Melissa and Rhonda's Surrogacy Journal

Rhonda wife and Mom of 4 children proud surrogate mother for Melissa and Billy.
Meliisa wife and Mom of 3 IM (Intended mother) to Rhonda

1.28.2007

We Have Fertilzation!!

Well everyone is packed and ready to go and In just a few short hours I will be leaving for Kansas City and we will catch a early morning flight to Baltimore!! Melissa is doing well after retreival (refusing any pain meds and even going to her childrens competetions a few hours after retreival) She is SUPERWOMAN!! Of the 12 eggs they retreived from Melissa 8 were mature (which is normal to have some immature ones in the mix). Of the 8 eggs 6 fertilzed (75% is the average fertilzation rate with ICSI) So we are doing well!! The clinic has all kinds of requirements to the take the embies to 5 days old for transfer. We will either transfer the embryo's when they are 3 days a old OR when the are 5 days old (we perfer five) but the clinic may not want to risk them being out of the uterine enviorment for long if we only have a certain amount to start with b/c we don't want to risk losing them as the progress outside the body.. This morning they had 2 cells (meaning fertilzation). The gold standard would be for them divide equally within a certain time frame.. Day two ideally would be 4 cells and day 3 would 8 cells and so forth (there cn be varaibles and still be good emrbyos though) on day 4 they will be morulas (like a little rasberry) they will then start to compact and then go to blast stage (which is 100 or more cells). We now just wait and let the embryo's do their job (which is to grow). We are thinking positive and saying a little prayer that they continue to grow and divide! I am excited to see Melissa again and I know time will just fly and be gone to quickly lol so off we go FINGERS CROSSED and a reminder of my favortie saying..

"Even miracles take a little time the" ~Fairy godmother~

Posted on 1.28.2007 at 1:44 PM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

1.27.2007

Melissa's retreival!

Well Melissa had her retrival this morning and we couldn't have asked for a better one!! They retreived 12 eggs (which is about average for a women with 2 ovaries). She was painfree and in excellent spirts. They decided to do ICSI (injecting a single sperm into each egg) this will yield a higher fertilzation rate than letting them fertilze by themselves in a dish.. They will also be doing assisted hatching (use a enzyme to help the embryo's hatch better from the protective shell. ) We are still VERY encouraged about doing a day 5 transfer and transferring two embryo's.. We are scurrying around making last min preparations to leave and we will drive to Kansas City tommrow and fly out first thing Monday morning! Getting closer!!!!

Posted on 1.27.2007 at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

1.26.2007

Retreival Tommorow

Thursday night our RE thought it was time for Melissa to trigger so she took her HCG injection (this helps the follciles she worked so hard to grow mature). Tonight I started taking a daily progesterone injection (PIO). This is a vital hormone that will help the lining and help sustain the pregnancy. Becasue I am a carrier and I my own ovaries were suprressed I don't make any so this is important and I will continue taking this after a postive BETA (bolld pregnancy test) until about the 12th week of pregnancy along with delestrogen injections every 3 days.. So Melissa will have her retreival first thing in the morning (very early) and Sun we will get a fertilzation report. So we are thinking good thoughts and hope to hear a good report!!

Posted on 1.26.2007 at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

1.24.2007

Making Progress

Tonight will day 8 of stims.. Melissa is doing well. She currently has 20 follicles and her E2 levels are 655. 14 follicles were the same size the rest were smaller. She will likely trigger Friday!! When she has 3 lead follicles she will trigger (they must be 18 to 20mm in size). This will put her retreiving on Sunday with a transfer on Wed or Friday. I had my lining check Monday.. My lining measured 12mm (between 8 and 15 is ideal they say). Lining was a triple stripe and my E2 levels were 355 and P4 was 0.3. We are right on track and are expecting to fly to the East Coast early next week!! We are coming down to the crunch and Melissa is eating a lot of extra protien rich foods (good for her and the eggs). I am still taking baby asprin and delestrogen and When she triggers I should began PIO injections so we are moving along very nicely!!

Posted on 1.24.2007 at 4:05 PM | Comments (1) | Permanent Link

1.18.2007

Stims have begun!!

Well Melissa has started "Stimming" (which is the process of injections to stimulate her ovaried to produce lots of eggies). Actaully when she went in for her baseline U/S and labs her one ovary had huge cyst (bigger than her ovary) for her this wasn't uncommon and they set up an appt to aspirate the cyst. Labs indicated that it was a non functional cyst (producing no hormones like progesterone) which meant it was lijkely an old one.. PLUS her E2 levels and P4 levels were REALLY good the lower the E2 levels the easier it is to stim they can range from 20 to 80 and hers was 28 so it looks like she will respond 3extremly well to the meds!! They have decided to not stim her hard (she has one ovary and we don't want to risk damaging it by stimming her hard they also don't want a lot of eggs anthow because they won't don't embryo's frozen indefiently. So we are hoping for 10 so we can have a 5 day blast transfer but we may do a 3 day transfer which her triplets were the result of a day 3 transfer so we are excited about how things are going now.. So Melissa went in yesterday and had her syst drained and they got an entire dixie cup full of fluid.. She started two different stim meds last night ((WOOOHOOOO)) they will now monitor her very closely watching her hormone levels (mainly her estrogen level) and doing U/S of her ovary.. I have an appt tommorow to check my E2 levels and to check my lining.. I'm still taking a daily prenatal and a baby asprin a day and every 3rd day I take an injection of delestrogen to build the lining and I have finished my antibiotic and I will start taking a daily progesterone injection once thery retreive! So I go tommorow and Melissa goes Sat for her checks so we are moving forward as planned with no problems we will expect Melissa to stim for 9 to 10 days!! We are so very excited and today is also my intended fathers Birthday ((Happy Birthday Billy)) I hope by this time next year he will have another member of his family joining him...

Posted on 1.18.2007 at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

1.9.2007

WE ARE CYCLING!!!

Ughhh sometimes this process can razzle you a bit lol... I went in on the 8th for my baseline U/S and labs.. I come home and wait for the results and med instructions.. The nurse calls with the results.. BETA HcG is of course negative. My lining was 6mm good for cycle day 3. My E2 levels are 43 my P4 levels are 2.36.. Well the clinic didn't like thje P4 level very much. They thought I might be on my way to ovulating WHAT!! I had been on BCP's and the U/S showed my ovaries inactive and high.. They were actaully hard to find they were so supressed and "high and dry".. So we have to repeat the labs we were told if the level didn't go down the cycle would be canceled ughh.. That would mean expensive tests need to be repeated this was not good.. Those levels usally just continue to rise.. I went first thing this morning and had labs drawn again.. The nurse cfalls Melissa and the level DROPPED to 1.3 YIPPEEEE we are not on our way to ovulation we are still cycling down... So I start building my lining TODAY!!!! I will start taking .2cc'ss of Delestrogen tongiht and Melissa started her Lupron yesterday and she will start Stims in 5 days!! WoooHoooo . She is going to start growing those eggs!!

Posted on 1.9.2007 at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

1.6.2007

Ready to Begin!!

Well I took my last active BCP On Jan 2nd and good ole AF (Aunt Flo) showed up Jan the 5th I am to have a baseline Ultrasound and my labs on Monday and I should start my delestrogen. I am currently taking baby asprin and a daily pre-natal vit.. We are all set for a fresh 5 day transfer on Feb 1st My IM starts Lurpon on the 8th also.. I have prepared for the two week wait by buying all kinds of HPT's I just can't seem to stay away from them lol.. I also get to see Melissa soon. I have found a reliable and true friend in Melissa. She is just to sweet and I just can't wait to spend some time with my sweet friend!! I am so excited for her and Billy who go to the clinic on Monday for their FDA required labs and the required sperm freezing..Then the next step for her is STIMS!! We are getting so much closer!!

Posted on 1.6.2007 at 4:17 PM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

12.23.2006

Mock cycle ends!!

Well I should of had my biopsy on Dec the 1st.. However even though we had made the appt a full month in advance the Dr decided the risk was to much and referred me back to the RE he said he we should of had a consult before the biopsy. Well his staff refused to see us before saying that it was not neccassary.. So he was running late for a delivery and he ran out. I had to scramble to get to another last min Dr.. So I called the fertility center in Wichita who agreed to see my the following Monday (the 4th) and do the biopsy.. So we ended up going to Wichita Monday the 4th for the biopsy which was performed then sent off the Johns Hopkins.. The results were good the drugs were working just like they should!! We could proceed.. The social worker part was not for us... We hated it.. She had her own ideas about the way a perfect surrogacy should be and we had our idea's about what would work for us .. She wanted us to only speak to each other once every ten days.. She didn't want me to take HPT's (yea right) and If I "must" to not even think about telling Melissa about the results.. I can't imagine not telling her anything having to do with her pregnancy and her children... Anyhow she "tried" to micro manage us but we are independent for a reason we don't want to be told how to conduct OUR surrogacy journey... Anyhow we were waiting on the final report as well as a troubling CMV result.. I had tested positive but the first clinic I transferred with labs sais I was negative.. Which meant I had been exposed to this virus (which cause complications for newborns) this was troubling we needed to wait until I tested negative before proceeding well we repeated the test only for it be exactly the same result as before which was puzzling it would mean a recent exposure.. So we talk about having a different lab test and see if we had a change.. Well the NC decided to call the clinic and come to find out there was a the same lab error TWICE and I was actaully negatvie.. Sooo we are about ready to cycle as soon as the final report from the social worker is complete...

Posted on 12.23.2006 at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

11.21.2006

Lining check today!!

Well, today I had my lining check for our mock cyle... I had a prefect triple stripe (3 distinct layers of your lining this is what they are looking for) It also measured between 12 and 13mm they like it to be above 8mm so we are good!! I had E2 levels drawn today but I don't have those results yet.. Hopefully we are okay and I will start progesterone tommorow!! We are one step closer to making Melissa and Billy parents!!

Posted on 11.21.2006 at 9:09 PM | Comments (0) | Permanent Link

11.10.2006

Mock cycle begins!!!

Well today our Mock cycle begins!! I start taking Delestrogen injections to build my lining. I will take these every 3 days until my lining is built then I will start PIO (progesterone) then I will have a biopsy.. So we are taking our next step woohooo......

Posted on 11.10.2006 at 3:23 PM | Comments (1) | Permanent Link