Tuesday, April 29, 2014
So, today I start my hormone injections. In the belly, twice a day. (As a vascular nurse, I can hear all my heparinized patients snickering in revenge.) The injections burn a little and about an hour later I am tired. Luckily for me, I only have to do this for a few weeks until I start the intramuscular injections. Thats where the real fun is. Other than that, I am still taking my birth control pills, but I have added a baby aspirin and prenatal vitamin to the regimen. If all goes well, I will be implanted at the end of May. So now I wait....
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Some photos of us
 |
| Phoebe's 4th Birthday |
 |
| Eric and I |
 |
| Xander, Phoebe, Aubree |
 |
| Mojo |
 |
| Tyson |
 |
| Xander |
 |
| How he usually looks |
 |
| Mega |
 |
| new hats |
 |
| that's my boy sticking his finger up the cow's nose |
 |
| Penelope AKA Baby Evil Kitty |
 |
| Phoebe |
And we are off...
Today is officially my first real day as a gestational surrogate. This started almost a year ago. (Yes that is a long time, but this isn't something I came into lightly.)
About me, I am divorced, I have two super awesome kids, Xander 6, Phoebe 4. I have a super boyfriend whose daughter is the same age as Phoebe (double trouble). I currently work as a registered nurse. In the past I have run horse farms, been a dog groomer (still have 2 clients), painted houses, did home remodeling and worked for a veterinary office.
I come from a big family, 3 sisters and a brother and we have a zillion family members outside that. Yay for blended families!
My four legged family members include Tyson, sweetest but dumbest dog ever, Mega and Penelope, household feline overlords, and Mojo the holland lop.
I'm a somewhat recent divorcee, and being a college graduate, like most people I have incurred a size able amount of debt. I am able to pay my bills, but thats about it, I am not getting anywhere any time soon. Call it fate or whatever, but last February I got a spam email about becoming a surrogate (obviously I didn't open it) and it got me thinking.
I am not having any more children, not that I don't love kids, but I thought two was enough (and now I technically have 3, including Aubree) I love being a mom, and I figured if I could help someone else experience this vast amount of awesome insanity that is parenthood AND help myself financially, why not?
This got me researching..if I was gonna rent out my uterus, I wanted to be very careful about how I went about it. I started with the surrogacy forums, what better place to get honest opinions about surrogacy and companies than to stalk real people who were dealing with the situation.
I quickly learned that The Center for Surrogacy and Egg Donation came up quite a bit. They are located near Boston, and both intended parents and surrogates had good things to say.
It took me a few weeks of thinking about whether or not this was something I wanted to do before I finally sent in my application, which was a lengthy questionairre about myself, medical history, personal beliefs the whole works. I liked the fact that they try to match you up with intended parents who hold similar beliefs to yours regarding medical issues like genetic testing and abortion.
I got lucky, within two weeks I had a set of Intended parents who loved my profile and I loved them. Unfortunately it fell through rather quickly due to Ohio having some antiquated law regarding pre birth adoption (meaning the baby would be theirs before it was born) and being a gay couple. I wasn't happy and neither were my intended parents, so they had to turn to a surrogate not living in medieval Ohio.
It took another monthish before I was matched up with a parent who lived in Italy, his name is Marco.
We got all of our tests done, including my flying to Boston to get my psychiatric evaluation done (YES i passed, i know some of you were giving me the look...) and meet the IVF doctor who will be doing the actual implantation.s
Side bar on this stuff for some facts:
1. This baby is being created via a donor egg, therefore it will not genetically be related to me in anyway, I am just renting out the space.
2. I will have a small surgical procedure to place said blastocyst (baby cell ball) after its the correct size.
3. Other than going to Boston for the implantation, all of the other pregnancy stuff, including the birth will take place here in lovely Cleveland Ohio.
4. Yes, Eric is aware I am doing this and is being very supportive.
Ok, back to the story thus far, Marco and I keep in touch via email and facebook mostly, He doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Italian (hooray for Google translator). We can also 3 way Skype with a translator as well, but haven't had much luck with the video part of it working. We will meet in person when I fly out to Boston to have the implantation done.
My contract took months to finish, MONTHS! I was getting a little cranky with my attorney by the time all was said and done. But, my contract gave me everything I asked for and I am happy with the way it turned out.
Fast forward to today. I got my prescription for birth control yesterday. I have to take this in order to start syncing my cycle up with the egg donors cycle. At some point in the near future I will start daily hormone injections, which Eric has kindly agreed to administer. I will have to take them for the first trimester to basically trick my body into thinking that it is supposed to be pregnant, until the embryo starts making my body produce enough of its own hormones. (Can we say complicated?)
I am apologizing to everyone (Eric especially) in advance for any hormone induced insanity. This is not limited to crying, lethargy and intense mood swings. Hopefully it won't be too bad..but just in case, I am sorry for the monster I might become in the near future. As a pregnant person I am actually pretty easy to get along.
So thats how we got to today. It only took a year. And by this time next year it should be all over. I'll be keeping everyone posted...
About me, I am divorced, I have two super awesome kids, Xander 6, Phoebe 4. I have a super boyfriend whose daughter is the same age as Phoebe (double trouble). I currently work as a registered nurse. In the past I have run horse farms, been a dog groomer (still have 2 clients), painted houses, did home remodeling and worked for a veterinary office.
I come from a big family, 3 sisters and a brother and we have a zillion family members outside that. Yay for blended families!
My four legged family members include Tyson, sweetest but dumbest dog ever, Mega and Penelope, household feline overlords, and Mojo the holland lop.
I'm a somewhat recent divorcee, and being a college graduate, like most people I have incurred a size able amount of debt. I am able to pay my bills, but thats about it, I am not getting anywhere any time soon. Call it fate or whatever, but last February I got a spam email about becoming a surrogate (obviously I didn't open it) and it got me thinking.
I am not having any more children, not that I don't love kids, but I thought two was enough (and now I technically have 3, including Aubree) I love being a mom, and I figured if I could help someone else experience this vast amount of awesome insanity that is parenthood AND help myself financially, why not?
This got me researching..if I was gonna rent out my uterus, I wanted to be very careful about how I went about it. I started with the surrogacy forums, what better place to get honest opinions about surrogacy and companies than to stalk real people who were dealing with the situation.
I quickly learned that The Center for Surrogacy and Egg Donation came up quite a bit. They are located near Boston, and both intended parents and surrogates had good things to say.
It took me a few weeks of thinking about whether or not this was something I wanted to do before I finally sent in my application, which was a lengthy questionairre about myself, medical history, personal beliefs the whole works. I liked the fact that they try to match you up with intended parents who hold similar beliefs to yours regarding medical issues like genetic testing and abortion.
I got lucky, within two weeks I had a set of Intended parents who loved my profile and I loved them. Unfortunately it fell through rather quickly due to Ohio having some antiquated law regarding pre birth adoption (meaning the baby would be theirs before it was born) and being a gay couple. I wasn't happy and neither were my intended parents, so they had to turn to a surrogate not living in medieval Ohio.
It took another monthish before I was matched up with a parent who lived in Italy, his name is Marco.
We got all of our tests done, including my flying to Boston to get my psychiatric evaluation done (YES i passed, i know some of you were giving me the look...) and meet the IVF doctor who will be doing the actual implantation.s
Side bar on this stuff for some facts:
1. This baby is being created via a donor egg, therefore it will not genetically be related to me in anyway, I am just renting out the space.
2. I will have a small surgical procedure to place said blastocyst (baby cell ball) after its the correct size.
3. Other than going to Boston for the implantation, all of the other pregnancy stuff, including the birth will take place here in lovely Cleveland Ohio.
4. Yes, Eric is aware I am doing this and is being very supportive.
Ok, back to the story thus far, Marco and I keep in touch via email and facebook mostly, He doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Italian (hooray for Google translator). We can also 3 way Skype with a translator as well, but haven't had much luck with the video part of it working. We will meet in person when I fly out to Boston to have the implantation done.
My contract took months to finish, MONTHS! I was getting a little cranky with my attorney by the time all was said and done. But, my contract gave me everything I asked for and I am happy with the way it turned out.
Fast forward to today. I got my prescription for birth control yesterday. I have to take this in order to start syncing my cycle up with the egg donors cycle. At some point in the near future I will start daily hormone injections, which Eric has kindly agreed to administer. I will have to take them for the first trimester to basically trick my body into thinking that it is supposed to be pregnant, until the embryo starts making my body produce enough of its own hormones. (Can we say complicated?)
I am apologizing to everyone (Eric especially) in advance for any hormone induced insanity. This is not limited to crying, lethargy and intense mood swings. Hopefully it won't be too bad..but just in case, I am sorry for the monster I might become in the near future. As a pregnant person I am actually pretty easy to get along.
So thats how we got to today. It only took a year. And by this time next year it should be all over. I'll be keeping everyone posted...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)