The puzzle pieces are coming together...

Putting this piece of the puzzle in place was a challenge, but we are very excited to announce that we confirmed our egg donor on Wednesday, December 15th.  She is Greek, French, Russian and German.  This egg donor was a breath of fresh air compared to the run around we got from our previous chosen egg donor.  I think we got a little helping hand from above with my mother looking over us.  The donor is a 26 well-educated young lady.  She is single and dedicated mother of a four year old daughter, who is adorable!  We love her pictures.  Donor seems to be a fun, energetic, and caring individual.  She loves the outdoors and cares about animals. She likes to make people smile and is a great listener to her friends.  Donor is very determined and as a single mother at a young age managed to get through college with two majors and earned a scholarship with a beautifully written essay.  When looking for a donor these were a majority of the characteristics we were looking for in a person.  She has all of the same characteristics that I have with the exception of two majors and a scholarship that is. :)  


Our surrogate has been medically screened and waiting on final results.  FCI said everything looked good.   Our surrogate "J" is a 32 year old mother of three beautiful children and wife to a caring and devoted husband "M".  J seems to be very caring and responsible young lady with a great personality.  She loves to spend time with her family and caring for others.  Since we spoke of J and M in a previous blog, we won't repeat ourselves other than to say we are so thankful and blessed that J and M have come into our lives and look forward to our journey with them and a long and ever lasting friendship.

Starting to get frustrated...

Looking for an egg donor is stressful especially when you aren't part of the puzzle.  Well, not biologically anyway.   We have had some set backs since our last post. In a prior post in October, we thought we had matched with an egg donor, but she has shown to be not a good match.  We have been going back and forth with this egg donor (I will refer to as "L").    We thought everything was great and we would be on our way with our journey.   There were some issues of waiting until she had her IUD removed and weaning off a medication or switching to a different medication that was acceptable by the fertility clinic.  After numerous e-mails with the agency acting as the go between, we were receiving conflicting statements from "L" with regards to weaning off the medication.  One minute she didn't like how she felt going off the medicine and then the next time she went off cold turkey.  When asked for a statement from her doctor stating it was okay to go off cold turkey she stated she had been weaning off for over a month with her doctor's knowledge, but has shown no evidence from her doctor showing clearance.  It makes you wonder if she would be responsible in following the direction of the fertility clinic in taking the injections and medication needed to proceed to retrieval.

So in search again…  We have a few profiles in mind, but have to wait for a telephone conference appointment with one agency, which is on December 8th.  Wish us luck...

Our footsteps that pave the way to our journey...

On October 10 we had our phych evaluation in Glenview.  Passed with flying colors!  Did you expect anything less?  LOL  Met with our attorney in Chicago on October 11.  Travis had the day off of school, so we made a day of it in the big city.  We took the train down and met with our attorney downtown on LaSalle Street at 10 a.m.   We spent the rest of the day walking around the big city.  Started out with lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe and then walking to Michigan Avenue to the magnificiant mile.  Shopping...Shopping...Shopping.  We did a lot of window shopping.  We visited the Hershey store.  Never knew Chicago had a Hershey store.  We walked down to the Hancock building and Travis and Brian decided they wanted to go up to the observatory.  I was pooped from all the walking and told them to go and I will visit the the Cheesecake Factory.  I think I got the better end of the deal.  Yummy!  After we had enough shopping, we decided we were too tired to walk back to the train station so we decided to brave it out and take a taxi back to the train station.  Must say I think that was one of the better taxi rides I have ever had in the city.  Travis' eyes lite up when he would go fast.  He heard many of my taxi stories when I have been down town for conference.  We ended the day with fresh popcorn from Garrett Popcorn and Aunt Annie's pretzels for our train trip back home.  It ended a nice day in the big city!

Had our telephone conference with our third party nurse to get our testing done on October 14.   She coordinates the testing and makes sure the surrogate, egg donor and intended parents complete their "checklist" of tests and screenings.  Brian has his physical with the doctor on the 23rd and then we both have to get our blood work done.  Next is the surrogate and egg donor phych evaluations and screenings.

Thursday, October 21, we confirmed our egg donor.  How ironic...when Brian and I were choosing a date for our wedding, Brian choose August 21 because two become one.  I guess in this scenerio the same goes here too...two become one.  Two special people to help make one dream come true...

Our pursuit of an egg donor...

We spent many days and nights looking at profile after profile agency after agency for the perfect match for an egg donor.  They say finding a surrogate is harder.  As we wrote in a prior post, we beg to differ.  It's harder to find that perfect match for an egg donor.  Especially when you know you aren't going to genetically be part of the puzzle.  At the top of our list for a characteristic was to find a donor who was at least half Greek.  Part of my ethnic background.  Let me tell you there isn't many Greek donors out there.  The ones that we did find either had a extensive family medical history or did have characteristics that matched ours. 

After looking at one profile after another we narrowed it down to three candidates.  The first donor was Greek and German.  We thought that would be perfect since Brian is part German and I am part Greek. She was a prior donor with positive result, which was a plus. The second donor donated once a year for the last 4 years.  She too, had four positive results.  Very fertile! She was Greek, German, Lithuanian, French Canadian and Native American.  The third donor was Greek, Canadian, French and Indian.   

Trying to eliminate and select our donor was a hard one to do.  Who do you go with?  You ask yourself so many questions.  Are you choosing the right one?  Will the child have any of our characteristics? All three had beautiful characteristics.  The first donor has reddish brown, but looked more German than Greek.  Neither Brian nor I nor Travis have a reddish tint to our hair.  We were concerned about that.  Now it was a choice between donor two and three.  Brian really leaned towards donor two and I really leaned towards donor three.  There was something about donor three that I kept going back to her profile.  When you search for your donor, you really take a look at the characteristics of a person and their qualities and beliefs.  It was something about her features that reminded me of my late mother.  She had that look about her that drew me towards her profile. 

We started asking more questions about each donor to help make our decision.  When we started asking questions of donor two and had been communicating with the agency, donor two decided she was going to go with the highest bidder and matched with another couple without blinking an eye.  When searching for your perfect match, you will find that money does play a role with some and then there are those special people who want to help intended parents with their journey of having or extending their family.  So it was fate after all.  It came back to donor three.  God answered our prayers. I think my mom had a hand in it too looking over us to make sure we choose our perfect match...

The pursuit of a surrogate...

We started our pursuit of a surrogate first, as we were told finding a surrogate was the hardest.  We beg to differ.  When we left Family Source Consultant's we were given a couple of surrogate profiles to review.  Shortley after a few more came.  It wasn't until the fifth profile that we really thought we found our surrogate.  I will use "J" and "M" to protect their privacy.  We really liked all aspects of J's profile.  We had the same beliefs and hobbies. We both liked the country living and outdoors.  M also bowls on a league too!  That was a plus! :)  M and Brian also had a lot in common.  Yep, you guessed it SPORTS!  Although they are Cubs fans! LOL  It was also a plus that they were from Illinois so we will be able to be there every step of the way (ultra sounds, watching the baby grow, etc.). 

We had our match meeting on September 19.  The minute we walked in the door and I saw J, a feeling came over me that I can't explain.  I know this probably sounds funny, but we actually had the similar shirts on and same colors.  We clicked right away.  There was nothing but laughter.  Before you knew it three hours went by.  Our jaws hurt from laughing soo.... much!  We had a lot in common and same moral beliefs.  Brian and I knew it right away before leaving the office that J would be the one we wanted to carry our child.  We knew M would take care and support J every step of the way. 

A few days later we received a call that J and M felt the same way.  Our match was made...

Starting our journey...

In July we decided to start our journey.  We thought if we were going to extend our family and give Travis a sibling we should stop talking about it and get started before we get to the point of not wanting to change diapers anymore.  We met with Dr. Jacobs from Fertility Centers of Illinois in July.  We left the office with a folder full of information to review and several calls to make.  Who knew having another child would be so complicated.  It's a little more complicated than when we pursued IVF ourselves.  A lot of baby steps before you see the big picture.

A friend referred us to an agency out of Hinsdale, IL to pursue our journey of gestational surrogacy and egg donor.  We met with Zara from Family Source Consultants on August 9th.  She cleared up a lot of our questions of cost and the steps of surrogacy.  We left with more confidence in pursuing our journey.

A lil' bit of history...

For several years Brian and I have attempted to conceive another child so Travis could have a sibling and we could extend our family.  We have been trying to conceive another child since Travis was 4 years old.  He is now 10 years old.  


Looking back, it's amazing as a woman, what we put ourselves through to have another child.  As for myself, I was driven and wasn't going to take "no" for an answer.  It's hard to explain to others unless they have walked in your shoes the feeling you have of feeling incomplete.  It's not the urge to have another child, but the emptiness you feel.   


The history of what led to our journey of Gestational Surrogate and Egg Donor... 


We started by me taking oral drugs to increase my follicles to various testing of my Fallopian tubes.  In 2006 we decided to begin in vitro fertilization (IVF).  The process of  IVF entails the woman to take hormone injections to stimulate her ovaries to produce more follicles to better her chance for pregnancy.  The follicles are than retrieved through a laboratory procedure and placed with an unfertilized egg in a Petri dish to achieve fertilization.  The embryo is then transferred into the uterus to begin pregnancy.  (How about that for an IVF 101 class :) )  We made it through retrieval and were on our way to transfer and were 10 minutes away from River North (Fertility Center of Illinois is located for procedure) when we received a call.  On the other end was a quiet soft spoken nurse who calling to inform us that our one embyro stopped growing and cancelled our transfer.  You can imagine the devastation we felt being so close and having it all taken away from us within seconds…


Shortly after our first cycle of IVF, I started doubling over multiple times with excruciating pain and made a trip to the emergency room to learn that I had the size of a grapefruit cyst and it was not going to go away by itself and if it did, I would be in even more pain.  The cyst being too large for Laparoscopic surgery, I ended up having to have surgery with an incision from one side to the other on my "bikini" line to remove the endometriosis and the cyst.  After surgery, my Gynecologist visited me in my hospital room to tell me that they could not save my left ovary.  This was just the beginning of several trips to the hospital…


To prevent the endometriosis from coming back and so we could move forward with our second cycle of IVF, my doctor put me on Lupron injections once a month for 6 months.  After the last injection of Lupron I started having extreme anxiety attacks that came out of no where.  The first couple times they occurred, I thought I was having a heart attack.  I would shake uncontrollably and my blood pressure would sky rocket through the roof (we're talking 190/110) for about 20 minutes.  These attacks happened about 4 or 5 times.  Not knowing what was going on we made several trips to the ER.  My doctor thinking my blood pressure was out of control increased my blood pressure medicine and I ended up bottoming out from too much medicine and passed out on the bathroom floor for my husband to find me unconscious.  Another trip to the ER, but this time in luxury of an ambulance chauffer.  After meeting with our fertility doctor we learned that I was having an allergic reaction to Lupron.  Thank god it was that and nothing more serious.


Two months after the Lupron treatment, the endometriosis reared its ugly horns once again.  This time a cyst the size of a tennis ball.  Once again, an incision was done from one side to the other side of my stomach.  The only good thing that came out of this surgery was that we learned that they did not take my whole left ovary in the first surgery and the right ovary was still in tact.  


Once recovered from surgery, we attempted our second IVF cycle.  This time was different than the first cycle.   This time we actually made it to transfer.  I had one perfect grade A embryo.  The doctor said it couldn't be any better.  There was a good chance of becoming pregnant.  As I told my husband, I may get pregnant and I didn't even get kissed.  It was a joyous experience.  Days later after a follow up doctor's appointment, we learned that the embryo did not plant itself and I wasn't pregnant.  Yet another devastation.


We were told to rest my ovaries for 2 to 3 months before we should attempt our third cycle of IVF.  You guessed it, during that rest period the endometriosis wanted to decide my fate.  Once again, I doubled over in excruciating pain.  Unable to drive, my husband drove me to the doctor on Friday morning to get an ultrasound.  The endometriosis had returned.  My Gynecologist said I had no other choice but to have a full hysterectomy.  I left the office in tears hearing my doctor's voice over and over in my head saying "Okay, I will see you on Monday for a emergency hysterectomy."  


After our long and winding road in our attempts to extend our family, I learned my strength as a person.  As Forrest Gump's momma use to tell him, "Life was like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're gonna get."  "You have to do the best with what God gave you."