Hello. Brand new to all of this. We are about to put our international adoption on hold to pursue donated embryo transfer. DH is Latino, I'm Polish. Obviously, we don't expect to find an exact match with our specific national/ethnic heritage backgrounds, but we would much prefer Latino embies.

We are in the Washington DC metro area, and would prefer not to have to travel. As I'm not sure how this process works... could we find our embies out of state and have them shipped to a clinic near us for the FET?

Are there clinics anyone wants to recommend with Latino, Native American/Indian, Mediterranean, and/or Romani ("Gypsy") background embies?

Thanks for any feedback!

I don't know which clinics if any have a program for donor embryos in the immediate area. Cooper is near Philadelphia and has an active donor embryo program, I have heard they have some Hispanic embryos available. It is close enough to get to via car in a day trip (maybe 3 hr drive?).

I was able to get monitoring done locally near DC at Shady Grove (I did OE and DE). Good luck! Not many clinics offer donor embryos, they just don't want to fool with it since there is no money in it for them, clinics are not allowed to charge recipients for the donated embryos.

Thanks, I'm certainly not opposed to a little day trip! Heck, we're looking at two trips to Poland right now for the international adoption we're about to put on hold!

You mentioned you were also open to Mediterranean type donors - hate to stereotype, but from the area where Cooper is located (Philadelphia/ south Jersey/ proximity to NYC and the Jersey shore) yields a lot of Italian descent donors. You have a good chance to see that reflected in the donor pool/ donor embryo pool there.

Our donor was Polish there were none that fit that genotype/phenotype we were hoping for, so we brought a donor from elsewhere (from a part of the country where there were lots of Polish & Swedish populations). In NJ not so much.

Donor embryo should be fairly inexpensive, there are waiting lists though so I would try to get on lists ASAP.

Thanks again - regarding waiting lists and choosing clinics, it sounds like it's prudent to be simultaneously signed up with several clinics that have donor embryo programs... Am I understanding correctly that I'd have to travel to the clinic for the FET? I couldn't have the embies shipped locally? I ask bc I read that you cannot "buy" embies, so any money a clinic makes would be from performing the actual FET. Is this true?

And if so, would they accept our workup from local sources? Are there usually no large amounts of money exchanged until you actually start a cycle?

I would try to sign up for different waiting lists if you can, but they might require consults first. Cooper would let you do the consult over the phone with an RE, then mail you lab orders for required tests you could do at home...technically you could only have to go to the clinic once (for transfer). I would first want to talk to the donor embryo coordinator to just ask questions about the embryo pool and waiting list.

You could also try an organization like miracles waiting . org. Some people want to donate their embryos but want to know they are going to a good home and they want to pick the recipients themselves.

The only reason the clinic storing the embies makes any money is from your cycle there. I actually lived in DC and found the donor embie prospects there disheartening. Thanks to a rec from this board, I ended up on a waiting list at Center for Reproductive Medicine of New Mexico http://infertility-ivf.com/). It took just four months to reach the top. They had maybe 10 profiles, of which 3 were non hispanic caucasian and 7 were hispanic. There were a few great choices (imho).

For my cycle, the profile I chose had 5 blasts in 2 straws - I struggled with how many to thaw but ended up thawing all and transferring the 3 best (3 because they were 13.4 yrs old and had been frozen, thawed, cultured to blast and refrozen before my time), and I got pregnant with twins.

Just a thought. My total cycle costs including local monitoring via Shady Grove, two plane trips (one for mock cycle), hotel, meds and everything ran right at $8000 so not bad and not much more than GIVF would have cost if I ever reached the top of their list. There is a local clinic here too in DFW http://www.embryo.net/) which I understand has minimal wait time but I don't know how many hispanic choices. I'd imagine a fair number though.

Good luck!!

Thanks for the feedback I think I'm finally starting to figure out the various options. So I guess you'd only have embies shipped if they were from a source like miracles waiting. I'm talking to a clinic in my state today that has their own embie program, so I'll see what those prospects are. Another area clinic told me their wait time is up to 2 years right now.

Does Shady Grove not have their own donor embryo program? I'd have thought that they would.

GIVF was all I found locally. Best wishes to you...I'd definitely get on all the waiting lists you can get on!

lots of Latinos in Texas.

Sounds like we may have to be traveling, then

there is a clinic in Spain, I believe its ranked #1 in the world as far as success rates (anyone know for sure?) If its not #1, its very high up there. I was considering going there for IVF at one time, since we had so much bad luck in the past. Anyway, I'm sure you could get Latino embies there.