What a beautiful day for a Transfer!

Finally, some exciting news to share after too many rounds of lawyers, clinic appointments, urgent phone calls and frustrated emails! 

Not to mention a very nervous weekend where we all waited breathlessly to find out if two of our Day-2 embryos would thaw and grow to Day 5 ...

But one did, making Monday our Transfer Day! And it went bizarrely well! 

I say it was bizarre because it has felt like the last month was one frustrating stumbling block after another. So I almost expected that the transfer would follow the same path.

But No! At Charmaine's urging, I called the clinic first thing on Monday morning to get an update on our thawed embryos - we hadn't heard anything further since Saturday morning, so were very nervous. 

We had one 'very good looking' blastocyst! I was delighted, but saddened at the thought the other embryo had dropped off. But the technician wasn't finished - we also had a lovely looking Morula that was coming along nicely, if a little more slowly. We immediately dubbed it The Mollusk, as in my excitement I had completely forgotten what the technician called it!

Hubby and I met Charmaine at our FS's office where we chattered like nervous birds and Charmaine downed a litre of water for the ultrasound. One pre-transfer accupuncture appointment and then it was off to the clinic!

We met the technician who gave us each a photo of our beautiful little Blasty, and before we knew it we were being asked who would be in the transfer room. Hubby politely tried to bow out, but Charmaine and I were having none of that!

I had no idea what to expect with the procedure, never having been through a transfer myself. We walked into a very little room, with a huge picture of our Blasty on the screen. Our FS was not far behind us and before I knew it, Charmaine was in the chair and I was asked to hold the ultrasound scanner! Happy to be of help, I jumped at the chance and then tried my best to hold it as steady as possible as we watched a little white jet appear on the screen and our Blasty was off, off and away! Ohhhh my!

And that was it! Hugs all around from our lovely FS and we found ourselves almost immediately out in the hallway. Where I proceeded to tear up and had to hug Hubby and Charmaine again just for the heck of it! 

We hustled to Charmaine's post accupuncture appointment and Hubby and I went to lay in the sun in the park and talk about what an amazing experience we had just been lucky enough to have. 

It feels a little surreal to finally be pregnant until proven otherwise, and I'm still on a huge high! We had an awesome day with Charmaine, with lots and lots of laughs and, hopefully, a little pinch of magic! 

We have a date!

A transfer date, of course!

For the first time in a while, Charmaine and I left our last clinic appointment feeling like we were walking on air!

Looking back over my last few posts, I admit that I haven't been completely honest about how stressful the last few months have been. It wasn't that I doubted we would get the clinic's approval, but more that the waiting and the uncertainty was slowly doing my head in!

For every test we completed or hurdle we jumped, each conversation with the clinic was a repeat of "one step forward, two steps back". I understand that the clinic is trying to do the best they can to ensure we are all in the best possible situation before we proceed. It's only been a few months delay, but when we've waited so long to get to this point ... what can I say? It's hard!

Charmaine has been an inspiration to me over the last few months (even more than usual!). She has been jabbed and prodded and scanned, and she has done it all with a smile and plenty of laughs, even though I know that the delays have been as frustrating for her as they have been for us. It confirms what we already knew - that we could not have found a better, braver or stronger person to trust our hopes to.

And now I can see that, as fantastic as it would have been to have been medically cleared after our very first appointment and proceed straight to transfer within a few weeks, the last few months have meant we've spent a lot of time together, just getting to know each other better. Not just Charmaine and I, but our hubbies and kids and wider families. We've formed a real friendship and a bond that feels stronger with every get-together.

And now all that patience (who am I kidding? I wasn't patient!) has paid off! 

At our latest appointment, our FS helped us plan out a transfer date (and an inevitable due date!) that would suit us all. With a first transfer planned in early September, Charmaine's due date would be ... exactly one year away, to the day! 

Feels like fate!

A little getaway ...

This weekend, hubby and I have been in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, celebrating a big birthday (his, not mine!). We had a couple of lovely catch-up with friends and hubby enjoyed death-defying feats in a surprise aerobatics flight - just to remind him "you're never too old ...!"

This morning we had brunch with old friends of hubby's and their two little boys. Was so nice to be discussing lego and machines and superheroes and crawling around on the floor with the toddler. Something for us to look forward to with our own little one, hopefully ... Though there is definitely no denying the hard work involved.

Our little getaway has been especially bittersweet for me, I think. With any luck, this could be the last trip away with just the two of us for sometime, almost like an unofficial Babymoon (which we saw plenty of couples enjoying here!). It's so exciting and joyful to think about how much our lives are about to change (we hope!), and at the same time, contemplating that change makes these moments together all the more special.

As for the next steps, Charmaine and I have an appointment with our FS later this week. It's been about a month since our last appointment, so it will be good to catch-up and have a proper debrief from the last clinic committee meeting. For various reasons, a June transfer is looking less likely now. But it will be exciting to discuss a more definite timeframe a little later in the year, and for us all to begin to realistically plan around that magic date!

Happy Mothers Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mothers Day yesterday in whichever way they chose to celebrate!

We took the opportunity of a family BBQ to tell my wider family our big news - it was with a little bit of nervousness that we told then, but we got a lot of smiles, tears and hugs! It is so lovely to be starting to tell more and more people, and to get such positive feedback and well wishes for our journey along this path. I hope we have plenty of good news to continue to give them all now!

Things are moving along nicely - This week just past, the clinic’s surrogacy committee met again and I took a call from our FS on Friday, advising that the meeting went very well. The committee has asked that my husband and I undertake counselling from a geneticist before they will give us the big tick, which we will hopefully be able to do in the next few weeks. But otherwise advised we are looking very good to proceed in coming months! Wahoo!

To top it all off, I won a Mothers Day Raffle at work on Friday - pretty amazing as I hardly ever win anything! When I told Charmaine, she said it was a sign - winning a Mothers Day Raffle on the same day we were advised that the committee is happy for us to proceed -  I love the way Charmaine looks at things!

Second counselling appointment - 2 May 2015

It is at about this point where I catch up to myself!

Friday night was an interesting one for us, and many others in Brisbane - a ‘serious weather event’ (aka a storm) flooded many parts of the city and hubby and I took about six hours to get home, with my cousin and a work colleague hitching a ride. We were luckier than some, though, who were on the road much longer than us - in some cases all night!

An early start the next day, and we were at Charmaine’s for our second counselling appointment, which was our group session.

The session started with a bit of good news - hubby and I came back as completely normal in our personality tests! Phew! 

Discussion centred around all things pregnancy, birth and post-partum, as well as our plans for the longer term. We discussed hospitals and options for medical care, what we hoped for from the birth experience, and how we would handle things if they didn’t work out exactly as we wished. 

We spent a lot of time talking about our expectations around the birth in particular. Hubby and I have not had children of our own, so it would be fair to say we are both a little 'vague' on the specifics of labour and birth. Charmaine and Darren on the other hand have a lot of experience of natural birth! We talked about some of the details of what could happen and what was important to each of us, if we were lucky enough to have an ‘ideal’ labour and birth.

We also discussed the possibilities of how our expectations may need to change if things do not go exactly as we hope - things like whether hubby and I would be allowed to be present, especially if there are complications, and whether this may affect our ability to all be together when we meet the baby for the first time. It was such an important part of the session to get an understanding of what these potential curveballs would mean to each of us.

We spent a long time discussing the birth, because it does feel like an important thing to get as ‘right’ as we can. We know we can’t control everything (or very much at all, in reality!), but we agreed we can all put plans in place to help us cope with the unexpected.

Then we moved onto the next part of the journey, and how the birth is ultimately a gateway to a much larger adventure! How we could support each other and the baby during those first days and weeks after the birth, our hopes to continue to be in each others lives and how we can introduce the little one to the amazing story of how they came to be here …

I felt this session was such a valuable thing to do. It gave us all an opportunity to put our cards on the table and talk about what we were hoping for and how we could try to make that happen, while still acknowledging many parts of it could be outside our control. It also helped us to make some really practical decisions about how to move forward.

I think our counsellor thought we had done well too! She advised she would be preparing a letter this week to the clinic to advise them we had completed this part of the process - another tick in the right column!

I hope I will be able to update regularly, especially once we have the real excitement of transfers and hopefully a BFP! I’m not sure if our surrogacy journey (from an IP’s perspective) will be interesting to everyone undertaking a similar journey, but I hope that sharing my experiences may answer some questions for others in the same situation and maybe reveal a little bit about the magic that happens ‘behind the curtain’, which I am certainly finding out as we go!

First counselling appointment - 25 April 2015

We had our first counselling session on Anzac Day (after doing the Dawn Service, hubby and I may not have been at our best, but a strong coffee helped us recover!)

Charmaine and Darren had their session first, with our lovely counsellor who was happy to do the counselling at their house. We were delighted to find her, as I figure anything which makes these processes as easy as possibly for them to attend is well worth it.

We arrived about an hour later and were confronted with a 344 question personality test! Charmaine tried to warn us about some of the weirder questions, but it wasn’t until we saw them for ourselves that we understood! Apparently the test is almost unbeatable, and it knows when you are trying to trick it. That scared me a little, but what really psyched me out was when the counsellor came in after 45 minutes and asked why we weren’t done yet. She seemed to think that this was a concern in itself!

Counselling with hubby and I then took place. It was fairly straight forward, with questions and plenty of discussion to ensure that we were thinking about potential issues and we were all on the same page. 

Some of the questions revolved around issues like:

• What did we think we would do if screening revealed the child may be disabled, mentally or physically?
• What were our plans should any party be injured, die or have a relationship breakdown?
• How did we think we would handle things if we have no successful pregnancies? 
• How did we see the relationship between both couples continuing after the birth?

Luckily for us, Charmaine and Darren and hubby and I had already discussed most of these tough questions over the last few weeks, so we were pretty comfortable with where we all stood on them.

The next step is the group counselling session, which I think we are all really looking forward to, as the counselling report feels a bit like one of the final blessings we need to get the surrogacy committee’s approval. We still need to get the legals and a few other things completed, but this also feels under control and just a matter of time. 

More good news! 24 April 2015

Well, I am slowly catching up! I hope I can be as good about writing down the rest of our experiences as I have been with the last four months! I’m not yet sure whether I will make a faithful blogger …

Charmaine and I recently had a follow-up appointment with our FS to hear the outcome of the second surrogacy committee meeting. The advice was that after the good report from the Obstetrician (as promised!) things are looking positive for us to proceed, though there are still a few additional medical items we need to check off, as well as counselling and legals. 

How exciting!

We spoke to the FS about two possible dates for a transfer - one as early as June, which would work very well as Charmaine will shortly afterwards be on a pacific cruise, where she will be feeling very relaxed for the 2WW!

However, a June transfer will require a lot of things to come together perfectly! Being the realists that we are (Haha!) we also discussed the possibility of a transfer around October, which will also fit in well with Charmaine’s plans for early next year.

I am optimistic about a June transfer, despite the hurdles we need to get over - mostly because once again it seems a little like fate - a transfer in mid-June could mean a birth date of early March, when most of my family seems to have birthday’s clustered together!

We left the appointment feeling even more positive and discussing how Charmaine would be able to get news about a possible BFP to me from onboard a ship in the middle of the Pacific!