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.

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?

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.

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!!