Monthly Archives: June 2012

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Day 3 and feelin’…

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Day 3 and feelin’ free!

I know this is going to come back to bite me, but I felt so great today. On this glorious day, I felt happy and healthy and mentally clear. I haven’t felt that way in over 6 months! I am assuming given the logic behind the hormone therapy I’m on (Lupron and BC pills), that I am plateauing hormonally. I know my hormones were raging before, from the BC pills, but now the Lupron is bringing all those levels down (see my previous blog explaining the hormone/retrieval process). This would explain why suddenly I’m not cranky, exhausted, and starving every hour of the day. Knowing a little about what is ahead, these levels are going to continue to decrease (I have provided a visual, below) especially after I go off of the BC pill on Thursday.

Enough explanations, I’m so excited for my ultrasound next week to confirm that I can start the “ovary revver-uppers”! Because from there, it’s only a matter of days until the doctors retrieve my eggs. This is crazy, we might be pregnant in a month!! And yes, I am going to refer to it as “we’re pregnant”, rather than “my cousin is my gestational carrier after a tragic medical emergency rendered me uterus-less”. Technically, she’ll be pregnant for us, so collectively all parties involved are included in the “we’re” part.

Now for the beating-around-the-bush-announcement (pre-announcement); we have decided that once we find out we are (or, are not) expecting, we are not going to make an announcement either way. In other words, we are not going to tell either way, until we feel safe doing so. If Kristen is successfully impregnated, we will want to wait a few months (understandably, right?) before we make the exciting announcement; on the other hand, if something goes wrong, we will need those same months to heal mentally and emotionally. Not to sound glass-half-empty, we are just “realists” preparing for both good and bad. Plus, we figure the anticipation will drive everyone to really hone in on our website/facebook/blog to find out when we will tell the world!

Thanks for all of the continued prayers, messages, well wishes, offers for help, etc. We are so proud of the progress we have made personally and with the foundation, and it’s all because of our family, friends, community and media presence.

And don’t worry, I’ll still be documenting through the “quiet months”; I’ll post them all once we make our announcement!

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Giving shots, like a boss!

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Yeah, I’m proud – I’ve been scared of needles most of my life, and I just gave myself my first fertility shot!

Not only was this moment a huge stepping stone against a fear, it marked the beginning of our final step to becoming parents. I will give myself this particular medicine via injections each day for 14 days, which will shut down my ovaries. Let me explain..

In order to retrieve lots of good, fertile eggs, my body needs to know to produce them. Otherwise, our bodies only prepare one or two (normally) eggs each month. So, we are going to shut off my ovaries (hello, menopause!) for two weeks, and then essentially shock them back with jumper cables. That is, if jumper cables were in the form of another two weeks worth of injections.

My ovaries will rev back up into overdrive and get lots of precious eggs ready to be retrieved. Technically, we don’t need “lots” of eggs, as only one will be implanted in our gestational carrier. However, we are playing this game as if odds were against us (imagine that!). If I break it down for you like a good elementary school teacher would, here’s the mathematical/statistical facts:

- Say they retrieve 25 eggs from me (which is about twice the normal amount, but likely for me because my ovaries are healthy).

- 1/3 of these eggs will most likely not be chromosomally complete or “ideal” (even though I love them all..) so now I only have about 16 viable eggs.

- Then we go on to the fertilization phase. About another 1/3 of the viable eggs will not fertilize due to various reasons. This leaves about 10 eggs that are now fertilized.

- Only half (yes, half!) of these eggs will go on to divide and grow into healthy embryos. That is 5, my friends! 5 healthy, viable embryos to pick from and freeze the rest.
I can’t imagine how women who go through all of this and only retrieve a few eggs must feel. I’ve never understood what a delicate balance getting pregnant is – and how perfect the timing and chemistry must be! No wonder perfectly healthy people can try for months or years without getting pregnant “unexplained”. I have scientists “aligning the stars” for me in this case, but to all my fertile friends out there – have faith!!

I’m a pro!

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Behind the scenes..

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It occurred to me tonight that often I am praised for my hard work with RWF and all of my blog posts and writing. Every where I go, someone tells me how amazing what I am doing is, and how much they appreciate my advocacy for this unsung cause.

However, we forget sometimes about the heroes behind closed doors. My husband, first of all, is my biggest fan and my rock. Without him, RWF would not exist and I would have been admitted into a mental ward by now. He created the idea for this foundation while putting the pieces of our life back together in the hospital; seriously, how many people do you know that would want to help others in the midst of going through the most horrific event of their life? Probably not a whole lot. He is selfless beyond words, and as many relationships go, I do not thank him or praise him nearly as much as I should. He is strong beyond measure and wise well beyond his years. Although I have never doubted it, I know now more than ever that we truly were made for one another. I thank God every day for him and for his passion and zest for life, because without him I surely would have crumbled by now.

And onto more unsung heroes. While my cousin, Kristen, is receiving her *well deserved* accolades and praise for her selflessness, her husband stands tall beside her every step of the way. This young couple reminds me so much of Jake and I, and I can see that their bond too will be strengthened by this journey. Lee is not only a man to be respected for serving our country, he is an amazing daddy to their almost-2 year old little boy, Hayden, and an amazing husband to Kristen. I have known him for years, even before his & Kristen’s wedding, and I have always sensed that he is head over heels in love with her. We all need this kind of marriage, and I am so blessed to know that someone I care about dearly is taken care of so well by a man such as himself.

The list goes on, but the importance of these people in our lives does not waiver. Our family, especially our parents, are supportive of us every single day. Our parents have relentlessly pestered everyone they work with, are friends with, or even come in contact with to sell wristbands, raffle tickets, or just get flat-out donations. They were there for us those dark days in the hospital, and the even darker days when “life moved on” for everyone else except us. We will never be able to thank them enough, but knowing what a joy our future children will bring to their lives gives us some sense of repayment.

And our friends, followers, and fans – we are blessed beyond words; period. Our foundation is barely 5 months old, and we have accomplished so much already. We are fortunate enough to be part of a community that is not only uplifting, but adamant about helping us achieve our dream of starting a family. There will never be another time in our lives that we doubt how much we are loved by all of these people, and even those who we have never met other than via the internet. I have never realized the strength of the thread that connects us as humans until such a tragic event takes place; it has been a blessing in disguise and a true eye-opening experience to see the good that truly is within all of us.

Thank you all, no matter what role you play in our lives. You have touched our souls; and although we would never be able to write a “thank you” card to each of you, we hope that you all know that each time we look at our future children we will see each of you in them. Because without you, they would not be possible.

Love to all, always!

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Menopause at ..27?

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In seven days I will begin my first round of fertility shots. Hooray! I never knew I would be this excited to experience menopause and ovarian-overload all in one month. Wait, menopause?

That’s how this process works. The first cycle of injections I’m about to begin will completely shut down my ovaries. To clarify, I have had a partial hysterectomy (removed my uterus but left my ovaries). So, I still have hormones naturally and the occasional “monthly” rollercoaster; however, I do not have a uterus therefore no periods. So, it is still necessary to take the Lupron (ovaries-off drug) in order to successfully overstimulate with the second cycle of drugs.

A couple of weeks after my first cycle of injections, I’ll start the next phase which will stimulate my ovaries to produce lots of eggs (imagine a chicken laying 4-5 times the amount of eggs they normally do). Sounds like fun! After a couple of weeks of these injections, I’ll  go in for some final blood work and ultrasounds, and then the grand finale of my work: the egg retrieval. They will harvest my eggs, as many as they can from both ovaries, and begin the fertilization process.

You have two choices when it comes to the fertilization: you can allow the eggs and sperm to self-fertilize (the “natural” method), or embryologists will singularly fertilize each viable egg. Our doctors have advised us to do half natural and half assisted fertilizations. The reasoning behind this is that A) We are technically not “infertile” other than me missing a mechanical part to my baby-oven and therefore we don’t really need someone to fertilize the eggs for us, and B) At this point in the game, we aren’t taking chances on anything not working properly and as long as we’ve come this far in the process, I feel a little hypocritical saying I demand to take the “natural” route anymore. So we decided to make everyone happy and let half of the little guys try on their own, and lend a helping hand to the other half. No pun intended.

The next month will either fly by, or drag on seemingly like a year. Either way, I’m finally starting to get excited. After everything we’ve been through, I don’t really know what to do with these feelings. A huge part of me doesn’t even want to get excited about anything before it happens, I suppose as a protection measure. I know it’s no way to live life, but it’s hard to be optimistic about the one thing that nearly destroyed my life.  I hope to look back on these blogs a few months from now with gratefulness, as I do now thinking back to January and February and how much progress I have made mentally since those dark months. I’m ready for the day not far from now when I can say again that we are expecting;  maybe it’s not in my own body, but we are the proud parents of those beautiful little miracles that will live in a petri dish for their first days of life, and then in a rented-oven for the next 9 months.

Bring on the needles, I’m ready to be a Mommy!

 

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20 Months of Sundays

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When someone mutters the phrase “a month of Sundays”, they just have no idea. When it comes to waiting to get pregnant, we women know the process is a grueling waiting game. But what happens when you’re waiting for someone else to get pregnant for you?

I thought last September, when I found out that I was pregnant, that 9 months was forever to wait. Wow, I had no clue! After we lost our pregnancy 4 months later, I promised myself I would dedicate the following 5 months to healing and grieving rather than jumping right back on the baby bandwagon. I am somewhat of an impatient person when it comes to this baby game, so of course that didn’t quite work out. Here we are, 9 months after my first pregnancy, but another 11 months from having a baby. So in mother-to-be time, that’s forever.  This feels like the never ending gestation.

My weekly turn in counting occurred on Sundays, because that’s when my cycle fell. So every Sunday, I count down another week until our anticipated egg retrieval date on July 14th. Another 5 days after the retrieval, we will put the trophy winning embryo in our carrier and then play another waiting game to find out if she indeed is pregnant. No one ever told me that the game of life was just a never-ending battle of hurry up, wait, now hurry up again. I am so sick of counting time, days, weeks, months and so on; I just want to wake up and go to sleep not knowing what day it is anymore! I know that many other women have so much longer to wait for children, and I know that my petty 2 years is nothing compared to what some women go through, but I am ready just the same.

I’ve started cutting back my caffeine intake, my artificial sugars (aspartame), increasing my “healthy” foods and liquids (lots of water!), and started taking my prenatal vitamin again. If someone else is going to carry this baby for me, the least I can do is prepare my body to produce the healthiest eggs possible. It makes me feel somewhat normal to still have a part in the health of my child, even before it is conceived. I did all of the same prep work last year before, and I’m not changing anything now. I believe that it is just as important to keep your body healthy pre-egg transfer or IVF cycle as it is before normally conceiving. So for the next two months until our embryo transfer, I will spend my time exercising (low impact due to the IVF injection drugs), eating right (I’m normally a healthy eater anyways), and cutting out the junk that I don’t need in my diet (caffeine is hard to say goodbye to).  If that’s all the physical responsibility I can have during this process then that’s what I’ll do, gladly.

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Shots, shots, shots, shots (everybody!)

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Back to the real world after experiencing paradise for a whole week – and I must say, it was a much needed break for both Jake and I. The first day of vacation I literally didn’t know what to do without my cellphone or laptop, and I walked around for hours before I was comfortable just -sitting-…aka, relaxing. Then, I slept for four days straight. I slept on the beach, on the boat, by the pool..you get the picture.

We came back home just in time to receive our newly signed gestational carrier agreement, which was very exciting. Jake and I went to the bank the same day and had our portions signed and notarized, and then mailed it off to its new home at our lawyer’s office in Charlotte. Today, Friday, I got the call I’ve been waiting for months to hear: REACH received the “go ahead” from our attorney (meaning the contracts are official) and that we can schedule our tentative egg retrieval and transfer dates. I felt like someone was telling me that I’m going to be a mom; and I’m not going to lie, it scared me to pieces. I was instantly elated at the thought of this whole process being over so soon, but then almost just as quickly I was terrified at the thought of all the “what if’s” and “possibilities”. Let’s be honest here, I do seem to be the minority percentage (aka – murphy’s law) in every situation in my life. I can’t help but have my guard up when someone tells me that I could be expecting a baby again in as little as two months; it just doesn’t seem real. Then again, it seems all too real. It was only a year ago this month that we decided to try to become parents, and time has moved so quickly from there.

So the plan is for me to begin my hormone injections in about two weeks, and then three or four weeks after that we will be harvesting my eggs! That sounds so awkward, like someone is going to have a picnic basket full of eggs for me, but I guess that’s what it is; instead of a picnic basket, it’s a petri dish. If someone would have told me this time last year that I would be going through this process to have a baby, I wouldn’t even think any of this was possible. Who knew life could begin in a dish of jelly? Crude, maybe..but true!

The next few weeks will produce (hopefully) very informative blog entries as we make our way through the IVF path; doctors will be doing a “mock transfer” on Kristen (our carrier) next week, and then the week after that I will begin my shots. I want to document all of this for anyone who is going through what we are, or maybe know someone who is. This whole situation is such a sensitive and delicate topic, it’s hard to know how to support someone going through it. Always know that if you have a friend, co-worker, or family member experiencing the IVF (or any fertility) treatment to become parents, it is in no way an “easy” option. I would *much* rather carry my own child than go through everything this entails – but in the end, we will do whatever necessary to become parents.

Pursley Pre-transfer Getaway 2012