As a favor to Danielle & Rich, and as a way to explain our journey to others through my eyes I am starting this blog. Hopefully, in a few months this can be printed up and saved in a baby book for many years worth of reading.
This is how it all started:
I placed an ad looking for intended parents to help on a website for surrogates, egg donors and intended parents. I had several replies before I got that first email from Danielle. I knew, as soon as we started talking that they were the ones. There was a natural "click" there for us and we spent that whole weekend swapping emails. It was wonderful!
We agreed that we were a match within days and then we were off. We got everything done pretty quickly despite this being their first time pursuing surrogacy and my first time going independently.
It was finally time for us to start our cycle on August 16th, 2007. I was starting Lupron and we were rolling. Our transfer was to be around the 18th or so of September and it didn't sound like it would be a problem. Little did we know the obstacles that we would face.....
At my first monitoring appt. we knew something just wasn't right. I had a few follicles that were pretty big considering my system was to be completely supressed and my estrogen and progesterone levels were a bit too high. The RE left me on my meds for another week and my numbers were even higher and I had one follicle that decided it wanted to keep growing and the rest of them had settled down. We went for 2 more weeks with this stinky follicle getting bigger and bigger and finally it had to be aspirated. I ended up flying to Chicago at 8pm on a Saturday night, had the aspiration at 8am the next morning and my flight back home was to leave at 10:30 am that same day. It all went off without a hitch although that follicle had a ton of fluid in it. I went and had my E2 and prog. checked the very next day again and everything had dropped off significantly! I was ready to start estrogen!!! We were all so excited thinking that had to be it, we were on our way and only a couple weeks away from transfer. Little did we know that poor Danielle, who hadn't been checked by the RE that entire time would ultimately have the same problem I did! She ended up with an estrogen producing cyst as well but thankfully a week later hers had nearly disappeared. Unfortunately, she couldn't start the stim meds because all the REs were to be out of the office for a conference for a week. She was able to start them on Oct. 9th.
Now Danielle knew from previous experience that she typically stimmed longer than whats considered normal so we were kind of expecting that, but we weren't expecting everything else. Her follicles seemed to be growing nicely but her estrogen level stayed pretty low. Finally, she had about 10 follicles and her E2 was about 1500 and she was given the green light to take the ovidrel shot. 36 hours later on Monday Oct. 22nd she went in for the retrieval. I was biting my nails all morning until the nurse called me to ask a couple questions and I asked how Danielle was doing. The nurse said she was doing great and had even asked for a glass of wine! I was instantly relieved just knowing that she was ok. Then more went wrong. I got an email from Rich just saying he was on his way out to get a couple things but Danielle was doing good and resting and they had gotten 7 eggs. That was the last time I heard anything until the next afternoon which was fine but things with Danielle went from good to horrible. She was rushed to the hospital that Monday night with complications everyone thought were from the anesthesia. We were all very very wrong. Something had been punctured in her retrieval and she was bleeding horribly internally. I was absolutely devastated to hear this but was even more anxious to get to Chicago to see her and to get on with the transfer. Thankfully the bleeding was stopped but Danielle had to lose an ovary in the process. I've never felt more upset than I did when I heard that. But I was more determined than ever to make this transfer work.
I flew in On Wed. Oct 24th, went straight to the hospital to visit with Danielle and give her a ray of hope. I gave her the shirt I had embroidered with the phrase Miracles Happen and told her we are going to have another one. I don't know how much good I did in cheering her up (and don't go bursting my bubble Danielle HAHA) but I tried and told her that we were gonna do and it was all going to be ok.
The next morning we, Rich and I, got the huge pleasure of meeting with another surrogate and her intended mother just before our transfers! We headed off to the transfer where the nerve wracking decision of how many to transfer had to be made. Out of 10 eggs, we had 4 embryos which were all beautiful. The decision to transfer all 4 was made and I was suffled off to get post op instructions and prepare for the transfer. Rich was shuffled out of the room while I stripped from the waist down, put on a gown, hair net and booties (which mind you looked like elf shoes after I had them on, pointy toe and all). When I was ready I popped open the door and in strolled a bunny, oops I mean Rich in his bunny suit! His first question to me was who looked more silly, him or me. LOL I told him it was a toss up, we both looked silly but there wasn't anything I wouldn't have done if it meant a better transfer. We were walked back to the next room where I got to ride in the space chair. You sat down in it, put your feet in their holders on the sides and it just tipped backwards until you were nearly sliding out onto your head! Never had a ride like that before....Rich was very kind and kept asking if I was ok. Throughout the time it took for them to find that perfect spot to put the embryos Rich was intently watching and rubbing my arm. Such a sweet guy! The embryos were finally inside and they took a pic of all of them and handed it to me. I handed it to Rich and said " here you go Daddy, all your kids!". And that was it! I walked out of the room and met K, the other surrogate we had met just a few mins earlier, gave her a squeeze and wished her good luck and we were all done.
The rest of that day was spent laying around, relaxing and enjoying the time we had together. The next day proved to be pretty big, it was time for me to leave and come home. We did like we always do, sat and talked just outside the security check point after I got my ticket. Only this time we talked a little too long.... It ended up taking quite a while to get through security and I was left with a very short time to get to my gate and on the plane. Little did I know, they had changed the gate I was to be at and I ended up missing my first flight. I was lucky they got me on the next one but that was 1 1/2 hrs later so I had some time to kill. My instructions were to take it easy so walking around the airport was out so I sat down, made some calls and read my book until it was time.
I'm home now and taking it easy. Praying that we have 1 or 2 beautiful embryos that decide to stick around for the long haul. I know I'm crazy but I did a HPT this morning. I don't expect to see anything on it since the embryos probably haven't even implanted just yet but I did want to see if there were any evap lines on those brand of tests. So far there are none!
We just have to wait a few more days. Beta is on Nov 6th but hopefully we will know, by hpts, before then!
