Round 2

Following our negative result last week, we've transferred a large chuck of change over to SCI for round 2.  We didn't want to waste anytime trying again.  Getting the ball rolling again really helped us have something to look forward to, rather than dwelling on the failed attempt.

This time around, they are going to take 4 of the frozen 2 day old embryos and let them try to develop into 5 day embryos.  If any develop that far, they will use a laser to assist in hatching to improve our chances.  SCI says that they have a 60% success rate with this process, so fingers crossed.

Since only some of embryos survive the thaw and even fewer develop to blastocyst, we're likely looking at having one good embryo.  As long as we don't have zero, we're happy.  If anyone has experience with this, we're curious to know how many you thawed vs. how many made it to blastocyst.

We are scheduled to transfer again near the end of next month.  In the meantime, we just wait!

Negative

We received the beta report from SCI this morning and the value was less than two.  Blah.

The fact that we can read all of positive outcomes here in blog-land, even after parents had several failed attempts, makes it much easier to get past a negative result.  We know we will have a positive result.  It's just a game of patience and faith.

This was only our first attempt and we have 10 more frozen embryos.  We're staying positive.  Just waiting to hear back from SCI regarding when we can try again.

C&B

1WW

One more week until we receive the pregnancy test results.  EEK!

I've gone from having a funny feeling that we going to have a really high beta to having a feeling that it will be a negative result.  Now I am just trying to tell myself that this pregnancy test result doesn't mean that much.  If it's negative, we have 10 more frozen embryos.  If it's positive, it's way too early to celebrate anyway.  I think that's been the hardest thing so far - trying to balance the absolute excitement of possibility with the fear of heartbreak.

When do you break out the champagne?  When you get the donor you wanted?  When you have a good egg collection?  When the test is positive?  The first ultrasound?  Heartbeat?  2nd trimester?  The self-preservation part of me says to be cautious.  But the hopeful majority of me says "all of the above!"

To get some professional advice, I downloaded a magic 8 ball app for my iPhone.  According to it, we will test positive, it will be twins, we will not miscarry, and they will both be boys.  Although we wanted at least one girl, we obviously have nothing to worry about - if the iPhone says it, it has to be true.

Speaking of the iPhone, I might have to take a sleeping pill to get through next Tuesday night without checking it every three minutes for the pregnancy test results.  I toss and turn at night thinking about it already - I can only imagine what that night will be like.

I am trying to downplay it and just not think about it, but I am doing a terrible job so far.  Brent however, is totally Zen.

Egg collection & start of the 2WW

We made it back from India in one piece.  I can see why people love India and our one regret is that we weren't able to explore as much as we wanted to.  

When we landed back in the states, we received an email from Dr Shivani that 18 eggs were collected and 16 were mature.  The donor had only 8 eggs collected the last time she donated to a previous couple, so we were really excited to hear 16!  Of the 16 mature, 15 fertilized.  Of the 15, 14 survived the following days.  Of the 14, all 14 were grade I!  Of the 14, 10 were frozen.  We're very, very happy with the results! This means we have enough for 3 1/2 tries.  I was so worried that we'd only have enough for this first round!

Four of the eggs made their way into our lovely surrogate yesterday, so we're officially in the two week wait!  We're very excited to be at this point of the journey into parenthood - it's surreal that we're already here!  Let the nervous anticipation begin (er, continue).

While in India, we had the chance to meet our surrogate.  When asked if we wanted to meet her, I almost hesitated, but I'm so glad that we said yes.  She didn't speak any English, but we had a translator help us just say the basic things like "thank you so much for doing this for us", "we're very excited", etc.  It all happened in what seems like two seconds, but I will forever remember her using her sari to cover up her beautiful, nervous smile while we were meeting.  It was an incredible experience.

Right before we started aggressively pursuing surrogacy, I had a dream that we had a two year old son.  I was sitting down on the floor and he was climbing all over me and hugging my neck.  In the dream, there was a song playing.  This really stood out to me because my dreams never have soundtracks.  The dream was so vivid and felt so real and I woke up knowing that I was ready to be a father.  On our last night in India, the night before the egg collection, Brent and I were sitting in the lobby at the hotel day dreaming about our future as a family and that song started playing.  The singer, Jonsi, is a pretty obscure artist from Iceland, the song is a couple of years old, and I've never heard his music on the radio.  That link to my dream and the fact the it played at that exact moment really felt like the universe was sending us a message.

I can't believe we're here already. 

A few quick photos from the trip:

Egg collection day - so excited!