On Hold

I forgot to update this page.  We are in holding right now, due to an insurance issue.  As soon as it's resolved, we will be able to move forward.  I hate the waiting game, but it is what it is now.  S&G had great success with their egg donor last week.  They now have some embryos for future use, which is fantastic!!  As soon as we start moving along, I will update again.  Surrogacy is all about "hurry up and wait"!  :)

Oh. My!

It's been pretty quiet here.  BUT, I received an email stating my meds will ship today and arrive tomorrow!  Woohoo!  I love it when that box-o-drugs comes!  It means things are moving forward. How exciting!!  Will keep you updated as thing progress.  :)

Screening

My hubby and I went to Chicago to FCI for our psychological screening and my medical screening. We got to meet Dr. Kaplan.  He's so extremely kind and quite funny.  He performed the sonohysterography.   It didn't take long at all, maybe 1-2 minutes.  As he was looking at the ultrasound monitor, he said, "Your uterus is beautiful, absolutely beautiful!".  LOL, that's not something you hear every day!  It was such a relief though.  You never know what could be going on in there.  Dr. Kaplan is a very well known and highly successful fertility doctor.  He helped Bill and Guiliana Rancic have their baby via surrogacy.  Small world!!

After all that, we had our bloodwork done - 3 vials from Brad and 9 from me.  We then met with the psychologist.  I believe all that went well.  I then had to take the MMPI....a 344 question test to assess my psychological state.  It's full of strange questions to see if I think people are stealing my thoughts or are out to get me or if I'm suicidal.  Yeah.  Interesting, to say the least.

As of right now, we are looking at a possible early summer transfer.  S&G will decide later if they would like to do a fresh or frozen transfer.  The success rate is the exact same, as long as the donor is young.  I was reading over all the information we received tonight.  It gets me all excited!!  I can't wait to begin all this again!

Meeting

On Saturday, my hubby and I drove 3.5 hours to Chicago to meet S&G before they headed back home.  Wow!  Driving in Chicago is something else!  We live in a very rural town where you only have to worry about getting stuck behind a tractor or Amish buggy.  I'm so glad Brad drove.  I don't think I could have done it without having a panic attack!  Traffic, traffic and more traffic...and they just cut you off and don't use their blinkers.  We have to go back on the 12th (tentatively) for our psych and medical evaluations at the clinic.  It is an early morning appointment, so we will be heading down the night before and staying in a hotel.  

We had a very nice lunch and chatted for a couple hours.  I think all went well.  They seem to be such wonderful, down to earth people.  I hope they liked us as well!  They are having to use an egg donor, as they found out they are unable to retrieve any eggs from S.  :(   S did say that the one they really like is currently in a cycle for someone else.  She will be available again in May.  That would put us in a June or July transfer range.  That seems like a long time to wait, but then I think of how long THEY have waited for this.  I know I can handle the wait just fine.  This will just give us more time to get to know each other and feel more comfortable with each other and the entire process.  :)

New Beginnings

It's almost a new year.  How crazy is that?  2014 has flown by.  We were hoping to have a better outcome with our last transfer with G&M.  Unfortunately, things didn't work out as hoped.  They are blessed to have D, I know.  I just wished we could have helped bring a sibling into the world for them.  They are like family to us.  They are hoping to come to WI sometime next year to visit us all.  I'm already looking forward to it!!

We went back to the agency to see if there were any potential matches for us to try to help another couple.  Within a week, the agency sent us several profiles.  There was a couple from the Netherlands that stood out to us.  They are S&G.  They have no children.  They are Dutch-English translators.  I told the agency I wouldn't work with an international couple if they didn't speak fluent English.  This is too important of a thing to have a language barrier.  

We had a Skype meeting on Sunday.  They are just great!  Their accent isn't too thick at all.  We can understand them perfectly!  A couple days later, we learned they like us, too.  We are officially matched!  :)  They will be coming to Chicago at the end of the month so S can go through the egg retrieval process.  They will be staying until the end of January.  Brad and I will hopefully get to meet them in person next month while we go through the medical and psychological evaluation there in Chicago.  If all goes well, our coordinator said we could be looking at a spring transfer.  This is all so exciting.  We are looking forward to moving ahead with S&G.  I will update once we start really moving along!