Hormones & Contracts...Progress!

Thom and I met with our lawyer (Leslie-she's great!) last week to go over the first draft of the surrogacy contract. You'd be amazed how many little details have to go into this agreement-from how many embryos we want to transfer, to how many cycles we're willing to attempt together (if not successful), to whether or not we're ok with Laura travelling or consuming caffeine during pregnancy! Some things seem so juvenile, especially when you trust the carrier like we do. But Leslie explained that they have to be extremely specific so that the contract would hold up in court if one of us ever sued the other (this wont happen BTW!!) Anyways, the next step is to forward the draft to Laura's lawyer (Ruth) for her review, which was done on Friday. The latest is that Ruth will review the contract herself this week and then will meet with Laura and Calvin sometime next week to go over it together. Any changes that they come up with will be sent back to Leslie...and so on and so forth. Luckily, Laura, Thom, Calvin & I have already agreed upon all of the important things so this part should go smoothly. Phew! I officially heard from Holly (the surro coordinator) today that I will begin my weekly blood testing on Friday, Feb 10. I will do this every Friday at 7am(yikes!) for 4-5 weeks. Since I no longer get a monthly period (sorry if this is TMI for some!), the purpose of this is so that they can track my cycle hormonally. They'll use this knowledge, as well as the birth control pill, to eventually synchronize Laura and I (in cycle) before we start injections. For you ladies out there, its like in college when you somehow ended up on the same cycle as all your girlfriends. That's the goal here-Laura and I just aren't around eachother enough! :) So, that's the latest and greatest! Finally, I think I'm caught up to where we truly are in our journey so future posts should actually be dated correctly. WOOT WOOT!

Appointments, Speedbumps, & Finally Face to Face!

I think Laura would back me up when I say that it seemed like FOREVER trying to get our screening appointments scheduled at Brigham & Womens. The Brigham Center for Infertility, by the way, is the clinic that we will be working with throughout this process. Thom and I had met with Dr. Fox a few times (she will be the doctor in charge of our cycles, transfer, etc) but it certainly didn't end there. While I was here getting weekly blood tests drawn (making sure my ovaries are still functioning properly-looks good!), Laura was home in GA getting her prescreening tests done and gathering all of her medical records to send to the Brigham. In the meantime, we found out that we had to purchase an individual health insurance policy for Laura because her insurance would no longer cover surrogate pregnancy. After a whole lot of research, we discovered that there is only one individual health plan in GA that doesn't exclude surrogate pregnancy in its summary of benefits. And the big catch is that there is a 12mo wait period on this policy for maternity benefits. On the bright side, Laura can actually become pregnant before the 12mo wait is met. She just can't give birth before this period if we want any insurance coverage. Though we quickly realized that our hopes of a December transfer were unrealistic, we were able to get her started on the insurance policy, effective December 2, 2011. So, what does this mean? It means that we are aiming to have a baby sometime after December 2, 2012. Moving forward, all of our cycling, retrieval, transfer, etc will be scheduled around this date. For those of you who dont know what these terms mean: "Cycling" will be the period of time that Laura and I will be taking daily injections to prepare my ovaries/her uterus for retrieval & transfer. "Retrieval" is when my eggs will be extracted. "Transfer" is when the embryos created with my eggs/Thoms boys will be transferred into Laura's uterus. With that being said, though December 2, 2012 seems like forever away at times, its exciting to think it is now less than a year away! So, now onto the exciting part-the big meeting!! With these new dates in mind, we could finally move forward with our screening appointments at Brigham & Womens, which were scheduled for December 19, 2011. This meant that Laura and her husband, Calvin, would be coming out to Boston. I was excited to finally meet them but was FULL of anticipation for what was to come. Not only were they coming out for the appointments but they were staying with us for the weekend. When they decided to bring the kids, we realized that we didn't have enough room for everyone so we planned to spend the weekend with them at my parents house. And, to top things off, it happened to be the weekend of the big annual Dillon family Christmas party. Being the amazing people that they are, Laura and Calvin insisted on sticking around and meeting the whole family (God bless them!). Don't get me wrong..my family is great! I just knew that I was nervous enough meeting their little family of four, so I couldnt imagine being in their shoes. Thom and I got to the airport on Saturday a bit early so we spent a lot of time pacing the baggage claim area (atleast I did!) waiting for Laura, Calvin, and their kids to come down the escalator. Thom seemed pretty calm but my heart and mind were racing! I kept wondering silly things like "should I have straightened my hair??", "do I hug them or just shake their hand?", "what if I'm akward and have nothing to say??". But when they finally arrived, their little girl, Kaydence, broke the ice by asking "where's Brynlee?" and then reaching for me to pick her up. Thank you, Kaydence!! When we got to the car, Laura and I were crammed with their youngest, Logan, in the backseat so we were forced to get to know eachother, whether we liked it or not! Thom & Calvin also got a chance to chat up front, which made me happy since most of the communication up to this point had been between Laura and me. Anyways, I wont go into this much detail for the rest of the weekend or we'll be here forever! The most important part is that all of us really hit it off. As I mentioned, Laura & Calvin met my WHOLE family (including Thom's parents) and we also got a chance to bring them to our church, which was nice. Sunday night, my parents were kind enough to watch the kids so that just the four of us could get out together for a few drinks at CBS Scene. Calvin was excited to see Gilette Stadium and it was great to have the chance to finally chat with them in person, one on one. This is where Laura and I joke that the "Bromance" began between Thom & Calvin. :) On Monday morning, we all headed into Boston for our appointments at the Brigham. This included indiviudal and joint social worker visits, blood work, medication classes, psych testing, and some other stuff for Laura. It was a long day for all of us but Laura definitely takes the cake-she had non-stop appointments all day while the rest of us got to sit around a lot. Most importantly, three important things got accomplished. 1) we all got the medical/psychological "ok" to move foward, 2) Laura & I got to learn about the medication regimens that we will both be on for 6wks before the transfer, and 3) we got a rough idea of timing for cycling/transfer. Because of the insurance coverage issue, Holly (the surrogacy coordinator) suggested that we time our cycling/transfer based on a 34wk pregnancy. Though this seems conservative, we want to factor in the possibility of twins and premature delivery. Therefore, backdating 34wks from December 2, 2012 (our maternity policy effective date) brings us to a transfer (if all goes well)sometime mid-end of April 2012. This means Laura and I will most likely start injections early-mid March. Things dont seem so far away anymore!! So, that was about it for the weekend. We brought Laura, Calvin, Kaydence & Logan back to the aiport early Tuesday morning and said goodbye to what seemed like one big whirlwhind of a weekend. But, it was well worth it. I think I speak for us all when I say that this weekend made us feel even more confident about working together and extremely excited for what's to come!

How We Met Laura

One of the most common questions I get from people is how I found somebody who wanted to be our surrogate. Well, believe it or not, there are actually websites with classified ads for this exact purpose. As soon as I found out about this website I was all over it. Shortly after returning home from the hospital with Brynlee, I spent night after night combing through the potential surrogate profiles in order to see who was out there. I NEEDED to know that this was really a possibility for us. When I posted an IP (intended parents) ad, I was pleasantly suprised to find that my inbox was flooded with responses from women who wanted to help us out. As you can imagine, it isn't easy to pick out the woman who will potentially carry your baby. Fishing through emails and choosing who to respond to was like a full time job-I felt like I was in the online dating world! If you don't know me too well, I have to admit that I have a bit of a stubborn (I like to call it "determined") side to me. Thanks to this, as well as Thom's patience with me, I was successful in finding some wonderful people.
I talked to an amazing woman ("A") from TN for almost a year. She knew that we were not ready to get started right away but we got along really well and had planned to move forward on this journey together. In the end, timing did not work out for us but I made a lifelong friend. In fact, she is the talented lady who crocheted the famous "Hello Kitty" hat that has become Brynlee's signature accessory for this winter! Thanks, A!! And I'm VERY excited to say that she is currently moving forward with another couple and hopefully we can journey through this together!
I was pretty bummed when I realized things were not going to work out with A. I feared that I would not be able to make that connection with somebody again. Fortunately, the stubborn side in me came out again and I began the search all over. This time, I found Laura. When she emailed me back (this was August 2011), I could tell immediately that we had a lot in common. However, she had already been talking to another couple for awhile so I was not too hopeful that she would be interested in getting to know me. (Now do you see how this feels like online dating??) After only a few emails, we developed quite the connection. Her husband was deployed at the time and, though she was busy taking care of her two little ones, she somehow found the time to email back and forth with me all day! I could tell that she was in this for all the right reasons and that she would be the perfect person to take care of our baby for 9 months. She also found my "Ed Beard humor" (as my friends would call it) to be funny which is always a good thing! :) We started skyping (the hubs finally got to be involved too) and talked on the phone a few times. During this time, Thom and I were faced with the VERY tempting offer to potentially work with a surrogate ("A") that lived just one town over from us. I couldn't believe it... I had hoped all along for this opportunity because how amazing would it be to be close by for the pregnancy and to have our baby delivered right here in MA! We went to her house, talked for hours, and met her husband and children. They were a wonderful family but something just told me it wasn't the right decision for us. I can't really explain how you "know" that you've found the right woman to be your surrogate, but you just do. And that was Laura...allll the way out in GA. After just a few weeks, we all decided that we wanted to move forward in this journey together. And, well, the rest is history!

Welcome!

Hi everybody,

I've never actually blogged before but figured this was a great time to start. As most of you know, Thom and I are in the process of a very exciting journey through surrogacy. Though we've been through a lot in the past two years, we feel extremely blessed to have this opportunity available to us. Our daughter, Brynlee, has already brought so much happiness into our lives and we just can't wait to add to our family. There is SO much involved in this process-much more than I ever could have imagined. Instead of telling the same story over and over again, I thought I'd create this blog so that you all can follow along with us in this process. I plan to do my best to keep you posted through it all-the ups and downs, the boring times and, of COURSE, the exciting times. So, here goes. Enjoy!