Well it's been months of planning and preparation for today...to be honest I felt so nervous and anxious this morning. Mostly concerned as to how our two embryos would thaw. I have felt the opposite about our surrogate. We went out to dinner with her and her boyfriend last night and she has the most amazing and beautiful personality. She has a way of making me feel calm and confident by just being herself. Throughout this whole process I have never doubted for a moment if she remembered to take her medicine or if she would remember to go to her scheduled appointments...she is truly amazing.
I feel so blessed for our doctor who has been so thorough at every appointment and today was no exception. My palms were sweaty as we went into the room to discuss how our embryos thawed. The doctor walked into the room with a big smile on his face and he could see the concern in my face when I asked "how did they thaw..how do they look?" He said "Great..see me smiling" I felt like a ton of bricks was removed from my shoulders. He also gave us a color picture of our embryos so we could see how they look. This was something new to us as we have never seen pictures like this....it was a pleasant surprise.
Then onto the transfer...again our surrogate was so calm and was open to all of us being in the room to see the transfer. After it was all done I felt a wave to emotions and couldn't help the tears from falling from my eyes. I feel so blessed we were able to do what we did today and I thank God for connecting us with our surrogate, Dr. Boostanfar, our attorney and all the others who were a part of this amazing process. Dr. B saw me get so emotional and gave the a real heartfelt hug.
After he left us we all had fun chatting about our favorite movies and laughing at certain lines we each remember from the classic movies. It was a real fun connection and moment we all had together. Then after resting for about 20 minutes we were back on our way home. I think I smiled for the entire ride home. I feel so blessed for this day and for all the love and support of our family and friends. 11/24 is the pregnancy test....stay tuned.....
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
God's Plan for our last 2 Embryos....
On April 7, 2010 I received an amazing message on Facebook from someone who saw our story on PBSNOW and would like to help us achieve our dream of becoming parents. I will never forget that morning when I read the message and couldn't wait to wake up Marcio to tell him. We knew we would try for a final time with our last 2 embryos, we just didn't know when the right time would be. We arranged a time to talk and from our first conversation I knew she was a gift from God. At times I felt like everything was too good to be true. I had a great conversation with our attorney in California and he said to me, "until you have reason to be worried, don't be. This is all good." He was so right and to date I have no reason to worry. Marcio and I agreed that we needed to meet in person before moving forward. We flew out to California at the end of May and all the good feelings I had were confirmed when we met our new surrogate and her boyfriend.
So over the past 5 months we have secured insurance for her, received psych eval, got the doc approval for her to be pregnant, filled out a mountain of paperwork, had our FDA blood test done (for the 2nd time) and shipped our precious embryos to Encino California. We have also continued to strengthen our relationship with our surrogate. She grew up in Illinois and was home on vacation in October so we were able to see her and her boyfriend for lunch and then go to our first doctor appointment to test her lining and blood levels. All of which came back perfect!
We have the transfer scheduled for November 16th. I'm so excited, and trying not to be guarded, but after being hurt so many times I can't help it. I know God has a plan for us and I hope that this is part of it...we could end up having 3 little ones all at once and what a blessing that would be.
PS our surrogate does have a name, but at this time I would like to protect her privacy.
So over the past 5 months we have secured insurance for her, received psych eval, got the doc approval for her to be pregnant, filled out a mountain of paperwork, had our FDA blood test done (for the 2nd time) and shipped our precious embryos to Encino California. We have also continued to strengthen our relationship with our surrogate. She grew up in Illinois and was home on vacation in October so we were able to see her and her boyfriend for lunch and then go to our first doctor appointment to test her lining and blood levels. All of which came back perfect!
We have the transfer scheduled for November 16th. I'm so excited, and trying not to be guarded, but after being hurt so many times I can't help it. I know God has a plan for us and I hope that this is part of it...we could end up having 3 little ones all at once and what a blessing that would be.
PS our surrogate does have a name, but at this time I would like to protect her privacy.
Shifting Focus to Adoption...
We decided to take a step back from surrogacy and research adoption. This was a really hard decision to make, but after many conversations and reading as much as possible we felt a South Korean child was meant to be for us. After being burned by our surrogacy agency we were more than guarded when we began our research on adoption agencies. There is a big difference between the two when it comes to the government’s involvement. Anyone can open an agency, but there are criteria for gov't approval for some adoption agencies, this is not the case for surrogacy agencies. We first began to work with Lutheran Social Services, they were so helpful in working with us to find the right country to embrace. We attended a wonderful 2 day training class where we learned alot about becoming adoptive parents. It never occurred to me that our child might not attach to us at first. We are so excited to welcome our child into our lives, but we are up rooting the child from their life and culture. This was eye opening to me and I have been reading alot about how to deal with this since.
We decided on Lifelink as our international adoption agency, filled out our paperwork and waiting for the next step. After several months we were informed in Nov. 2009 that we could not adopt from South Korea due to my RA...WHAT?? Seriously??? I was really hurt by this, because I may have a chronic illness, but I have every right to be a Mom and I will be an amazing one!! :)
So after doing more research we decided to attend Bethany Christian Services informational meeting on adoption. We were planning to shift gears to domestic adoption. At the meeting they talked about their international programs and at the end of the meeting we asked if they have restrictions on ppl adopting that have RA. She thought not, but would call their corporate office and ask. I was thrilled when I received her call saying that we could adopt from South Korea. Yeah! This was truly were our hearts were and I felt so blessed we had attended the meeting! So our homestudy was approved in April 2010 and we are officially on the waiting list. This could be anywhere from 12-18 months. Marcio and I have been reading up on South Korea and leaning a few words too. I have found a few yahoo groups to join and love receiving the "posts" from other adoptive parents.
We decided on Lifelink as our international adoption agency, filled out our paperwork and waiting for the next step. After several months we were informed in Nov. 2009 that we could not adopt from South Korea due to my RA...WHAT?? Seriously??? I was really hurt by this, because I may have a chronic illness, but I have every right to be a Mom and I will be an amazing one!! :)
So after doing more research we decided to attend Bethany Christian Services informational meeting on adoption. We were planning to shift gears to domestic adoption. At the meeting they talked about their international programs and at the end of the meeting we asked if they have restrictions on ppl adopting that have RA. She thought not, but would call their corporate office and ask. I was thrilled when I received her call saying that we could adopt from South Korea. Yeah! This was truly were our hearts were and I felt so blessed we had attended the meeting! So our homestudy was approved in April 2010 and we are officially on the waiting list. This could be anywhere from 12-18 months. Marcio and I have been reading up on South Korea and leaning a few words too. I have found a few yahoo groups to join and love receiving the "posts" from other adoptive parents.
our story from the beginning continued....
We selected an agency by the name of Surrogenesis, they were wonderful at first, connected us with an amazing surrogate and everything was falling into place. We were close to finalizing everything and our surrogate called informing us that she needed to back out due to her Mom being ill. I felt so heartbroken as this is such a time consuming process. As it turned out we had a friend step up and offer to help....everything went well and we did one transfer of 2 embryos in February 2008. This attempt failed, as did our relationship with our surrogate. We were blessed to have another friend offer to help, and after the mountains of paper work, appointments, contracts, etc..we transferred another 2 embryos, the day after Marcio's Dad passed away. This was a real tough time...I kept thinking God has taken him from us, but has a plan to give us our own child. That was not the plan. We decided on another transfer in December, this turned out to be using our best embryo along with one other. One of the nurses told me.."oh this is going to work, you are going to be parents" well...Marcio and I were on vacation with a friend in Tucson and when the nurse called me with the bad news..I was devastated. So that leaves us with 2 embryos....I had always worried about what we would do with our left over embryos..well that is something I don't have to figure out now.
We returned from vacation and were trying to figure out what we were going to do next. We had been researching adoption and thought that would be a blessing to give a child a home as we are bursting with love to give!! On March 13, 2009 we received an email from our agency contact that there is reason to believe our escrow money is gone. This was so shocking to us as we had felt we had done our research and had contracts to protect ourselves..well that was not the case, the owner of the agency we were contracted with was also had access to our escrow account. Our story was shared on NBC5 and PBSNOW. Ironically after our story aired on NBC I was let go from my hotel sales job...ironic to say the least. Marcio and I just couldn't understand how someone can steal from innocent people and not be arrested for it. The FBI is investigating the case, it's just incredibly frustrating. We are honest people that worked hard for years to save to have a baby and she is walking free? It's just not right. Marcio and I agreed we would do whatever we could to help, but to date there is no progress in our case.
We returned from vacation and were trying to figure out what we were going to do next. We had been researching adoption and thought that would be a blessing to give a child a home as we are bursting with love to give!! On March 13, 2009 we received an email from our agency contact that there is reason to believe our escrow money is gone. This was so shocking to us as we had felt we had done our research and had contracts to protect ourselves..well that was not the case, the owner of the agency we were contracted with was also had access to our escrow account. Our story was shared on NBC5 and PBSNOW. Ironically after our story aired on NBC I was let go from my hotel sales job...ironic to say the least. Marcio and I just couldn't understand how someone can steal from innocent people and not be arrested for it. The FBI is investigating the case, it's just incredibly frustrating. We are honest people that worked hard for years to save to have a baby and she is walking free? It's just not right. Marcio and I agreed we would do whatever we could to help, but to date there is no progress in our case.
Our story from the beginning...part 1
I have been thinking about starting a blog for quite sometime now and for some reason I decided to start today..no better time than the present. Perhaps I also find this to be the "right" time because of everything we are about to under go in the next week....I will get to the details of that later. First I feel it's important to reflect back on how we got to where we are today.
The turn of the century was a big year for us....as we entered the year 2000 Marcio and I were busy preparing for our wedding in September and couldn't be happier. I went for my annual exam and to make a long story short, after many tests, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer, this was in February 2000. After much thought, prayer and meetings with specialist I decided it was best for me to have a radical hysterectomy. Marcio and I had some good heart to heart talks prior to this decision and we knew we would do whatever we needed to do to become parents. I, of course was devastated at the thought of not being able to have a baby. The doctors mentioned that surrogacy and adoption would both be options for us to have a family. We were open to both.
Fast forward to the year 2005...after enjoying several years as a married couple we were ready to start our process to be parents. We both agreed that surrogacy was something we would try and see what happens. I also have Rheumatoid Arthritis so this complicated things a bit, I had to be off my medication in order to harvest my eggs. I had such mixed feelings, since there is not really any data as to what affect the drugs might have on my eggs...I thougth I will put this in Gods hands and see what happens. Welll...bottom line is I have one super ovary. We harvested 13 eggs that produced 9 good quality embryos that we froze while we looked for a surrogate. We knew this would take sometime to research and find the right agency.
The turn of the century was a big year for us....as we entered the year 2000 Marcio and I were busy preparing for our wedding in September and couldn't be happier. I went for my annual exam and to make a long story short, after many tests, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer, this was in February 2000. After much thought, prayer and meetings with specialist I decided it was best for me to have a radical hysterectomy. Marcio and I had some good heart to heart talks prior to this decision and we knew we would do whatever we needed to do to become parents. I, of course was devastated at the thought of not being able to have a baby. The doctors mentioned that surrogacy and adoption would both be options for us to have a family. We were open to both.
Fast forward to the year 2005...after enjoying several years as a married couple we were ready to start our process to be parents. We both agreed that surrogacy was something we would try and see what happens. I also have Rheumatoid Arthritis so this complicated things a bit, I had to be off my medication in order to harvest my eggs. I had such mixed feelings, since there is not really any data as to what affect the drugs might have on my eggs...I thougth I will put this in Gods hands and see what happens. Welll...bottom line is I have one super ovary. We harvested 13 eggs that produced 9 good quality embryos that we froze while we looked for a surrogate. We knew this would take sometime to research and find the right agency.
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