We got the great news this morning that everything is set for a December transfer.
The egg donor's screening tests for infectious diseases and genetic abnormalities came back OK today!
We got contracts sorted out last week. My husband and I set up an appointment for last Friday at noon to go in and sign the papers. Just because no stage of this journey can be without drama, I was shocked to find out that my husband was a no show! I called his phone several times with no answer. Turns out he was a wee bit tired after working three 12 hour night shifts in a row, and had slept through his alarm. He called me in a panic at around 1:00. Luckily my attorney's office was able to squeeze him in later in the afternoon and everyone signed by the end of last week.
Just as a side note, both my agency and my attorney told me they had worked with my IPs' attorney in the past and she had "never been like this before." My attorney confirmed that our negotiations were much more complicated than most, and that it never should have taken over 3 months to get our contract done. Apparently the other attorney was saving up all her ball-dropping energy for our contract. Does anyone else get the impression that our journey is cursed, or is it just me?
Oh well, I'm going to assume that all of our bad luck has been used up and the rest of this process will go smoothly!
Monday, October 29, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
All Refreshed and Ready to Go!
Italy was lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Here is a picture from my balcony in Sorrento (Homer's land of the Sirens), just to give you a taste of the beauty that is Italy:
Aside from being buried under piles of backed up paperwork at work, I'm feeling very refreshed. I'm spending every second I can get making up for missed time with my daughter and enjoying the fall weather with her. I'm also ready to get back on the crazy train that is surrogacy with a positive attitude!
Updates: the egg donor has her screening appointment today. The nurse coordinator actually forwarded me the tentative calendar, with me beginning injectible meds on November 9 and transferring somewhere between December 7-14. Although it's nice that this seems to be going forward, I'm trying not to get my hopes up and plans set just yet. This new donor is a first time donor so she has no previous donation history to complicate things, and she already had to do most of her screening to even be accepted by the agency. So, we are hopeful that everything will go OK. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that she doesn't test positive for cocaine or chlamydia, and that we can all be on our way to receiving some very merry Christmas news!
In other news, the contract is still being negotiated but it looks like we have all the issues worked out. Now we just have some nitpicking left to do, and we will hopefully get that thing signed in the next week or so.
As a side note, I realize that my last few posts have been a bit negative. I just want to go on the record and say that despite complications and disappointments along the way, I'm still just as excited to make my IPs parents as I was when I first started out. They are wonderful people who deserve to be parents, and I can't wait to be there on the day they meet their son or daughter!
Aside from being buried under piles of backed up paperwork at work, I'm feeling very refreshed. I'm spending every second I can get making up for missed time with my daughter and enjoying the fall weather with her. I'm also ready to get back on the crazy train that is surrogacy with a positive attitude!
Updates: the egg donor has her screening appointment today. The nurse coordinator actually forwarded me the tentative calendar, with me beginning injectible meds on November 9 and transferring somewhere between December 7-14. Although it's nice that this seems to be going forward, I'm trying not to get my hopes up and plans set just yet. This new donor is a first time donor so she has no previous donation history to complicate things, and she already had to do most of her screening to even be accepted by the agency. So, we are hopeful that everything will go OK. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that she doesn't test positive for cocaine or chlamydia, and that we can all be on our way to receiving some very merry Christmas news!
In other news, the contract is still being negotiated but it looks like we have all the issues worked out. Now we just have some nitpicking left to do, and we will hopefully get that thing signed in the next week or so.
As a side note, I realize that my last few posts have been a bit negative. I just want to go on the record and say that despite complications and disappointments along the way, I'm still just as excited to make my IPs parents as I was when I first started out. They are wonderful people who deserve to be parents, and I can't wait to be there on the day they meet their son or daughter!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Some More Details
When I decided to create a blog, I vowed to myself that I would be honest. No sugar coating things, not putting a positive spin. I wanted to have all of my real feelings, both physical and emotional, written down on (virtual) paper, both so that I could remember all the aspects of my journey, and so others that are considering surrogacy know what to expect. So, here I go.
Yes, we have been pushed back another month. It is what it is. It's disappointing. But there's really nothing we can do about it. What pushed me over the line from disappointment to outright fury, is the way our clinic handled the setback.
As I already said, I had emailed my coordinator to get my calendar, only to be told that the egg donor had not finished her screening yet. Upon asking when she would be done, I was told that her screening appointment is set for October 18. And she anticipated that we would transfer in December. Um, what? Since when? Two weeks ago she had told me the egg donor's screening would be finished up the last week of September. But there was no explanation of what happened. No apology for the delay. Not even an acknowledgement that this was a change in the original plans. Just bad news delivered in a two sentence email, which I had to prod out of her.
So I emailed my IF to vent. The worst part? He didn't even know! He had no idea the egg donor still hadn't been in for her screening yet. I can understand someone not bothering to tell me, I'm not the person paying the bills. But not even bothering to tell my IPs? Totally unacceptable. He then emailed to find out what happened. Again, no explanation for the delay, no apology, and no acknowledgment that there even WAS a delay. He tried asking if I could start meds in October as planned with the hope that the egg donor would pass her screening and we wouldn't have to lose a month. But because they expect her blood work to take 2 weeks to get back (um, mine took 3 days), she would have already had to start meds before they would know if she was cleared. So no go.
She told us that getting delayed a month "isn't a big deal." OK, maybe not for her. I'm sure it makes no difference to her whose embryos are being transferred in any given month. But now we've been delayed for 3 months. When I was starting this journey, I was planning to have a baby in late spring/early summer, and then having the rest of the summer to enjoy being with my family. Now, assuming the egg donor manages to pass her screening and I manage to get pregnant on the first try, I will be due with a baby at the very end of August. I cannot think of a more miserable time of the year to be hugely pregnant. Then there's the fact that I will be on a travel restriction for the entire summer...no vacations for us. It also means that I have to start all over again on trying to find childcare while I'm out of town for an embryo transfer. Believe me, making arrangements when you have a husband who works nights and will need a nighttime babysitter for 3 straight nights somewhere in a window of 8 days when you have no family nearby is hard enough to do once. Now I have to start over on this for the third time.
And all of my selfish reason aside, what about my IPs? Maybe being delayed for a month in the grand scheme of things isn't a big deal. But three months is a quarter of a year. A quarter of a year longer that they have to wait to hold their baby in their arms. They've already been trying for almost 9 years for this baby...don't they deserve a break?
Yes, we have been pushed back another month. It is what it is. It's disappointing. But there's really nothing we can do about it. What pushed me over the line from disappointment to outright fury, is the way our clinic handled the setback.
As I already said, I had emailed my coordinator to get my calendar, only to be told that the egg donor had not finished her screening yet. Upon asking when she would be done, I was told that her screening appointment is set for October 18. And she anticipated that we would transfer in December. Um, what? Since when? Two weeks ago she had told me the egg donor's screening would be finished up the last week of September. But there was no explanation of what happened. No apology for the delay. Not even an acknowledgement that this was a change in the original plans. Just bad news delivered in a two sentence email, which I had to prod out of her.
So I emailed my IF to vent. The worst part? He didn't even know! He had no idea the egg donor still hadn't been in for her screening yet. I can understand someone not bothering to tell me, I'm not the person paying the bills. But not even bothering to tell my IPs? Totally unacceptable. He then emailed to find out what happened. Again, no explanation for the delay, no apology, and no acknowledgment that there even WAS a delay. He tried asking if I could start meds in October as planned with the hope that the egg donor would pass her screening and we wouldn't have to lose a month. But because they expect her blood work to take 2 weeks to get back (um, mine took 3 days), she would have already had to start meds before they would know if she was cleared. So no go.
She told us that getting delayed a month "isn't a big deal." OK, maybe not for her. I'm sure it makes no difference to her whose embryos are being transferred in any given month. But now we've been delayed for 3 months. When I was starting this journey, I was planning to have a baby in late spring/early summer, and then having the rest of the summer to enjoy being with my family. Now, assuming the egg donor manages to pass her screening and I manage to get pregnant on the first try, I will be due with a baby at the very end of August. I cannot think of a more miserable time of the year to be hugely pregnant. Then there's the fact that I will be on a travel restriction for the entire summer...no vacations for us. It also means that I have to start all over again on trying to find childcare while I'm out of town for an embryo transfer. Believe me, making arrangements when you have a husband who works nights and will need a nighttime babysitter for 3 straight nights somewhere in a window of 8 days when you have no family nearby is hard enough to do once. Now I have to start over on this for the third time.
And all of my selfish reason aside, what about my IPs? Maybe being delayed for a month in the grand scheme of things isn't a big deal. But three months is a quarter of a year. A quarter of a year longer that they have to wait to hold their baby in their arms. They've already been trying for almost 9 years for this baby...don't they deserve a break?
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
So, December It Is
I'm not going to say a lot right now, because I am very upset and I don't to type something I will regret later. But because of a delay in the new egg donor's screening, we have been pushed back another month. We are now looking at a transfer around the second week of December (assuming this egg donor passes her screening).
Now it's time to forget about surrogacy for a while and gear up for my trip to Italy!
Now it's time to forget about surrogacy for a while and gear up for my trip to Italy!
Monday, October 1, 2012
Sitting on Pins and Needles
After sending in my doctor's approval letter to the clinic on Thursday morning, I waited with bated breath for a response and hopefully my calendar...and I waited...and I waited. Finally on Sunday, the nurse coordinator emailed me back to say that I could not have a calendar until the new egg donor fully passed her screening. So I guess she's not done and ready to go after all.
In addition, after having the contract back for 2.5 weeks, my IPs' attorney finally sent it back to us with revisions on Friday. It looks like we agree on most things, but there are still two fairly big issues that need to be addressed. The deadline for getting this signed is Thursday (3 days from now), because my attorney will be out of the office Friday for about a week, and I leave the country on Sunday for a week and a half. Despite the other lawyer insisting on taking her sweet time on this, we are hoping to actually get this done on time so we aren't pushed back a whole month because of it. My attorney is planning to get it back to her by the end of the day today.
So, I still have to find out if I even get a schedule, have the meds shipped to me, and get my contracts done by the end of this week. Oh, and I also have my daughter's first birthday party and my international vacation to plan for, both of which happen this weekend. No biggie, right?
In addition, after having the contract back for 2.5 weeks, my IPs' attorney finally sent it back to us with revisions on Friday. It looks like we agree on most things, but there are still two fairly big issues that need to be addressed. The deadline for getting this signed is Thursday (3 days from now), because my attorney will be out of the office Friday for about a week, and I leave the country on Sunday for a week and a half. Despite the other lawyer insisting on taking her sweet time on this, we are hoping to actually get this done on time so we aren't pushed back a whole month because of it. My attorney is planning to get it back to her by the end of the day today.
So, I still have to find out if I even get a schedule, have the meds shipped to me, and get my contracts done by the end of this week. Oh, and I also have my daughter's first birthday party and my international vacation to plan for, both of which happen this weekend. No biggie, right?
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