I am thrilled to be introducing a new series on Gunnar’s blog, called Family Building Fridays.
Family Building Fridays will be a series of blog posts, each authored by a different family impacted by CF, that will address a lot of meaningful topics within the CF community. We’re going to be highlighting families built through adoption, In-vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and natural pregnancy. We will feature adults with CF, and parents of children with CF.
This blog series was born out of Gunnar’s and my shared dream of having a family one day, but subsequently hitting a roadblock when trying to educate ourselves about our future options. I’ve googled “cystic fibrosis family planning” and “cystic fibrosis male IVF” extensively. There is a solid amount of information out there in terms of reproductive technology and adoption, but very little as it relates to cystic fibrosis (or chronic illness, in general). Thanks to social media, I’ve been able to connect with families who have been through the process of building a family in the face of CF, and they’ve been able to provide me with the information and answers I’ve been searching for.
I realized that if hearing other family’s stories helped me, it would probably help other people, too! And hence, Family Building Fridays was born.
The goal at the end of this is to have a library of personal stories for cystic fibrosis families to reference when they are thinking about planning their family’s future.
I hope you enjoy reading about some awesome families, big and small, and learn about family building options, too.
P.S. If you have been blogging about your family building story already, say something in the comments, I’d love to check it out!
