Privatisation – for my own protection
This is something I have to do for my own protection. I will be privatising this blog in 24 hours.
For those of you who know the current password for my surrogacy related posts I will shortly be posting a new post wherein I will give you the address of my public blog so that you can still follow my journey. Sadly comments will be disabled.
Perhaps I will explain in that post why I am having to do this. If you follow me on twitter you will know why. If you follow me on Twitter then you will also be able to follow our oh-so-near FET there too.
It saddens me deeply to close this space but at this time in my life I cannot risk it being found by the desperately broken woman in my life that has instigated this. If you have read my blog for a while you probably already know who it is.
I hope that one day I will return here.
The Surro-Moon
Sitting in the London office, air-conditioning cooling the sheen of a light, summer sweat on my body, my skin is brown after ten days in the sun.
I had to run away, I had to escape. I was running on empty, my brain and body split between surrogacy, DIY and work. I felt that there was simply no energy left in me for anything.
On waking one morning and light heartedly mentioning once again that we needed a holiday, when my response was met with a blank look, an anxiously reeled-off list of all the things that need doing on the house and what was basically an outright refusal that a holiday was a possibility right now. I sank into silence and he stared ahead at the road. I was spent.
The next morning, when I realised it was time to get up and go to work I had to fight back the tears. There was nothing left.
Finally he saw me for the tired husk of a woman I was right then. That night we booked our trip.
I fought with my guilt – the guilt that will be my frequent guest over the coming year – as we left on the day that Leigh started her suppression injections. We drove and camped, we drank and ate. We swam and walked, and talked and slept.
We read and read.
Some light beach reading.
We drove through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and finally we reached our destination of Italy.
Our map across my knee – I’m old-school
We saw Rome.
This needs no caption!
We camped on the Amalfi Coast.
Our campsite’s beach.
Driving past Mount Vesuvius.
We slept, oh how we slept.
I felt the quiet solitude of the canvas under the starry nights and the dazzling heat of the bright days rebuilding the cells in my exhausted body as my energy levels finally began to recharge.
Gratuitous beach selfie
We spent the evenings wondering what now is to come? How different could our lives potentially be this time next year? In less than six weeks we could be at the very beginning of our parenthood.
It is both terrifying and utterly exhilarating.
In Italy we wondered and we dreamed. We have two ‘finalist’ baby names, one for a girl, one for a boy. We talked about our fears of parenthood, our joys both now and to come, what we look forward to the most. We wondered aloud to each other how it is that we could be so lucky to have SJ and Leigh in our lives, how on earth two people could be so wonderful and selfless to want to do this for us.
But now we are back and we are ready to go. The Surro-Moon is over and it is time to begin.
Leigh’s first jab
Leigh started spotting brown blood today. Usually, she texted me, this means her period will come today. And so then we will have a suppression check, then more drugs, more jabs (which she is fucking ROCKING by the way) and eventually, sooner than I could have ever imagined at the beginning of this year, our embryo transfer.
I sit, now, at my desk, tanned, humbled and in awe.
How could I ever have been this worthy?
“It was as much of a gift to receive as to give, requiring as it did both courage and humility.” The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel Joyce
Ready, Set, Go!
L started suppression this morning. We are officially on the FET wagon and we’re off, rolling away into the sunset. Over that beautiful, hopeful, horizon, may there be a little baby waiting for us on the other side.
#CHEESEFEST
You all love it really.
In all seriousness I spent most of today trying to not cry with emotion, humility and gratitude. My desk may even have been assaulted with the odd tear-shaped splash…
The Twins Thing
We are on the countdown to L’s Suppression and starting our FET. Fingers crossed there are no more hurdles and that this time it’s for real!! L’s period came like clockwork on the 21st June and by the Tues we had our new tentative timetable:
9th July – start provera
11th July – start suppression injections (Buserelin the bitch!)
23rd July – estimated next CD1 (likely to be earlier)
25th July – estimated suppression check
27th July – starts GEEP (FET) cycle (don’t ask me what the Fuck GEEP stands for!!)
11th August – lining check and embryo thaw
13th August – embryo transfer
27th August – HPT
L and Dax are not budging on the whole test earlier thing. Even though I will now, on the bride’s request, be SHARING A ROOM with my 7 month pregnant friend on the hen do, not two days after the pregnancy test….I am going to keep plugging away at them. I may also have to gently request that the bride switch me, if it is the worst case scenario…I haven’t yet had the heart to tell her just how potentially heartbreaking that could be for me…
It is also highly likely that L’s body will respond quickly and transfer may be earlier.
The plan for this first FET is to transfer the embies on day 3. Provided nature doesn’t fuck about and only leave us one (fuck, I hope at least one survives…) we will be transferring two.
This of course brings about the whole Twins thing. They have classed us as 95% chance of twins, but personally I think that is bollocks cos they currently have no idea what quality my eggs are. They cannot really be accurate with that statistic for us basing it solely on their other MRKH/Surrogacy patients. I may be unlucky enough to have shit eggs in addition to a lack of womb. Who the fuck knows! I have to, of course, try my best to believe differently and think that, until proven otherwise, my fucking eggs are rockstars! And Leigh has grown two healthy baby boys in two very challenging conditions. Her first she was under a lot of stress in her first marriage and wasn’t aware she was pregnant for a few weeks and therefore had drunk on a few occasions. The second, well, she smoked through my nephew’s entire pregnancy, something which I think she feels pretty shit about now, three months into having quit entirely for our future baby.
She is going to do everything she can (which we all know is not a great deal other than what the RE tells you to!) to ensure that she gets pregnant, and to ensure she STAYS pregnant, if it happens. She knows that we are literally trusting her with a life and that responsibility is far from lost on her. She is embracing it, it is amazing to see. I trust her body. It grows healthy babies, even when she was not perfectly healthy. Imagine what her body could do with a strict IVF regime!
So back to the whole ‘High risk for twins thing’. All four of us decided, independently of each other, that we each of us wanted to transfer two. For all of us it’s about increasing the odds of having a singleton pregnancy, just a greater chance of success. All Twin Pregnancy risks aside. And believe you me I think about those risks all too often. It is all I can do not to worry about the general possibility of miscarriage, still birth, neo natal or maternal death pretty much all day long without the increase in a twin pregnancy. So I have to NOT think about it or I will go insane. I have to choose to believe that everything will be ok.
I choose to try and proceed on this journey as though I don’t know anything, as though I am a total world of conception and IVF newbie. I choose the naivety that I do not have.
Dax desperately wants twins. For him it’s all-consuming, the thought of having an instant family, complete, in one go. Our kids would each have a sibling. We will have two children.
I would like twins too, of course I would, for all of the above reasons. But I cannot put aside the (tiny amount of) knowledge I do have: twins will be such hard work (for me) at first. As a couple we are likely to just not have any time for each other for at least the first 9 months. There are things I might not get to do with twins: I most likely would not be able to induce enough to feed them both. I would not be able to wear them (I long to be a baby wearer-I have always had hippy tendencies and what better way to carry them after birth than wear them when I couldn’t carry them pre-birth!?). When we have been through so much and longed so much even to just get to be parents I am kind of scared of the possibility of twins dividing my attention, rather than me getting that single undivided bond with a singleton….
Of course I would take any child, any number of children be it one, two, three or four (though I would shit my pants!), in a fucking heartbeat!
And then I can’t help but remember the overwhelmingly powerful ‘vision’ I had during acupuncture for my second IVF: a twin handed to Dax in the operating theatre, both of us scrubbed up, two babies’ cries…
Man….I just want it to work…
Period-Watch and The Group Decisions of Surrogacy
We are on Period-Watch. Never before did I realise how excited I could be about another woman getting her period. Of course the whole period thing holds so much meaning for me, the girl who has never had one. What I would give to have one.
Ho hum. Anyhoo.
She is due on any day now. Once it shows up I can call New Clinic with her CD1 and we will get our new timetable. Leigh now is blissfully Mastitis free and healthy. Please Universe let’s not mess us all around again another month hey!? Leigh is chomping at the bit, I am, weirdly, feeling more calm about the whole thing – maybe the delay was what I needed to calm the fuck down.
Dax is still being, well, a bit ansty about the whole thing. He seems to think that the whole mastitis thing was a massive warning sign that she’s not ready. I think it’s more a sign that maybe he’s not ready…
Our estimated timetable, should her period rock up roughly on time, will mean an embie transfer of on or around the 13th August. Which would mean an Official Test day anytime in the week SMACK BANG between our Wedding Anniversary and my best mate’s hen do (where my hugely pregnant other friend will also be). So the choices would be to test early and risk ruining our Wedding anniversary, or to wait until the OTD and then potentially have to go to a hen do immediately after and be faced with my massively pregnant friend as well as not one but five brand new mothers (in the last 12 months). Of course if we test early and it’s a BFN and we ruin our anniversary I will still have to go on the hen do. I will just have had a week for the pain to go away (hahaha as IF!).
That’s kinda a shitty choice and could be hideous either way!
Which brings me onto the next topic of this post:
Group Decisions of Surrogacy.
When we had our setup appointment and final counselling session the Clinic talked us all through Leigh’s protocol and our FET timetable. They told us that under no circumstances should we test before our OTD as we run the risk of discovering a chemical pregnancy instead of just not knowing and Leigh’s period arriving…. Of course inside my brain I sniggered thinking “Yeah Right, Like We are Going to Listen to THAT!”
Fast forward to us all back at my house discussing the timetable and the fact their OTD was the day before Dax leaves for a stag do (the stag of the aforementioned Hen do that I am attending a month later) so I was all like “so we ignore them right and test early” Obviously.
But I was totally overruled.
Dax would rather wait until we know that we will KNOW FOR SURE. SJ wasn’t that bothered but went with Leigh’s opinion.
Leigh wants to wait.
She wants to know for sure and know 100%. She is not sure she wants to know if it’s just a chemical.
After all it is her body so if she would rather wait until the OTD and possibly remain in blissful ignorance of any potential chemical that has to be her decision. This means that I may be facing possible disaster one day, then having to swan off on a hen do with a heavily preggo and a load of new mummies the next.
Fucking fuckitty fucknuts.
Our original planned timetable had us testing just before the Stag, Were it bad news, or even good news, Dax planned on bailing from said Stag. After all, whilst he is great mates with J they only know each other through me and Cece. I, however, cannot bail on the Hen. I am a Bridesmaid and I love Cece so damn much, I will not miss her Hen Do unless I am dying or something.
Every single damn day I am counting my lucky stars that we have Leigh and SJ as our partners in crime. I cannot imagine how hard all this shit is with a relative stranger. The comfort it brings me knowing that my baby will be, legally, born to my brother and his wife is a Very Good Thing. But even something as relatively small fry such as determining the day on which she will pee on a stick highlights just how little control I really hold over this whole process and I can’t help but feel a teensy bit sad about that.
I am trying to just embrace the freefalling-type lack of control and just roll with it.
We will get there. We will get there.
Of course, maybe what I should be thinking is that maybe it will be a BFP and this will all be irrelevant!
Ha! Yes, instead I will be desperately trying not to reveal the fact that we are expecting on the Hen Do. Yes. That is what I choose to think. I guess….
Delayed
Pushing FET back to next cycle due to confirmation of Leigh’s mastitis 😭
Dr said antibiotics would be fine but she was more concerned about even the existence of a mastitis flare meaning L’s body is just not quite ready. Were we to start suppression and the infection continues or comes back next week we would have to quit mid-cycle then schedule (& pay for) a whole new cycle.
Am gutted but it’s for the best. Better that she be in full health than we rush and get a BFN because we fucked up.
Ugh.
My brain is full of straw
Every morning on my way into work I see a car that has BFP as the end of its registration plate, and every single day without fail I wonder “Will a BFP be how all this ends?”
I pretty much feel sick all day every day in this final leg to transfer. It’s going to be a loooong 5 weeks…although I could do with shifting a few pounds, my running long went out the window due to lack of time and energy.
Already I don’t know how many times I could do this cycling malarkey. How pathetic is that?
Maybe it’s a good thing; with how we both (Dax and I) feel now, if our embies run out and we have not had a BFP, we would (probably) stop. Of course I reserve the right to entirely change my mind. Strangely enough, the closer we get the more I can see the benefits of a childfree life. Perhaps it is self-preservation, I am mentally preparing myself for the ‘worst’ (and by worst I mean not-hoped for, not that childfree is bad), not the preferred, outcome. I just don’t know how anyone could go through this over and over again. I guess I am being tough on myself, with a surrogacy-cycle it must be a lot harder because there is SO much more than just a couple’s choices involved…right?
Perhaps it was because I babysat my nephew on Saturday night -so that Leigh and SJ could have their first date since he was born – and he was a little misery guts. Poor boy was constipated but man alive he was hard work. Dax coped with A way better than I did; maybe that has freaked me out; I couldn’t cope well with one, suddenly I am freaked out about the remote possibility of twins…
Fuck me this is a scatterbrained post.
Of course I want this to work. I need this to work. I have to just assume it will work. Everyone else around me does and that freaks me the fuck out! Leigh, SJ and Dax all simply believe that it will work. “Because there is nothing that says otherwise”
But they are not the ones whose body is on the shit end of statistics.
Leigh’s drugs arrived on Saturday and she starts suppression on Weds. Holy fucknuts. Holy fucknuts.
Then today she woke up feeling like she is getting mastitis. She stopped BFing two weeks ago. I am waiting for her call as I type this, she is with the doc and may have to go on antibiotics for a few days.
What would that mean for our cycle? I feel so wrong and weird even thinking about how that affects me, us; how selfish of me…
Man this surrogacy shit is hard.
My mother is still so fucking absent. It should hurt but instead I am just kinda numb. Dax and I argued about her the other night. He is ready to cut her out of our lives but it’s easy for him to say, his mum is not the arsehole. I think my mum is silent because she doesn’t approve or like what we are doing, but she knows that she is on her final strike with me and instead is just not risking it by just not saying a fucking word. She texted me last night saying she heard ‘the week went well’ and ‘perhaps we can catch up sometime over the summer’. So when I suggested some days to maybe chat she came back to me saying that she’s “probably busy all week”. That was it. So I just replied with ‘Fine, no prob’. It is too sad to be angry about although I will probably never get over this.
This was not meant to be a sad/stressed post! What the fuck happened?!
I find myself wishing away the next 7 weeks till I can just know whether it’s over or not….Tell me I should be enjoying this process and please tell me how to?!
Today
Today I could write about nerves, clinics, dreams, babies. All manner of things. Today I could write about stresses, in my marriage, in work, in DIY, the pains of normal life, the hamster wheel of routine. Today I could write about what it means to be within mere days of starting our FET cycle.
Today I could write about #EachEveryWoman and my own experiences of misogyny and associated abuse, or about my fears surrounding parenting a child, of either sex, in this day and age. Today I could write about fears for the mental health of several women in my life or about the feelings I have on mortality, both my own and of those I hold dear. Today I could write about infertility and the grief that goes ever on and on, or about my weight battles or about the somewhat trivial discomfort surrounding my aging looks.
But somehow all of that pales in light of today for today marks 70 years since D-Day.
What, today, could be more important than the most horrific struggle, the battle for the triumph of good over evil; the battle for tolerance and peace to overthrow violence and genocide.
Churchill said “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Our Grandfathers landed in hell and they just kept going.
On this day seventy years ago the tide slowly began to turn. Had Operation Overlord not succeeded what world would we live in today? My Grandpa was there, whilst he survived, what scars must he have carried for the rest of his life?
For all those who fell, for all those who fought, so that we might live; We will remember them.
#LestWeForget.
(Source: Wiki Commons D-Day Public Domain photographs)
TTC Newbie Here! *Waves Hello”
My life has just taken on an entirely new slant. Whilst I have been officially infertile these past 12.5 years forever, though I have been ‘active’ in the ALI blogosphere for the past 2.5 years, I have never Tried To Conceive.
Because of course I haven’t, I have no womb.
For me Sex has only ever been for pleasure. I haven’t ever been involved in a monthly cycle of anticipation-excitement-hope-disappointment-despair.
Of course I am not an infertility ‘Newbie’ as such. My born-wombless status means that I am not one of those girls who has just ditched her birth control and not gotten pregnant immediately so considers herself ‘trying’ a whole one month in…but of course I just have never actively actually had the chance to ‘Try’, or experience that real hope that I might have a baby, in any single way. Therefore I feel like a total newbie; I might as well be one of those naïve fertiles who has just chucked the BCP, if you ignore the whole IVF/FET/Surrogacy aspects ha ha ha 😉
This is a really fucking weird place for me.
Until now the reality of actually making a baby, even when we were doing the IVF part, seemed like such a distant dream, such an unreal fantasy, that now it is actually around the corner I am utterly bewildered.
This time in only SIX weeks we could/should be going for Embryo Transfer. My entire life feels like it hinges on the next 8 weeks and suddenly I am finding it hard to breathe.
Dax told me he felt so panicked last week he had an actual panic attack. Not because it might work, but because it might not. That was his hesitancy at bringing it forward.
I always knew the stakes would get, and feel, higher the closer we get (and if we get to pregnancy, the longer it progresses the higher they go) but this is intense and powerful stuff. And it’s exhausting.
We haven’t even gotten to the drugs, let alone thaw, let alone transfer and I am already a big old bag of Nerves. How the hell am I meant to get through the next 8 weeks?
Breathe. One day at a time.
This, my dear friends, is our potential timeline:
11th June – (CD19) Leigh starts Provera
13th June – (CD21) Leigh starts Buserelin (The Bitch).
22nd June – Leigh’s CD 1 should start
25th June – Leigh’s CD 3 Bloods/Scan
27th June – Leigh starts GEEP cycle day 1 (Progynova and Gestone (PIO) injections)
14th July – GEEP CD17 Bloods/Scan
15th July – Embryo Transfer
29th July – Pregnancy Test
My first thought (after “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”) was there is no way in hell we are holding out to test until 2 weeks post transfer! Although, testing before that would mean on the Thursday/Friday that Dax goes away on a Stag do. Hmm.
Of course these things are never set in stone so of course transfer may shift a few days forwards or back.
But still…I am not holding on to two weeks post 5 day transfer, that’s just crazy!
And then I come straight back to “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!”
MRKH Musings 
