Things I Didn't Know

Over the last few weeks, I have learned how much I don't know about gestational surrogacy. First off, I've learned I shouldn't call it surrogacy at all, especially since in my state there are criminal penalties associated with it. It really is "gestational carrier" but that to me describes a person, not a process. Gestational carrierism? LOL! So I keep referring to it as gestational surrogacy.

There are only about 1500 surrogate births per year in the U.S. That is an incredibly small amount when you think about that over 4 MILLION babies are born each year in the U.S. And of those surrogate births, the majority are actually wealthy foreigners who hire American surrogates (largely because surrogacy is illegal in their countries). Most of the rest are close friends or family members of intended parents themselves. I haven't seen how many are born through agency agreements every year, but I imagine it's a small amount of that 1500. For instance, I saw somewhere that the state of New Jersey had 12 surrogate births last year. MA is a surrogacy-friendly state, so there's probably more, but man, that's not a lot!

Surrogacy Laws by State

This is probably is why there's just not that many resources on talking about surrogacy with people. I mean, there's tons of stuff out there on adoption and how to tell people, work, etc., but I haven't found ONE thing on surrogacy (and I'm an expert Googler). 

I'm not ashamed of doing surrogacy. My inlaws and parents already know obviously. Eventually our families will know. My closest friends already know and I will have no problem telling less close friends as it comes up. But work? I don't mind telling my boss because I have to, and she's discreet enough. But I have some co-workers who are so nosy and rude and they will ask crass questions about it. And L keeps saying I can just tell them to mind their own business, but I really can't. Because they actually don't realize they are being rude.

I keep getting so ahead of myself. I'm so nervous this won't work, so why am I thinking so far ahead this time? I never did before.

I think it's because I have nothing else to do. I don't have any symptoms to think about and google. So all I have is to think about what I *will* have to do at some point.

Regarding adoption, I haven't heard from the agency since June...at this point, we will probably not agree to any more profilings. Probably after the next u/s we will tell them we are "pregnant" so we won't get profiled anymore.

And that's hard too. Most of my friends knew we were doing adoption, but don't know about surrogacy. I just got an email from one of them yesterday asking how the process was going? And I told her we'd gotten profiled but not picked yet, but still couldn't find a way to mention surrogacy. And I should probably do that before we have any babies birthed, because then everyone will think we adopted them.

Tomorrow is Gabby's birthday! I've ordered an Edible Arrangements to be delivered to her house (she's not working tomorrow for once!). Figured fruit was good for a nauseous woman + her kids (one of her kids actually had minor surgery so she's staying home tomorrow to take care of her) and I don't know many of her other likes.

I'm debating crafting a questionnaire for her to help with future gift giving ideas. Edible Arrangements is kind of a cop-out plus holy cow! It has gotten expensive! $55 for a small bouquet? Outrageous. But I couldn't come up with anything else. I want to save a prenatal massage for later on in pregnancy - and that's it, I'm out of ideas. Please, if anyone has any, send them my way.

But I'm serious...sending her an email saying I need to know this for the future.

Favorite:

• color
• movie
• tv show
• food
• book
• activity
• way to relax
• any others?

Maybe I should send it to her husband instead and let him answer :) 

We Said No

The title is so painful to write. We got a call about a profiling opportunity this weekend for a baby born in Indiana June 1st with a congenital heart defect, and I wanted to say yes so much. But in the end, we had to say no. Our first no.

Of all the times for this to happen. It couldn't have happened 2 weeks ago? Or two weeks from now? The timing was just so so bad. I'm the middle of stims and my retrieval won't be this week but next week We've spent so much money on this cycle and we would need to go pick up the baby and stay in Indiana for God knows how long until everything is approved and we can go home. With a son. A little baby boy who is undergoing surgery today for his heart but is otherwise perfect. Of all parents, *I* would know what that little baby is going through. I feel such a kinship with him even though I will never meet him or know anything else.

I wanted to tell the agency - if they can wait 2 weeks we'll go. I want him. I want him right now. But she said no, he would be discharged before then (how? I have no idea). so we had to let him go. And now this cycle I'm in the midst of probably won't work and what will happen is at the end of June we'll have no surrogate pregnancy and no adopted baby either - that's just how things go for me, right?

It wasn't guaranteed we would be picked either, but considering how we got a call on Saturday I think we were one of those only ones being considered.

That baby felt like mine, even though he wasn't. And isn't. And never will be.

Rejected

No baby for us :( The birth mom picked another couple who lived in OH, like the birth mom did. It feels like no one wants us. When I made out adoption profile book last fall, I thought it was so great - that we would get picked right away. Boy was I wrong.

Yes, I know it hasn't been THAT LONG (will be 6 months at the end of this month) but everything feels like an eternity at this point.

....
In other news, I'm having new medical issues. I am the winner in the medical lottery, it appears. But Megamillions? No way.

For the last month I've been having awful stomach pain. It's pain right in the middle of my abdomen, just under my rib cage and above my belly button. It got to the point that ANYTHING I ate, whether it was a sip of water or a healthy dinner, made me feel like I'd eaten a 12 course meal and was stuffed to the gills and bloated beyond heck. It was just miserable.

So I went to my PCP and they did bloodwork and apparently found I have h pylori bacteria infection. This can cause ulcers and other things (can even lead to stomach cancer in rare cases) so they gave me about 8 pills a day to swallow for 2 weeks. After 1 week I was feeling so much better. But this weekend, I was in so much pain it wasn't even funny. So back I went today, and rather than do another blood test, he gave me a referral to have an endoscopy done, an ultrasound to rule out it being my gallbladder, and a prescription for N.exium twice a day. He's thinking it may be an ulcer, which N.exium will heal. But I haven't had any burning heartburn or anything at all.

I can't handle anymore invasive procedures so I told him it will be at least July before I get that done. Apparently the only thing to fix an ulcer is to take Nexium for 12 weeks so it may certainly be that long by the time I get around to it. There's just too much going on, driving to Boston often and doing the cycle. Can't. Handle. It.

At least this Friday I'll have the U/S done so we can rule out anything really bad. I am so sick of doctors though.

....
I ran out of BCP on Friday so I started my placebo week as directed by the Boston nurse overseeing our surrogacy group. Her exact words in an email to me, "Go through placebo week I want a good stim from you." Me too!!

I emailed her today though because I wasn't sure when to start the BCP again. On Sunday, only the second day off the pill, I had about 2 hours of moderately heavy bleeding, (TMI) only when I wiped. It never made it to a pad or anything but wiping it was definitely more than just a little. It was almost like breakthrough bleeding. But 2 hours later it stopped and I haven't had anything since. So I've been waiting for AF to come and emailed Holly the nurse to ask. She told me to consider that my period (best period EVER then) and start the pill again tonight. Good thing I emailed! I'm getting excited...it's like we're in the homestretch! At least I hope so, I still don't know exactly when we're starting but we should be ready to go by the end of next week.

Totally exhausted tonight from not sleeping well last night. Hopefully will get some good sleep tonight.

Someone Call Me

Well, it's Monday and there's been no news on that profiling. I have been ridiculously consumed by it - checking my phone umpteen times a day this weekend. She should have received our adoption profile on Friday, and she was due any day, but even if she hasn't given birth yet I just have the feeling she's already picked someone else. And it makes me so, so sad.

I don't know why this one is hitting me so badly. I think because of the half caucasian/half hispanic angle, or the name angle, or the no drugs/alcohol angle or even the "want to keep in touch but not too much touch angle." And the fact that it's a girl. I may have a soft-spot in my heart for girls (although I want ANY baby no matter what!). It just seemed so perfect for us.

The other opportunities I was excited about but definitely not this excited. And there's really no difference in this one vs. the other ones. But this weekend we found out that my SIL is pregnant again after her December miscarriage (she waited slightly longer this time to tell us - 8 weeks) and it just brings back the fact that everyone has kids now/is pregnant and we're just sitting here, alone.

Heh, I even hoped my phone would ring right about 9am this morning, the adoption agency, perhaps not technically "working" over the weekend, calling first thing. So far, it has not happened :(

Our appts. in Boston went well. It was a very long day though. We were up at 5am to make it to Boston by 9:30am and even though we left early we still barely made it on time thanks to rush hour traffic. We started in pre-op anesthesia where I signed the consents for anesthesia for the egg retrieval I'm not even going to have in the next month. I did get to see the Boston doctor who's doing my surrogacy cycle, and gave her the embryo information for my last cycle which she didn't have yet. She told me she had already decided upon a protocol for me based on what I had told her previously but she was going to review the latest information I handed her just to make sure. Sounds like a good plan to me.

After that, we went to the heart center to discuss the genetics of my heart. I had to go over the most inane questions with the fellows and residents. "When did you learn you had a heart condition?" Um, I was born with it. "So you learned about it immediately?" Well, *I* had no idea at approximately 1 day old, duh.

They did a physical exam and don't think that my heart condition is genetic (thereby putting myself into an even smaller anomaly percentage, yay :/) but took blood work anyway just to confirm. If there's no genetic component we don't need to do PGS for any specific heart defect.

After a quick lunch at Au Bon Pain (the only reason to ever go to a hospital in my opinion, is for their oatmeal raisin cookies - which got me through my last heart surgery :), we headed over the to the Dana Farber Cancer Clinic.

This was such a sad place. I've been in hospitals all my life, but with the exception of when I was a child, I don't remember seeing so many visibly sick people in the waiting rooms. I have an image in my mind from when I was young walking down a hallway in a hospital and walking by the thinnest, bluest girl who clearly had a heart condition but was still upright and ever since then I've wondered what happened to her. Is she still alive? Is she long dead? Did she make it to high school?

But here in the Dana Farber clinic there were so many people in wheelchairs, clearly debilitated. Still, cancer must be where the money is because the clinic was beautiful. And they gave away snacks. I've donated money before to the Jimmy Fund and I kind of was annoyed it was so nice. How much donated money goes to making things look pretty when it can be spent on medicine or research?

We met with some genetic counselors there and went over the cancer history in our families. Apparently L is more at risk because of his family's cancer history than mine, but there's still the chance we could both be carrying the BRCA 1 gene. And something new we learned: If we were both to pass on the BRCA 1 gene to a child of ours, it would never survive. Now, there's only a 25% chance with any given pregnancy that we would and I have had 4 pregnancies, so you would think it not likely. And it probably isn't. But since we're totally unexplained I guess it's not out of the realm of possibilities. So we had bloodwork taken for that too. We're not sure our insurance covers the test though so they will check first before running it. If not it's $3300 out of pocket for each of us - $6600 total. Yea, we can't afford that on top of surrogacy.

We headed back home after that and got stuck in so much traffic that it took us more than 5 hours to get home. (it should take us between 2.5-3 hrs normally). It was such a long day.

So now, there's nothing else to do but wait. The last of the prescreening appointments for surrogacy are next week. I ended my BCP pack on Friday and was told to stop taking it and wait for AF to come. Not sure if I will go back on it again or they have some other plan but will need to figure that part out soon.

Another Profiling!

3 profilings in just a few weeks? Whew!! I read on another blog that is doing adoption they've gotten profiled 8 times and their agency said it's "adoption season." I guess it's true!

I admit, when we don't get this one I'm going to a little crushed by it. It seems SO perfect for us. Mom is due any day and is having a baby girl. She's had prenatal care from 3 months on and has no drug history or exposure or alcohol drug history or exposure. Except she did take vicodin during the first two months of pregnancy and an antibiotic in the 8th month for bronchitis.

She is my age and has 3 kids already (2 teens, one child). Whew! Father as usual is not in the picture. Not much extended medical info given but no major issues told about. She doesn't desire to talk or meet with the adoptive family until after delivery and she only wants pictures/letters/and a phone call for contact.

The baby will be half Hispanic which I would totally love because I am hispanic so it would be awesome to share a culture. Plus the birth mom's name is actually one of the names we were considering for a girl so that would be so fortuitous!

Of course, being born possibly this weekend would throw a serious kink into our plans. We're supposed to go to Boston for the first medical appts. related to the surrogacy cycle - PGD and pre-op anesthesia for retrieval when the time comes. And then next week are the rest of the pre-screening appointments with Gabby and then we start!

So I don't know how it will work out but I'm trying not to care. Probably won't work out anyway, so why worry until it does?

Updates

Well, we didn't get picked for that profiling opportunity, but the birth mom did end up picking another family, so I guess I was totally wrong about that! It was really weird. On Tuesday, my agency advocate called and left a message saying she had made a decision and to please call her back because she also had another profiling opportunity.

Ok, so since there's another opportunity, obviously, we weren't picked for the other one. Is there any reason you just can't come out and say that on my VM? And by the time I got the message it was 5:30pm so I couldn't call right away and find out. Ugh, I hate that.

When I called the next morning sure enough, we hadn't been picked. The new profiling opportunity didn't sound as good either. First, the birth mom was in Arizona, and she was due Apr. 14th. It was basically a meth/heroin baby, even though the mother swears she got off it as soon as she found out she was pregnant at 4 months. Ok, there's a reason why there are methadone clinics, because you can't just quit that stuff cold turkey, so I really didn't believe it. She also hadn't had any pre-natal care, so I didn't think she was really taking care of this baby the whole time. But we said we would like to be profiled because hey, you never know.

One day later, yesterday, we get a call saying the birth mom had picked someone else. Whoa, that was really fast. I mean, 1 day to receive our profile (and undoubtedly others) and we're in NY and she's in AZ? I don't think she put much thought into it then. But I think it's probably for the best since we weren't really sure if we were ready for that anyway.

So two profilings in less than a week, and now we're back to zero.

We're almost ready to go surrogacy-wise. We're in agreement on the contract now, so we just need to get it signed and we're good to go. Gabby's been doing her pre-screening and is on BC and getting her hysteroscopy done next week or the week after I think. I've run the cycle through my insurance (finally got that taken care of!) and though we still owe some money after insurance, it's less than it otherwise would be, which is good. We just need to go through the psychological screening and we're set to go!

I got in contact with Boston doctor to let her know because I'm a little more than midway through my BCP pack and she had previously said she didn't want me on it longer than a month, so hoping she can work some magic to get everything done so we can start soon. Gabby is now going on vacation the last week in April (so a week earlier than I thought) which could be good (getting started sooner) or bad (not getting all the prescreening stuff done ahead of time....but we're definitely almost ready to start!

Babies

We are being profiled again. Didn't get much in the way of details and I'm not holding out much hope - just happy to be out there for something!

I called on Friday to check in on things and once again she said, "This is so funny! You always call when I'm about to call you!"

I have no intuition about these things and at this point, I'm ready to call BS. I don't really like calling for no reason, but if this is the only way we're going to get profiled I will do it. Sigh...

The expectant birth mom had just come in with her mom (she's in HS) which our advocate said was a good sign because she has family support. She's due this THURSDAY which makes me think she will probably end up changing her mind. I say that because coming in with your mom the week before strikes me as someone who's not really interested in making a birth plan and may only be doing so because your mom is making you. I could be wrong - maybe it's just a teenagery thing to do. It's nice we won't have to wait all that long to find out what the outcome is though. I didn't get that many details, like I did about the other opportunity we had, except that there's no info on the birth dad, and no drug/alcohol issues to be concerned with. I have no idea if the birthmom wants a relationship or not. As you can tell, I'm trying not to get too invested in this.

It's hard though, even with very little info. Just the thought of possibly having a baby next weekend or the week after makes me think about it too much. I spent the weekend with babies. On Saturday my BFF and I went downstate to visit with some high school friends (including one who now lives in KS and she brought her two kids - 5 & 6. My BFF's baby is almost 5 months old and the day ended with me changing her in a thruway rest stop changing room and helping feed her out by the food stations. BFF and I kept getting knowing looks as we passed the baby back and forth from passersby, like we were a couple! Hahahaha. BFF said loudly to the baby, "A___ has two mommies!" It was pretty funny.

Then Sunday morning we were invited to the christening of my coworker's baby who will be three months old soon. I keep calling her my coworker but she is one of my best friends too - but the one I call my BFF I've known since 9 years old and coworker I've known for 4 years - we are very close though. Her mother in law is a pastor and did the christening - which unlike Catholic baptisms which I am used to was done in front of the whole congregation. She only invited me and L and two other close friends (husband and wife) out of everyone she knows so it made me feel good that we were so special to her. Once again her MIL thanked us profusely after the service for coming and coworker's husband kept thanking us again and again both at the service and when we went to their house afterwards for pizza. It got to be a little strange - there's only so many times you can say "you're welcome" without it sounding weird. But he kept saying it and L finally came up to me and asked why he was saying it so much, to which I didn't know. But finally I caught up to him alone in the kitchen and he said almost exactly what his mother did when I went to coworker's baby shower in December - that he knew it was tough for us and he was just so grateful we would come to the baptism. It wasn't as eloquently put as his MIL had said it back then, and I felt a little more awkward but it was nice.

Since the christening was held in the middle of the mass they did the rest of the mass too and there was a lot of silence and prayers and stuff and his mom/pastor talked a lot about going through tough times etc. and I couldn't help it but the tears flowed through a lot of that part of the service. I don't know if he saw it or his mom did (he was in the pew in front of us and obviously his mom was at the front but it wasn't that big of a church) so maybe that's why he felt like he had to thank us. Of course he didn't - but in another way it's so nice when people recognize that something may be difficult for you.

I'm not that religious but of course all I could think about is where we'll get our baby(ies) christened when the time comes. It was just one more reminder that we still have no one at home.

I have more to write but it'll have to wait for tomorrow.

W-T-F

Ok, so WTF? Today is CD 60. SIXTY. Sesenta. No period. I was feeling crampy and PMSy a few days ago and still nothing. 11 days ago I had my P4 checked and it indicated I'd already ovulated and I was sure I hadn't just ovulated the day before, so AF should definitely be here by now. At this point, it's going to affect our upcoming cycle if this keeps up.

Surrogacy agreement has gone over to the other attorney. Our attorney checked on Gabby's insurance for us. I mean, they had of course checked it out before but she wanted to give me specifics.

There is a $100 annual deductible for all insurance services and then there's a $300 co-payment for inpatient stay when she gives birth. Otherwise, her coverage is 100%.

How freaking awesome is that???

I need to call up the adoption agency soon just to check in but I'm dreading it a bit. Obviously there's nothing new over there since I haven't heard anything. I also want to ask them for a "receipt" for all our expenses in 2011 so we have it when we go to file taxes next year.

This year (tax year 2012) is the last year that the adoption credit/deduction (I don't remember which one it is, but it's whatever one gives you more money) is over $12K. I believe last year it was $13K. The healthcare reform act (I refuse to call it "Obamacare") put back the deduction/credit for this year, but next year it drops back to $5k (maybe $6k) unless they change it, which they haven't done so far.

The way adoption stuff and taxes work is generally, this - if you haven't finalized your adoption, you can take a partial credit (for whatever adoption expenses you have paid - in our case, application fees and homestudy fees) in the tax year AFTER you paid those fees. Since we paid those fees in 2011, we can take credit in tax year 2012 (which gets filed NEXT April). If you finalize in a given year, you can take the credit in that year.

Obviously the way we are going we'll be lucky to get a placement in 2012, so forget about finalizing. If we finalize in 2013, there will be only $5K we can get back...boo :( So I definitely want to file for partial credit next year for whatever we can get. I think we spent between $3-$5K last year on adoption stuff. Hopefully then in 2013 we can get the $5K when we finalize, which is better than nothing. I'm not positive if $5k is the most we can back total, so we'll definitely be going to a tax attorney that year.

I am a bit annoyed we're going to miss out on the adoption credit/deduction by only a year or so. But then today I got a fundraising letter from my law school alma mater and learned that tuition has been raised from $6k when I went there in early 2000s to nearly $30K now. Holy smokes. So that timing at least worked out for me there. Win some, lose some.

Surrogacy Agreement Part Deux

AF watch: no, still not here. But I feel crampy and like it will be here any day now. Hurray!

One time I did have a 69 day cycle. But that was after my open heart surgery. Kind of makes sense that my body went a bit wacky after that. 55+ days for no reason at all? I don't get it.

L and I had 2 hour phone conversation with our attorney for the surrogacy agreement this morning. Thank goodness a new month of cell phone minutes will be starting soon! It was really good. She was very knowledgeable, well spoken, and listened and agreed with many of our changes.

She told us Gabby gave ridiculously low payment amounts for many of the things contemplated in the agreement. As I wrote yesterday, I can't specifically go into language of the agreement, but for caesarean, ectopic, D&C's - all of these have an amount allocated to them if they happen and apparently the surrogate gets to pick an amount they will be paid in case they do (I didn't know the surrogate picked this until today).

She's also the one who gets to say how much childcare will be in case she needs to go on bed rest or while she's at doctor appointments and our attorney said she must think her au pair or family members will just take care of the children because it is crazy low for 3 kids! There are so many things I would not have contemplated myself so I'm glad we have an attorney who has experience writing contracts like this up. She told us this woman sounds incredible - she makes a lot of money (our attorney of course didn't tell us how much but she needed to submit paystubs in case there are lost wages), has 3 kids, works full time, has an au pair for crissakes, but she still wants to do this, and is asking on the low side for reimbursement. Clearly this means she's doing it for the right reasons. I don't know how we got so lucky!

I was all excited about the lowered amount for her fee yesterday, but now it makes sense. However, she sort of makes up for the money a different way. She really doesn't want to have twins, if it's up to her, but we definitely want to put 2 back since this process is so expensive. The $3K we would "save" on her fee is actually added to the multiples fee - that ONE fee is higher than normal. I can't really fault her for that, everything else is ridiculously cheap apparently and she wasn't a huge fan of multiples to begin with, but she's still going to go through with it, so I guess she decided to make it worth her while. I think it's fair. If we don't end up with twins the price will be lowered and if we do we will be so thrilled anyway! The price goes up even higher for triplets but we would never ever put 3 back in her and the only way to end up with twins would be in one of the embryos split. That has never happened to me (my twins were from two embryos that both implanted) and there are no twins in my family so the chances are not high for that.

I am so grateful I want to email her to thank her but I'm not quite sure how to put it. I'm sure I'll find away throughout this process though.

On the adoption front, no news to report. Almost 5 months into it and there's been practically nothing. If we hadn't been told when our profile is going out (the two times it has) we would have had no contact with the agency whatsoever. The average wait time for them is 9 months - how is that possible if we've barely had anything happen in 5?

Go go go

Our second installment is in the process of being sent and then the contracting process (the specifics of what will happen during IVF and subsequent pregnancy and birth) will begin and Gabby's info will be sent over to the clinic so she can start getting screened to begin a cycle!

Gabby is very trusting. She emailed me to say she had made an appointment to get her IUD taken out this week. We have no formal contract made yet! She also got a list of attorneys from our agency to pick one in order to do the contracting for her, but she says she doesn't care who it is and I can pick if I want. Of course I won't do that (conflict of interest) but again, it seems very trusting to me!

We finally began making some headway in the future "nursery" room this weekend. Basically cleared it out some more and finished puttying and sanding the walls. Hopefully next weekend we can prime.

Tomorrow I have a call with the director of reproductive medicine over at the Boston Hospital where my previous heart stuff and now surrogacy stuff will be taking place. She's the one that back in August we saw for a second opinion regarding our recurrent miscarriages, and the one who said, "If you can afford it, I would recommend surrogacy." Well, we can't afford it, but due to the generosity of my inlaws we're able to do this now, and I'm hoping that she can help save us money by working with my local RE up until retrieval/transfer time. See, my insurance covers IVF at an in network provider, but this Boston hospital is not in network. If I can at least do the baseline and monitoring there it will be cheaper than doing everything out of pocket in Boston. So fingers crossed! I also want to ask her about our failed IVF #3. I love the Boston hospital doctors. They are always willing to do phone consults with me, so I don't have to drive 3 hours one way for a 1 hour appt. They don't charge my insurance for it either. Very nice.

I called the adoption agency last week to ask about that profiling opportunity from 3-4 weeks ago now. They said that they haven't heard back from the birth mother but given that she wasn't due till May they weren't surprised. I guess it's good that we're not out of the running yet, right? I have to call them back today because we've decided to add an online profile (ugh another $99 every 3 months) because recently I've heard that many people at my agency have been "picked" from the profile and I want to give us the best chance possible.

This infertility/ adoption / surrogacy stuff is like a full time job. Sheesh.

Things Looking Up?

So far, 2012 is going well! Well, except for slipping on black ice two days ago while walking the dog and losing her leash. But she came back when I called her, so that's a positive too!

When it rains it pours, and when good things are happening, the opposite is true as well, it seems. I had called my mom to tell her about the surrogate on Monday night and she asked about adoption and I told her there was nothing on that front and likely wouldn't be for who knows how long? She told me, "Hey you never know, it could be tomorrow for all you know," which I agreed with.

And then yesterday we got a call from the adoption agency for a profiling opportunity! Our first real one, since the other indirect one was never heard back from. It was so exciting.

A lot of adoption bloggers don't blog about their profiling opportunities because they come and go so fast and it gets depressing being rejected (not picked). But this is our first one, and even if we're not picked I feel ok with that. I feel hope for the first time in a LONG time that this is going to happen for us, someway, somehow, SOON.

This is for a baby boy due in May from a birthmom in her late 20s with two other boys already. Father is not in the picture at all. No alcohol, no drugs, all in all, pretty darn great! From the description of the mother (haven't seen a picture) she is my height, my color hair and my color eyes. Dad had blue eyes, but otherwise meets L's description. Not that that is really important to us, but I just thought it was amazing how it matched us so well!

The birthmom gave the agency a very detailed listing of medical conditions that run in the family, including down to the grandmother's cousin - which is great. That shows she really cares and wants the baby to know about his medical history. Another funny thing is that it mirrors L and my family's too! Even down to someone having a congenital heart defect!

The mother wants an open adoption, which is great because the baby will have two half-brothers. She actually wants a lot of contact which we told the agency we were unsure about and really depended on the relationship we could develop. But they told us all we needed to be was open to it, and we are. But since we don't know this lady at all, we aren't ready to make any promises at THIS moment in time. If we were to get to know her over the next few months, I'm sure we'd feel better about everything.

So we'll see. We had to make the decision to be profiled in about an hour, which was nervewracking, but we did and now we just wait and see!

In other news, we're meeting the surrogate and her family the last Sunday of January. By the end of all of this, we're going to have connections to a whole bunch of families, the way we're going!

Fingers crossed. I just know something has to work out. Irons in the fire...something will happen for us.

Longest post ever?

This week I'm doing much better than last week, in which I was pretty much a wreck. My mom came home from the hospital yesterday and is doing as well as can be expected so that is good.

I'll admit, it occurred to me last week that if I had been pregnant, I don't know what would have happened with my mom going in for surgery on Tuesday and me giving birth on Weds. Part of me wonders if that was all in God's plan, and then the other part of me thinks God has given up on me and that's a silly thing to even ponder.

So...an update. You know there will be months and months of nothing going on and then all of a sudden a bunch of things happen on one day? Yea, today feels like that. After being in a bah humbug spirit most of this season, I finally got Christmas cards printed out at CVS (express pick up last night) and I will be mailing them out tomorrow. I guess they should reach everyone by Christmas Eve so I won't be on the naughty list. we've gotten Christmas cards from everyone and all along I've been like, "Ugh, I don't want to do them!" But we took some really cute pictures of my dog last night all wrapped up in ribbon (really it bordered on animal abuse, lol. We made her lie down as I wrapped ribbon all over her body to make it look like she got into it "by accident" and then made funny noises so she would cock her head to one side so we could get the cutest picture. i'll have to post it later. She was covered in sparkles from the ribbon by the time we were done.)

We're moving ahead with surrogacy, as we continue with adoption. Or rather, we've been trying to move ahead with surrogacy. We hashed it all out with my inlaws a couple months ago and we started looking at profiles with one agency. Originally, we got two profiles to look at. One I didn't like at all. I thought I would be pretty open minded about surrogates (as long as they were healthy, didn't do drugs, etc.) but boy did I turn out to be pretty judgmental!

S#1 was about 28, had had one kid only about 5 months before she signed up to be a surrogate but the baby was 10 mos. old by the time we saw her profile). I thought it was odd that she wanted to be a surrogate so soon after having her own baby, but hey maybe she loved being pregnant. She said she didn't take any medications, but had asthma, which I found a little ingenuine. L has mild asthma but still takes an inhaler occasionally and when we filled out our own profile we made sure to write it down.

Here's where the judgmental part really comes in: they are a deeply religious family, apparently. And S#1 refuses to be a surrogate for a homosexual couple. It is fine if it's a single heterosexual woman or man she is carrying for, but a committed homosexual couple is apparently not ok. That really really annoyed me. I'm not homosexual so it doesn't affect us in the least, but the S#1 wrote that she really wanted to be a surrogate to give a loving couple what they wanted most, a child (and I snarkily thought, unless their homosexual, then I guess you don't care). Oh yea, judgy mcjudgerson, that's me. She said that her church wouldn't approve of her carrying for a homosexual and that's why she wouldn't do it.

She also said she wouldn't terminate a pregnancy for any reason. We don't want to terminate for any reason other than no quality of life (i.e. baby couldn't live on its own outside the womb), but get this. She had an abortion in 2004. Was her church ok with that? See the weird thing is that I am very pro-choice. I don't believe in abortion for myself, but I don't believe I have the right to tell others what to do with their body (I certainly don't want anyone telling me what I should do with mine!). So you would think it wouldn't bother me, but it did. BIG TIME. Maybe because she claimed to be so religious. Now, I recognize she could have "found God" after that, but she wrote that she had been religious ever since she was a child.

the other thing that didn't sit well with me in my Judgy Chair was that she had a boob job in 2009. Why am I so judgy about that? I don't know. I think her profile came across as someone who really only wanted to do surrogacy for the money (which lets admit it, that's really the reason why women would do surrogacy for the most part), but combined with her religious beliefs and stuff, maybe she shouldn't have spent money on a boob job then.

Ok, ugh, I know. I never would have guessed in a million years I would have been so judgmental.

S#2 we really loved. My age, has 3 kids, is done with having kids (her youngest is 17 months (closer to 20 mos. now) is a PEDIATRIC NURSE (how awesome is that?). Would carry for anyone, homosexual or not. No meds, very into exercise. And awesomely, gives birth at the hospital I was planning on giving birth at in Boston. How perfect is that? She needed to schedule being induced for her last two kids because she gives birth SO QUICKLY. What an awesome "problem" to have! She is only willing to terminate when there is no quality of life (i.e. not for down syndrome or anything that still has quality of life- which is totally what we want too). Just we match up so well together. We had expressed our interest in her and she looked at our profile and said she was interested, but had a vacation and couldn't do a transfer until April. We were willing to wait until then because we liked her so much (and at this point, geez, it doesn't even matter that much when). Then a week later, the agency came back to us and said she now had ANOTHER vacation and couldn't do it until July.

To us, it sounded like she got cold feet (she's a first time surrogate) because we picked her literally just a few weeks after she applied. So we were disappointed but didn't want someone who was flaky anyway.

So last week we got sent S#3's profile. She was an experienced surrogate - had twins for another couple a few years back - so she's charging $10K more than the other's rates. Geez. But we looked at her anyway. She had two issues: no termination no matter what (even no quality of life), and while she was willing to travel for doctor appts., she wanted to give birth at her local hospital. We were willing to compromise on the first, but given my heart condition, there's a small percentage a baby of ours could have one as well so we wanted her to give birth at a big hospital. We asked if she would compromise - if there was a known issue before birth, she would go to the big hospital, but if there was no issues known we would go to her local hospital.

I thought it was a good compromise, but apparently she didn't, because she flat out said no. I guess we're not a good fit for each other.

So I was just about to give up until January when we got an email from our surrogate agency yesterday saying S#2's vacation was cancelled and she was wondering if we were still interested. (It would be back to transferring in April, which we were originally fine with). Yes! We want to get her locked in before she changes her mind again though (if that's what happened before, which I don't know for sure)...I think once she signs a contract, everything will be fine. We told the agency yes and today got an email saying she and her husband were so excited and want to have a call with us next week. So we will see how that goes - and all of a sudden that seems to be moving. But once that phone call takes place, money will start changing hands so we need to be careful.

AND THEN...
I call up the adoption agency today because it's been yet another month and we still haven't seen our homestudy. Of course, when I call I am told, we just mailed it to you on Friday, so you should have it today! (of course, on the DAY I call). Then I am also told that just yesterday they sent out our profile to someone (I'm not sure who, my mind was going crazy) ...there was a baby born a few weeks ago...it was early- a preemie, but no health issues and is doing great. I didn't even ask what gender! I think it was a referral from another agency because she said time was limited so they sent over our profile without asking us and she was about to call and let us know) and they haven't heard back yet. But she will let us know what the outcome is.

Holy cow. How awesome would that be. Adopt this month/early next AND have another baby around next January? That would just be too perfect.

I don't know how many profiles were sent over. Or the details. I didn't really want to ask because I didn't want to get my hopes up. You know, the more details, the more you start imagining. This is only our first profiling, I'm sure it won't work out. But holy cow!!

Trigger tonight

My uterus feels like it's humming. Hmm...

Today's appointment shows that I'm indeed ready to pop (hell if I can never say that while pregnant, I'm going to say it now). They stopped counting at 18 follies, and there are likely more/bigger ones. I do still have that one outlier at 25 that they're going to sacrifice, but the others are all around 18 right now.

My E2 came back today slightly lower than Monday's. Man, am I sensitive to the drugs or what? I was 2109 on Monday and am 2023 today. I asked if I should be concerned with the drop and they said no, it just means it's time to do trigger.

So I'm triggering tonight for a retrieval on Friday morning. Ugh, I'm so uncomfortable and so bloated right now, but I don't feel as sick as I did on Monday. My guess was that it was the big increase (from 160 to over 2100 in a matter of 5 days!) Now that it's leveled out I'm better adjusted.

L and I also applied for a private loan at our local credit union earlier this month, as we need to have a lot of money on hand at a moment's notice if we get an adoption call. We've been playing phone tag with the bank because we don't have any need for the money right now but they finally got ahold of me today and I asked when the latest we could "close" on the loan was. Technically it's 30 days from date of application but I explained that we needed it for adoption and the lady said she'd speak to her manager to see what they could do. She just called me back and said that while they couldn't hold it open for ever, they would check in with me every 2 weeks or so to see how things are going. I'm hopeful that when they get sick of waiting THEN we can close on the loan (instead of having to reapply all over again). Even if that only gets us an additional month before having to close, hey, that's one less month of having to pay interest on a loan we're not even using right now. Yay credit unions - where you're treated like an actual person and they care about your story!

Hoping I'll be able to enjoy T-day tomorrow without feeling like a beached whale :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh, the irony...

So the irony wasn't lost on me that we sat in 2 days worth of adoption education classes, Friday and Saturday night, and were there when my BFF's baby was born. Classic.

The classes were actually pretty good and interesting. On Friday night there were two speakers, the first being so fun and upbeat. I turned to L and said, "Why couldn't SHE have been our social worker?"

And then (cue music, dun dun dun DUN....) was our social worker. Seriously, such a debbie downer, making everything so negative. there were about 20 of us in the class and I think we all felt that way after she spoke. It made me feel a little vindicated afterwards...

She kept talking about the pervasive loss her children feel as a result of their adoption, and maybe it will come with time, but I do not fully understand it. Older child adoption, international adoption, foster children, THAT I fully understand. But her children were domestic adoption, and with her since they were 36 hours old. I certainly don't remember anything from 36 hours old, do you? While I do understand a general feeling of loss from being adopted, that your mother did not necessarily give birth to you, but your birth mother chose to make the best decision for you to have someone else raise you, I don't understand a pervasive sense because those kids have never known anything else. If they were adopted at 6 years old and knew other families, or were in an orphanage in Russia, or the foster care system, shuttled back and forth, then it would make sense.

In fact, the first speaker (whom I loved) spoke about her older child adoption from Russia. She adopted the child at 8years old. At 6, the child and her full blooded sibling were adopted by an American family, but the family ended up keeping the sibling and sending the older daughter back to Russia, where she was adopted 2 years later by the first speaker. Pervasive sense of loss? Oh yes! How horrible that must have been to have been sent back, and as a kid, not really understanding why (and as an adult, I may not be able to understand it either). My social worker's kids? Not at all the same, in my honest opinion.

Anyway, for the most part the class(es) were nice. Some we didn't need because we're done with our homestudy and profile now, and it would have been nice to have done this several months ago. But most of the classes are 5 hours away from us and we got lucky that they were doing a weekend near us so we jumped on it. They also showed us examples of profiles and I have to admit (braggy here) I thought ours is so much better. I hope it works for us, anyway.

Paper Pregnant

We are "paper pregnant" or whatever the term is for finishing our homestudy. I like the term "on the market" but our SW-from-hell didn't really appreciate it. No sense of humor, that one.

I got through the last homestudy session by literally biting my tongue. Once again she brought up the fact that I cannot handle infertility treatments and adoption at the same time. Honestly, I would much prefer her to just say, "the agency doesn't allow it" because I am a goody-two shoes rule follower and would have no problem saying, "ok." But I don't think it actually is prohibited, which is why she never said that. However, I told her during the first and second meetings that I wouldn't do any fertility treatments once we were getting profiled and apparently it STILL wasn't good enough. She still needed to tell me how I feel ONCE again during our third and last homestudy meeting.

This time, I literally bit my tongue to keep quiet, stared her straight in the eyes so she would think I was listening, blocked out anything she was saying, and concentrated on precisely what color her eyes were. Slate gray, I think. Matches her personality.

But we got through it, and she only spent about 2 seconds looking over the house, so I feel like I cleaned it inside and out for nothing...grr... but it's over, and we're approved, and now we just get to wait. For how long? I have no idea...

L and I did end up calling my agency contact last week because I was so upset about her. The short of our conversation is that we don't have to work with her in the post-adoption placement home visits. So I sucked it up for our last pre-adoption home visit because I'd never have to see her again. I think they did talk to her as well because I could tell she was trying to be nicer. Still, we just didn't click at all.

She told us we should go out and buy a car carrier and pack 'n play because we don't know how much time we'll have if we get called quickly. I'm so hesitant to do that, because I don't want to have baby stuff hanging around (even in a closet) and making me sad. Plus, I want a travel system for the car carrier that I did pick out, but don't want to spend the money right now for no good reason. So I'm torn. I guarantee you if I buy something, it will be well over a year before we get placed, but if I don't, it'll happen quickly and we won't be prepared.

I Think I'm Done

I feel done with jumping through hoops. I HATE our social worker. How can she be so judgmental about two people who've never done anything bad in their whole lives?

I called back on Monday and said that she could speak to our infertility counselor any time she wanted and we really wanted this to take place on Thursday as planned. She hemmed and hawed saying she didn't have the release saying so. I told her it would be at the adoption agency on Tuesday, so they could tell her they received it. She said she needed it in her hands. What is this? Does she not trust the adoption agency (for whom she works? If not, why is she working for them?) But I told her fine, I would bring over a copy of the release if she really needed to see it. At that point she basically told me to calm down, she understood my anxiety but she wasn't going to move any faster and to just deal with it.

WTF? She doesn't understand my anxiety at all. If she did she would understand that we have been waiting for years for a child, and her putting this off just adds to that. Don't you think we want a baby? And the longer you keep us waiting for no reason just makes us more anxious! We have done everything possible to keep this moving and on schedule. It seems to me like she had made plans for Thursday and didn't want to tell us, because why couldn't she have worked with us to actually do it on Thursday if she got the info on time?

I had called my counselor that day to ask if she would send over the release to the agency. And bless her, she did. She faxed it to the adoption agency on Monday (even though they were going to get a hard copy in the mail on Tuesday.)

I get two phone messages this morning, one from the SW, one from our infertility counselor. The one from the SW says she spoke to our IF counselor last night and she wants to reschedule our appt. for next week. The one from the IF counselor says she spoke to the SW last night and thinks everything is on track and that both she and the SW think it's best if L and I come in to see the IF counselor tomorrow night at 6pm (when our homestudy was supposed to be) and the SW will do the home visit NEXT Thursday at 7pm (when our next IF counseling session is supposed to be).

I'll be honest - I was/am livid. What is wrong with this Thursday!?!?! That was the date we originally had planned! Our SW spoke with our IF counselor ahead of the home visit, so why can't this continue as planned? Or Friday night? Or Monday night? I feel like the SW isn't working with us at all.

I feel like I've worked my ASS off to get everything in, all the i's dotted and t's crossed, and no one wants to work with me. I feel this is all because of the fact we see a counselor and I HATE the SW's judgment. I wish we had never seen my IF counselor and I think it is so wrong that the SW has made me feel that way. One would think you would want your adoptive parents to see one so you know they have dealt/are dealing with the issues regarding infertility/loss/grief that come with this whole process, but instead I feel like I'm being made to feel like I'm going to be a "bad parent" because of this.

I know it's only one more week, but I've had it. Why am I doing this? To be made to feel like crap? I can't take it anymore. I'm ready to walk away.I don't want anything more to do with this SW, and I'm just going to need to have more contact with her. I can't do it. I'm done.

ETA: I still want to know why our SW needed to talk to my counselor but didn't need to talk to my cardiologist. Why was a letter from my cardiologist good enough, but not one from my counselor? It seems like everything I ever said to the counselor can now be held against me, and at the time I was talking with her about those things, I thought it was a safe, confidential place I could express my feelings (not all which were rational at the time, but I was upset). Now it doesn't feel like a safe place anymore, and I can't go back, even though I liked my counselor very much.

Ready to Revolt (and 2nd Homestudy meeting)

Do most people strongly dislike the social worker they are assigned to in their adoption? I heard that's not usually the case, but it is with us. My two closest friends, both social workers, are trying to make me feel better by calling her a "glorified secretary" but I'm still really upset. She's just so...judgy. L and I are goody-two shoes - I mean, neither of us have even so much TRIED pot in our lives, and she's making us feel terrible. I can't imagine what other (more normal) people have gone through.

The second homestudy meeting was two individual meetings, first with me, then with L. For the most part, it went better than the first meeting I thought. But then, towards the end, I was mentioning how we see a counselor about my infertility issues (something I thought would only show how much I was willing to deal and come to terms with my issues) and she just made me feel batshit crazy. She said, "You know, you really should have told the agency that, that's really important to know." Um, excuse me, I did!!

My first agency contact I told everything too. I don't lie, and I'm not hiding anything (hence why my SW and I had issues the first meeting). I TOLD my agency contact and even asked if I needed to get a note from our counselor and she told me no. So I really don't appreciate being lectured to like our SW did. Then she tries to go over our adopting/infertility treatments from last week telling me how important it is if we get pregnant to let the agency know because it's not fair to do both at the same time.

FUCK OFF. What was the first thing we did when I found out I was pregnant in April? Call the agency to put our stuff on hold. Again, don't lecture me because I've always done everything the way it should be done.

Unfortunately, my first agency contact left last month so I called up my new agency contact as soon as I got out of that meeting. She told me that our SW HAD ALREADY CALLED her. Jesus H. Christ. She didn't understand why my first agency contact had told us we didn't need a note from our counselor but said we did. Freaking pain in the ass, but fine. So we met with our counselor anyway that night so it was easy enough to ask for (hopefully she'll send everything in ASAP). I emailed my second agency contact (because we mailed in our adoption profiles on Friday - woot!) telling her everything should be on its way and we hope we don't get delayed because we had just been told.

Our third homestudy meeting (actually in our home) is scheduled for this Thursday. This morning I wake up to a message from our SW saying that she is confirming that our homestudy is delayed until we get our other paperwork in. WTF?!?! I called up my second agency contact right away (they are actually open today, imagine that!) and she said that's incorrect and we don't need to delay. So is my SW going off the rails or what? Is she going to refuse to see us until that paperwork is done? I don't know why the note, which is going to say "I don't see any issues with L and Ducky adopting" and ONLY that makes a difference in coming to our house. I'm going to be so pissed if our SW goes rogue and says she won't do it. (the timing was PERFECT because we're getting our carpets cleaned tomorrow and our cleaning lady comes Weds. morning. And we didn't even plan it this way!)

I'm so annoyed that this lady will be doing our post-adoption home visits as well. I can't stand her.

First Homestudy Meeting

I've had the worst period ever. Well at least the last few years. I had to actually take a couple of hydrocodone (the ones I had left over from when my periods were so painful - and they were expired) so I could tell how long it's been. I don't know why this one was so bad, when they haven't been that way for years now.

Yesterday was our first homestudy meeting. There will be three of them. The first was one with me and L at the social worker's office. The second one will be individual meetings at her office. Only the third will actually be in our home.

It went all right. I didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling from her. She actually upset me so much at one point that I almost got really angry and started crying. I'm hoping I just misunderstood, but the more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed.

She asked if I was going to put IVF on hold while we were profiled. I wasn't sure what profiled meant so I told her no. I said we weren't trying right now but that didn't mean we wouldn't try again in the future. She told me while I didn't have to legally, I really needed to because adoption is so emotional and IVF is so emotional I really can't handle it. That's where I got really upset. Don't tell me anything is so emotional I can't handle it. I've handled two open heart surgeries, I've handled the loss of 5 babies, 2 IVF cycles, 1 FET AND done adoption paperwork to date, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I CAN HANDLE!!!

Then I stopped crying long enough to tell her maybe I just didn't understand what being "profiled" meant. She told me that's when we're matched with a birthmother. Which I totally didn't understand originally and which was fine with, at least initially. In my mind, we're going to finish our homestudy and wait months and months until we hear from the agency and I was being honest that I wasn't sure I was going to NOT do a cycle while I hear nothing. But if we're matched I of course wouldn't do anything. That I'm ok with. She said we should be profiled within 1 or 2 months. We'll see.

The more I think about it though, the more I realize it's just not as simple as that. What if I'm in the middle of a cycle when I get the call that we're matched? I'm not about to throw away a cycle or my money when nothing is definite. I wouldn't START a new one if we were matched, but IVF cycles are very long, and I think she doesn't realize it.

So nothing's simple, even in adoption (well especially in adoption, but you KWIM.) Still ignorance even there...

It's hard.

Welcome ICLWers

Hi ICLWers and welcome to my blog. I have bullet points to my "story" down the side of my blog, but it's really long by this point so let me give you a summary here.

DH and I have been married since 2007 (we were high school sweethearts who dated a looonng time before getting married) and trying to have a child since 2008. In that time I've had 5 pregnancies (or really 4, but one was twins) and have miscarried all, the most recent being twins at 11 weeks in June. I've been tested for recurrent loss to no avail, and the D&C genetic testing showed chromosomally normal boys, so all doctors are stumped. As you can imagine, this has been very hard for us.

I am currently towards the end of a 2ww for my first FET. Today is 12dpo and I'm pretty sure it didn't work. I had two 2BB thawed embies transferred last week and today I got a BFN on a FRER. It just feels like I can't catch a break.

We also started the adoption process back in February, but it was on hold for a few months when we last got pregnant. However, since losing the last pregnancy, we kicked it into high gear and just got matched with a social worker to write our homestudy. Our first meeting will be next week, and it looks like if everything goes smoothly our profile will be ready to present by November 1st!

I am hopeful one way or another we will have a baby within the next year, but the length of time and heartbreak that has gone on has really made me a much sadder person. I don't think I will ever begin to reclaim myself until I have a child one way or another though, so we keep trying. Not trying means not getting to where I want to be.

Thanks for reading!

Another go

Today I had my transfer for my first FET. We put back two snowbabies - both 2BBs. Definitely not as awesome as my fresh IVF cycle, but I'm hoping one sticks. I didn't really relax that much afterwards, but my day job is a desk job so I'm hoping it doesn't matter. I took off half a day only like I did last time and that seemed to work out ok (at least initially).

I don't really think this will work out for me. And if I do magically get pregnant, I'm pretty sure it won't end well, but I will always try. We are actually waiting to get assigned a social worker as all of our Homestudy paperwork is in, so I have that in the back of my mind. At this point, I just want a baby - no matter which way. The only problem is that one costs me $30k. Yes, I'm blessed to have my insurance cover IVF, at least up to a certain threshold.

On the way into work today I called into a radio show and won the prize! Haha!! Just a little gift certificate to applepicking (totally up my alley) but it brought me a lot of joy because I NEVER win anything. Hoping that means good things for the transfer that happened today as well.