The transfer!
Well once we flew into NY, we were exhausted but ready for the next day. The BIG day! The day that we had been preparing for. I didn't sleep that much that night as you can imagine. I got up and showered and got dressed. My husband could see that I was some what stressing. Who wouldn't in that situation?
I had a lot going on in my head as well as the emotions that were setting in about the transfer. So I had breakfast and we went ahead and headed over at 10:45 for my frozen embryo transfer. I got there and they started talking to me about the procedure and what I could expect. I texted my Ips and let them know that we were about to go in and get pregnant with their babies! So I put on some stylish scrubs ;) and the Doc came around and showed me a screen with the embers, and there they were. These perfect little circular cells.
After seeing them, I was like LETS DO THIS!!! So I laid on and table and forgive me for the next line, but spread eagle so they could insert this long tube into my body and insert the embryos. It was a lil pinch but nothing uncomfortable at all. After watching the screen, the Doc advised me to lay still for about 15 mins and then gave me some instructions to follow over the next several days which included:
-No lifting anything over 15 lbs
-No strenuous workouts
-Bed rest for the rest of the day
I could eat anything I wanted and go about my regular life after a couple of days rest. So after the transfer, I started praying and thinking a lot. My hubby and I went to lunch and then back to the hotel for the rest of the day. The next day we flew home back to Tucson. Little did I know that my stress levels were only to get more intense as I waited for 7 days to see if all this time and effort had paid off. So almost 7 days later, I tested…………….POSITIVE!!!!!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
The emtions after giving birth to surrobabies
The legal process………and the emotions.
Well after having the babies, and everyone was healthy, happy and finally together. Where was I to go from here? What was going to happen from this point? They agency told me what I could expect. Well they couldn't have prepared me for the emotional, stressful and very hard issues that came along with the legal process or the hormones that follow a surrogacy ending.
As I was leaving the hospital, it wasn't the usual getting the baby ready to go home. It was what felt like endless amounts of paperwork and not knowing what to put on them or what to sign. What if I did one thing wrong and messed up this whole process the my IPs had worked so hard for and waited even longer for? Not to mention that my breasts hurt, my c-section was throbbing from the pain, and my husband was on military duty. Wow what had I gotten myself into? I left the hospital that day, crying. Because I felt so lost. This was not like me to feel this way. Don't get me wrong, I was so excited for my IPs and their new additions. But I felt like I wasn't needed anymore. We all know that that is a not such a great feeling. So where was I to go from here? What was the next step to this process?
Well 2 days later, postpartum hit in. WOW, I thought it was bad with my own children, I guess because of twins, the baby blues maybe a little more intense. Well for me at least they were. I then got a call from a lawyer saying I needed to come into their office and look over the paperwork that they were going to file the next day to the courts to relinquish my rights as birth mother to the tweeds. I met my IPs there at the office and for the first time since I left the hospital, I got to see the girls. It was such a wonderful to see that they were a family and how happy they were because of 9 months of work that I had gone through. That was all it took for me to put my feelings and questions that I was feeling to the middle of outer space. It was in other words my closure, being able to see the tweeds with their parents where they belonged. I then happily signed the papers and 2 weeks later my name was no longer on their birth certificates.
I got a call from my IPs to go have lunch with them the next day after signing the papers, and I got to see a more personal level of how they were handling these new babies. It was so touching to see my intended mother hold and kiss the foreheads of one of the tweeds, then to watch my intended father watch his daughter as she slept. I had a part in this happiness that they were feeling. I was so content. :)
I was pumping milk for the tweeds as well and further contributed to their well being. The breast milk was my gift to them. I did it free of charge and willingly so that they would get the vitamins and precious nutrients that they would need. I felt even better after that. :) I went from Surro momma to milk maid. HAHA I hope that one day these girls will be able to come to me and we can sit down and show them the start of their journey. Because oh my what a journey it has been.
Well after having the babies, and everyone was healthy, happy and finally together. Where was I to go from here? What was going to happen from this point? They agency told me what I could expect. Well they couldn't have prepared me for the emotional, stressful and very hard issues that came along with the legal process or the hormones that follow a surrogacy ending.
As I was leaving the hospital, it wasn't the usual getting the baby ready to go home. It was what felt like endless amounts of paperwork and not knowing what to put on them or what to sign. What if I did one thing wrong and messed up this whole process the my IPs had worked so hard for and waited even longer for? Not to mention that my breasts hurt, my c-section was throbbing from the pain, and my husband was on military duty. Wow what had I gotten myself into? I left the hospital that day, crying. Because I felt so lost. This was not like me to feel this way. Don't get me wrong, I was so excited for my IPs and their new additions. But I felt like I wasn't needed anymore. We all know that that is a not such a great feeling. So where was I to go from here? What was the next step to this process?
Well 2 days later, postpartum hit in. WOW, I thought it was bad with my own children, I guess because of twins, the baby blues maybe a little more intense. Well for me at least they were. I then got a call from a lawyer saying I needed to come into their office and look over the paperwork that they were going to file the next day to the courts to relinquish my rights as birth mother to the tweeds. I met my IPs there at the office and for the first time since I left the hospital, I got to see the girls. It was such a wonderful to see that they were a family and how happy they were because of 9 months of work that I had gone through. That was all it took for me to put my feelings and questions that I was feeling to the middle of outer space. It was in other words my closure, being able to see the tweeds with their parents where they belonged. I then happily signed the papers and 2 weeks later my name was no longer on their birth certificates.
I got a call from my IPs to go have lunch with them the next day after signing the papers, and I got to see a more personal level of how they were handling these new babies. It was so touching to see my intended mother hold and kiss the foreheads of one of the tweeds, then to watch my intended father watch his daughter as she slept. I had a part in this happiness that they were feeling. I was so content. :)
I was pumping milk for the tweeds as well and further contributed to their well being. The breast milk was my gift to them. I did it free of charge and willingly so that they would get the vitamins and precious nutrients that they would need. I felt even better after that. :) I went from Surro momma to milk maid. HAHA I hope that one day these girls will be able to come to me and we can sit down and show them the start of their journey. Because oh my what a journey it has been.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Part 3 The needle is how big!?!?!
So after getting back from my medical screening and being able to get back into the swing of normal life again, I got a package in the mail that was about the size of a shoe box. I wasn't expecting anything. So I opened it up and in there were 7 different medications!!! I was then asking myself, "WHAT THE HECK DID I GET MYSELF INTO??" Well I started going through the meds and noticed that there were some very B-I-G needles in there, not to mention, lots of them. So I called the clinic and asked them where I was supposed to stick myself with them. Thats when they notified me that I was to stick my Gluteus Maximus. Yes the butt!!! OMG!!! So I guess I had to suck it up and do this. The list of meds I received were the following:
1. Lupron (suppresses a womans ovaries)
2. Estrogen
3. Children's Asprin
4. Progestrone shots
5. Birth Control (if needed)
6. Estrace
7. And of course I don't remember what the last one was. lol
So after much deliberation in my mind, I started the sticking and the cocktails of pills that I was ingesting. I had to keep telling myself that this was for a great cause. Well after 2 months of being on these meeds my system finally was being put into hibernation. The estrace was suppressing my ovaries so that my body was not creating any of my own eggs. I did have the munchies and gained a little bit of weight during the couple of months preparing my body for the transfer. Well we got a timeline to do the transfer in feb! I was finally going to meet my intended Parents and I couldn't be more excited!
I went to my local monitoring clinic where they did an ultrasound to check the lining of my uterus to make sure that it was thick enough to receive the two embryos that we were planning on transferring. Well I wasn't ready at all. :( Boy did I feel like a failure. My husband told me it wasn't my fault. I had to stop taking all the meds and let my system have a period and start all over again!!
So after speaking to the clinic in Ct and my IPs, we decided it was for the best to now do a frozen embryo transfer instead of a fresh embryo. So my IPs flew into CT from Sweden and they harvested My intended mothers eggs. 11 of them to be exact. They then fertilized them and we got 8 eggs that were ready to be frozen.
Well after three days there were only 3 of them that were "strong" enough to put in deep freeze to wait for me. We had lost 8 eggs!!! It was a huge blow. They couldn't come back for another harvest if this transfer failed. The pressure was on and boy did I feel it. I needed to be ready and needed to makesure that my system was up to the standards of the clinic. It was a very stressful next month. But after hard work and mucho mood swings, i went back into the clinic and low and behold, I WAS READY!!!! 3 days later my husband and I were on a plane to CT to meet some sweden embryos. ;)
1. Lupron (suppresses a womans ovaries)
2. Estrogen
3. Children's Asprin
4. Progestrone shots
5. Birth Control (if needed)
6. Estrace
7. And of course I don't remember what the last one was. lol
So after much deliberation in my mind, I started the sticking and the cocktails of pills that I was ingesting. I had to keep telling myself that this was for a great cause. Well after 2 months of being on these meeds my system finally was being put into hibernation. The estrace was suppressing my ovaries so that my body was not creating any of my own eggs. I did have the munchies and gained a little bit of weight during the couple of months preparing my body for the transfer. Well we got a timeline to do the transfer in feb! I was finally going to meet my intended Parents and I couldn't be more excited!
I went to my local monitoring clinic where they did an ultrasound to check the lining of my uterus to make sure that it was thick enough to receive the two embryos that we were planning on transferring. Well I wasn't ready at all. :( Boy did I feel like a failure. My husband told me it wasn't my fault. I had to stop taking all the meds and let my system have a period and start all over again!!
So after speaking to the clinic in Ct and my IPs, we decided it was for the best to now do a frozen embryo transfer instead of a fresh embryo. So my IPs flew into CT from Sweden and they harvested My intended mothers eggs. 11 of them to be exact. They then fertilized them and we got 8 eggs that were ready to be frozen.
Well after three days there were only 3 of them that were "strong" enough to put in deep freeze to wait for me. We had lost 8 eggs!!! It was a huge blow. They couldn't come back for another harvest if this transfer failed. The pressure was on and boy did I feel it. I needed to be ready and needed to makesure that my system was up to the standards of the clinic. It was a very stressful next month. But after hard work and mucho mood swings, i went back into the clinic and low and behold, I WAS READY!!!! 3 days later my husband and I were on a plane to CT to meet some sweden embryos. ;)
Part 2: Travel and drugs oh my!
Being matched was the simple part it felt like. Compared to what I was starting to experience in terms of patience. This was really testing my ability to tolerate the concept of time!! What was taking so long, we are matched, why am I not pregnant for them already? Geez! Then I received an email concerning travel arrangements to CT to be evaluated at a fertility clinic. Oh Joy! I was scared, all these questions started streaming through my head.
-What if there was something out of the ordinary in my insides?
-What if they didn't approve me?
-What would my IPs say if I wasn't approved?
There were tones more, but I will not bore you with the details. Lets just say I was an emotional wreck, concerned that I had made it thus far in the process just to be turned down because a doctor didn't like me inside. LOL They say they are supposed to like you for who you are in the inside. Well this doc better like what he sees or I'm going to be nasty on the outside. HAHA. Anyways I was supposed to fly out on the 22nd and be there thru until the night of the 23rd of Dec. My hubby was going to be my travel companion. Well the weather in NY decided to be a butt, and not let the airplane leave. So we rescheduled for the 28th of Dec, well that worked out all fine and dandy except for my husbands work schedule. GREAT, so I was going to fly into NY by myself and then drive my happy lil butt to CT.
Well I left and got to NY no problem. Only problem is, I am direction DUMB!!! Well I got to CT about 4 hours later, it was supposed to be a hour and half drive. I must have taken the scenic route. Lovely! So my advise to you, get that lovely piece of technology that they call GPS!!! Most rental care agencies will provide you with one for around 15 bucks. Not very smart of me. Got to my room finally and went directly to sleep. 5 hours later and unable to have slept the whole night, I got to the fertility clinic and was there for about 2 hours doing the medical screening. The Doc and his crew were wonderful!!! They made me feel very comfortable about the whole procedure. They were very personable.
They took some blood, did an ultrasound inside and out. Took some cultures of my uterus, and then showed me how to administer the meds that I was going to be taking to get my body ready for the pregnancy. The RN was very thorough in the direction of what I was going to be doing, how to do it and what order to take it in. 7 medications and a headache later, I left to go home to my family. 2 weeks later I received my drugs!! lol
-What if there was something out of the ordinary in my insides?
-What if they didn't approve me?
-What would my IPs say if I wasn't approved?
There were tones more, but I will not bore you with the details. Lets just say I was an emotional wreck, concerned that I had made it thus far in the process just to be turned down because a doctor didn't like me inside. LOL They say they are supposed to like you for who you are in the inside. Well this doc better like what he sees or I'm going to be nasty on the outside. HAHA. Anyways I was supposed to fly out on the 22nd and be there thru until the night of the 23rd of Dec. My hubby was going to be my travel companion. Well the weather in NY decided to be a butt, and not let the airplane leave. So we rescheduled for the 28th of Dec, well that worked out all fine and dandy except for my husbands work schedule. GREAT, so I was going to fly into NY by myself and then drive my happy lil butt to CT.
Well I left and got to NY no problem. Only problem is, I am direction DUMB!!! Well I got to CT about 4 hours later, it was supposed to be a hour and half drive. I must have taken the scenic route. Lovely! So my advise to you, get that lovely piece of technology that they call GPS!!! Most rental care agencies will provide you with one for around 15 bucks. Not very smart of me. Got to my room finally and went directly to sleep. 5 hours later and unable to have slept the whole night, I got to the fertility clinic and was there for about 2 hours doing the medical screening. The Doc and his crew were wonderful!!! They made me feel very comfortable about the whole procedure. They were very personable.
They took some blood, did an ultrasound inside and out. Took some cultures of my uterus, and then showed me how to administer the meds that I was going to be taking to get my body ready for the pregnancy. The RN was very thorough in the direction of what I was going to be doing, how to do it and what order to take it in. 7 medications and a headache later, I left to go home to my family. 2 weeks later I received my drugs!! lol
Part 1 The Journey: The beginning that has no end:
Infertility plagues everyone. No matter your race, your gender or your age. Percent of women ages 15-44 with impaired fecundity: 11.8%. That is 7.4 million people in the USA alone. So maybe double that and you will get a small glimpse as to how many people suffer from such an unfortunate problem. I have so many friends and family members that are unable to bare children themselves. I asked myself, How am I so fortunate to be able to experience being a mother and these people are not able to. But they would make wonderful parents. That then lead me to the next question, can you guess what it was? HOW CAN I HELP?? Well, I am able to carry children with no major issues. I am young, fit, and love being pregnant. So I started doing some research online and came upon surrogacy. Boy did that open a can of worms, in a good way of course. :) I became obsessed. I started reading and watching and became an "expert" over night. I looked into several agencies and came upon one that really popped!
I had only one thing that I was really struggling with, I am LDS. I was concerned at how the church would view this decision that I was interested in making. Not saying at all that I would allow a religion to make my life decisions for me, but I would like to get some feedback. So I confronted my bishop and spoke with him concerning the churches views on surrogacy. After what seemed like a long discussion, everything went pretty much like I expected it to. In LDS religion, family is a HUGE part of our everyday lives. In fact, its the key component that we strive for. The view on surrogacy is that it is a way of creating a family, not exactly the traditional way, but a way non the less. So now that that was covered, I could move forward to the next step. Just a bit of advice, if you are part of a religion, please take the time to see what the views are of surrogacy, because having your churches support can be EXTREMELY helpful. It was for me.
So I applied to a website, but never in a million years expected to be contacted in the first 24 hours of my application being submitted. They then asked me for additional information, ie: full medical history, family history and the what nots. So after sending all that information to them, they then had me take a crazy test. Sorry for the pun, but I felt crazy after taking the MMPI test. 575 questions asked in 5 different ways, T or F. I could have sworn I was going to fail it due to the fact of pure nervousness. So once I passed all that, they then matched me. OH BOY, talk about impatience. That was the longest week of my life. I was so excited to get the email with the subject line of, "Potential Match" So I read the profile and could not have fallen in love with a couple faster. Their story touched my heart. EVERY surrogate will say that and knows what I mean if you have experienced that portion of your journey. If you haven't, then look forward to falling in love in a way that you will never experience otherwise! Once we were matched, the fun really started.
I had only one thing that I was really struggling with, I am LDS. I was concerned at how the church would view this decision that I was interested in making. Not saying at all that I would allow a religion to make my life decisions for me, but I would like to get some feedback. So I confronted my bishop and spoke with him concerning the churches views on surrogacy. After what seemed like a long discussion, everything went pretty much like I expected it to. In LDS religion, family is a HUGE part of our everyday lives. In fact, its the key component that we strive for. The view on surrogacy is that it is a way of creating a family, not exactly the traditional way, but a way non the less. So now that that was covered, I could move forward to the next step. Just a bit of advice, if you are part of a religion, please take the time to see what the views are of surrogacy, because having your churches support can be EXTREMELY helpful. It was for me.
So I applied to a website, but never in a million years expected to be contacted in the first 24 hours of my application being submitted. They then asked me for additional information, ie: full medical history, family history and the what nots. So after sending all that information to them, they then had me take a crazy test. Sorry for the pun, but I felt crazy after taking the MMPI test. 575 questions asked in 5 different ways, T or F. I could have sworn I was going to fail it due to the fact of pure nervousness. So once I passed all that, they then matched me. OH BOY, talk about impatience. That was the longest week of my life. I was so excited to get the email with the subject line of, "Potential Match" So I read the profile and could not have fallen in love with a couple faster. Their story touched my heart. EVERY surrogate will say that and knows what I mean if you have experienced that portion of your journey. If you haven't, then look forward to falling in love in a way that you will never experience otherwise! Once we were matched, the fun really started.
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