Wish Upon A Star

I can't remember if I posted a picture of my meds and needles last time but this is for G! He loves needles ;)!

My protocol is a bit different this time and I am not sure I like it. Not much I can do about it so I will follow my directions and try not to be annoyed. This time I don't only have injections but also have estrogeen patches and crinone gels. The patches leave horrible sticky places all over your body that from what I understand are impossible to get rid of. The crinone (progesterone gels) are no fun either but I won't go in to detail about those. Let's just say I would much rather be giving myself injections. The crazy thing is while I am using the progesterone gels, I am also still giving myself the progesterone injections. There are less needles this time but as crazy as it sounds I would rather have all injections. They really don't bother me that much.

My calendar thus far.

Sunday 6/2    - Begin Lupron 10 units daily
Thursday 6/6 - Last BCP
Tuesday 6/11 - U/S and Blood Work
              6/12  - Patch Day 1 ~ Etrogen patches 0.1mg (1 Patch) Decrease Lupron to 5 units every day.
              6/14  - Patch Day 3 Etrogen patches 0.1mg (1 Patch)
              6/16  - Patch Day 5 Etrogen patches 0.2mg (2 Patch)
              6/18  - Patch Day 7 Etrogen patches 0.3mg (3 Patch)
              6/20  - Patch Day 9 Etrogen patches 0.4mg (4 Patch)
              6/22  - Patch Day 11 Etrogen patches 0.4mg (4 Patch)
              6/21  - Patch Day 12 Lab work and ultrasound today. Continue estrogen patches ( 4 patches  every other day until pregnancy test.
              6/27 - Discontinue Lupron
              6/27 -  Begin Doxycycline 100 mg twice daily X 6 days.
              6/27 - Begin Medrol 16 mg daily at bedtime X 6 days.
              6/27 - Begin progesterone in oil 50 mg. (1cc/ml) once daily. Crinone vaginal gel AM and PM. Continue until pregnancy test.
              7/1   - Lab work only
              7/2   - Transfer!!!
              7/12  - Pregnancy test will 12 days after your embryo transfer.

and should be transferring in a little over a month!!!!

Bill and I met S&G for brunch on March 10th. We spent 3 hours talking, enjoying our meal, and drinking way too much coffee. I finally looked at my phone and realized the time; also realized we had spent very little time actually talking about surrogacy. We both needed to run at this point so decided we would get in touch with each other once we had some time to think everything over. I already knew my decision but I knew they would need to think over all the costs associated with a surrogacy in the United States.

On my birthday, March 24, I got a great birthday present! They wanted to match with me. The email subject read "Check Yes or No" which I thought was great. I really like they have such a great sense of humor. It always makes this process go much easier when things are kept light and not too serious. I let them know that I was ready to begin as soon as they were. So from there began the hurry up and wait. So far everything has gone fairly smoothly. We were really pushing for a June transfer and we almost got our way. Looks like transfer will be sometime between June 30th and July 5th.

Contracts went smoothly. It really helped that they used the same lawyer that Y&S used. Meant most everything was already written and I knew what to expect.

We used the psych evaluation from last time. While some would disagree with this I really don't think I could have gotten too much crazier in the last 3 years.

S&G were able to find an egg donor fairly quickly.

We found an insurance company that would cover the surrogacy here in North Carolina.

Those are usually the biggest hurdles in beginning a surrogacy and we were able to knock them out pretty quickly. I feel like if the IVF clinic and donor agency had been a bit more on top of things we would have been able to transfer a little sooner but all seems to be coming together in the end.