Everything in the world of surrogacy has been on hold for a while, but it's just as well. This month has been insanely busy with the rest of my life! I published my book, and I've been in crazy marketing mode. I even scheduled my first book signing!
Then Hubs and I just got back from celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary in the Keys.
It was completely overdue, and it was by far the best vacation I've ever taken. It was the definition of rekindling a romance among the sand, sun and fish. Pure magic.
While we were gone I got a very important email...OUR FINALIZED CONTRACTS!!
I'll back up a bit. Before we left I talked for a while with Baby Mama over the phone about all of our embryo drama. It turns out that we have the test results we need to move forward, just not the test results we need to move forward with our clinic here in Texas. But the doc from our clinic called to discuss the sitch, and she's completely confident in the safety of the transfer. She's just not legally allowed to do it without submitting paperwork to the FDA that could delay things for 9 months! That's crazy talk, so it looks like we will be heading to sunny California for our transfer!
I'm actually pretty excited. I think Hubs will stay here with the kiddos and Baby Mama and I will have the ultimate girls trip hopefully resulting in me getting pregnant. Maybe if she takes me to dinner and comments on my sparkling eyes it'll work.
Once I talked with Baby Mama and Baby Daddy and the doctor here and got an email from their original clinic I had all the info I needed to give them the green light. Since transmittal of disease is basically unheard of anyway, PLUS we have clear test results before and after their retrieval, the doctor here said there's no logical reason not to proceed.
So we got our contracts back and I mailed them off this morning. Baby Mama is getting in touch with her old clinic so we can coordinate everything, and the ball is once again rolling. Her old clinic is being super helpful in facilitating everything, and our doc here said this is actually not unheard of. Sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
One thing that has touched me is the amount of support I've received from everyone. My friends have all been beyond supportive, and then I got a message from a mom I know through Sunshine's school. Her boys went to school with Sunshine and are the most handsome little gentlemen you ever saw. Their momma messaged me to tell me she's been meaning to reach out because she read my blog and could relate because of her own struggles with fertility.
I'd never known that she used IVF to conceive her boys, but of course she never asked if Sunshine was conceived in a corn field in Indiana...
Still fertility struggles are such an underdiscussed subject I think. So many people go through it, but I guess people generally like to keep some things private. Maybe not everyone likes to blog about their uterus...but to each their own.
She went on to tell me that they actually transferred in California as well! Small world! So I'm pumped to know someone who had Cali success. She then blew my mind.
She said she and her husband debated over what to do with their remaining 8 embies. That has to be one of the trickiest things about fertility treatments. At the time you're not thinking about having a surplus of babies. You're just thinking about the fact that you might not ever even have one baby. So when they retrieve eggs they try to harvest as many as possible. Out of those harvested there's no guarantee that any will even be viable, and so once you fertilize them you end up with a smaller pool of viable embryos. After three retrievals my Baby Mama only ended up with one. You just never know how many will survive.
The options for the surplus are basically to terminate them, donate them to science, hatch them yourself and have 10 children, or put them up for adoption. I can't imagine being faced with this choice. There is no easy answer. Keeping them frozen forever is quite costly, but terminating them can't be an easy call. Having 10 kids just isn't practical for most families, not to mention the cost of the necessary IVF treatments to actually carry those remaining embryos.
Putting them up for adoption means knowing you'll have full-blood siblings of your own children out there somewhere, but it's honestly one of the most selfless wonderful things I've ever heard. Knowing the pain that other couples go through to build their families and then giving them such an amazing gift just gives me hope for humanity. That is the ultimate mama gift. And that's what this mama has decided to do.
She has two beautiful little boys, so whoever adopts her remaining embryos is getting a real gene pool jackpot. And I had tears in my eyes as she told me she wanted to extend the offer to my Baby Mama should we not have any luck with the one embryo she has.
I told Baby Mama and she too was beyond touched. I'm sure she knows more than I do what that could mean for a family.
But for now we will cross our fallopian tubes that this one little embryo takes. So I know I've said this before, but we're that much closer to getting our calendar! They don't call this a journey for nothing!
As for now I'll just focus on the craziness of my own baby starting kindergarten. It's definitely best that I'm not starting any hormones right now. I'm already going to be a mess.
We're also planning a trip to the coast soon, which will put us just a few minutes from Baby Mama! We're planning to meet for lunch so they can meet our girls, and so Sunshine can see that Baby Mama is not an actual chicken. I think she's still imagining I'm hatching a real egg.
I'm just hoping she doesn't pull her latest adorable ridiculousness and ask Baby Mama if she's pregnant. It's her favorite question to ask women these days, but I think it might be a bit more humiliating in that situation. Thankfully Baby Mama seems to have a good sense of humor, so I'm sure she'd just brush it off. She is thinking about dressing in feathers and a beak for her first meeting with Sunshine after all...
I really hit the jackpot with this couple.
It was completely overdue, and it was by far the best vacation I've ever taken. It was the definition of rekindling a romance among the sand, sun and fish. Pure magic.
While we were gone I got a very important email...OUR FINALIZED CONTRACTS!!
I'll back up a bit. Before we left I talked for a while with Baby Mama over the phone about all of our embryo drama. It turns out that we have the test results we need to move forward, just not the test results we need to move forward with our clinic here in Texas. But the doc from our clinic called to discuss the sitch, and she's completely confident in the safety of the transfer. She's just not legally allowed to do it without submitting paperwork to the FDA that could delay things for 9 months! That's crazy talk, so it looks like we will be heading to sunny California for our transfer!
I'm actually pretty excited. I think Hubs will stay here with the kiddos and Baby Mama and I will have the ultimate girls trip hopefully resulting in me getting pregnant. Maybe if she takes me to dinner and comments on my sparkling eyes it'll work.
Once I talked with Baby Mama and Baby Daddy and the doctor here and got an email from their original clinic I had all the info I needed to give them the green light. Since transmittal of disease is basically unheard of anyway, PLUS we have clear test results before and after their retrieval, the doctor here said there's no logical reason not to proceed.
So we got our contracts back and I mailed them off this morning. Baby Mama is getting in touch with her old clinic so we can coordinate everything, and the ball is once again rolling. Her old clinic is being super helpful in facilitating everything, and our doc here said this is actually not unheard of. Sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
One thing that has touched me is the amount of support I've received from everyone. My friends have all been beyond supportive, and then I got a message from a mom I know through Sunshine's school. Her boys went to school with Sunshine and are the most handsome little gentlemen you ever saw. Their momma messaged me to tell me she's been meaning to reach out because she read my blog and could relate because of her own struggles with fertility.
I'd never known that she used IVF to conceive her boys, but of course she never asked if Sunshine was conceived in a corn field in Indiana...
Still fertility struggles are such an underdiscussed subject I think. So many people go through it, but I guess people generally like to keep some things private. Maybe not everyone likes to blog about their uterus...but to each their own.
She went on to tell me that they actually transferred in California as well! Small world! So I'm pumped to know someone who had Cali success. She then blew my mind.
She said she and her husband debated over what to do with their remaining 8 embies. That has to be one of the trickiest things about fertility treatments. At the time you're not thinking about having a surplus of babies. You're just thinking about the fact that you might not ever even have one baby. So when they retrieve eggs they try to harvest as many as possible. Out of those harvested there's no guarantee that any will even be viable, and so once you fertilize them you end up with a smaller pool of viable embryos. After three retrievals my Baby Mama only ended up with one. You just never know how many will survive.
The options for the surplus are basically to terminate them, donate them to science, hatch them yourself and have 10 children, or put them up for adoption. I can't imagine being faced with this choice. There is no easy answer. Keeping them frozen forever is quite costly, but terminating them can't be an easy call. Having 10 kids just isn't practical for most families, not to mention the cost of the necessary IVF treatments to actually carry those remaining embryos.
Putting them up for adoption means knowing you'll have full-blood siblings of your own children out there somewhere, but it's honestly one of the most selfless wonderful things I've ever heard. Knowing the pain that other couples go through to build their families and then giving them such an amazing gift just gives me hope for humanity. That is the ultimate mama gift. And that's what this mama has decided to do.
She has two beautiful little boys, so whoever adopts her remaining embryos is getting a real gene pool jackpot. And I had tears in my eyes as she told me she wanted to extend the offer to my Baby Mama should we not have any luck with the one embryo she has.
I told Baby Mama and she too was beyond touched. I'm sure she knows more than I do what that could mean for a family.
But for now we will cross our fallopian tubes that this one little embryo takes. So I know I've said this before, but we're that much closer to getting our calendar! They don't call this a journey for nothing!
As for now I'll just focus on the craziness of my own baby starting kindergarten. It's definitely best that I'm not starting any hormones right now. I'm already going to be a mess.
We're also planning a trip to the coast soon, which will put us just a few minutes from Baby Mama! We're planning to meet for lunch so they can meet our girls, and so Sunshine can see that Baby Mama is not an actual chicken. I think she's still imagining I'm hatching a real egg.
I'm just hoping she doesn't pull her latest adorable ridiculousness and ask Baby Mama if she's pregnant. It's her favorite question to ask women these days, but I think it might be a bit more humiliating in that situation. Thankfully Baby Mama seems to have a good sense of humor, so I'm sure she'd just brush it off. She is thinking about dressing in feathers and a beak for her first meeting with Sunshine after all...
I really hit the jackpot with this couple.
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