Hellobee

Right before I started my last ever IVF cycle, we were re-matched with a new surrogate by our agency. Our agency worked hard to expedite the process, and our re-match came through only 6 weeks after our first surrogate broke our contract.

We really liked the new profile. The surrogate had three successful natural pregnancies, was older and more mature than our last surrogate, was married, and met all of our other wish list criteria. The only negative was that she lived in Utah, which we viewed as a huge complication considering that we lived in Chicago! We weren’t clear on the legal picture in Utah, we didn’t want to be so far away from our growing baby, and we didn’t like the idea of traveling to Utah for the birth and having to travel so far home to Chicago after the delivery (the travel time between Chicago and Salt Lake City is roughly 20 hours by car or 3 hours by plane).

Still, with location being the only hang-up, we decided to proceed to an introduction to the new surrogate. Our agency set up a conference call for us and we all dialed in around lunchtime on a weekday. The call went very smoothly and we decided to move forward with the new surrogate (and importantly, she also decided to move forward with us!).

Over the next few weeks, we worked on several to-do items including the clinic’s review of the surrogate’s past pregnancy and health records, a psychological screening of the surrogate and her husband, and legal negotiations and contracts. Most importantly, I had the opportunity to meet with the surrogate and her husband when they flew to Chicago for the clinical work-up. It was stressful and exciting to plan a dinner at our condo to meet the two of them. I was a nervous wreck but tried to appear calm and relaxed and all of the other things I thought a surrogate would want to see from an intended mother, so that she would want to carry our baby (no pressure or anything!).

We leaped over all of the hurdles to an eventual transfer extremely quickly. Only about two months passed from the time that we received the surrogate’s profile to the time that she started her medications for the cycle. This is an abnormally quick pace, but all of us wanted to move to a transfer as quickly as possible!

Shortly after our surrogate started her medications, we discovered that my own IVF cycle had resulted in a positive pregnancy test. I’m pretty sure that most people consider us crazy for deciding to proceed with the embryo transfer to the surrogate despite my positive pregnancy test, but most people haven’t endured three years of failed infertility treatment. It is important to understand that Mr. Starfish and I had only experienced extremely negative results up until this point and that was our baseline for making this decision. We expected the worst with my own pregnancy, so we thought we should proceed with the surrogate. Likewise, we had experienced a chemical pregnancy with our last surrogate so we also didn’t expect smooth sailing there either.

So with all that as background, we decided to proceed. And thankfully, our surrogate was excited to proceed as well despite my confirmed pregnancy. We flew our surrogate and her husband to Chicago in a weekend in late September for the transfer on a Sunday at our clinic. We all had dinner together the night before and awoke early the next day and met at the clinic. The transfer went as smoothly as can be imagined, with our surrogate’s transfer occurring exactly five weeks after my own transfer.

Me and our surrogate moments before the embryo transfer  |   All dressed up in scrubs for the embryo transfer, and striking a fashion pose!

Just like with our first surrogate’s transfer, this time we received news within 6 days that our surrogate’s home pregnancy tests were positive. We were excited but given the heartbreak of our last surrogate’s chemical pregnancy, which had also started with positive home pregnancy tests, we kept our hopes in check. We celebrated the milestone, but cautiously.

A few days later, I received the call from the clinic on the afternoon of our surrogate’s pregnancy test. When I saw the number flash on my phone, my heart started beating so hard and everything else in the world went silent around me. I picked up the call cautiously and held my breath as the nurse told me the news…

We were pregnant! The surrogate’s pregnancy hormones were positive and strong! For years, I had concluded these pregnancy result phone calls by wiping tears from my eyes as a nurse sadly told me that yet another IVF cycle had resulted in negative results. This time I was surprised to feel the tears running down my face again, but this time they were tears of pure joy and happiness. We were officially expecting two!