Episode 6: Running (Well, Actually, Writing) Down a Dream

The Embryo Adoption Podcast

Embryo adoption mom Savannah Hansen once thought writing books was a childhood dream she’d just forget about. Then she saw the need for more children’s books to serve the adoption and embryo adoption communities. So she started, as they said in the old days, putting pen to paper. (Digital keystrokes to a phone app just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?) The result: Two children’s books you need to know about. Learn all about them as Savannah joins us for this episode of The Embryo Adoption Podcast.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (Please note transcription is done by AI. There may be some spelling, grammar, and other errors.):

00:01
Mark Mellinger
Embryo adoption touched her life so much, she has decided to help others by writing a couple of books about embryo adoption. I'm talking about Savannah Hansen. She's a national embryo donation center, mom. She is my guest today on the embryo adoption podcast. I'm your host, Mark Mellinger. The embryo adoption podcast is brought to you by the National Embryo Donation Center. You can find out more about us at embryodonation.org. Savannah, let's start by describing your own embryo adoption journey with the NEDC.

00:34
Savannah Hansen
Of course. My husband and I got married in 2015, and like everybody else, we just thought that it was going to be so easy and were going to have a family and it was going to be a breed. That did not happen. And I was 18 at the time. My husband was 19. Were young and thought that, of course you're going to have a big family, until the doctors told us we would never have biological children, which was a hard pill to swallow. I had actually found the NEVC a few years before we ever contacted you guys, because were still pursuing fertility treatment and trying everything under the sun to get there, until we really just felt God shut that door and say, no, this is what I want for you. We did, and it went very quickly. It was amazing. It was so fast.

01:35
Savannah Hansen
Before we knew it, we had adopted eight precious embryos and had our first transfer, and I was pregnant with my precious little babies. From there, it's just been a wild ride. We've had a few transfers. I'm pregnant with baby number two now, so it's been the best thing that we could have ever done. It's been amazing.

02:03
Mark Mellinger
Now, do you mind talking about Declan your first NADC baby?

02:10
Savannah Hansen
Of course. Declan is the best baby I've just ever experienced, ever been around. Of course, I am partial, of course, but everyone says it because he's the sweetest, most caring, gentle soul that he wants everyone to be included. He checks on you if anyone's crying. He'll run up to you and touch your face and say, Are you okay? And he's just the sweetest thing. We have been so blessed. We know that God really directed us in terms of the donor family and who were meant to choose. We have an open adoption with them, and it is beautiful, and I love them to pieces, but he has just been such a blessing to us, to them. It was everything we could have ever imagined and more. He's the light of our lives and our entire church. Call him the church's baby. Like, we can't claim him.

03:05
Savannah Hansen
He's everybody's baby. They're like, no, give me my baby. So he's two now. He'll be three in December. It was so fast, the blink of an eye, that he is just the best.

03:20
Mark Mellinger
He's going to be a great big brother, and I'm sure he's looking forward to that. Does he sort of get it?

03:26
Savannah Hansen
Oh, he gets it. He talks about the baby in my belly every day and asks for the baby to come out of my belly so that way baby can be home with us and in the car with us and everywhere with us. And he shares his water. He'll run up with his water and put it on my belly, and he goes, Baby, drink water. And I'm like that's, right? Baby needs water. Even Sonograms and everything, he'll look at the screen and he goes, Baby swimming in the water. I was like, yes, baby, the baby is in the water. He's so excited. He can't wait.

04:02
Mark Mellinger
This is just going to be great. I love it. Before we talk about each book individually, let's just start with the concept. Like when and why did you decide you wanted to write children's books on this?

04:18
Savannah Hansen
The dream itself to ever even write a children's book started back when I was a child, actually, that was something that I had already held dear to me. I love to write, but that's something as a child, you think, okay, well, that's a dream that we'll just forget about and it won't go anywhere. While facing all of the years of infertility and going through that and just knowing how isolating it was and seeing all of the other couples and young women in the clinics who were clearly facing so much emotional distress and in there and didn't want to talk to anybody because of the shame and didn't want to do all these things, I was like, man, we need more resources in this area. When we found NEDC and went through that process and just looking to see, okay, what are all of these resources?

05:18
Savannah Hansen
Because we chose open adoption, and we want it to always be something that our children know, and we want them to understand the concept in a way that makes sense to them, so that way as they grow, they can ask more questions. And there weren't many. You guys provide the resources of some books that other parents have written, and that was a huge thing. I bought all of them immediately, but I just knew that it was still something that was so nobody's talked about. Even, what a blessing to have Declan in the world, because it opens up so many conversations and I tell everybody about his story and so many people don't know about it. It was really then that I was like, no, something needs to change. There are so many babies waiting to have a chance to live this life, and people should know about it, because I've talked to so many people who had faced infertility years and years prior, and they said, I wish that I would have known about this option.

06:20
Savannah Hansen
I would have chosen that. Now I have no children. I didn't get to experience any of that. It's so devastating to me because it's such a beautiful option. I knew that for my children, I wanted to have more resources. I still kind of put it on the back burner, was like, I'm just being a mom and living the life that I've always wanted, and this is just so amazing. Until one night, God would not let me sleep and kept giving me the title of these books. I'm like, okay, God, I get it. I'm going to go to bed now. And he was like, no, you're not. I rolled over, and I was like, okay, let me just get out my phone. Just the notes app on the phone. I'll type what you tell me to type, and then I'll go to bed. It was a good 15 minutes later.

07:12
Savannah Hansen
It happened two nights in a row with each book and 15 minutes. 15 minutes. A week and a half later, I was published. It was insane. It was insane.

07:25
Mark Mellinger
That's crazy.

07:27
Savannah Hansen
Yes. That's why I'm like, what, God? You have a purpose for these books. Even if it just touches one family, that's worth it. It's fine.

07:38
Mark Mellinger
Amen.

07:39
Savannah Hansen
Amen.

07:39
Mark Mellinger
By the way, both books, and we'll get to them here in a second, both are available on the NEDC website. At least we have links to both of them. If you go to our books section, we have five books on there, and Savannahs are two of them. They're called the greatest gift and the miracle of you. I can tell you, Savannah, that our ladies in the back. That's how I refer to them, ladies in the back. That means nothing to anybody. Our patient coordination team looked at one of the books, The Miracle of you, and they were crying at the end of it. You have already touched some people, and we've reviewed these books. We love them. I want you to go through and just describe each of them, the Greatest Gift and The Miracle of you. Why don't you start with the greatest gift?

08:31
Savannah Hansen
Okay, perfect. The Greatest Gift is definitely the story specifically geared for embryo adoption or adoption in any way, honestly. Specifically, I wanted to make sure that parents could read it to their children and children could identify like, oh, my goodness, this is like my story, and this is how you tell me I came about. Over time, as you grasp deeper understanding and they can ask more questions of, okay, well, what does this symbolize? The Greatest Gift is about a carrot couple, and they want to start a garden and grow some carrots because, of course, why wouldn't you? They're the best, and they have some trouble, but their friends across the way do not. They find theirselves on this journey of embryo adoption, and they adopt these precious little carrots who come about. It is a celebration of families grown in ways that are nontraditional but beautiful and specifically designed the way that they're meant to be.

09:45
Savannah Hansen
But, yeah, it's pretty simple. It's sweet, it's for your little ones, but it's definitely from the heart.

09:54
Mark Mellinger
The Miracle of you is more of a people book in the sense that the character in it is not a vegetable. The character in it is an actual human being. And that's what the pictures look like. Describe that book.

10:09
Savannah Hansen
The Miracle of You, I wanted it to be something that I imagined. The next morning, after I read it in the notes app on my phone, I read it and I just thought, I would read this to my son. I would read this to Declan at night or in the morning or before a nap or whenever. I would read this to him. I just thought, wow, what a good way to show your children how deeply you've desired them and how wanted they are and how loved they are in society. I feel like people lose that perspective a lot of the time, and so many people do feel unwanted or do feel like, man, this isn't the life that I should have had. I wanted it to always come for parents to be able to have the opportunity to tell their children no, even if they never faced infertility, even if they didn't wait years upon years to have these children in their arms, but if they have desired and wanted them and loved them since before they even existed.

11:13
Savannah Hansen
I wanted children to understand that from a young age, even if that was you start reading this to your infants, and then later on it's like, oh, my goodness, I read this to you every night when you were three months old, and you just stared at me because you couldn't do anything else. It is just a celebration of that beautiful life that is here, and letting them know that regardless however they came about, whether it was easy, whether it was hard, whether it was years, whether it wasn't that they are loved and wanted. I wanted to make sure that when I saw it, I could identify my son in it. When I hired the illustrator, I was like, listen, these are some reference pictures, but I don't want it to be exactly my son. I was like, I want it to be anybody could see their kid.

12:10
Savannah Hansen
But, yeah, I just wanted it to be a resource for parents to be able to reach their kids and say, hey, I love you and I cherish you, and you are not only answered prayer, and for some people, they don't live that life and they don't believe the way that we believe. I guarantee you, their children are precious to them, just like ours are to us. I wanted it to be able to be that for people.

12:37
Mark Mellinger
And it is, and you're absolutely right. You do not have to have gone through embryo adoption or even infertility at all for that book to be a really salient one that's going to resonate with parents and kids. I want you to unpack the process of putting these books together because you said it happened really quickly. I just think this would be an interesting process to learn about. Unpack it from okay, you talked about the writing. You basically wrote it in your notes app on your phone, which is awesome that you can do that these days. Take me from that point to finding an illustrator to finding a publisher. What was that like?

13:19
Savannah Hansen
Right? I wrote the books in the notes app, and you think, oh, it was late at night. It's probably garbage. I'll look over it in the morning, and I remember reading them and just thinking to myself, okay, well, I would read that to my son. I just sent it to my family without any context, I just sent it to them, and they messaged me back. They were actually coming to North Carolina within a few months for my son's first birthday. So they're like, oh, that's really nice. Where did you find that? Are you going to read that at the birthday party or something? I was like, oh, no, I wrote it. It was like, well, wait a minute. You wrote it? And I'm like, yes, I did. I realized, I was like, okay, well, somebody else could believe in this too. Okay, we'll see. I just kind of left him, and I was like, all right.

14:23
Savannah Hansen
A week later, I told my husband. I was like, Listen, what do you think about this? If I just reach out if I find a publisher, that I feel like, hey, I'm meant to go this route or with them. I'll look at some what do you feel about us pursuing this? And he was like, absolutely. Do it. Make the call. Do whatever you need to do, because this is great. This will be a great option. I called, and I got into contact with Christian Faith Publishing. The lady was so sweet, and she was like, yeah, just send me them. Of course, it was very rough draft. I was like, of course, yeah. I'll type them up on my computer really fast and kind of tell you what I would assume or like the images to be or what I envisioned in my mind. I typed it all out, and I sent them to her that day, and she called me back, and she said, we want both of them.

15:22
Savannah Hansen
I was floored because I'm preparing myself for the okay, honey, no. I'm like, oh, wait, are you sure? Do you have the right person? Are you meant to be calling me? My name is Savannah. Yes, honey, we want both. And so it was such a whirlwind. It was crazy. But we started right away. We just jumped right into it. I remember for the greatest gift, I was going to use their illustrators because of the style of book that it was. I really wanted it to be something that you could identify and a kid could look at and be like, I want the carrot book. I wanted it to be something that would draw their attention for the miracle of you. I wanted something very specific, and I wanted the artwork to be nostalgic in a way that I was read books from my grandma and the style of art that isn't seen anymore today.

16:26
Savannah Hansen
I wanted that desperately, because those are the books that I reach for, that I grab, and I'm like, oh, this is beautiful. Oh, I'm going to have this for my kids. I actually downloaded a few apps and went online and went to go look for people who were advertising their services in artwork and all these other things. I found this beautiful young lady named Elena from Russia. I messaged her, and all she had on her profile was actually animals. She did a lot of nature drawings and paintings and everything, but I could see the style in there. I messaged her, and I said, hey, this is something that I'm wanting to do. Have you ever drawn people before? No. The answer was no, she had not. I kind of explained to her what I wanted, and she was like, okay, well, let me try it, and I'll get back to you in a few days.

17:32
Savannah Hansen
Of course she sent me a message back, and immediately I knew that it had to be her, because it was exactly I immediately was like, I want to reach, and I want to grab that picture, and I want to keep it, and I want to have it. I went through the process with her of telling her every page what I wanted the details of, okay? I want their eye color to be this. I want their hair color to be this. I want on this page different hair colors, different eye colors, because they don't know what their kid is going to look like. That's the beauty of adoption and just all of these things. She was so sweet and so wonderful to work with. At the end of it, I paid her, and she gave me all of the files and talked about a God moment too, because it was right before everything happened with Ukraine.

18:27
Savannah Hansen
And so they shut everything down. They canceled all of their profiles, and so I got all of the illustrations a week before that happened, I think, and I wouldn't have been able to get it otherwise.

18:40
Mark Mellinger
Just in time. Wow.

18:43
Savannah Hansen
Just in time. It was like that throughout the entire process. Just like our process going through the NADC, everything was so god, everything. It's nice to look back and just see. I'm like, okay. God, thank you. Thank you for your hand in that.

19:00
Mark Mellinger
Yeah, well, she did a great job. The pictures are captivating and you're right, as I think about it is drawn in more of that older style and those things do stick with you. So this is important. I mean, I'm quite a bit older than you are and I can still remember decades ago the books that my parents, some of them read to me when I was just a little kid, Declan's age, like Goodnight Moon and the Mother Goose stuff and the arch Christian books. I mean, I'm 47 years old and I can still remember how formative and important those were. They have really good memories attached to them. It's great that you're involved now in doing such work that's going to have significant impact and resonance throughout people's lives that's really so meaningful. Savannah so I'm glad you've done this. It's awesome. What have the responses to the books been like so far?

20:02
Savannah Hansen
Oh, it's been wonderful. I just went to California, where all of my family is for a month, and I had a woman come up to me who goes to my mother's church, and she has a ton of children mindy, most of whom were adopted, not embryo adoption in any way. I just remember her coming up to me and crying. Of course then I start crying because that's all I wanted for these books. She just said, I'm so excited because I have something to read to my babies that not only says how beautiful our family is in the way that it has been created, but how loved they are, not only by us, but by God, and that they were placed here for a reason. Because I think that can be hard when there's been difficulties in life. She said to have it from the perspective of our faith and knowing that they are precious and they are wonderful, but being able to tell them that in ways that they understand and they can see and they're like, oh, okay, well, those carrots.

21:17
Savannah Hansen
The Carrots had a family that came together differently, but it's okay because they're beautiful and they love each other and it works out. Now I guess her kids asked for the Carrot book, which is so heartwarming to me, but it's been so beautiful. I've had so many people who have been so supportive and immediately just will be like, oh, I got my copy, or oh, I got this, and it's beautiful, and I cried. It gives people perspective as well, and more compassion in areas that they don't quite understand. I think that's important, as well as people, family members, friends that walk along, couples who face a life like this. It helps to bring that perspective of, oh, I wouldn't have ever guessed that this is how or what it might be like. It helps bring that to adults as well.

22:21
Mark Mellinger
And do you read them to Declan?

22:24
Savannah Hansen
Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, he absolutely loves books. He is a reader. We have books all over the house. He has a ridiculous amount. But, yes, I read them to him. I love it because every time he sees The Miracle of you, he'll point, he goes, oh, Declan. Yes, baby. He'll look and he'll point, he goes, you. I'm like yes, baby, you. He loves it.

22:55
Mark Mellinger
That is just great. I absolutely love it. Yeah, it's true what they say. There's no friend as loyal as a good book. You're doing a good work in raising a reader there. The books again are called the greatest gift. And the miracle of you. You can get them at Amazon, basically anywhere that sells books online. Again, you can go to EmbryoDonation.org. That's the NEDC's website. Just click on the book section and you'll see them there. We have links where you can buy them, so I think you'll really enjoy them. It's a great resource for embryo adoption parents or just any parents. Again, it's the greatest gift and the miracle of you by Savannah Hansen, who has been my guest. It has been a delight to talk with you, Savannah. Thank you so much for what you're doing.

23:46
Savannah Hansen
Thank you so much for having me and for all you do.

23:50
Mark Mellinger
You bet. We continue to pray for a safe, healthy conclusion to your pregnancy. We can't wait to see pictures of the new baby. This has been the embryo adoption podcast. Again, more information at embryodonation.org. I'm Mark Mellinger. We look forward to talking with you next time.