Surrogacy and Us- A long post

I'm thinking about our baby alot today. I wonder what he will be like (other than wonderful). How he will look, what he will smell like, how he will act. This baby is not biologically my child but I already love him so much that I can barely stand it.


In 1999 I had a hysterectomy. I didn't want to have one but was told it was my only chance at living a normal pain free life. I was told that since I had 4 children already that it wouldn't matter that I didn't have a uterus. At the time I agreed.


Fast forward to 2006. My marriage had ended a few years before (probably many years but it took a while for me to admit that) and I was a single girl NOT looking for love. But I found it, by accident. One of the first in-depth conversations that I had with Joe was me telling him that if he chose to be with me he would never be able to have children of his own. Joe had never been married and had not had any children at the ripe 'old age' of 37. You know what Joe said? He said 'it doesn't matter. I want to be with you.' He melted my heart that day. Within a span of about two minutes we knew that we would be living together in the very near future as husband and wife. Before our marriage we started talking about surrogacy. I had heard of it years before and then saw a movie on Lifetime about it recently which is what began our conversation. It seemed like it might be an option for us. We thought at that time that we would do GS using my eggs. As it turned out my eggs were about as good as sawdust so that wasn't an option. Then we started talking about adoption. But we discovered that adopting an infant would be unlikely since I already had 4 children. So we started looking into adopting older children. I discovered that I wouldn't be equipped to do that. We thought that having a child together was not an option after all. I'm not really sure when we decided to look at traditional surrogacy. But one day we did. And we knew that if we could find the right person to go thru it with that traditional surrogacy would be for us.


For those who don't know traditional surrogacy involves the surrogate using her own eggs. Usually this is done thru artificial insemination but occasionally thru IVF. The process of finding a person to go thru this with is not easy. I knew what I wanted. I wanted someone who I would be friends with 'in real life'. Someone who I could share things with and laugh with and cry with. Someone who I liked. We matched with a very sweet girl in SoCal. She and I got along well. We cycled for 5 months with her without a pregnancy. Then she met a man on the Internet and they wanted to get married and have kids of their own. She said that she would still have a baby for us first but Joe and I couldn't feel good about that. During most of the time that we were cycling with her (we will call her C) I was chatting with another person thru email. She (J) and I were friends. Joe and I had originally talked with her about being our surro but due to timing and other things we chose to just be friends. J was my source for questions and one of my sources for venting. She provided an experience view point for all things surrogacy. J was matched with another couple. Things didn't work out for that match. Eventually, we (J and I) decided maybe we should just think about matching. We already knew we got along well. We were already friends. We thought about traditional surrogacy in basically the same way (honesty was super important to both of us) so we decided to meet in person. The minute that we met I knew. She and I were like sisters. Joe liked her honesty and her calmness. We cycled 3 times with no pregnancy. The fourth time we did a medicated cycle.
Our medicated cycle was challenging. I hated J having to take the Clomid. She went in for an ultrasound on Wednesday, April 16. There was one perfect follicle (these are what the eggs are in) and one close to perfect follicle. The plan was for us to drive down on Thursday and she would have a trigger shot (this makes the egg(s) drop) and we would do IUI's on Friday. We left our home on Thursday night after working all day and drove for most of the night. Fortunately Joe's parents live about 2.5 hours from J. We stayed there a few hours and slept and then went on down to the town J lives in. Joe went to the doctor and 'did his thing' (translation: left a sperm sample) and then we went and checked into our hotel. The plan was for J to come over to our hotel and leave her dd to swim with my girls while she went to the doctor for the IUI. J showed up. She was on her cell phone. It was the doctor's office where she was supposed to have IUI's. The problem was that the 'sample' was not good enough to proceed. In a nutshell the sperm were dead. We were devastated. We had done IUI before and the sperm were perfect. We had a sperm analysis before and everything was perfect. But now- dead. The doctor said for Joe to drink extra fluids and to come in the next day to try again. That night was a very somber night. Thankfully we were very tired so sleeping was the main event for the evening.
The next morning Joe and I went to the doctor's office. We were on pins and needles waiting for the report of how everything looked. When the assistant came out and said everything looked good and we could proceed I started crying. J had me go back with her for the IUI. I actually had the privilege of being there for both the creation of the 'sample' and the actual IUI. The next day we did another IUI. The two week wait was llloooonnngggg. J had a trigger shot which produces hCG so she too pregnancy tests to watch the hCG go out of her system the problem was that it never really left. It faded but never went completely white. Then it started getting darker. At that point she and I suspected she was pregnant. Joe had a harder time believing. When J really thought she was pregnant I wanted her to tell Joe. The look on his face while talking to her on the phone was something I will never forget. I know a part of him was scared to think that it was real. He wanted it so bad that he was afraid to believe she really was pregnant for fear that it was a false alarm. I don't think that he truly 'believed' until we went down for an ultrasound and he saw the baby kicking and punching with his own eyes. The I could see on his face that he knew his baby was alive and well.
Now we are almost 17 weeks along. We believe that we are having a baby boy. We go down on August 15th for another OB appointment and ultrasound. Our relationship with J is amazing. Sometimes I think "how can it be this good". She and I get along great. I look at traditional surrogacy as a life long journey not just nine months together. Our baby will be her biological child. It will be her daughter's brother (or maybe sister). Our (that is the collective our- Joe, Me and J) child will grow up knowing that it took all of us to have him. I have some very strong opinions about traditional surrogacy but I will save those for another post since this one has already went on forever. I'll wrap it up by saying that without the collaboration of J and Joe and I this child would never be.