Delores Melon

I totally spelled that right too.  Since I’ll probably be blogging out the butt about this surrogacy, and I just re-read my last posts on the topic, let me try to give you a better idea of how it went down.

I found a lawyer online through a surrogacy classifieds.  What she does is represent couples looking for surrogates.  That classifieds is a place where women that wish to be surrogates or egg donors go to place an ad looking for Intended Parents (IP’s), or IP’s looking for a surrogate.  There are two kinds of surrogates, gestational and traditional. Gestational surrogates (me), only carry the baby. Traditional surrogates use their own egg, and either just shoot up with the Intended Father’s (IF), sperm, or actually go through the IVF process, where they have their eggs retrieved, mixed in the ole Kitchen Aid with some sperm and the resulting embryo is put back in to bake. They don’t actually do the “baby-dance” with the IF. I mean I guess some do, but it’s not the typical protocol. I kid.

So I met the lawyer, met the couple she had in mind, we matched and the roller coaster began. The first step was the contract. If there’s a lawyer involved there’s a contract. We had to work out everything from the fees to what happens to the baby if both parents die. It was a lot, but it did go smoothly and a hell of a lot easier than the contract phase some surrogates go through.

I had to give tons of blood. To make sure I’m not carrying crazy juice in my veins. I don’t know. Then, I had to have this procedure, where they inject my uterus with dye, and check it out. It was oddly fascinating. They want to make sure it’s going to accommodate a pregnancy I guess. They could have saved the trouble and just asked my kids. They were there.

Next up was the meeting the psychologist. A three hour tour indeed. One hour devoted to a questionnaire of over 500 questions. “Do you enjoy playing with fire“.. hell yeah. “Do you enjoy sex“… dude, wait, what? What’s that got to do with surrogacy? And how does it determine my mental stability? All those questions did were to create plenty for me.  After that lovely quiz, Man and I spent the next two hours chatting with the psychologist. We passed. We’re not nuts. Wait, yes we are, that man’s blind!

I think I might have gone through more blood work. They sure suck out a lot of blood. Next up was a mock cycle. This was when I went through the whole ordeal up to the point they’d do a transfer of the embryo into my uterus. To make sure my body handled the medications and responded accordingly. So I had to have injections of progesterone and estrogen in my bum. Progesterone daily and every third day, an extra shot of estrogen. Then I had to attend regular appointments at their office over an hour away so they could check how thick the lining of my uterus was getting. They want it at a certain thickness before they deem it ready for the embryo. They like it cushy.

I might be mixing up the exact order of things but you’re getting the general idea. There was also a meeting between the four of us, Man, me, Raz and Yoss, with a social worker.  I think they like to make sure we were all going to play nice together and that I wasn’t going to high tail it to Maple Leaf Land with their kid. Fat chance of that lady. I have my fill of booger pickers to clean up after, thank you very much. No really I love my kids. Honest.

So, then it was onto transfer number one. They tried with Intended Mom’s (IM), eggs. I don’t think I got any positive pregnancy tests that cycle. We tried one more cycle with her eggs, but apparently the chemo she had received had just been too much for her eggs. The second cycle I did get positives, but it looked like it was a chemical pregnancy.

They turned to an egg donor (NOT ME), after that. As soon as I got positives, I knew this was it. It was so cool. Of course we were all cautiously optimistic up until that magic twelve week mark. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to make sure people know I wasn’t the egg in this. It’s nobody’s business for one thing and even if I did chose to do so (I DIDN’T), who cares if they get a burr up their ass about it? (NOT ME)

I literally took over 20 pregnancy tests. When you’re trying to have your own kid, you take a test, and since you likely bought the box with 2 tests in it, you take the other. If you’re really lucky you got the 2 pack with the “Third Test Free!” in it. So you take that too. Just to be sure. Then you call your ob/gyn and have fun.

Surrogacy? LOL Three tests are just the first day. Then you keep taking them because you want to see that positive line getting darker. Then you throw in a few digital ones for fun and to take a pic of to send to your IM. She can use that photo for her xmas cards.  About two weeks after the transfer, the clinic will do more blood work (shocking, I know) to get a BETA, which gives a number that signifies if and how pregnant. Then you do that two more times to make sure the number is increasing like it’s supposed to.

Once the pregnancy was confirmed I still had to keep sticking my butt with needles until I was like 13 or 14 weeks.  I was only mildly sick, which seems to be the norm for me. I actually lost weight this pregnancy, which is very interesting. I gained about 25 or 30 pounds with my kids.

Here’s a fascinating tidbit. I’m gender psychic. I was able to accurately determine the sex of all three babies I’ve carried. I’m good. I’d like to carry twins, a boy and a girl and see if my sex-dar goes haywire.

So I guess that’s it. I’m torn between this blog and watching a show called “I didn’t know I was pregnant”… I’m trying hard to believe this can happen but as someone that’s actually seen a foot/elbow/knee extending from my abdomen, it’s a hard thing to wrap my brain around. My belly gets quite pregnant looking too. I don’t believe I’d write off a baby’s movement as gas. That’s some violent gas. You’d think a gas bubble causing that much commotion would blow a hole through your pants when it came out. Shit I’d have the camcorder set up to capture that.  I just don’t know about that.  When I get on the kick ass pc later, I’ll try to post a pic of my belly from my surrogacy. Dude, it’s HUGE. Hell I start wearing maternity clothes the day after the pregnancy test comes back positive.