Round 3 - Ready, Set, Go

It's that time again - needles, syringes and vials by the fistful. I started the third round of meds this past Monday, so today is day 5 of Lupron. The last time it took about a week before the side effects kicked in, so we'll see in a few days if the hot flashes, insomnia and weight gain will return with this cycle. Today I met a brand spanking new side effect that didn't pop up last time; nausea. To be fair, nausea is my catch-all 'something's off in my body' symptom. Some people get headaches, I get nausea. Especially when hormones are involved; even your run-of-the-mill birth control pills will make me nauseous on a daily basis. When we did the first round of meds in July and August, I was actually pretty lucky that the nausea side effect didn't show up until we added the Estrace and then it was pretty intense. I cursed the Estrace a bit for it, but I guess there's a chance that the Lupron was equally to blame. On the bright side, I didn't need to hold onto those extra calories I ate at our office holiday lunch anyway.

So we're about a week into the cycle with exactly 4 weeks to transfer. I'll go in for a baseline monitoring appointment next Wednesday and if everything looks good, we'll start the Estrace on Friday and work on building a nice thick lining for the next monitoring appointment in December. Scott and I are going to sneak a nice little Caribbean getaway in between to get some rest and relaxation in before I get called up for stork duty. We're now 2 weeks away from vacation, and I'm looking forward to a fruity drink in my hand and some sand in my toes. Here's hoping that the tropical sun will help clear my hormonally-induced pukiness.

Houston, We Have a Problem

As you may have guessed from my estradiol-induced grumpiness in my last post, Matt and Ellie decided to go ahead with the October transfer, so meds were started on September 16. I was very happy to hear from the nurse coordinator that we would not have to do Lupron in this cycle because it's a frozen transfer and we are starting so close to my own cycle day 1. I quickly learned that Estrace alone with no Lupron to balance it out did not love me. I have been irritable for the past 3 weeks straight - God bless Scott for putting up with me! But I can certainly put up with some irritability to get to our transfer and find the success that we've been waiting for in this stork adventure.

My first monitoring appointment to gather baseline information was on September 15. Ideally, we want to see a somewhat thin lining (2-5 mm) and little or no ovarian activity. My baseline for the August transfer was perfect, so I was hoping to hear the same at this one. Unfortunately, the ultrasound technician pointed out a follicle on my left ovary that was developing quite well, already 13 mm. A mature follicle will ovulate when it's grown to somewhere between 20-30 mm, so this one was well on it's way. As I've said before, this is a problem because we want to make sure that Matt and Ellie's bun is the only one baking in this oven. The number one rule of being the stork and not the mommy: DO NOT OVULATE (unless you do natural cycles and are into that kind of thing). The RE looked over the lab results later in the day, noted that the follicle wasn't producing high-enough amounts of estrogen on its own, and reassured me that the high-dose estradiol would stop that little booger from getting any bigger. So, like the first round, we all kept busy with work and kids while the days passed.

My final monitoring appointment before transfer was on October 1. Ideally, we would like to see a thick lining (8-12 mm) and little or no ovarian activity. However, based on the previous ultrasound, I knew that we would have some ovarian activity, so we hoped for at least no growth. I watched intently as the ultrasound technician did the lining measurements: 7.74 mm. Hmm, that isn't quite what we were looking for. Although she rounded it to 8 mm, my final lining check before the August transfer was 10.24 mm, so this one is considerably less, and borderline for what the RE wants prior to transfer. She then panned over my right ovary; nothing there, as expected, so on to the left one. I literally held my breath until she moved the transducer to the right spot, and the image was undeniable. She hadn't measured it yet, but that was one of the biggest follicles I've ever seen in real-time.
I started to ask questions so quickly that the words were getting jumbled. I knew that nothing good could come from this. It measured 25 mm, and she pointed out the haze on top of it that is indicative of imminent ovulation. So much for the estradiol stopping it from growing. Un-freaking-believable.

I called the nurse coordinator on my way out of the clinic to see what our options were. She didn't answer so I left her a message. I also sent Ellie an email of the findings. She had been worried about this exact scenario. We played arm-chair MD all morning and afternoon looking up all of the possibilities. We were both hoping that the RE would allow the follicle to ovulate and then transfer 5 days later in a quasi-natural transfer. I warned Scott about this; We have a live round in the chamber so he must not even make loving gestures in my general direction. When the nurse coordinator finally called back just before 5 pm, she told us that the RE had looked over the labs and found that my circulating hormone levels didn't match up with what they would expect for pre-ovulation, and that it was likely that the lining had already begun to breakdown. Not wanting to take any risks with the one embryo that Ellie and Matt have frozen, we had to cancel the October transfer and look ahead to the next opportunity. I stopped taking the estradiol that same day, and depending on when my cycle occurs naturally, we'll be able to put together a new medication plan for the next transfer. Without a doubt, the next one will include Lupron. That was the long, expensive, painful lesson that we all learned with this round.

Let It Go

Let me preface this post with the fact that I'm on a very high dose of estradiol, which is making me quite irritable, and more than a little nauseous (which makes me a little more irritable). No amount of Elsa singing 'Let It Go' will help, although I have the sudden urge to build a snowman. Admit it, you're still in mid-verse "the cold never bothered me anyway!" But I digress: Today's post is more introspective and less hearts and flowers than some of the others. I'm sure that the humor and whimsy will return soon, but today, my thoughts are about the tedious, unproductive nature of worry while trying to conceive.

Stop worrying. Stop thinking about it. Don't let it get to you. Ignore it. It will be what it will be. You can't change it by worrying. It's out of your control. Let it go. I've heard and said each of these things to myself many times, and yet, I find the advice hard to follow. While it's 100% true, I find no comfort in it. Somewhere deep down, I truly believe that if I work harder, try more, wish harder, hope more, and do something different than the next person, I will achieve greater success than they have. In most things in life, this really does hold true. Pregnancy, however, is not one of those things. If you could harness the power all of the hoping and wishing and praying of all of the women that have ever tried to get pregnant for more than one cycle, you could move mountains with it.

But there's a dark side to all of that hoping and wishing and praying: When the one thing that those women had their hopes and dreams set on doesn't happen, doesn't work, or happens and then tauntingly fades away, there's an emotional crash on the backside. Trying to conceive is often a very private adventure full of enthusiasm and excitement. Women daydream about what the positive test will look like, how they'll tell their partner, how their partner will react, how they'll tell their parents, whether or not they'll find out the gender, on and on. And while they're spending a great deal of time getting lost in the joy and visions of what it will be like when baby gets here, nobody entertains what it will be like when the test comes up negative or the doctor shows them an ultrasound with no heartbeat. I mean, who can blame them? You don't want to invite such terrible things to happen. Yet, a majority of the time, those things do happen.

For women trying to get pregnant in their 20s with no fertility issues, the chances of a successful pregnancy are 25%. In other words, they are 3 times more likely to see a stark, one-line negative test than the two lines they've been dreaming of. In their 30s, the likelihood drops to 20% each cycle, and by 40, there's only a 5% chance of successful pregnancy. Of the pregnancies that are achieved, about 1 in 5 will end in miscarriage in the first trimester. The odds are staggeringly pitiful.

So what makes us so punch drunk with visions of onsies and pacifiers and bottles and diaper bags? Certainly there's biology; an internal drive to procreate. But it also seems like the most bitingly painful casino game ever played. You might win big the first time you play - 'hey, my best friend did, so I probably will too.' The random reward schedule keeps you pulling that lever over and over again - 'I've lost so many times, this time HAS to be the winning one.' For women out there like me, we have somehow convinced ourselves that if we "try" hard enough, we'll overcome the odds and find success. I've beat my head against that wall 9 times in trying to conceive my own children. Come to find out, I'm totally normal - statistically speaking. But overachievers don't generally care for 'normal', thus all of the headache and heartache of my unsuccessful cycles.

When I came to the decision to be a stork, however, I was determined to leave the stress and worry to the parents. I wanted to know what it was like to just enjoy the experience of being pregnant. I am still certain that a worry-free pregnancy would be one of the greatest adventures in life, and look forward to it when it happens. Somewhere in the chaos of the hormones and the embryo transfer in August, I slipped back into the overachiever. I wished and I hoped and I tried(?) until the crash. As we embark on our second transfer next week, I am consciously aware that 'it will be what it will be', 'it's out of my control', and I need to 'stop worrying'.

While I know that I'm in a better place to handle whatever result of may come of this next transfer, I also know that it has come at a price. I haven't emailed or Skyped Ellie and Matt as much in the past three weeks as we did leading up to the first transfer. I know that they are excited and nervous, joyful and anxious, and a bundle of all of the emotions that build up in each cycle. While I'm cheering for them in the background, I recognize that I can't ride this roller-coaster with them. This isn't my trying-to-conceive road to walk anymore, and somehow, in watching their journey, I've found my way to letting it go.

Hormones and Needles and Tests - Oh My!

We've put another six weeks of the stork adventure under our belt, which was full of injections, pills, and anxious waiting. Of all of the parts of the process to date, this has been the most active in a day-to-day sense. From they day we left off of the last post, I've been on a constantly changing regimen of leuprorelin (Lupron), estradiol (Estrace), and progesterone in oil (PIO).

Now I'll be the first to admit that I can be a little OCD sometimes, and I take far too much pride in accurately following directions and doing a good job. But this ever-changing menagerie of dosages and drug combinations over a 4-week period is enough to make my head spin, and my subconscious constantly wonder if I took the right medications at the right time. To calm my inner Monica Geller, I found this nifty little pill organizer on Amazon, filled it with my oral medications for the upcoming week, then put dummy markers in each appropriate slot to remind me to do an injection on that day and time. The over-achiever in me beamed with pride.

It's probably time to address the elephant in the room: "How bad are the injections... really?" The Lupron was in a small insulin syringe with a tiny little needle (the small one in the picture). As long as the needle isn't dull in any way, you really don't feel it going in, and I really didn't feel the Lupron dispersing for the most part. The tough part about the Lupron injections is watching myself stab it into the skin. Even in the last few days of doing those, I would catch myself hesitating, hovering over the pinched skin, and have to talk myself into it. So all in all, the Lupron injections weren't terrible. The Lupron side-effects, on the other hand, were not as kind. I started with 10 units per day, and within a few days I had hot flashes and a slight headache. After a week, I was in a full-on battle against the INSANE weight gain, and I was noticeably slower in my thought processes. Lupron seriously made me dumber. By the time I stepped down to 5 units, I was in a hate-hate relationship with the drug, and threw myself a little party on the last day that I had to take it. That happened to also be the first day that I took the infamous PIO.

PIO gets a bad rap in the IVF world because it comes with (comparatively) HUGE needles, has to be delivered deep into the muscle, and is in oil - not a great solution for dispersion into the muscle. I read some great tips online from other IVFers before attempting any of the PIOs, and my dear, sweet husband, Scott, watched some very helpful YouTube videos with some professional tips. As most people recommend, I warmed the oil in the syringe to help it disperse once it's injected.

Buzzy Injection Pain Blocker

I also applied ice and vibration to the injection site for about 15 minutes. Ellie and Matt purchased a Buzzy for me to help with this part, for which I love them dearly! The rest of the work is Scott's to deal with. I place myself face down, he finds the right spot on my tush/hip, delivers the medication and does a wonderful job of massaging the area with the heating pad afterward. I've concluded that this is true love; someone that is happy and willing to rub my bum to keep it from hurting me the next day. What a catch. :)

Not all injections go according to plan, or with the luxuries of home, however. Shortly after starting the PIO, Scott and I had to attend an evening dinner party out of town, and we didn't have time to stop at the hotel to do the PIO injection first. Instead, I found myself with my pants dropped in the backseat of his pickup, because, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. While slightly more painful without ice or heat, Scott still did a great job, and I didn't end up with a bruise or a lump afterward. In fact, the only lump and bruise that I've gotten from the PIO injections came at the hands of our IVF nurse immediately following the transfer. Scott wasn't able to go with me, so she did the injection before I left the clinic that night. I knew it was going badly when I felt her pinch the skin instead of pulling it taut, and again at the end when she said "Wait here and hold very still. It's bleeding quite a bit, so I'm going to grab some tissue and a band-aid." I was thinking "BLEEDING??? Scott never makes me bleed!?" As I type, some 15 days later, I can still feel the distinct lump from that injection. If ever in that situation again, I think I'll take my chances and do the PIO on myself.

Did someone say "transfer"?? Ah yes, there was that exciting little event stuck in there in addition to all of the medication fun. :)  In fact, Matt and Ellie flew into town early in August to prepare for Ellie's egg retrieval. As we went through August, she had multiple visits to the clinic to check on her egg production progress, and I had two visits to ensure that the oven was fully pre-heated and ready to bake a sweet little bun. All of our appointments went great, and by the day of Ellie's retrieval, we were getting good news left and right. The RE ended up retrieving 9 eggs, 8 of which were mature, and all 8 fertilized into embryos through intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). We continued to be encouraged by day 3 when we learned that 6 of the 8 were still doing well.

On day 5 there were 5 excellent embryos, so Matt and Ellie decided to do preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and we pushed the transfer back a day to allow results to come in. On day 6, I traveled to the clinic in my lucky green shirt and my shamrock socks. I arrived with a full bladder as instructed, and was informed that the PGD results were not in yet. So I settled into the waiting room, only to find that the other woman in the waiting room was also a gestational carrier waiting for PGD results in order to transfer. We struck up quite a conversation over the 2 hours that we waited, trying to ignore the pain of the bladders that were ready to explode. Finally the results came in, showing that Matt and Ellie had 2 normal embryos from the 5 tested; 1 boy and 1 girl. We proceeded with the transfer of the best looking embryo of the two, and froze the other one. Thus began our intense wait.

Four days after the transfer I took a home pregnancy test, but nothing showed up. I retested on the fifth day after transfer and there was a faint second line - woohoo! Ellie and Matt were very encouraged to hear the news, while I was working hard to hold down my breakfast each day. Day 6 post-transfer brought the same faint second line, which made me a bit nervous. I was expecting it to get darker, but, as you all know, patience isn't my forte, so I chalked it up to being over-anxious to see progress. I tested again the next day, knowing that on the 8th day after the transfer we would have our first beta HCG blood test. The line was exactly the same as the previous two days, and as the day wore on, I felt less nausea than I had in over a week. I reported everything I knew to Ellie and Matt, so we were all cautiously optimistic going into the blood test. When the clinic called with the results of the blood test, it was only 2 mIU/ml, which is barely pregnant. If the pregnancy was viable, it should be have been above the single digits, so the clinic told me to stop all medications and allow my body to reset for a new cycle. Of course, Ellie and Matt were heartbroken, and I found myself in a combination of sad and mad at no one in particular. I was mad that we had all done so much work, did everything "right", received great news at every check point, and transferred a PGD normal embryo, only to have a failure on our hands. How does that happen!?!? The question is rhetorical of course, but that was the level of frustration that I had reached. I went home to tuck all of my medications and IVF supplies away in the closet, and found that Scott had brought me sushi, my favorite amber ale, and espresso ice cream to help me feel better. Have I mentioned that he's quite a catch? So Matt, Ellie, and I decided to Skype a few days later to discuss what happened and start to plan our next step. Based on our clinic's schedule, our options will be to transfer the one remaining frozen embryo in early October or mid-December. Regardless of which date is chosen, may the fertility odds be ever in our favor.

Don't Stop... Believin'...

I'm tired. Exhausted, really. It seems crazy; the process hasn't even really begun yet, but I'm totally wiped out. My work schedule has been particularly hectic in the past 6 weeks, and the paperwork of the stork adventure has continued to steadily roll in. I keep remembering how tired I get in the first trimester of pregnancy and thinking that I can't imagine adding that onto how worn out I am at this point. Luckily, the projects I have at work are dwindling down again, and we're close to the summit of Mt. Paper-manjaro, so hopefully I'll be able to catch up on some rest before I start incubating the storkie.

Here we are, two weeks since my last post, and we don't yet have a signed contract in place. That sweet, 10-day cushion that I boasted about is wearing a wee bit thin, but it looks like we're on the brink of success. Ellie, Matt and I have been through the first draft of the gestational agreement, conferences (very. long. conferences.) with our respective attorneys, and a fun little game of 'telephone' between our attorneys. I think we're lucky: We had a great foundation to our relationship before the attorneys were involved, and we worked through every contractual point that we could think of before sending it over for the attorney to draft. Still, the process has been mind-numbingly tedious. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for intended parents and surrogates that have had very little communication. Needless to say, we're looking forward to applying some ink to those pages and putting this part of the process behind us. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll be doing just that in the next 48 hours. I mean, really: Have my time estimates ever been wrong during this process? Wait... nevermind, don't answer that.

Rules of Engagement

It's been quite some time since my last update, but as things go in a stork adventure, there's a lot of slow and tedious work to do be done up front. I look forward to the entries that will tell you all about how the little storkie is growing and moving, kicking up a storm, and demanding bizarre treats at all hours of the day and night. With patience we will get there, but today it's all about contracts and legal procedure.

When we left off a month ago, Ellie and Matt had sent our contractual plans to the CFO of the agency, and we all waited for a contract draft to come our way. I can't speak for Ellie and Matt, but I had a great amount of patience in the first two weeks. Early on in the process, one of the agency directors had mentioned that the typical timeline of the contract phase was 2 weeks to draft the document, and 2-4 weeks of conferring with attorneys while requested changes are made and sent to each others' attorneys for review and further conference. Seems reasonable. So by week 3 I was starting to wonder how things were going (not that I would dare to check in with the agency!). I was counting weeks and days left until July 23 - the day that the contract has to be signed and notarized by all parties, in order to do the transfer on the date scheduled in August - and trying to not get impatient. Ellie emailed me at the 3 week point with great news: The draft would be sent to her within the next 3-5 days. We both went back to our day to day activities while we waited, and we were both completely swamped at work; sufficiently distracted. Five days later, Ellie's attorney contacted her to say that it would be another 4 days before the draft would be done, so back to the distraction of work we went. Life was bustling for both Ellie and I; besides work, all of my kids were out of school and in the full swing of summer activities. We can't even sit down for 10 minutes at our house without having to run out the door to the next activity. Again, it's nice to not be hovering over my email inbox waiting for it to ping. However, when we passed the 4 week mark, and got to the (second) date that the attorney promised the draft and there was still no draft, I was starting to lose my patience. Ellie's attorney sent her a message saying that it would be done early the following week. When it finally arrived in Ellie's inbox (after 4 weeks and 5 days), I have to admit that her attorney did a great job. It was VERY thorough (75 pages!) and sufficiently accurate. After taking a few days to read it over and make comments, Ellie, Matt and I Skyped to discuss our comments and thoughts. We were all quite happy with how it turned out and had only a handful of minor changes, so they were able to send it back to their attorney at the end of last week.

As of today, we're in great shape to finish the contract in time for our target transfer date in August. My attorney should be receiving the completed contract today or tomorrow, we'll have a conference call to review it on Monday, and coo coo cachoo: we'll have a completed contract! This, a full 10 days before we are scheduled to start meds for the transfer. And you were worried that our 9 week lead time wouldn't be enough. Pssshh, we just like living that close to the edge.

So it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work on the really exciting part of this adventure. Let's make some scientific magic happen! We need to get everything prepped with an impressive, month-long medication protocol involving lupron, estrogen, and progesterone. The countdown is on: 24 days to the first injection. Did I mention that I'm needle-phobic?? I'll be back to let you all know how this goes.

50 First Dates

It's been an interesting few weeks since I last checked in. As of my last post, the agency that I'm working with sent my profile off to the first set of potential parents, and we all sat back with bated breath and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Spring break came and went, and the agency called to say that all of my medical records had arrived, and everything looked good. In my usual, impatient style, I spent a great amount of time combing through the threads on various surrogacy forums. I tried my best to not think about what the potential parents could be considering - I mean, it's a Skype call, not a marriage proposal! But alas, my impatience won out once again, and I leisurely perused the classified ads of the aforementioned forums.

I find them intriguing, both from the standpoint of a potential stork, as well as wondering what potential parents must think of some of these ads that other storks post. I had visited these ads many times, and always thought that if there was an ad from a set of parents that really jumped up and grabbed me, that I would go ahead and send them a reply. That never actually happened, but it made me wonder if there were some awesome parents out there, hovering over the ads everyday, thinking "If there was an ad from a stork that really jumped up and grabbed me, I would totally send them a reply." And so it was; a relatively fleeting thought that manifested itself into an ad placed on one of those forums. An ad that emphasized that I was looking for parents to share the adventure and excitement of the journey with.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but the responses were numerous, and varied in their approach. I heard from several couples at various stages of their surrogacy journey, from just finding out that they would need to use a gestational carrier to having previously used a carrier and looking for a carrier to bring a sibling into the family. Interestingly enough, all of those emails came from intended mothers. I also received several from agencies trying to recruit me, but I simply deleted those. I love the agency I'm working with and have no desire to switch. Then there were the weird ones: A single middle-eastern man that wanted to have a child to aid him in securing a wife, and offered "double what the agency will pay" while writing to me in a tone that indicated that he believed that I was a commodity to be purchased for this period of incubation. There was also an intended father that emailed to ask a host of standard questions, along with a thorough list of questions probing every facet of my religious affiliation and activity level, which seemed a little too assertive for the first interaction. Oh, and I can't forget about the intended mother that asked me about my stance on termination, and when she wasn't happy with my response, sent me a reply stressing that my opinion was wrong and I needed to adopt hers. When I failed to reply, she emailed again a week later with an additional attempt to persuade me into her opinion. I politely responded to her, noting that it seemed that we were not on the same page with that issue, and that I had emphasized in the ad my desire for a strong relationship with the parents, which it didn't seem like we were developing, so I would not likely be her best option for a carrier. To my surprise, she responded again to say that, like the previous point, on this, too, I was wrong. That there is nothing in a surrogacy contract that requires parents to have a relationship with their surrogate, and rarely do surrogates get any contact after the birth of the child. Me choosing not to respond was the only way to stop that madness. But in the midst of the myriad of emails, there were a handful of gems.

There were emails from 5 different intended mothers that hit right on the bullseye. These women were exactly what I had envisioned: watching the ads, hoping for a stork to place an ad that really grabbed them, and looking for someone that they could really develop a relationship with throughout the process. We've spent the past couple of weeks emailing back and forth. Three of them live in the same state that I do, one is a plane trip away, and one is abroad. Over the course of the email conversations, the more finite details of each of our goals and wishlist items have come out, which has allowed me to encourage three of them on to finding a slightly better stork for their wishlists, and left me with two sets of parents that I know that I would love to work with. In a matter of a couple of weeks, I went from impatiently waiting for one set of parents to respond to having more parents than I have womb space for.

In the meantime, the agency called to say that they have a different set of parents that they think would be a good match, and sent me a profile to look over; no mention of the first set of parents, but that's probably a good thing at this point. The agency director asked if I would have a phone meeting with them later in the week, to which I agreed and figured that it would help me to make some final decisions on which set of parents to work with. So at the end of the week, we had a phone meeting that went really well, and these potential parents want to set up a face-to-face meeting in the near future. Just to recap, after what has felt like 50 first (email/phone) dates, I am now looking at a set of potential parents that I've had great casual email communication with that live abroad (parents A), a set of parents that I have only met through the agency, but have talked to and really like their personalities (parents B), and a set of potential parents that I've had very in-depth bonding email communications with that live several states away (parents C). I have no idea which way I'm leaning at this point. At any given moment, I oscillate from one to the next for one specific reason or another. All 3 sets of parents would be amazing to work with, and I sincerely wish that I could help all of them. As of today, I'm not sure which direction this will go in, but I'm sure that by the next time I sit down to blog, a decision will have be made.

Finding the Parents

Did I end my last post with "patiently waiting"?? Well, I have to admit that patience has never been my greatest attribute. Although I take a slow, cautious and thoughtful approach to most things in life, once I've made up my mind about something, I have the patience of a child in the days leading up to their birthday. And making the decision to take the leap into being the stork is no different.

As I noted last week, it had been about one week since I sent all of my paperwork over to the agency. They now had a full-profile to share with potential parents, and all of the forms that they needed to pull my OB-related medical records. I knew that I needed to wait for them to put all of the records together, look over them to ensure that there are no medical issues of concern, then start considering potential parents that they know of that are looking for a stork. Did I mention that waiting patiently isn't really my thing? The impatience got the better of me on Monday, and I sent my agency director an email to check on how things were going. She responded quickly and told me that although she doesn't yet have all of my medical records, that she had attached the profile of a set of parents that she has in mind that she would like me to consider.

There was a flood of excitement in knowing that I was holding information on, what could be, the parents of my first stork delivery. I dove into speed-reading through the pages. As I took it all in, I circled back to several key pieces of information; the infertility struggle, the preferred transfer method, and most importantly, the desired relationship between parents, stork, and the future babe. Studying and re-reading these sections is where the impatient side of me took a backseat to the slow, cautious, thoughtful side. As I approach this adventure, I know, without a doubt, that my main goal is to make someone's long-held dream of being a parent come true. All of the other aspects of the adventure are secondary to fostering the joy and excitement that will come from finally realizing the amazing rush of pure happiness that they have been waiting so long for. In order to lay the foundation for that type of experience, I think that it's very important to embark on this adventure with parents that want to be involved in the process, are hoping for a close relationship with the stork, and are open to maintaining communication and updates after delivery.

So I sat on the profile for a couple of days, re-reading it several times and asking my husband to read through it before we talked about our impressions of it. After letting it all sink in, I sent the director an email saying that I thought there was potential, although I had a couple of hesitations; most notably that the desired relationship sounded less involved than I was hoping for. On the other hand, I recognize that it can be very difficult to read something like that in a short paragraph. Again she responded quickly and let me know that she has had the opportunity to meet and interact with these potential parents on multiple occasions, and that she believes that they are hoping for a similar level of involvement and relationship development as I am. She suggested that we meet via Skype in a couple of weeks, allowing me an opportunity to get a better glimpse of the potential parents personalities and level of involvement, then determine if I think it's a good fit, or if I still have reservations. That sounds like a solid plan to me, so I'll once again (patiently?) standby for the next step in the stork adventure.

Gearing Up for a Stork Adventure

Several weeks ago, I was pondering the struggles of a friend that has been unable to create a family. I really felt for her and what she was wanting so badly to have in her life. I thought about how inconsiderate it must feel to her when I complain about my misbehaving children or joke about giving them away. I wondered about the extent of her infertility; Is her difficulty in getting pregnant, or carrying the pregnancy, or both? Does she have the ability to ovulate fertile eggs? What infertility treatments has she investigated? Then a random thought hit me: If the problem is only in gestating the future fetus, I've got a perfectly good oven that I don't plan on ever using again. I would be more than happy to lend the space to her if she needs it. After some time and serious consideration between my husband and I, that entire conversation played out with her. I didn't expect a decision in that moment, or any time soon for that matter (whether or not to add a family member is a huge decision not to be taken lightly!), but after talking with her, I just couldn't shake this feeling that this is something that I really want to do for potential parents that have struggled through the heartbreak of infertility.

As a woman in my early thirties, I am very fortunate to be a mother of four - two babes that I gave birth to, and two bonus babes that were a package deal when I married my husband. Our family and home lives are very well-established, and we have no desire to add any more siblings to our wild brood. But with several years of fertility ahead of me, I realized that I have the ability to provide this wonderful opportunity to a couple in need. So, as I give my friend an abundance of time to consider all of her options, including if using a gestational surrogate is something that she and her husband would ever want to do, I have decided to move forward with providing this opportunity to another set of potential parents in the meantime.

I heavily researched the process, agencies, articles and forums dedicated to surrogacy. I learned all of the acronyms and listened to all of the joyfully triumphant success stories, as well as all of the tear-filled accounts of intended parents and surrogates alike whose experiences did not unfold as expected. There were as many cautionary tales as excitement-filled birth stories, and as many articles and discussion threads on contracts and agencies as there were on embryo transfers, pregnancies and deliveries. I spent a great amount of time reading and wrapping my mind around the logistics and emotions of the entire process, and then started feeling out a few agencies. I stuck with my intuition when I contacted and communicated with each of them, rejecting some and moving forward with only those that I felt comfortable with. After a few days, the right agency was obvious to me. The director was coming through my town the next day and called to ask if I would have a lunch meeting. We sat and talked for about an hour and half, and again, my intuition told me that this was exactly who I wanted to help me find a great set of parents to help out on this journey. It's now been a week since I finished my paperwork with them, so I'm now in standby mode, patiently waiting for them to introduce me to some potential parents in need of a stork.