How our surrogacy journey all began......

Hello all! I'll pick right up where I left off - with the "announcement" that Chris and I are in the process of finding a gestational surrogate. You might be wondering what the difference is between a "gestational" surrogate (GS) and a traditional surrogate (TS) - I did too! I've learned so much already; allow me to enlighten you to the basics.

• A GS has no biological or genetic connection to the child she's carrying - she's simply carrying the intended parent's (IP) baby (a very recent example of this is Bill & Giuliana Rancic - if you're an E! fan like me, you know all about them!) So, in our adventure, the IP's are me and Chris.
• A TS offers/donates her own egg with the IP's sperm, making her the biological mother of the child 

So let's back up. How did we get here?! I'll start from the beginning (hopefully none of this is TMI - but something tells me most of you reading this are women and "get" that the details are chock-full of lady business. :-) And, if you really didn't want to know, you'd have stopped reading by now, right??!

Disclaimer: I'll be telling this "story" from my perspective. I don't want to downplay this as only MY issue in any way - Chris is going through this just as much as I am, but I don't want to speak for his feelings and thought processes. So, you'll see a lot of "I" language, but that doesn't mean it's not "our" journey. :-)

Chris and I have always known we wanted to be parents and couldn't wait to start our family after we got married (on September 10, 2011). You might be thinking "jeez, give yourselves some time! You've only been married a year!" True. The reason I started seeing a doctor is not because we weren't getting pregnant; it was because I wasn't getting my period. I had gone off the pill in August, just prior to our wedding. By November, nothing had happened - no period, but also no pregnancy. I made an inital appointment with an OB/GYN to simply check things out. After all, I was 33 years old and didn't want to waste too much time waiting around, ya know? After running a bunch of tests, she felt confident that I had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.) If you're interested - google it. It was not a good diagnosis - it makes one very susceptible to diabetes (and facial hair, like, beards and 5 o'clock shadows - eek!) She felt, however, that I should see an RE (reproductive endocrinologist) to confirm the diagnosis and run further tests.

I had my first appointment with an RE in December. Over the course of several months and LOTS of tests, he concluded that I did NOT have PCOS (thank God! Is it sad that I was more relieved about not growing a beard than not having diabetes?!) but that I was also not ovulating. I did 4 rounds of Provera (which is a drug that's supposed to trigger your period); nothing happened. I did 3 rounds of Clomid (a drug to make you ovulate); nothing happened. It was obvious he was stumped but just wanted to keep trying the same things. At this point we decided to call in the experts and go to the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Minneapolis.

We had our first appointment with Dr. Campbell in May of this year. We immediately loved him and felt we were in really good hands. He wanted to try one more round of Clomid under his watch - he felt the timing of my previous cycles were way off. Well, not surprisingly, nothing happened. By this time I had turned 34 and Dr. Campbell agreed that time was of the essence. (Yeah, yeah, I know 34 isn't old but in egg years, it's getting up there!) I really appreciated his approach - he wanted to move as aggressively as I did. I'm an Aries and totally Type-A - no time to waste! Again we underwent every test in the book; some weeks I was going in every day for monitoring. He finally admitted that I had broken every law of biology and he was absolutely stumped. This was not one of those "Yay! I stumped the teacher!" moments. This was more like "#$@#, I've even stumped the expert - WTH is wrong with me?!" I told him I was defective - he told me I was "special". Note: this is one area you don't want to feel special in. By this time, he wanted to try an "experiment" on me - not to get me to ovulate or get pregnant, but to simply test my uterus to see if it was even functioning. Basically - he was going to do a complete manual hormonal cycle to see if my uterine lining was thickening. So, it began. I took straight estrogen orally - nothing happened. I started taking it, um, vaginally (TMI?) - still nothing happened. Over the course of a couple months of hormones, more blood work and more ultrasounds, my uterine lining never got above 5 mm. While all of this may not have given us answers about my uterus or why I'm not menstruating - we did learn 2 good things:

1.) I'm not in menopause
2.) I have LOTS of good, healthy eggs

It was at this point that Dr. Campbell suggested gestational surrogacy. He first said these two crazy words to me on July 24th, 2012. Because of #2 above, he thought I'd be a great candidate (provided Chris's results came back OK too, which they ultimately did.) This conversation marks what I consider the true beginning of this journey and the emotional roller coaster ride I've been on ever since. It also marks the first time I cried about any of it. Believe it or not, I had totally held myself together over the previous 9 months and always stayed positive and calm, but hearing this news triggered emotions I never knew existed. To say I fell apart would be an understatement.

Even though Dr. Campbell felt confident in his suggestion, he still had a hard time accepting that my uterus wasn't working for apparently no good reason. As a final measure, he did a saline-infused sonogram to rule out uterine trauma or abnormalities (which totally sucked by the way - getting saline pumped into your uterus via catheter is not a pleasant experience - FYI.) As I suspected, he didn't find anything. So on July 31st, he finally "gave up" trying to figure me out. He offered to refer me elsewhere, particularly the Mayo Clinic, but he felt confident they'd reach the same conclusion, and we'd have to start all over again.We completely trusted him (and still do), and felt completely comfortable in that moment making the decision to NOT pursue a 2nd opinion (actually, it would be a 4th opinion, since he was already teh 3rd doctor we'd seen, and one of the Twin Cities' best.) On that day, Chris and I officially decided to pursue surrogacy.

It's very easy to explain all of this from a technical standpoint. What this doesn't quite cover are the emotions involved, and the emotions about feeling those emotions, and the emotions about having the emotions over the original emotions - you get the idea. What I've come to realize is that I (we) are suffering a loss, and I need to allow myself time to grieve. I'm suffering the loss of a dream I've had my whole life - that I would someday be pregnant. I realize I can still become a mother, but pregnancy itself was something I always looked forward to as part of that. With this grief comes some pretty ugly emotions, and I hate myself for them sometimes. I don't WANT to feel like screaming at every pregnant person I see. I don't WANT to hate seeing pictures of my friends' babies on Facebook. I don't WANT to want to crash my cart into every person in the baby aisles at Target. I don't WANT to feel like a failure as a wife and a woman. But I simply can't help it. I'm dealing with all of this the best way I can. I'm seeing a counselor (and I feel NO shame in that), I've joined an online surrogacy group, and.....I'm writing this. Selfishly, getting this out is cathartic for me. But even better - you never know who might be going through the same thing or something similar and will somehow feel validated and less alone.

Ugh, I hate feeling sorry for myself, and anyone who knows me knows that I need to keep a sense of humor to stay sane. With that being said, I've started compiling a list (with the help of my friends) of reasons why it will be GREAT to not be pregnant and have someone else carry my baby. Here it is so far - I've also listed my wonderful friends' names so they can get credit for their awesome contributions. :-)

1.) I can get drunk at my own baby shower.

2.) My boobs will stay nice and not get prematurely saggy.

3.) No morning/all day sickness, including a gag reflex around chicken (Beth)

4.) No hugely swollen feet, legs, and cankles (Beth)

5.) I won't have to go through the beginning preggo phase where you'd like to wear a shirt that says "I'm not getting fat, I'm just knocked up" (LOL! Beth)

6.) I won't have to watch my husband guzzle cocktails while I drink yet ANOTHER club soda. (Beth)

7.) I won't have to sober socialize with drunk people (Beth). Note to self: this one will come in really handy in Pine City and Murray County .....

8.) I won't randomly "toot" and try to giggle it off at inopportune times. (Erica V.)

9.) I won't have to worry about sneezing and pissing my pants. (Erica V.) Along the same lines - I will save tons of money on not having to buy Depends pantiliners, as I will maintain bladder control (Megan).

10.) I won't need a forklift to get me out of bed. (Erica V.)

11.) I won't have to worry about losing the baby weight (Erin) Note to self: I'll just worry instead about losing the weight gained from stress eating, ha!

12.) I can drink as much coffee as I want! (Courtney)

13.) My va-jay-jay will stay intact and look normal. (Megan)

14.) I won't reek like stale milk from nursing (Megan).

15.) I won't have to worry about vomiting all over someone when they can't stop talking about the fish tacos in the cafeteria. (Megan)

16.) I won't wake up in a pool of my own breat milk because my t*ts won't stop leaking (Courtney).

17.) I won't sprout a hairy line between my belly button and va-jay-jay - a not-so sexy treasure trail for women (Darial).

And a couple more gems - 2 ways in which my friend MJ offered to be there for me:

18.) Getting drunk on wine and having "angry" talk about all the crack heads who seem to be able to have children in litters.

19.) Letting me stare, poke and prod and even take photographs with/of her stomach that (according to her) looks like a map of Hong Kong with stretch marks so deep she could become a bird bath if she laid out shirtless (give yourself a break, M, you had twins!!)

I have the BEST friends and family a girl could ever ask for, and I couldn't go through this without them. Perhaps first and foremost, I'm blessed to have my husband. Chris has been AMAZING throughout this journey so far, and I can honestly say it's brought us closer together. He's my best friend and 100% there for me - I couldn't ask for a better person to walk this road with me. If you're reading this, Chris, I LOVE YOU and I know without a doubt that we were meant to be parents together.