I Love Roller coasters

I am happy to say that it looks like we have found a solution!!  Carlton just says it all.

Since Andrea's husband is really not wanting to travel out to the states for testing, we needed to find a way to do this that worked for everyone involved. He said he was willing to do the testing now, but only if he could do it from home and not have to travel.  Our clinic out here had called us back and said there was no way we could work with them if Andrea's hubby didn't want to come out to the states. I had heard that shipping embryos was not ideal and so I was trying to decide what to do.  I was not willing to give up on Andrea, I think we are too well matched and it just feels too right!!   Do we call around to a bunch of different clinics here to see if any of them will work with us and be okay without her husband?  Well I did a lot of reading and it looked like that would not be possible.  Do we wait to do everything until we move back to Canada?  That would mean putting off all aspects of the IVF till the summer.  That didn't feel awesome to me because I am so anxious to get started and so is Andrea,  but it seemed like that might have to be the solution.  I ended up talking to a clinic in BC to ask about their surrogacy program there and we ended up talking about shipping embryos.  The nurse said that they receive shipped embryos all of the time and are very comfortable with it.  I then talked to our clinic out here in CT and they said the same thing!  I was told that the risks have lowered significantly and that the shipping protocols have gotten so much better.  SO, we have a new plan!  I am going to go forward with our clinic out here and start the retrieval process.  We should have embryos by March at the latest and we will then be able to ship our embryos out to BC where Andrea lives!  Yes, there is a slightly higher risk to our embryos, but this feels like the right decision for everyone!  Andrea and I cried when we got this all figured out, we were both so relieved with the decision!!  We now need to just hope and pray that I will have lots of eggs at retrieval and we will have quite a few healthy embryos for shipping!!  It is always risky, the odds are not the best, but we are going to hope and pray for success. I know some people are going to wonder, why not wait till you get back and lower the risks??  Well, one of the reasons is money, the other is urgency.  We have medical coverage for IVF out here, and will not back home in Canada.  Canada does not have any coverage for fertility treatments (which I will hold my opinions on that) and why not use the insurance we pay for out here?  It will probably save us $10,000!!  The other reason, urgency.   If you know me well you would know how quick I make decisions and stick to them.  I do not like plans changing, but in this situation, plans have to change all of the time.  I am trying to stick to as many of my original plans as possible to protect the crazy that comes out when I feel out of control. haha  Sometimes in surrogacy you just want to feel like something is moving forward, that you aren't always working on logistics, but that you are actually progressing!  If we waited till Canada I would feel like I just was not moving anywhere  and would never stop worrying about it.  Like, do I have any eggs?  Will we be able to get any embryos?  It is just so much longer to wait!  And, if we aren't able to produce an embryo, it also puts off Andrea working with a family that can move forward with their family.  I was told by the owner of the surrogacy agency that we work with, that there is always a major bump in this process and she hoped this was our bump.  Me too!!  I am expecting more bumps, I just hope they are minor!!

Im Frustrated post #1

 
Can anyone say hiccups?!  Cause I sure can!!  I cant tell you how annoyed I am by doctors, clinics, phone calls, emails, blah blah blah.  Im sorry, this is going to be one of those blog posts!  I need to complain and vent so it is out of my system.  You think things are going super smoothly, and then oh wait, there is another hiccup.  You find an awesome agency, the most wonderful surrogate, the best lawyer ever, but then your ivf clinic wants to make you INSANE!!!  Being out of Canada and trying to do this is so frustrating.  It took a lot of calls to them to convince them that it is okay that we are using a Canadian surrogate and we are following the Canadian laws because our baby will be born in Canada.  They of course need their lawyers to look at our contract and make sure they approve of it before they will sign off on this whole process.  Then they just told me that they want both my surrogate and her husband to come out to be psychologically evaluated.  Well, hiccup, our surrogate's husband is overseas with work and can not come back for this or he will lose his job.  Plus, he is totally willing to back up his wife in being a surrogate but does not want to be medically involved at all.  Who can blame him???  We are already asking a lot of him and he deserves his right to not be interrogated for allowing his wife to do this.  So now I am patiently waiting for the psychologist to get back to me to see if she will allow us to proceed.  I just don't get why it is the clinics business?!  Is it for liability?  Probably, but we have a legal contract in place, and our surrogate is willing to do all the tests.  Arrrgh.  So whats the problem here??  Sometimes you just want to say, just put the embryo where I tell you to.  hahaha  I would never, but you just feel like you are losing your mind sometimes!!  I am still so new to this whole thing, that I get really confused a lot about why things need to be done in these certain ways and why every clinic has a different policy. 


Now, if you knew me, you would know that I HATE the phone!!!  I hate making calls!!!  I have tried on many occasions to get my mother, or other family members, or even friends to pretend they are me and make calls for me.  haha  I really don't like confrontation and usually calls to businesses and doctors sometimes can be confrontational, so I try to avoid it.  Well, in this situation all I do is phone offices and clinics and businesses and it is so brutal.  I have been now calling different clinics, but in Canada to see what their policies are on screening a surrogate.  Do they want to meet with the husband too??  Also I need to know if our embryos could survive transportation since no matter what, we are doing the egg retrieval out here, so our embryos will be out here.  I don't want to go through all of this just to lose our embryos in transit!!  But, being in Canada for this would definitely make it a lot easier since we wouldnt be dealing with international questions.  Surrogacy is just different in the states than it is in Canada and they don't understand it so I am getting a bit of a hard time about it.  So the Canadian clinics would be able to understand the whole surrogacy legalities, our surrogate would be able to hopefully use a clinic closer to home and her poor husband could maybe be left out of the doctor stuff.  Good grief I am just tired!  Somebody please fix all of this for me so I don't have to!!  Mother???  haha

In two weeks today I have my first appointment to begin the process for the retrieval, so hopefully that all goes smoothly and they don't decide that they aren't going to do this for me if I don't keep the embryos in their clinic.  Cause I am starting to wonder if they are a little possessive...  I have told myself I am not allowed to throw my hands up and yell "I quit", so if I need to I will just get a new CT clinic to make some embryos for us knowing from the start that we will be transporting them to Canada.  I don't know, I just feel like we are starting over again.  Finding and working with this clinic has been tough!!  So I am now going to change my badatude to a more optimistic attitude and tell myself that it will all work itself out very quickly!  I can't wait to post some stuff on the actual retrieval, medications, transfer, and then baby!  I am aching to post those things!!  So happy thoughts that this is going to move forward somehow and we will all be delirious with joy.  

I added a link to this video of our not so little guy when he was just a little guy because I watched it yesterday and it made me bawl!  (A cute Boy)  I just can't wait to be able to do this again and have another sweet little muffin.  As tough as this journey is going to be, I know it is worth it! 

Let the Games Begin

I can't believe I am writing this post!  We have found our surrogate!!  We talked for hours the other day and I just knew I wanted to have her be our surrogate, so I just hoped and hoped that she would feel the same way.  She is hilarious, honest, extremely open, happy, kind...I could go on!  How can you even describe the person who makes this kind of sacrifice for a stranger?  She not only has to come out here to get a psych evaluation, and medical screening, but she has to take lots of medications to trick her body into thinking it is going to be pregnant.  Wait, that's not all!  She has to then come back and have our embryo shoved inside her, and and then shove needles in her butt for months to trick her body into believing she is now pregnant with her own baby.  Wait, that's still not all!!  She then has to wait and see if the pregnancy actually took, high chances that it won't, especially the first time around!  Then be on pins and needles that the baby will make it to 40 weeks and then pop that thing out of a tiny hole and give that sweet muffin to us.  Oh, I forgot to mention what her family has to sacrifice by having a pregnant wife and mother around, with all that comes with pregnancy!  They are also making a huge sacrifice!!  Oh, and she has to fight those crazy emotions that come from being pregnant.  Did I get everything???  Probably not!!  What does she get out of this?  I know that is what lots of people are wondering.  I have thought about this so much!  I have thought that I am putting a family through a lot so that my family gets another baby. Is this fair to ask?  I don't really have an answer for that.  I can't even come to grips with the fact that she is doing this for us!  All I know is that there are great things ahead for this family!  When you do incredibly unselfish things for others, there is always karma that returns to you!!  Some book I saw said “If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”  I will accept this unbelievable gift and I will accept this kindness that is being offered.  My greatest hope in all of this, is that my children and future child will see this gift and this sacrifice and want to give back to others.  That they will believe in the kindness of strangers.  That they will believe in a world that is good and kind and hopeful.  I hope that I will in turn also know how to be a selfless giver.  My other hopes are that my blog and experiences from surrogacy can help in a small way with the misconceptions of surrogacy.  That people can see that we aren't trying to take advantage of anyone, that they are offering a gift to us.  That surrogacy is an acceptable means to having a child and that if everything is done in the proper ways, it is not a scary option. 

Dave has read my post so far and said, wow, you sound really excited.  I guess too many exclamation points.  Get used to it, I love them!!!!!!  Like I am screaming in excitement all of the time!!!!!  I definitely over use them most of the time, but in this post, definitely not.  I am that excited.  Tonight we go out to our fertility clinic to an information session with other couples that are starting the IVF process soon.  I am sure we will be the oddballs, I don't think there is going to be anyone else using surrogacy.  But, I want to know everything.  I want to know all that I will be going through, and all that my surrogate will be going through.  I want to be able to somewhat sympathize with her while she is stabbing herself over and over.  She told me that I was very welcome to get a bunch of syringes and fill them with water and inject myself with her.  Maybe I will, except that I am told its more like injecting yourself with syrup rather than water, and I don't think it is too safe to put maple syrup in my butt.  It almost sounds sacrilegious to use our precious maple syrup that way.  I do have to participate in some injections myself for the egg retrieval, but not like she will have to.

I had some people ask about the cost of surrogacy in Canada.  If it is the same as adoption, or how that works.  I am also not 100% sure yet, but I do know it is illegal for a surrogate to get paid in Canada for this.  She is reimbursed for any costs she would accrue based on the pregnancy and delivery.  We would be paying for her medications, her travel costs, money for clothing, legal costs because there are contracts involved, life insurance while pregnant... Stuff like that.  I would say it is probably comparable to adoption costs because of the IVF costs and such??  I am comparing to international adoption.  I am unsure of the costs of adoption in Canada.  Is this pricey?  Yes!  It is very pricey!  We just can't focus on the cost.  We want to focus on the baby we can one day hold and love.  That is where we have to be, or the costs can drive you mad!  Plus, I am already way too ready for this, I want a baby so bad!  We will forget about the costs one day, but I would never forgive myself if I decided a baby wasn't worth the risk of trying, or the money.  

So there it is!  We are actually headed on this journey, and we can't wait!!!  No matter the outcome, what a journey this will be. 

Ah, Hells Bells

This is a crazy thing, or a different thing, or an amazing thing depending on what you believe on this topic, but we have decided to have another baby!!  There is only one small thing that is holding us back.  I had a hysterectomy 5 years ago.  So, my oven is closed!  We have tried and tried to forget about more kids, I have told myself over and over that I don't want anymore, that our family is perfect the way it is but we have failed to make these thoughts stick  and have decided we definitely do want another kidlet!!  I have realized that these old thoughts were just an attempt to make me feel at ease with our situation and not how I have ever actually felt.  The reason I feel a need to tell everyone before we even have a baby in our sights is because it is a path that I have no experience in, nor have I met or heard of anyone in our circle of friends that have used this route.  Dave and I have decided to use a surrogate to have another child.  It was a decision that took a while to come to, but we really feel this is the way that is best for us.  If you are at all interested in this story, follow along and hopefully in the end, we will be able to show some pictures of a baby/babies and our amazing surrogate who brought them to us.

In Canada there are strict laws that you have to abide by to be a surrogate and to use a surrogate.  They cannot be paid for their services, but they receive compensation for their accrued costs while carrying your child.  Its confusing, but we have figured all that out.  Let me know if you have any questions, cause I know it is complicated!  We are super open about talking about it, so don't feel like you can't ask!!   We will be doing IVF starting at the end of this month to see if we can get some embryos on ice ready for when a surrogate picks us.  I am super nervous about all that this entails as I have no idea the state of my body since the hysterectomy.  Do I even have any eggs left, and if I do, are they healthy??  I am not that old, but I don't have a great history of this as my biggest problem was my PCOS.  So that will be interesting to know!!  I have my first fertility appointment on January 28th, so I am excited and nervous all at the same time because this will be the day of my ultrasound and blood work to check the status of things. 

We have joined a surrogacy agency to find a surrogate and it has not been easy!!  You email possible surrogates that the agency sends you to let them know about yourself and send them a link to your profile on the website and then cross your fingers that they will be interested enough in you to start talking to you.  Then its like dating.  You email back and forth trying to get to know each other, see if your expectations of surrogacy match, if your personalities match so that you will trust each other, and then you have to see if they like you enough to pick you.  I never experienced online dating, but I don't know if I ever would have the heart to do it.  Your self esteem is really tested and you are hoping hoping and hoping that they will like you.  Just through an email or skype, how do you really show someone who you are in an email?  Its a lot of pressure!!  This is a person that is so generous to offer their body to carry your, a strangers, baby and so it is totally obvious they would want to like the family they are helping, but you can start feeling yourself getting desperate!  There is also the feeling, do you email one surrogate at a time, so that you are giving a real chance to someone to pick you and they don't feel like you are just like I said--desperate???  Or do you not put all your eggs in one.... basket? or uterus?  Pun intended.  We also have one big thing against us.  We have kids already!!  There are these couples who have no children and then you come on the website with a beautiful family and want to take away one of the few surrogates available.  I know how badly I want another child, how long I have wanted another child, but I feel selfish!  We had our first disappointment recently after talking to a surrogate for a few weeks.  She seemed so perfect, she was so nice, she was fun to talk to, I knew we could be friends, and I wanted to be her friend.  I got a little attached!  There were some hurdles, she lived far away from us, so we wouldn't be able to be at many of the doctors appointments, and could we be okay with that?  All of us?  That's the tough stuff!  When planning for a baby in the "normal" ways, you don't include a third party in those plans.  With surrogacy, you are having to plan with another family.  How does this work for you guys?  Is your family happy with this?  Do you want to take on a pregnancy that the person you are doing this for wont be there to physically support you all of the time?  Are our personalities compatible enough that we will be able to stand each other for the 9 months of stress it involves?  In the end, it was the distance and the fact that we already had children that made her decide we weren't the family she would choose to help.  I totally get it!  I thought I was mentally prepared for it.  I sensed it was coming.  I am devastated.   Ultimately I am worried this is how the whole experience will go.  Exhilarating highs and devastating lows.  Hopefully more highs than lows.  I felt a need to write, to share my experiences in this as I think it will be cathartic.  My plans are to move forward with hope, optimism, and faith and hopefully never entertain the thought of quitting.    Plus, I promised Dave we could pretend we are actually trying, so at least one of us is having a great time!!!  hahahahaha  MEN!!!