Wednesday, September 05, 2018

When Miracles Happen

It's been a long time. I was writing very consistently until everything changed and I didn't know how to write about it. I also didn't want to jinx anything.

Where did I leave off? I'll sum up and try to keep it short. We were looking for a surrogate. We found a surrogate in New Brunswick through an agency. Going the independent route didn't work out and it just seemed easier to have a "middle-man" to deal with payments. She seemed wonderful. But everything was stressful. All the medical tests she had to do, the healthcare system in New Brunswick we learned was terrible and inaccessible, the costs involved with our fertility clinic, the agency was difficult to work with, the clinic also became difficult to work with, and I felt like everything was against me becoming a mom. Contract negotiations were also taking forever (a document that takes at least 3 hours to read). Summer 2017 was not fun, very stressful, and I wasn't feeling well health-wise. The only thing keeping me going was our canoe trips on the summer long weekends to give us a break from the chaos.

After putting it off forever, I decided that I would start another IVF cycle to create more embryos. This would be my 7th egg retrieval. I didn't know how many tries we would need from the surrogate and was also thinking of future children. Since I don't have a cycle, the new plan was to take the birth control pill for 2 months before starting the IVF cycle. The standard protocol is to go in to the clinic for a beta test (pregnancy test) before starting any cycle / meds. My in-laws were in town from Israel and I honestly just didn't have the willpower to go in. Why do a blood test that's going to be negative? So I was about to start the pill when something in the back of my mind told me to just pee on a stick.