Thank you again for being with us on this adoption journey. Our family has been doing well generally, as this transformational year has encouraged us to do even more family hiking & biking outside together, playing board games at the dinner table, making homemade ice cream in the backyard, and growing cherry trees and sunflowers in the garden. I hope you all are feeling healthy and vibrant as well, and we are happy to share this update with you. This one comes in two parts.

You might remember from our last update that our adoption journey so far has had many obstacles. We’ve now had two adoption agencies close down on us mid-process, and our potential third recently decided they will no longer work with adopting families in New Mexico, because of state laws making inter-state adoptions too difficult. We've now had 3 different adoptable children temporarily in our care, but we could not adopt because we are lower on the 'priority list' than other waiting parents. We continue to work as foster parents, and continue to hope that we can adopt a foster child in need of a safe, loving home, if one becomes available. But it's been incredibly difficult, and deeply heartbreaking, to have already lost children whom we thought we would give a forever home to.

Why is this so hard?

The truth is, there are hardly any babies placed in adoption, but there are thousands and thousands of couples waiting to adopt. There's just no such thing as 'an unwanted baby' anywhere in the world. Adoption rates have been steeply declining since the early 2000s, following a general trend of birth rates so low that economists are calling it ‘a crisis.’ Our most recent adoption agency told us they personally receive 150-200 applications each month from people deeply wanting to be parents; how many children are actually placed each month? Twelve.

Adoption isn’t easy. Are we giving up on adopting? Absolutely not. But we are changing tack...
There aren't many babies born and available for adoption... BUT there ARE embryos!

Stick with me, I can explain:

When an infertile couple uses IVF technology to create children, they often have extra embryos. Those embryos are already biologically alive, each a unique individual with complete human DNA and inherited characteristics, but cryogenically frozen in stasis. If they are not adopted and given a chance at life, those tiny little human lives will die without ever being born. (Fun fact-- IVF embryos can potentially remain alive for over 13 years in stasis!) There are many many waiting embryos than there are families willing to adopt them, but many of them will simply be discarded, if not adopted.

Well, we want to adopt them, give them a full chance at life, and love them forever!

If you’d like to help us in our search, or you’d just like to learn more about the process of embryo adoption, please reply to this email. We’d love to just say hello to you, too =)

Thanks again for being with us on this journey. We hope to share more news with you again soon!

With Gratitude,

Ashley and Chris Zappe
tiny.cc/zappeadoption