Michael's Surrogate Experience

How Car Seats and Poop Affect Me

2012-02-03T15:59:00.000-06:00

There isn't much to report and yet I feel like I have so much going on. I guess I should say that there isn't much going on that is newsworthy.

I called the hospital and took care of some more paperwork. I have a very nice contact there who has been extremely helpful to the point that I want to find her boss to praise her. I called a pediatrician's office so that we can have a pediatrician check on the kids when they are born because the pediatrician we picked doesn't have privileges at the hospital where they will be delivered. I got more money sent off to my escrow account. Chloe did her gestational diabetes test and it turned out to be negative so that was good news for her and the babies. I picked up some more hours at work so hopefully I'll make my 1,250 hours and qualify for FMLA. The registries are set although Derek and I still have to pick cribs and mattresses.

According to Jewish tradition we're not suppposed to have anything in the house until the babies are born. A few thousand years ago when people made their own clothing and only breastfed that might have worked fine. Nowadays I need my binkies, boppies, bottles and blankies the first day the babies come home. I have been resistant to having too much in the house but at 30 weeks it is time to prepare.

My wonderful cousin, Wendy, bought us the car seats from the registry. They arrived yesterday and it was exciting and a little scary to bring them into the house. Yes, we have a couple of other Target packages that were sent to our home, but there's nothing identifying them as having baby stuff. The car seats are clearly marked.

This may seem melodramatic, but it was kind of a big deal for me. It was one more moment (a big moment) that makes being a father seem a little more real to me. There are moments when it still doesn't seem real, but seeing proof every day will help me know that my dream is coming true.

Tomorrow I'm taking my first parenting class. My friend learned about the different kinds of poop when she took her class. Poop is my kryptonite. At work I'll see a festering wound or watch blood spurting out of body parts without batting an eye, but poop makes me want to run out of the room. I've built up some tolerance since adopting cats. I have built up more tolerance since moving in with Derek. No...don't go there; it's not what you think. Derek has a cat who doesn't cover his rather smelly poops. I'm sure, though, nothing will prepare me for the first "poo-nami" or "lolla-poop-looza." I did just take a baby poop test at http://www.babyzone.com/baby/care/diapers-digestion/quiz/baby-poop-iq and got a 26 our of 33 so it says I'm a pro when it comes to poop.

On a lighter note, it looks like most people think that I'm having a boy and a girl. We have a few weeks left to guess. And, if you're up for guessing some specifics, guess their birth weight, length, and date at ExpectNet.com. The link is on the right side of my blog. I just changed my vote. Keep in mind the babies were a lot heavier than average babies at the last ultrasound, they have leg bones that were measured around the 90th percentile and they will be here one way or another by about 38-ish weeks which is March 28th although my OB is on call that weekend so it could be pushed to a few days later.

The Good, The Bad, And The Lovely

2012-01-27T12:50:00.000-06:00

The Good News

I went to another appointment on Wednesday with my surrogate and got another ultrasound. We had Jocelyn who is the technician who prints a million pictures for us -- OK, not a million, but 26. The babies are growing. Remember way back when Chloe's uncle used to put his hand on her stomach and say, "Grooooooooow baby"? Well, it worked. The babies, according to the fruit tracker, should be the size of a cabbage and two and a half pounds. They are 3lbs 13oz and 3lbs 14oz. Yikes! They're in the 83rd and 84th percentile. They have plenty of fluid and the low-lying placenta has moved up enough that it is now not an issue. The only problem is that Baby A has decided to go butt first again. Hopefully he/she will go head down at the next ultrasound. We still have about 5 more weeks of twisting and turning to try to avoid a c-section.

The Bad News

I went to H.R. a couple days ago to file for FMLA for when the babies come. I want my paternity leave and my boss was bugging me to go do the paperwork. I explained to H.R. that I wanted to take several weeks off and asked what I had to do. The woman who runs that program checked my hours and said I was probably ineligible.

Excu-sa-wha-huh-come-again???

Yep...that's right. I work part-time for a hospital. I work 20 hours a week which comes out to 1,040 hours a year. In order to qualify for FMLA I have to work at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months preceding my leave. As luck would have it I am very, very, very close to 1,250 hours because I grab every bit of overtime I can possibly get. But my broke hospital is clamping down on any overtime so I probably won't be able to get FMLA.

What does that mean? It means that I can take all my PTO at once IF my supervisor approves many weeks off all at once or I can take Personal Leave of up to 90 days IF my supervisor approves that. However, neither one of those provides me with job protection and with the money situation I'm hoping my paternity leave doesn't make for a good excuse to make it a permanent leave.

Gotta love our amazing Congress for making such "family friendly" laws. Apparently parents who work less than 24 hours a week don't need time off to care for their children.

The Lovely News

Oh, and the other piece of news is that I asked Chloe if she wanted to attend the baby shower and she immediately said yes. Maybe I'm over-analyzing it, but she seemed excited to come so thanks to everyone who told me that I should invite her. My lovely friends who are hosting the shower are planning on giving her a book full of thank you notes and one friend mentioned making a basket full of things to pamper her. I think it will be nice to have her there.

The Grandmothers To Be

2012-01-25T18:40:00.000-06:00

Last week the real machatunim met. Yes, it's true my previous posting used the word machatunim wrong. There really is no Yiddish word for the mother of the surrogate carrying your baby. Guess the Yiddish language couldn't keep up with the changin' times. The machatunim is really the relationship between the parents of the two children who are in the relationship.

The last night we were all together we went out to dinner. There were seven of us and we were sitting at a long table. My mother and Derek's mother were at one end across from each other. I was having my own conversation so I only heard bits and pieces of their conversation, but I loved what I heard.

I know they were talking about having to explain their sons' situation to their friends. It's something I hadn't thought about too much, but I get that explaining that their gay son is in a relationship with another man and they're asking a stranger to donate eggs and another stranger to carry their babies isn't always the easiest topic to bring up to people in their 60s, 70s or 80s. Of course they're thrilled to be grandmothers, but at the same time there is a "coming out" process for them too and their joy in telling people becomes more apparent every day.

They talked about how wrong it is for anyone to judge them or their sons. They have announced to the world that they will be grandmothers. They are proud of what their children are doing. (Yes, Mom, I was eavesdropping a little.)

In a world where some families hide, don't talk about, don't talk to, or punish their children for being gay, it's nice to know that we have some pretty awesome mothers -- and fathers too.

To Invite Or Not To Invite, That Is the Question

2012-01-21T21:17:00.000-06:00

I recently read an article asking if the constitution still mattered. The writer wondered what the constitution would say about Libya, the debt ceiling, Obamacare and immigration. The gist of the article, if I remember correctly, was that the founding fathers could never predict that we would have fights about universal health care and whether or not to build a huge fence to protect our borders. In 1787 when the constitution was written (thank you Schoolhouse Rock for teaching me that) issues that we face today were not on anyone's radar.

Well, now I face an issue Miss Manners could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. As the baby shower approaches, Derek and I wonder if the surrogate should be invited or not. Is it nice to include her because she is a major part of this process? Is it hard for a surrogate to see all the baby clothes and toys knowing that she won't get to dress them and play with them? What would Ann Landers say? Our friends are planning on making some sort of sentimental gift for Chloe regardless of whether or not she comes. They're thinking of some sort of collection of letters telling them how grateful they are for what she is doing for Derek and me. Is that a good idea?

Since a lot of surrogates and IPs read my blog, I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts, advice, experience with this? Of course every IP-surrogate relationship is different so we'll have to make a final decision on our own, but I could use a little advice from my online family.

First a Liebster, Then a Tony, Then an Oscar!

2012-01-20T22:27:00.000-06:00

When I was 14 years old I went to a theater camp. (There's a documentary called "Stagedoor" about that camp but even better is a movie called "Camp" loosely based on the real camp.) At the end of every session there was a fake Tony award for best actor, actress, cast, etc. I am proud to say I won Best Ensemble Member in a Musical (Pippin 1990), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Annie, 1991) and Best Lead Actor in a Musical (Once Upon a Mattress, 1991). However, those plastic, gold colored "Tony" awards mean nothing compared to the Liebster awards I just won.

I'm now one-fifth of my way to my LEGOT. For those of you who don't get the reference, a few seasons ago on 30 Rock an actor was trying to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. Well, I'll do even better by getting those AND a Liebster.

Thank you so much to Jeni from Love Makes a Family and the lovely ladies at Life on Prescott Street for the award. Jeni will definitely get a role in my musical and I am happy to give the Prescott Street ladies all the advice they're willing to take when they are blessed with their own, precious bellyfish.

The Liebster Blog Award is an award for bloggers with less than 200 followers who deserve more recognition.

Liebster is a German word that means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’, but can also mean ‘favorite’. The idea of the award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers.

The Award comes with a few rules. You’re supposed to:
§ Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them
§ Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
§ Post the award on your blog
§ Bask in the love from the most supportive people in the blogosphere – other bloggers
§ Hope your recipients pass the award to their 5 favorite blogs to keep the love flowing

I don't like that I only get five recipients. I'm a very indecisive person and I don't like the idea of singling out only five blogs from the amazing people I've been following online for the past year. But rules are rules so I will comply. Besides, I think most of the surrogates and IPs' blogs I wanted to mention have already won Liebster awards, so here are some a few non-baby-makin' blogs.

Drum Roll Please...

And the Liebster Award goes to...

1. Since I was inspired to start writing because of the whole Julie & Julia thing, I want to share the modern day version of it. Carly isn't cooking an entire book of recipes. Who has time for that with a job and a baby??? But she is sampling every single-serving frozen meal out there. She hasn't posted in a while, but maybe this award will make her realize she has fans waiting for the next entry. Check her out at A Girl's Gotta Eat.

2. If frozen meals aren't your style and you want to cook for yourself, you should check out The Amazing Shrinking Actor. Chase has lost almost 150 lbs. to date and he provides some great advice on weight loss and sometimes a couple tasty recipes too. Give him some support and you'll get support in return.

3. As a former actor who did two years of touring shows I know how great it can be to see the entire country. If you don't have 9 free months and a few thousand dollars to see it on your own, follow the adventures of a super actress/interpreter at New Adventures and see what she discovers.

4. I couldn't resist adding a couple of surrogacy blogs and I don't think this blog has won a Liebster yet. There is one particular entry that really touched me and this link goes directly to that day. Chelle is so passionate about having a successful pregnancy for her IF and you can see it in her blog 4 St@r Womb. She's starting another cycle very, very soon so let's all keep her in our thoughts as the day approaches.

5. The last award goes to a blogger who is dear to my heart, Tiffany - otherwise known as Michaela in the "Michael and Michaela" movie/musical/mini-series. This particular entry from No Womb At the Inn shows how our lives became connected for the third time. Tiffany and I started our journeys around the same time, found strength in each other, cried together when things didn't work, yelled together when we we angry at the world, laughed together at the craziness we endured, and now we can celebrate our successes together as two families. Her story has ended, but it's worth reading again and again.

Thank Goodness for Mark Zuckerberg

2012-01-11T15:01:00.000-06:00

I did it. I took that little gun and went zap, zap, zap. My friends and their two year old met Derek and me as well as Kirsten and Marty (who are quickly becoming stars in this movie/Broadway musical since I know you're all becoming more and more invested in their story) and we went to the bastion of baby needs: Babies R Us. All I can say to any future parents is that you need to take someone with you who has a baby.

My friends told me how many blankets we need (a lot), whether fancy Pack 'N Plays are worth the money (they're not), wipe warmers are necessary (babies love them), what socks are best (triple cuff so babies don't kick them off) and more. Kirsten and Marty and Derek and I were in awe of this dynamic duo of CC & KK who made their way through the aisles of baby paraphernalia like pros.

By the end of the experience my head was swimming. I had seen strollers, cribs, clothes, bedding, toys, books, and even little booger suctions. I think had CC and KK not been there I would have been found at closing time curled up in a ball in a corner and quietly weeping.

We made it through most of the small stuff but Derek and I were still trying to decide on a crib. We had heard everything from "Get it on Craig's List" to "Spend $1600 on an Amish, all-wood crib -- it's worth it." This is the reason I am grateful to Mark Zuckerberg.

This morning, about 7:30am, I asked about cribs on my Facebook status. I asked if I really needed something that was $1000+. Within a few hours I had about 10 opinions telling me that almost any crib is fine and the most important thing is to make sure there are no recalls on it. People had hand-me-downs, IKEA cribs, or cribs that were a few hundred dollars that they used for 2 or 3 kids and they all worked. One friend's response to buying an Amish crib was, "And yet many non-Amish still raise kids just fine." So thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for helping me get a lot of answers quickly.

Also, my hormones are so out of whack I cry at everything. I think it all started with the gift registry. That day meant that this is real. This is really happening...and soon. This has been a long and emotional journey where the stakes are among some of the highest we face in life. There have been heartaches and, as one other blogger put it, we put up walls to protect ourselves. Now, the wall is starting to crack and it's exciting and scary and wonderful all at the same time.

To show you how bad my crying has become I'll tell you a story about crying at a sitcom. Yes...a sitcom. I know. I'm supposed to laugh. Derek would agree with you and didn't know why I would cry at a sitcom. Allow me to defend myself.

The sitcom was "Up All Night." If you don't know the show, it's about a couple who recently had a baby. I've started watching it to get pointers -- often I learn what not to do. If watching a show about taking care of a newborn wasn't enough to make me cry, this particular episode was a flashback to the birth. (Are you starting to understand my side now?) The parents were on their way to the hospital and started realizing it was their last few minutes on earth not being parents. They wanted to remember their lives before they changed forever. (Are YOU tearing up now?) During labor the mother wanted to give up but got strength from a supportive husband and knowing that she would soon see the face of her child allowed her to push the baby out. In the end they were holding an adorable baby girl as a happy family.

How could you not cry at that?

I Met the Machatunim

2012-01-04T17:04:00.000-06:00

What the heck is a machatunim?

Yeah, I know I better explain that first before I continue.

Machatunim is a Yiddish word meaning the in-laws. I didn't really meet the in-laws last Thursday. I've already met Derek's family. (Although this month my family will meet his family for the first time and I'm so excited for that.) On Thursday I met Chloe's mother. Chloe had previously mentioned that her mother had been wanting to come to an appointment. I'm not sure if it was just to see the ultrasound or to meet Derek and me or support her daughter or a combination of everything. It was fun to meet her. Here's what I took away from that experience:

1. Chloe's mom is excited for this pregnancy. She talked about feeling the babies kick and how great it is to watch the babies grow.

2. During the ultrasound she got up to get a closer look at the monitor and afterwards she was looking at the picture (we only got one, measley picture of Baby B that day -- how sad).

3. She seemed truly excited for Derek and me.

It's this third one that really gets me. Once again I am amazed by the lack of judgement of our situation. As Derek and I start shopping for cribs and strollers and get ready to register we "out" ourselves and our situation more and more. I expect to get that surprised look on people's faces for a second as they readjust to understand they're talking with two dads; they don't. We're not so special any more. We're commonplace in (parts of) America (and the world).

Speaking of shopping, my friends with a 2 year old are taking Derek and me (and Kirsten and Marty of the kirstenmartingadopting.com fame from my last post) to register at Babies R Us this weekend. There is so much to learn: stollers, cribs, car seats, monitors, clothes, toys, bottles, etc. I'm sure we'll be overwhelmed but we have to start soon. Wish us luck and make recommendations if you want.

Also, a little update on the babies. They're big. Oh, and I don't mean big for twins -- I mean big for singletons. Poor Chloe. With every measurement I became more concerned for her. The babies are each over 2 lbs. The ultrasound technician measured their femurs and heads so we got four numbers based on the size of a singleton. I can't remember all four numbers but I believe they ranged from the 72nd percentile to the 92nd percentile. My dad has long legs. I have long legs. I'm not so worried about the femurs and sort of expected tall kids. (I believe the 92nd percentile was for a femur, not a head circumference.) It's the large heads that are tough. Women who have given childbirth can attest to that. I had a kidney stone so I have some idea of what birth is like (don't argue...people say the pain is similar!) so I'm worried for Chloe. The doctor said she is measuring at 31 weeks even though we're only at 25. We go to 38 weeks and after that the babies are coming out one way or another. One piece of good news is that the larger baby will most likely be born first and doctors like it that way. Plus baby A was not breech this time so hopefully he/she will continue to have his/her head down. We also got to listen to the heartbeats for the first time. I've heard so many heartbeats while interpreting appointments but it's different when it's your own. That sloshing, whooshing sound is beautiful when it's your own kids.

The last piece of news is that Derek proposed to me. We took a "we-need-one-last-time-to-ourselves" vacation and Mexico and he proposed on the balcony of our hotel overlooking the ocean. It was pretty awesome. We had already known that we were committed to each other, but I have to say there is something pretty amazing to have someone tell you that you are the one person in the world who they want to be with for the rest of their lives. Kinda makes ya feel special!

A Different Kind of Wish

2011-12-30T17:19:00.003-06:00

This is the time of year we hear about wishes. We hear children wishing that they get presents from Santa, people wishing to be home for the holidays with their families and everyone wishing everyone else a happy new year. All of us in the surrogacy community are wishing for happy, healthy babies too. But let's not forget all the soon-to-be parents out there going through adoption and their wishes too. For an unknown amount of time they hope that their phone will ring bringing them the news that their baby is on his or her way not knowing if they'll have 4 months or 4 days to get ready.

I recently wrote a blog talking about how lucky I felt to have twins on the way. Too many amazing, caring, wonderful people have not had the success I have had in this crazy process of having babies. This process is so random and a lot of luck is involved. My friends Kirsten and Marty are still holding their lotto tickets hoping that their lucky number will come up. My wish for this year is that someone is able to help them achieve their dream.

Marty and Kirsten are looking to adopt a newborn. You would think such an amazing couple would have been picked by a birth mother long ago. Kirsten has been a great friend of mine for about 8 years. She is intelligent, compassionate, very giving and a great actress who played my sister in a show and has since become like a sister to me. She is one of those rare people in this world who really values quality over quantity. She chooses to use her time to work on valuable projects and social justice and I know if she becomes a mom she will dedicate her time to her ultimate role as a mother while instilling quality values in her child.

I have known Marty almost as long as I have known Kirsten and he has been a wonderful, caring provider and a loyal friend who is always willing to lend a hand and give support. He has a gift of looking at a situation and seeing all sides while using both rational thinking and compassionate emotions. He has dealt with adversity and always managed to confront it with a smile.

Kirsten and Marty have learned that one of the best ways to adopt a child is through networking. They have asked me to publicize their webpage and Facebook page among my small but growing number of blog readers who understand the strong desire to become a parent. It doesn't matter where you live—they can adopt from any U.S. state. Please check out their beautiful website and spread the word to help a lucky child connect with some amazing parents-to-be in one or more of the following ways...

1) Email them your contact names at kirstenmartyadopting@earthlink.net. Their counselor tells them that the best referrals are OB/GYNs and family doctors. If you have the names and contact information for any of your doctors, they’d be really grateful to receive those names or other leads. They’ll send the doctors a nice letter introducing ourselves, and then no pestering them after that -- they promise.

2) Visit and share their updated website: http://www.kirstenmartyadopting.com/ Can you think of 3-5 people with whom you could share this link? Good choices would be people with large networks of friends/family, and people who regularly come into contact with young women (the typical birthmother in successful adoptions is in her early 20’s).

3) “Like” their Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kirsten-and-Marty-Adopting/175460612502343?sk=info%3E, and share the page with your Facebook friends.

Thanks in advance for any help. I know 2012 will be a great year for me. I hope 2012 is a great year for Kirsten, Marty and all of you bloggers out there. Some of you recently got your wish, some are like me and are waiting for the wish to arrive, and for those of you still wishing, I hope you have the opportunity to wish again and it comes true this time.

I Need an Interpreter

2011-12-12T13:41:00.000-06:00

One thing that you should know about me before you read this posting is that I am an interpreter. I spend my days running around the city interpreting anything and everything you could imagine. Seriously, you imagine it, I've probably been asked to do it or I've actually done it. I have interpreted high school and college classes in every subject imaginable, training for people who do taxes, 12-step recovery program meetings, discussions on transubstantiation and world religions, traffic court and mediation meetings, psychological assessments, and even a couple classes in Spanish even though I'm not a Spanish interpreter. Very little phases me any more. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, psychologists, rabbis and anyone else can throw out terminology and I've probably heard it or can deduce the meaning and provide an accurate interpretation.

Then I went shopping for baby strollers and car seats. I needed an interpreter. Here's what happened...

On my stroll through the city to run some errands and head to work I passed a couple of baby stores. I went in one because I wanted to see if they had that bed that grows with your baby I've heard about. Sure enough they did. Well, the saleslady told me that ordering a crib can take 10-12 weeks. I was taken aback by that since the babies are probably coming in about 15 weeks. Maybe I was in a state of shock and that's why my brain wasn't working when I went into the next store to discuss car seats and strollers.

The salesgirl at that store talked so fast my brain couldn't keep up. There was one sentence that was all gibberish to me. All I remember was hearing something that sounded like

You can use an InfantRoundaboutBSafeConvertibleAdvocateMarathon
CombinationBoosterClickAndSafeHarness and put it in your GracoTrekkoMountainBuggyDuoGliderWheelCityMiniTandemSportSnapAndGoBritaxDoubleWideDeluxeSwivelSideBySideBugaboo in silver, blue, onyx, paisley, cavalier, gray, navy, cardinal, crimson, red or cowmooflage."

Really? Cardinal, crimson AND red??? Do babies even care? (I know...it's the parents who care.) And just what the heck is cawmooflage? You know designers spent years coming up with just the right Holstein cow pattern worthy of being called cowmooflage.

Oh...and it's only $600 if you don't want any of the attachments.

Years ago, before we had all these laws and choices, kids were rolled through town in a wheelbarrow or rode on the back of a mule or were strapped to the back seat of a car with duct tape? (Kidding!)

Luckily my friend with twins (who is an interpreter) invited me over to her house to meet her kids and talk about parenting twins. She helped explain the stoller and crib situation. Whew. Hopefully I won't have another breakdown until I try to put together the crib or install the car seat. I've heard you need a degree in rocket science to do those.

The Award Winning All-Star Broadway Musical Which Will Be a Blockbuster Movie and (Maybe) a Mini-Series

2011-12-07T14:18:00.000-06:00

If you've been reading my blog from the beginning you'll know that I started out joking that my story would be the next "Julie and Julia" entitled "Michael and Michaela". "Michaela" has been going through surrogacy too and I'm thrilled to say that yesterday she became the mother of a baby girl. I couldn't be happier for her and her husband.

Since you can't make it through this process (or any pregnancy) without a little humor, "Michaela" and I (with the help of some Facebook friends and now YOU) have been writing this Broadway musical/movie/mini-series. The descriptions of the songs are from the writers and you can see who gets credit for each song. This will be updated periodically as the cast and song list change and hopefully it will be completed at the birth of my children. Please feel free to make comments and suggestions for casting and song titles.

CAST LIST

Michael: Me!
Michaela: Amy Adams
Derek: Neil Patrick Harris
Aaron (Michaela's husband): Matthew Broderick
Michael's first egg donor: Mayim Bialik
Michael's second egg donor: Lea Michele
Michael's third egg donor: Natalie Portman
Chloe (Michael's surrogate): Jennifer Hudson
Lisa (Michaela's surrogate): Ashley Judd
Dr. K. (Michael's doctor): Hugh Jackman
Nurse Ratchet: Glenn Close
Michaela's doctor: Judy Greer
Michael's friends: Kathy Griffin, Jason Bateman & Eva Mendes
Michaela's friends: Ryan Reynolds and Tina Fey
Michael's parents: Carol Burnett and Martin Short

CREATIVE TEAM

Director: Steven Spielberg
Music and lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Choreographer: "Michaela"

SONG LIST

"Makin' Babies in the 21st Century" - A song featuring porn, pipettes and petri dishes. (written by Michaela)

"Matchmaker" - A cover from Fiddler on the Roof with all new lyrics about finding the right egg donor and surrogate for Michael and Michaela. (written by Michaela)

"A Game of Telephone" - The joy of contract negotiation between two strangers via two lawyers in which messages are hilariously misinterpreted (written by Michaela)

"I'll Leggo My Eggos For You" - Several of Michael's absolutely amazing friends all offer him their eggs to help start his family. (written by Michael)

"Shootin' Up" - A raucous, western/country-esque song sung by Michaela and the egg donors and surrogates about the process of producing eggs and getting ready for the transfer. (written by Michaela)

‎"Circles of Life" - A song about the round shapes of eggs and the Life cereal Michael's friends ate for him and Derek. (written by Allison O.)

"It's a Hard (To Get) Knock(ed Up) Life" - The cover from "Annie" sung by Michaela's doctor. (written by Michaela)

"One" - An uplifting and exciting tap number about the great odds of only needing one egg to stick. Of course, there will be sparkly hats. (written by Allison O.)

"Somewhere That's Fertile" - A song sung by fetus as it dreams of fertile uteruses (uteri?). There will be fog and projections of a fetus gallivanting joyfully through uterine lining a la fields of daisies! Too gross...? (written by Allison O.)

"(It's all about) Pluses and Minuses" a duet/power ballad sung by Michael and Michaela as they await the results of their many pregnancy tests, while also contemplating the pluses and minuses of surrogacy and questioning whether or not they will ever become parents. (written by Michaela)

"Nobody Puts Baby (or Michael) in the Corner" - A sensitive and climatic power ballad that comes right before intermission and communicates Michael's determination to have a baby. Of course, since it's right before intermission, the entire cast will slowly enter and join in the song a la Fame's "Hard Work Reprise". (written by Allison O.)

"The Wicked Witch of the Womb's Lament" - Michael's nurse's song showing her true, inner feelings that's sure to win the hearts of the audience as well as a Grammy. (written by Michael)

"It's Not Over 'Til It's Ova!" - a second-act, buck-'em-up rousing song. (written by Thomas S.)

"Grooooooooow Baby" - Chloe's tender ballad hoping that the eggs stick. (written by Michael)

"Baby's Goin' to Beauty School" - Derek and Michael's duet realizing the babies can't go to Harvard because this process is draining their college fund. (written by Derek)

"Out There"- The fetus' song where they dream of what's beyond the goo. (written by Thom S.)

"Pushin' Real Hard" - a revival-esque gospel number about the birthing process sung by Chloe and the whole cast. (written by Michaela)

The Wee-Wee or Hoo-Ha Appointment

2011-12-03T12:07:00.001-06:00

I hadn't seen my surrogate for almost 6 weeks. She had mentioned to me that she was showing. She had to order the pregnancy uniform for work because she was showing so much. When she walked into the waiting room on Wednesday she didn't look that big. She certainly had a baby bump, but it wasn't huge.

Then we entered the ultrasound room and she raised her shirt. Her stomach was big. I don't know what a typical 21 week stomach looks like, but it was bigger than I thought would be.

Yes...I know it's twins. I know she is going to get big. But at only slightly more than halfway through I'm concerned. I'm afraid she's going to be on bed rest by week 30.

The ultrasound technician, who I really liked and who will be the ultrasound tech for us for the rest of the pregnancy and might even make a cameo in the Michael/Michaela musical/movie/mini-series/Broadway blockbuster, asked if Derek and I wanted to know the genders of the babies. We said no. Well, I had said from the start of the while process that I didn't want to know and Derek is OK with that. I wanted to make sure they each have 10 fingers and 10 toes, a couple of arms and legs each and a healthy spine, brain, heart and all those other important body parts. I couldn't care less about the wee-wee or the hoo-ha. (Those are the official terms. I'm a medical interpreter so I should know.) The technician said if it were a singleton baby the 20 week ultrasound would be the last one, but because it's twins we'll have ultrasounds every 4 weeks to make sure they're growing appropriately. I could ask for the sex during a future ultrasound, but I'm 99% sure I won't.

I got to work after the ultrasound and some co-workers were looking at the pictures. I told them I hadn't asked to know if the babies were boys or girls or one of each. One friend said, "I'll look!" As she looked through the pictures she asked, "Where are all the crotch pictures??? Did you tell the tech to avoid the crotch?!?!?"

So instead of knowing, I'll let you all vote. On the right side of my blog is a game to cast your vote. Or, if you're a fan of guessing, you can click on the link for ExpectNet and then click on "Enter a Guess" to guess the babies' due date, length, weight, and gender. I'll even give you some pictures to help you decide. Are these boys, girls or one of each?

I've Won the Lottery

2011-11-23T15:06:00.000-06:00

Well, I didn't really win the lottery. I don't have a million dollars. But I do feel like I've won the lottery.

As I've gone through this process a lot of my friends have confided in me that they are going through similar struggles to start a family. Their reasons for not being able to have a child the "traditional way" are varied. It pains me to see some of my friends -- who would be amazing parents -- struggle as I have and not succeed. Anyone who has dealt with an infertility problem, for any reason, understands how high the highs are and also how low the lows can be.

Sometimes I wonder why I was the lucky lottery winner. I wonder why I was blessed with enough finances to pursue my dream. I wonder how I got the right combination of egg donor, sperm, surrogate, doctor, embryologist, lawyer, and agency. I wonder what I did to be blessed with twins. It's not that I doubt myself; I just wonder why luck can't hit every deserving person the way it hit me. Like a lot of things in life, this lottery isn't fair and it's unfortunate the game doesn't always reward hard work and good hearts.

I sincerely hope this entry isn't like pouring salt into a wound of those who are still waiting to see if their lottery ticket is a winner. I know sometimes it can be hard to celebrate a friend's success when you want to achieve the same dream and it hasn't come true yet. Maybe I'm writing this as a reminder to myself to be grateful during those days when I want to tear out my hair as the kids are screaming or talking back to me. Maybe I'm writing this to let my friends know that I understand what they are feeling and that I am there for them as they have been there for me. Maybe I'm writing this because on the internet will stumble across this posting and gain some hope. Who knows. For now I guess I'm just writing this to say thank you to all those people who helped me feel grateful this year.

This Is the Audience Participation Portion of the Blog

2011-11-16T13:37:00.000-06:00

Here we go, people. It's time for all of you "lurkers" (as you like to call yourselves) out there to get in the game. I know there are a lot of readers out there (10,244 hits so far) but not a lot of comments. Well, here's your chance to help me out with comments, suggestions, advice, etc. The babies are due April 11th and will probably arrive end of March because twins usually come early. Let the preparations begin!

1. The question I've been thinking about for a while is: What do children with two dads call their dads? Dad and daddy? Daddy 1 and Daddy 2? Daddy Michael and Daddy Derek? Brainy dad and brawny dad? (Derek and I decided on our second date he was the brains and I was the brawn because he beat me at a trivia game at Dave and Buster's and I beat him at skeeball and a snowboarding arcade game.)

2. Derek and I are looking to connect with parents of twins to learn more about what twins need. My big question is about the stroller. Anyone know good strollers for twins? Should we get the side by side kind or the front and back kind? Or should we just buy a large, loyal dog and strap the babies to the dog? Maybe a St. Bernard? What's the maximum weight a St. Bernard can carry? Is it worth investing in a miniature pony instead?

3. Should we buy stock in Pepridge Farm or General Mills? Will we go through more Goldfish crackers or Cheerios? Will it make a difference if we have boys or girls since boys use Cheerios as a target during potty training?

4. I have a long last name. How frustrated will a child get if he or she has a 16 letter hyphenated last name vs. a 10 letter last name?

5. Derek and I will most likely become regulars at Babies 'R Us very soon. What should we definitely get? What was a waste of your money? Do you know of a good brand of car seats? What about those beds that grow with your baby? How many binkies do we need? And why on earth does no one use the word pacifier anymore? And is it a binky or a binkie? Inquiring minds want to know.

6. Derek keeps talking about matching outfits for the twins. I say no. Pick a side. Take a stand. This is like toilet paper rolls going over vs. under, Team Jennifer vs. Team Angelina or Team Edward vs. whatever that vampire guy's name is. (Wait...is Edward the vampire? I don't know and I don't care. I don't have a teenage daughter.)

7. Now that the twins can hear, Derek got us a lullabelly and our amazing surrogate said she would use it. While Derek and I have our own favorite childhood stories we want to read, we'd love to know your favorite stories too. What books should we read to the twins? Goodnight Moon? The Hungry Caterpillar? Samuel L. Jackson's Go the F**k to Sleep?

8. Lastly, but still an extremely important question, what can I do for my surrogate after the babies are born? I know every surrogate is different and has a unique relationship with her IPs so it's hard to know for sure what to do. Does anyone have any ideas? How do you thank someone for doing this? Any advice from IPs or surrogates? My surrogate and I both had said, at the start of this process, that we hope to be in touch and be friends. That is what is happening. We care for each other but we don't go out for lunch and call each other every week. I do hope to stay in touch with her after the babies are born and I think she would like to stay in touch with me. I've read surrogate blogs and the women are thrilled to see their IPs' dreams come true, but some have had a little bit of mixed emotions seeing their journey end. If you could tell your IPs anything, what would you want them to know?

I know my questions were silly and funny, but I really am looking for advice.

My Better Half

2011-11-11T09:53:00.001-06:00

I was just looking at the title of my blog and realized that I wrote it has taken one man and two women to make these babies. Well, I think I need to make a little amendment: it's really TWO men and two women.

If you have read my blog you have seen me mention Derek from time to time. Hopefully he won't mind me talking about him, but he's as much a part of this as anybody so I want to introduce you to him.

In December of 2009 Derek and I met online and I wasn't interested in dating. I was getting close to putting down my deposit with the surrogacy agency. After 10ish years of dating men who always said, "Those kids are so cute but I'm glad I don't have one" or "I love being an uncle so I can give the kids back to their parents at the end of the day" I had resolved (or maybe resigned?) myself to being a single parent. Derek had emailed me to say he was moving to Chicago and asked where he should live. Being the nice guy that I am, however, I emailed him back by answering his question. Done. Case closed. I wasn't going to date.

A few months later I got an email from him saying he was in Chicago. By this time I had already started with the surrogacy process and it was right around the time I got matched with my surrogate. I was even less interested in dating than when Derek had first contacted me. I wasn't going to date.

Well, this man kept emailing me. I would respond because he seemed like a nice guy and I didn't want to be rude. Plus, I am a sign language interpreter and it was great to see in his profile he is fluent in American Sign Language, but that alone wasn't enough to meet him. I wasn't going to date.

After two months of him "bothering" me I agreed to meet him so we could eat dinner, realize we weren't a match and finally he would stop contacting me. We had a great time and he asked to see me again. I still wasn't going to date.

We went out a few more times. He was nice. He was cute. He was smart! I didn't know if we were starting a relationship or not. I was resistant. Maybe I was going to date.

My birthday was three weeks after we met. That morning I emailed Derek and told him I was getting together with friends and he was invited to join us for dinner. He accepted. Thirty minutes before dinner I thought, "Oh *$#@!!! Someone is going to ask me how the baby making process is going and Derek will have no idea what is going on." So I asked to meet with Derek before he came into the restaurant. I told him of my plans to have kids. His response was, "I think that's wonderful." I said he could leave now before dinner and never call me again. Or he could eat dinner and then leave and never call me again. He stayed. Hmmm...maybe dating was a possibility.

For weeks I didn't believe he was OK with this twist in our relationship. I questioned if he understood what he was getting into. I worried that he didn't really want kids and I was wasting my time. I worried that he only wanted kids and didn't want me. I worried about anything and everything. (You all know me by now...that's just what I do!) And yet he stayed. We became closer. He told me that he had wanted to be a dad for a while. I think I could date him.

Over the last 18 months, as I've gone through the process, Derek has been added into the mix slowly but surely. At the beginning the kids were 95% mine, then 90%, then 80% and it has slowly worked its way down to 50/50. I entered this process alone and needed to protect my babies. Derek has now proven himself time and time again. He has been there for me through all the ups and downs. He helps coordinate doctor appointments and wakes up at 5 a.m. to go to transfers. He holds my hand as I hold my breath during ultrasounds. The babies are ours now. There are moments that I freak out realizing that I'm not in control all the time and I may have to make compromises about how to raise the babies, but I know these babies will be lucky to have both of us in their lives raising them together.

I love you, Derek. I can't wait for us to meet our babies.

Amazing Facts

2011-11-04T16:00:00.000-05:00

There's not a lot going on right now. I guess this really is the honeymoon trimester. Isn't that what people call it? We've made it past the scary first trimester and we're not at the "I-need-my-cell-phone-with-me-24/7-in-case-something-happens-at-3-a.m." phase. My lovely friend Michaela had a scare like that. Her surrogate thought she was in labor a month early and Michaela got on a plane only to find out it was a false alarm. But it was a good trial run. And in true Michaela fashion - since she always finds the bright side in this crazy journey - she said "next time, when it's for real, I'll remember to bring pajamas." Hope she doesn't mind me telling this story to you all.

Since I don't have much to say but I gotta keep all my internet fans out there entertained, here are some fun facts about babies, pregnancy and everyone's favorite topic of sex.

1. The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. While you can’t see skin cells or muscle cells, the ovum is typically large enough to be seen with the naked eye with a diameter of about a millimeter. The sperm cell, on the other hand, is tiny, consisting of little more than nucleus.

2. On any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Humans are a quickly proliferating species, and with about 4% of the world’s population having sex on any given day, it’s no wonder that birth rates continue to increase in many places all over the world.

3. The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Pregnancy hormones can cause mood swings, cravings and many other unexpected changes. Oddly enough, hormones can often affect the types of dreams women have and their vividness. The most common are these three types, but many women also dream of water, giving birth or even have violent or sexually charged dreams.

4. Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. While few babies are born with teeth in place, the teeth that will eventually push through the gums of young children are formed long before the child even leaves the womb. At 9 to 12 weeks the fetus starts to form the teeth buds that will turn into baby teeth.

5. Babies are always born with blue eyes. The color of your eyes depends on the genes you get from your parents, but at birth most babies appear to have blue eyes. The reason behind this is the pigment melanin. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.

6. Babies are, pound for pound, stronger than an ox. While a baby certainly couldn’t pull a covered wagon at its present size, if the child were the size of an oxen it just might very well be able to. Babies have especially strong and powerful legs for such tiny creatures, so watch out for those kicks.

7. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. When only a small fraction of the way through its development, a fetus will have already developed one of the most unique human traits: fingerprints. At only 6-13 weeks of development, the whorls of what will be fingerprints have already developed. Oddly enough, those fingerprints will not change throughout the person’s life and will be one of the last things to disappear after death.

8. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell. All life has to begin somewhere, and even the largest humans spent a short part of their lives as a single celled organism when sperm and egg cells first combine. Shortly afterward, the cells begin rapidly dividing and begin forming the components of a tiny embryo.

Astrology

2011-10-21T08:53:00.001-05:00

I'm not someone who really is into astrology. Years ago someone made my astrological chart. It was the really detailed kind of chart based not only on my birthday, but the time and the location of where I was born. I thought it was about 50% accurate and 50% totally off base.

My weekly emails about the pregnancy gave me a fun website to try. It tells you how parents and kids relate based on their signs. Do I really believe it? No. But it's fun to see what it says. Check out the link below to see your relationship with your child.

http://www.babycenter.com/horoscopeCompatibility.htm?r=pnc&sign1=gemini&sign2=aries

The twins' due date is April 11th or 12th (we've heard both) and twins usually come about 2-3 weeks early so I can pretty safely assume they'll be Aries. The website says this:

Your fun-loving spontaneity is the perfect foil for your Aries child's brash, independent spirit. You'll never tire of watching him meet, greet, and challenge the world in his inimitably courageous way. You both love bouncing from one attraction to the next, so getting out of the house is a must -- think bright, noisy places filled with lots of different people and diversions, like amusement parks, fairs, and other family fun centers.

On the rare occasion that you're home together, you can still let your little Aries explore at his own fast pace. With your energy, you should have no trouble keeping up! But you should pay attention, because this little one may be prone to burns and accidents. In general, some grounded energy is in order here, and you may need to rely on someone more levelheaded and practical to keep you two on a schedule.

Great. "Prone to burns and accidents." Like I didn't have enough to worry about already!

The Nicest Email

2011-10-20T13:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a crazy day at work. My co-worker wasn't in the hospital so I was pulling double duty and it was a busy day. By noon I was already exhausted and there was no end in sight. I still had plenty of running around to do.

About 3:00 pm I got the nicest email from my surrogate that just made me happy. She replied that she liked the doctor we just met and was OK staying with him which was good to hear since we needed to decide on a doctor, like, two weeks ago. That's one more thing off my to-do list.

The next part of her email made me relax so much more about this whole process. It gave me such insight into what "Chloe" was thinking. Here are the couple of lines from that email...

"Yeah, Im excited. This process- the spawning of life- is so cool to me. Seeing them move around so much is also exciting and very reassuring, especially since I cant feel them yet. I know you thank me all the time for doing this for you, but I thank you for allowing me to do this for you. Its like the longest, coolest, most important babysitting gig ever!!!"

I think I'll be calmer now knowing that she is so excited for me. It's sometimes hard for me to understand how a woman can do this for a stranger, but I'm glad that she is happy with her decision to be a surrogate and happy to work with me. The other surrogate blogs I have read have helped me see the emotions involved from their side too and I'm glad to know my surrogate feels similarly. Chloe also has a sense of humor about what's happening. Here's something else she said...

"I just got my "Your Pregnancy:15 weeks" email from BabyCenter and they said around this time the babies should be 2 1/2 ounces. These babies are 4oz already! I'm not scared yet, but geez. That's almost double. Well at least we know they arent malnourished."

Baby's Beautiful Bladder

2011-10-19T13:18:00.000-05:00

On Monday Derek and I went to the new doctor we picked with our surrogate. I liked him. More importantly, we got to see the babies again on an ultrasound. The technician was good and gave us information about what she was seeing. We saw a brain. Can you believe it? A freakin' brain including clearly delineated hemispheres! I was amazed. We also saw spines, arms, heads, fingers, legs, a stomach and a "beautiful bladder" according to the technician. In about 14 years, when the baby has become a typical, surly teenager, I think I might have to bring up what a beautiful bladder he/she had in front of his/her friends. ;-)

The big question was the genetic testing. I could go into all the pros and cons, but I won't. I'm a very (and I mean very) indecisive person. But I also make a decision and never look back. I'm 99% sure that I'm not going to do the genetic screening or testing for a bunch of reasons. There's still the 1% of me that wants to do it, but I'm hoping that will go away in time. It's also Derek's preference to not do the testing. It's nice going through this with someone. Although there are things that I will have to compromise having added an unexpected (and very welcomed) partner in all this , it's nice to have someone there to help make some tough decisions.

The other nice thing that happened was that "Chloe" said that she was scared of doing an amniocentesis. The contract is a little vague about whether or not I could compel her to undersgo the procedure. Regardless of what the legal is, I'm thrilled that she felt comfortable enough to voice her feelings to me. I don't know if other IPs feel this way, but I'm always trying to make sure Chloe feels appreciated and treated as a person, not an object in the contract. I think we're doing OK together. She was willing to rearrange her schedule a little to make sure Derek and I could make it to the ultrasound appointments and at the end of the appointment she gave me a hug. It's the little things like that that make me feel good about her taking care of my children. It makes me feel she is invested in me just as I am invested in her.

My blog has been kind of deep for a while so I've been looking to make a fun entry. I have been searching the web for a site with surrogacy cartoons and jokes and haven't found many. If anyone does find some jokes feel free to send them my way or write a comment with the link. For now, I just have one cute story from the "America's Funniest Surrogate Stories Contest"...

"I have been on Lupron for a week now, and it is my 4th time around, so my kids are used to seeing me inject myself. Well, the other morning, my son was being incredibly slow getting ready for school, and just ignoring everything I was saying to him. So I started yelling at him. He got to school late and upset, and I am yelling at him to hurry up and get to class. Just before he walked into the room, of course I gave him a hug and said I loved him. He looked at me like I was some sort of alien. His teacher asked to speak to me after school concerning something he had said. He told his teacher that I was sticking needles in me, and that I was acting funny again....oh my!! I envisioned CPS coming to my house to arrest this lunatic woman on drugs. I explained to his teacher, and we both had a good laugh, but for a brief second, I was worried!!!!"

The First 100 Days

2011-10-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the numbers on my baby counter at the top of the page and saw that we just passed 100 days. That's a lot. (For those of you privy to that joke, I hope you laughed a little.)

There are 179 days to go. Although in my world I always take off about 20 days since twins come about 3 weeks early. So we're down to about 160ish days. Some days that seems so far away. Some days it seems like I have no time at all before the babies get here. Today I watched a Tivo'd episode of "Parenthood" in which one character gave birth. I just cried as I thought, "I want these babies to be here now!!!" So today is a day when they can't here here fast enough.

This past week I completed my will as part of my requirements with the surrogate contract. Tomorrow or some time this week I'll be starting the paperwork to petition for parental rights. It's good to feel like I'm getting things crossed off my to-do list. Tomorrow we meet with a new doctor who should be qualified to deal with twins and surrogacy. Hopefully Derek and Chloe and I will all like him and his practice. We need to pick our doctor soon. Plus we get an ultrasound tomorrow so I'm excited to see Baby A and Baby B again. I hope they wave at us.

Since I'm feeling more relaxed about this whole process, I'll introduce you to Baby A and Baby B. Here are there first pictures.

August 17th, 2011

August 25th, 2011

September 6th, 2011 Baby A

September 6th, 2011 Baby B

Medical and Legal Blah Blah Blah -- The Most Boring Posting to Date I Believe

2011-10-10T14:55:00.002-05:00

There's always something new, right? The first trimester is done, but now there is genetic testing, finding out the sex (which I'm hoping to not do), delivery options, fear of the twins coming early, buying things for the nursery, baby proofing the home, finding a new home that accommodates everyone, etc., etc., etc. And this is before they even come! Lord knows how stressed out I'll be when I have to take them to their first day of school, put them on the bus to sleep away camp or let them get drivers licenses! I don't know how parents do it.

But you all would be proud of me. I'm accepting things as they come along. We had a little bit of a problem last week. Because my surrogate had spotting a couple weeks ago and ran to the doctor to get checked out we got off the normal check up schedule. Plus, her doctor wasn't the right doctor for a twin pregnancy so we had to find a new doctor and a new hospital for delivery. All of that made getting routine testing go off track. Now we're at week 13 and a half and, long story short, through a series of unfortunate events we are not able to do the nuchal translucency test (which is done on twins) because we waited too long.

At first I stressed out about this. After some time I realized that
1. The test only tells you the chance of a problem, it doesn't actually diagnose a problem.
2. There are a lot of false positives and false negatives so the test isn't very accurate.
3. Considering my history and age and the egg donor's history and age there is a very low chance of a problem.
4. Would knowing even make a difference to me? I'm not sure.

So we missed the window of opportunity for this test and there's nothing I can do. Derek and I have been talking about the miracles technology can do but also the curse of knowing too much. Sometimes it's best to just let nature take its course. We'll be able to do a blood test in another week or two and get mostly the same information.

Meanwhile, I have to start my application for parentage. I thought I was mostly done with the legal mumbo-jumbo, but no. My lawyer is going to make forms for the doctor to keep on file which basically say that I am the father and the birth certificate will say "gestational surrogate" where the mother is usually listed. I get copies and my surrogate gets copies too in case she delivers in an unplanned location and we need legal proof that the babies aren't hers. Illinois has some of the best laws protecting the parents (so my lawyer says) but it still is a pain to go through more legal stuff and it costs another $500. I've also been told that in IL we can do a second parent adoption even if the second parent is the same sex. Or, more likely, Derek and I will do a civil union. The laws are pretty murky, though, because everything is still new. I also have to have a will made in a few days as part of the agreement. I stumped my lawyer a little bit as he tried to find language to describe my relationship with Derek which is basically a husband and father to the kids without the legal rights...yet. If the stupid politicians would just grant equal rights to everyone these documents would be so much easier! But that's a posting for another blog.

Strange But True

2011-10-06T01:12:00.000-05:00

Before I write today's entry I just wanted to say to everyone that I appreciate you listening to my fears about this process and letting me get out my little neurotic outburst. After hearing from surrogates telling me how seriously they take their role and hearing from parents that they got their nails done and ate chocolate every day instead of broccoli and wound up with good, healthy kids I'm feeling much calmer now. As I think I've said once or twice before, I do like and trust my surrogate. I'm not saying my fears won't pop up again, but it's good to know with venting and support I can calm down.

I will say, too, that a couple weeks ago my surrogate had some spotting. She ran to the doctor to get checked out and then emailed me to say that she didn't want to scare me so she waited until she was examined by a doctor and everything was OK. I'm sure some people would have wanted to know right away, but since I am the worrier that I am it's probably best she handled it and told me later. That made me grateful that she was concerned enough to feel something was wrong and wanted to have a doctor see if everything was OK.

Plus, according to the baby calendar, we are starting the second trimester today. That is exciting and it's allowing me to get more excited about the process.

After I write a "heavy" entry I like to write something fun. So today's entry is all about the weird world of births.

1. One woman gave birth to twins who were each in a separate uterus. The statistics in the article don't really add up. It says there have only been about 100 cases worldwide but it affects one in every 2,000 women and one in every 5 million births. I know that there have been more than 500,000,000 births considering we currently have 6-7 billion people on Earth now. Maybe a statistician can explain what I'm missing. Well, whatever the numbers really are, it's kinda cool.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/andreea-barbosa-twins-uterus_n_971911.html?ref=healthy-living-health-news&ncid=webmail4

2. This next one is a story of a woman who gave birth to two sets of twins. Each time one was black and one was white. How amazing is genetics?!?! It's so rare there are no statistics on how often it happens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/andreea-barbosa-twins-uterus_n_971911.html?ref=healthy-living-health-news&ncid=webmail4

3. Finally, we have a bunch of different stories that you just have to read 'em to believe 'em. I won't summarize them. Just click on the link. You'll enjoy them like I did.
http://socyberty.com/society/six-unique-births-recorded-in-the-books-of-history/

My Online Family

2011-09-14T15:08:00.001-05:00

First of all, I know I haven't written in a while. When people in my life have asked about the pregnancy I've told them, but I've been hesitant to blog about it more. It's funny how the prompt to start writing came from total strangers. "Mike and Tony", whom I have never met, wrote a comment asking what was going on. It's amazing how this online family has started to feel more like a family. I feel like I've been through horrors of injecting lupron, the ups and downs of delivering triplets, the boredom of bedrest and more with my online "family" of surrogates and IPs. We all are pulling for each other and it's amazing to know that "Mike and Tony" (and others I'm sure) are invested enough in my life to want to know how my journey is going.

So here is the update...

I never thought I was very superstitious, but I'm learning that I really am. I recently saw an episodes of "Hoarders" in which a guy felt he couldn't throw out his dog's hair because it was like killing part of the dog. While I am more than happy to throw out and donate anything and everything I can, I can't judge the dog owner because I do silly things that I know aren't helping the babies grow, but I feel better knowing I do them.

1. I now have 3 ultrasound pictures and I won't take them out of my bag until the babies are born.

2. I have been nervous about blogging because we haven't made it through the first trimester yet but I'm happy to finally update my friends in the cyberworld because I know you've all been wondering what is going on.

3. I have a little wooden cat I bought a year and a half ago. I was in Epcot a couple months after starting my surrogacy journey and was waiting on line in the Japan store to buy something and saw these cats. The red cat was to bring luck for a healthy child. I bought it. Yes, Disney suckered me into it. I carry that cat around with me every day (when I haven't misplaced it...it's really small, y'all!).

4. I've already received a few baby gifts but they are with stored friends. Jewish superstition says you can't have a baby shower or buy baby gifts until the baby comes home. (In 2011 it's a little impractical but I don't plan to have anything in the house until we're well into the third trimester.)

5. I really want that cool "days left until the baby is born" countdowns some blogs have. How do I get that? (I'm already not as good as other parents. I can't figure out how to do that! LOL)

6. I wonder how I'll ever make it through parenthood if I'm this anxious already! :-)

I also bought my surrogate a pregnancy massage. I was hoping she could use it before the transfer but because of timing she wasn't able to do so. She tried to redeem the massage recently and was told she can't get the massage because twins are considered a high risk pregnancy. To get a massage she needs a note from her doctor. From what I've read, massages aren't a great idea in the first trimester. I'm hoping the doctor tells her to at least wait another month or just wait until she's close to giving birth. And my surrogate mentioned somthing about getting a manicure. While I know I can't control everything she does and I have to trust her, I've read that while a manicure isn't the worst thing, there are chemicals that are used that can be dangerous to a fetus. However, there's also the positive of feeling good and taking care of one's mental health. I'm sure if manicures were awful then we would have warning signs and no manicurist would be able to work for 9 months. So I'm concerned, but not super worried.

We're in week 10 now so we still have a month to go before I'll feel safe. But then we have testing and I'll worry about how they're growing. And in the third trimester I'll be worried that they'll come too early. (Are you all laughing at me and my neuroses yet?)

I'm wondering if a couple surrogates reading this blog might be able to answer a question. If your IPs asked you to do something/not do something (like take fish oil supplements, not get manicures, etc.) would you feel like the IP was micro-managing your life? Would you feel insulted? Would you be open to discussing the requests? Or maybe some IPs can talk about how you felt giving up control of the pregnancy to someone else. Overall I do trust my surrogate. I like her more and more every day and she has proven herself to be wonderful time and time again. I am thrilled to be matched with her. But as we get further along I worry more and want more control. That's just who I am. Of course every IP-surrogate relationship is different so I know there's not one right answer. Any thoughts from anyone could be helpful.

My surrogate contract does have a paragraph saying that the surrogate has to follow the doctor's orders and do things to not harm the baby. It's a very general statement. It also specifically states a few things are forbidden like changing kitty litter, but of course a contract can't address every situation that pops up in life during nine months. After reading an amazing article in Time magazine about how what happens in the womb can affect a person's life (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2021065,00.html -- read it if you're an IP who is not a worrier like me or if you want to be a surrogate who impresses her IPs) I want my surrogate to eat only organic broccoli and live in a bubble of purified air and have a magical unicorn as her best friend. (Hey...let me have me dream, people!)

I'll stop babbling. You get my point. I guess I just want to know how a surrogate might feel if I mentioned something about pedicures, hair dye, getting a massage, etc.

And to answer Mike and Tony's original question. The babies are fine, thank you again for asking. They have good, strong heartbeats and when I figure out how to add pictures to this blog I may be able to get some ultrasound pictures online.

Congratulations!

2011-08-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

I think my new favorite word in the English language is "congratulations." That's the word the nurse said when she left the message telling me that my surrogate was pregnant.

On Friday, August 5th, a nurse from the fertility clinic called to let me know the news. She left a message because I couldn't get to my phone when she called. I was working at my hospital when the message popped up so I called Derek and put him on speaker phone. I said I knew that the nurse had called and I didn't know if I should listen at that moment or wait until I was done with work. My amazing and supportive co-worker said that if I wanted to leave early I could so it was up to me if I wanted to hear the news at that moment or not. I vacillated for a minute or two and then decided I wanted to listen right away. So, my co-worker, Derek (who was on my work speakerphone) and I listened to the message on my cell phone (on speaker phone) and celebrated together. My co-worker was great and let me stop working for an hour or so while I processed the great news.

Now I'm going to try to remember these numbers but they may be wrong. I was never great with math. Math homework might be Derek's job.

My surrogate had an hCG (the pregnancy hormone) level of about 1,200 on Friday August 5th. The nurse said Chloe would have to go in again on Monday to make sure her hCG level kept increasing. The number should double approximately every 24-48 hours.

On Monday August 8th I got another call about 10 minutes before I was supposed to go into a job. I decided to answer it and heard the news. Chloe's hCG levels were up to about 3,800 so things were definitely going well. Then the nurse said something else to me. Chloe also had a sonogram that day and the doctors saw two sacs. So it looks like Chloe is pregnant with twins!

I was excited. Then scared. Then more excited. Then a little nervous. Then totally thrilled.

The nurse then explained that my doctor likes to do a third hCG test. So once again I had to wait for more results.

Yesterday, Thursday the 11th (which is my mother's birthday, by the way), I got a message saying Chloe's hCG level is up to almost 14,000. It was great that I could call my mom with such good news that day. And it was a relief to hear that everything is still progressing in the right direction.

I am starting to understand why people don't announce a pregnancy for the first few months. It's still so scary to get through this time and every time the phone rings I'm still holding my breath and praying for good news. But my lucky streak is still in full force. Soon Chloe and I will go in for an ultrasound and see what we can see. In the meantime, I really have to get around to buying that lottery ticket. I'm still having good luck and I'll need the money now that it looks like I'll be having twins.

I Should Go To Vegas

2011-07-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

This cycle has gone so well. I think I'd even dare to say phenomenally well. The numbers have been so good. Maybe I should go to Vegas or buy a lottery ticket since I'm on a lucky streak. The 15 eggs from the retrieval were a pretty good number. The fact that 13 of the 15 were mature was very good. The next stage was unbelievably amazing. I still can't get over the fact that all 13 fertilized. Five days later I knew I had five viable embryos which was a good number. It was the same I had last year. Only two embryos didn't make it the five days and six were still growing. I was hopeful that I would get one or two more from those six.

Well, yesterday my lucky streak continued. Out of those six that were borderline the embryologists were able to freeze four of them. And one of those even grew into a 4AB which is the second highest quality. The others were 4BB, 4BC and 4BC.

So from 15 eggs that were retrieved a total of nine survived. That's unreal. There is usually a 50% attrition rate for the fertilization stage and another 50% attrition rate during the five days between retrieval and transfer. I was thinking if I got four embryos I'd be satisfied. But nine is so much better!

As I said before, two embryos were transfered so I have seven frozen and one frozen from my donor last year. I'm feeling pretty good. I don't know when my surrogate's pregnancy test is. I didn't ask and part of me doesn't really want to know. I know approximately when it will be but I'm happy to just make it through this week and I'll deal with the pregnancy test in a few days when my nerves have calmed down.

In the meantime, I think I had another sign. The fortune cookies haven't been as good to me as they were last year. But last night I had a callback for a show. There were 10 sides I had to prepare. Everyone got to read two. I was assigned to read Adam in my second scene. Adam is arguing that freedom of speech is only in theory and never really happens. It went like this...

Austin: Youre' saying exactly what you want right now and nobody's stopping you.

Adam: Yeah...well...that's because I'm white...

Austin: What?

Adam: ...and a male when I'd rather be black and a woman and feel my belly swollen with my baby, and be able to sing like Aretha Franklin! That's what I'm talking about, man. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

It's like I'm Chloe! She's black. She's a woman. She wants to feel her belly swollen with my baby. She wants to sing like Areth -- well, I don't know about that one. But if this story is made into a musical Chloe needs to belt out a big song during birth so hopefully she'll sing like Aretha. I think this is a sign I'll have my baby and my musical too!

A Science Lesson

2011-07-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

"Good news."

That's what the embryologist said when Derek and I first walked into the room. I told her that I liked hearing that. Here are the numbers...

Out of the thirteen eggs that fertilized and became embryos five of them were good to go. Two didn't make it. Six of them are still too early to tell. They're classified as morulas. The embryologists will wait until Wednesday to see how they're doing and then make a determination if they are viable or not. What's a morula you might say? (I know I said that.) I have no idea. I tried to get a good definition and here's what I found...

1. a solid ball of cells resulting from cleavage of a fertilized ovum
2. a solid mass of blastomeres that forms when the zygote splits; develops into the blastula
3. a solid, spherical mass of cells resulting from the cleavage of the fertilized ovum in the early stages of embryonic development. It represents an intermediate stage between the zygote and the blastocyst and consists of blastomeres that are uniform in size, shape, and physiologic capabilities.
4. a cluster of organisms appearing as an inclusion in the cytoplasm of circulating leukocytes infected by Ehrlichia spp

And the one that kind of makes the most sense for those of us without PhDs in science

5. an animal organism in the early stages of growth and differentiation that in higher forms merge into fetal stages but in lower forms terminate in commencement of larval life

So basically it's a "maybe baby."

The embryos - well, technically I think they're called blastocysts now - were decent quality but not quite as high as the ones I had last year. They range from 3BC to 4BB. The number can be 1-4 and represents the expansion of the blastocyst. I asked the embryologist to explain what that means and she said "Y'know...it's how it expands." Nothin' like using the word expand to explain expansion. I asked for a better explanation -- an expansion on the definition if you will -- and she showed Derek and me a picture. Her explanation of the picture was "See how it expands!"

"Yeah," I said, not really sure.

Derek and I later decided it basically means that it gets to the point that you can't count the cells any more because there are too many of them. That's the definition we're sticking to.

The first letter refers to the placenta and the second letter refers to the fetus. It can be either A, B, or C. I didn't ask what makes them an A, B, or C. I'm guessing it has to do with the quality but my head was still trying to expand so I could understand the first ranking.

I had talked with Chloe last night about the possibility of three embryos being transfered. She is concerned about carrying triplets. I am too. I'm concerned for her health, the health of the three fetuses, my wallet and my sanity having three infants. I didn't want her to decide last night because I wanted doctor input but I wanted her to figure out how she felt about that. She said she had thought of it too.

After talking with the embryologist we found out the statistics...

Transfering 2 embryos
singleton: 65%
twins: 20-25%
triplets: 3% (if one embryo splits)

Transfering 3 embryos
singleton: 65%
twins: 30-35%
triplets: 15%

So the chance of pregnancy is the same but the chance of multiples is higher. Twins would be OK, but the 15% chance of three babies was a little too much to handle knowing it didn't really improve the overall chances. So we settled on tranfering two 4BB babies.

Now we wait. And pray.

And Wednesday we'll see how many of the six can be frozen but so far things are still going well.

Breathe, Michael, Breathe!

2011-07-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

This week is all about holding my breath, then breathing, then holding my breath, then breathing, then holding my -- well, you get the idea.

The breathing is going pretty well so far. We all know now that the doctor retrieved 15 eggs from the donor. That number was good, but there are still so many more hurdles to jump over.

On Thursday the nurse who is my contact for the egg donor left a message. She started out by saying it was good news. I was happy to hear that. But her idea of good news and my idea might be different.

The first number I heard -- holding my breath -- was that out of the 15 eggs 13 of them were mature -- breathe! That is a good percentage. I was happy to hear that.

Now I had to inhale again and hold my breath. There was another number I had to hear. The second number was how many eggs fertilized. This time the nurse said there was very good news -- hurry and say the number since I'm turning blue! Out of the 13 eggs we got all 13 fertilized!!! That was very good news. How exciting. I think my swimmers really outdid themselves this time. I am thrilled to -- wait...exhale first! OK. Better.

So things are good. Very good.

Today, about 5 minutes ago, I got a call saying it would be a 5 day transfer. I asked how my 13 embryos are doing and the nurse said she had no information about them. We'll all just keep praying that they're dividing and dividing and becoming stronger and healthier every day...or hour...or minute. I don't know how fast these things divide.

The big question now is how many embryos to transfer. Two is pretty common. But in my head, I'm starting to be open to transfering three. I won't know much until we get in on Monday and I learn more about the quality of the embryos. I'm OK with twins (and Derek is excited about twins) but triplets really increase the risk of health problems for both the babies and the surrogate. Plus, Derek and I would be outnumbered. No playing man-to-man defense. It would have to be zone defense. I'll have to find out about the chances of triplets and how Chloe would feel about that and how I would feel about it too. I hope to talk to her this weekend so she has time to consider it and we won't have to make a decision in five minutes on Monday morning.

I could be Octo-dad...TWICE

2011-07-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

The nurse recently called me to give me the egg retrieval number. She said they got 15 eggs! Of course I was hoping for more, but I'll try to not be greedy. It's a good number. It's a couple more than I got last time so things are already going well. Tomorrow I get the number of how many of these eggs are mature and how many fertilized.

Oh...and I did eat eggs for breakfast today. I just couldn't not do it.

Plagarism and the Egg Update

2011-07-19T09:47:00.000-05:00

So there's good news and there's bad news. But don't freak out...the bad news isn't so bad.

First, the good news. I got an update on the egg donor on Saturday and again yesterday (Monday). Things are going well. The news is that she has 16 follicles that are 15mm or bigger so those have a good chance of having a good egg. I forgot to ask but I'm guessing she still has 24 follicles. From what I understand follicles don't just disappear. It's just that the other follicles are smaller and have less of a chance of getting a good, healthy egg. But you never know. And the donor still has time for a little more of the meds to work. The retrieval will be on Wednesday (tomorrow). Here's the schedule...

Wednesday: I'll get a call letting me know how many eggs were actually retrieved and how many are viable. The fertility center will then fertilize the eggs with my sperm. They still have plenty left from my first, manly donation. (Ha!) I thought I blogged about it but when I just looked for the number I couldn't find it. I vaguely remember the clinician telling me that my sperm was in the 80th percentile. So my swimmers better do their job well since they're so robust! (Although I think that percentile was mostly related to quantity.)

Thursday: I'll get a call from the clinician's letting me know how many eggs actually fertilized.

Friday: I'll know more about how the embryos are doing and if we'll do a three day transfer (on Saturday) or a five day transfer (on Monday). There are a lot of factors that determine which one will happen but my surrogate was told to most likely plan for Monday. I believe a 5 day transfer is better for a few reasons, but a 3 day transfer isn't the end of the world.

Then we wait and get the happy news a couple weeks later. Just want to say that again...then we get the happy news a couple weeks later.

Meanwhile, I saw a musical called "Surrogates." Yep...someone stole my idea! (Shake fist in the air!) It was written as part of a musical theater class/workshop that started last fall. So this blog is proof that I had the idea first. (Hmmm...I wonder if blogs are admissible in court. I'm sure they are.)

The musical was only about 10-15 minutes long. It was the story of a gay couple who wanted a baby. They asked one of their sisters to be the surrogate and she said no because a baby should have a mother and a father. The brother was angry and asked why he was good enough to be a babysitter to her kids and pick them up after school but not have kids of his own.

The couple decided to interview some (crazy) surrogates. The first was a southern military wife who seemed good until she realized the two men were a couple and didn't have wives. The second was a very type A personality who wanted credit checks on the men (that actually seemed pretty reasonable to me). The third was a strong German woman who was excited to help increase the master race. Yikes!

The couple had a private conversation saying how much they loved each other and tried to accept that maybe things just weren't meant to be. The sister overheard the conversation and realized that they should have a child and agreed to be their surrogate.

It was good. It made me laugh and cry. But where was the "I'll Leggo My Eggos For You" egg donor song? Where was the funny sperm donation scene? Where was the drama of contract negotiations and the hot doctor with the cool accent? Where was the mean nurse who surpises the audience with her heart of gold? Clearly this musical has nothing on "Michael & Michaela." If we open the same year mine will definitely win the Tony award.

Can You Sprint Through a Marthon?

2011-07-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

This is a marathon. We've all known that. But now I feel like I've been sprinting the last few days. Everything has been a crisis. At least I see the end in sight. Well, it might not be the finish line. Maybe it's a mile marker or a table with people passing out Gatorade.

Financial: I finally got in contact with my account manager at the fertility clinic. He was very nice about working out a payment. He told me that I could pay part today and part on either Saturday or Monday. After a while he said, "Just pay it Saturday...I'll make sure nothing is held up." Whew. I still want to talk to someone in the billing department. I think it's a little ridiculous that I get a bill for thousands of dollars and am expected to pay it within 3 or 4 days.

Legal: My lawyer is out of town until Monday and her assistant wasn't calling me back. I wound up calling my surrogacy agency and she got some answers. Apparently my surrogate's lawyer is part of the big power outage and hasn't had an office for days. She is trying to work through her Blackberry. Yikes! My surrogate mailed the signed contract extension on Thursday so it's in transit. The assistant called me today and said she's sending over the papers with my signature only and an email from Chloe's lawyer saying Chloe signed the papers and her signature is on the way. The donor won't donate until at least Monday so the very earliest we need the surrogacy extension is Thursday...and that's pretty unlikely.

Medical: We have some good news. The fertility nurse called me Thursday while I was walking through Costco to update me on the donor and Friday to tell me about the surrogate. We have some good news. The donor is stimulating nicely. She has 24 follicles total and 19 are between 9 and 21 mm. That's a good number. My surrogate went in today and her uterine lining was at 9.4 cm and we want it to be at least 7 cm. So things are looking good for both of the women. Today I'm supposed to get another call with more news about my donor and a (probably) definite day of the retrieval.

Who Are You and What Do You Want???

2011-07-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

Ugh. That about sums up my feelings right now. Wait...maybe "double ugh" or "blergh." (Yay...more "30 Rock" references. If I had some night cheese maybe I'd feel better.)

Anyway...back to the point...

The last few weeks have been pretty stressful. I'm just so lost as to who needs what form, signature, consent, contract, approval, decision, and payment and when.

1. My contract with my surrogate is expiring in about a week and we want to extend it another year since the two of us want to continue working with each other. I signed the form and sent it to my lawyer. I thought we were all done. Then I got another form changing things like the word "a" to "the." I sent that back. Then the fertility center called -- it was someone named Cindy. She wants to make sure I have the extension form. I'm not sure why my surrogate hasn't signed it but I've sent it to my lawyer twice and haven't heard back.

2. I called my lawyer to try to understand what is going on. Well, my lawyer is off until July 18th. Eek! I've called and emailed her assistant twice (or maybe three times) and haven't heard back from her. Grr...I mean blergh.

3. I called the fertility center to ask a question about this many thousands of dollar bill I got on Monday to see about paying part of it this week and part next week. Well, my account manager is off sick so I can't talk to him. I talked with a nice woman who said Cindy would call me. She's not the same Cindy I know. Cindy called me an hour or two later and left a nasty message saying that I HAD to pay it by Friday because the egg retrieval is next week. The tone was pretty much "I don't see why this is an issue. You just have to pay it." Well, Cindy, maybe it's an issue since I have four days notice to come up with all this money. I have it, I just don't have it ready today. Plus, who are you??? I didn't get a last name or a position. Are you a nurse or a finance person? Double blergh!!!

4. I called the fertility clinic and asked to talk with some head person in accounting and billing. I wanted to let that person know that four days notice really is not acceptable and I wanted to see my options for paying it. I left a message for her and she has yet to call me back. Blerg, blergh, blergh, blergh, BLERGH!!!

It is just a stressful week. I feel like no one from this process is on my side. Last year I felt like people were constantly checking in with me and I had things all set. Now I'm just at a loss as to who has what and who is missing what. Hopefully this will still work. I'm sure it will, but I'm going on a little faith and hope.

Tomorrow will be more phone calls to try to clear this up. Wish me luck.

Facts and Figures

2011-07-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

It feels like I'm still climbing the hill of this roller coaster and I haven't made it to the first drop yet. In about two weeks things will go crazy and I'm not really looking forward to going through all the emotional ups and downs again. Maybe I'll be lucky and it will just be all ups! I was feeling OK with this for a while and then my mind went back to almost a year ago when every day or two I got news about how my future babies were doing. I forgot that the doctor gets eggs, but not all are good. I forgot that out of all the healthy eggs some don't fertilize. I forgot that out of the ones that fertilize not all start to divide. And I forgot that out of the ones that divide, not all make it to five days. Every day I held my breath for what the new number would be. I'm excited that this donor produced a lot of eggs last year when she donated. She was almost hyper-stimulated so hopefully I'll have a lot of good eggs. And my attrition rate last year was very low. A high percentage of my eggs made it to a 5 day transfer level. I'm hoping that's because my sperm was healthy enough to grow some strong embryos and will do so again. Of course Mother Nature has a lot of her own plans that may trump my dreams. We'll just have to wait and see.

So, to keep my mind off all the hurdles I'm about to jump over again, here are a few fun facts about dads. The website with the dad statistics is several years old so some of the numbers might be slightly out of date...

According to the US Census Bureau 66.3 million is the estimated number of fathers in the United States today. (Hopefully it will be 66.300000001 soon)

2.0 million is the number of single fathers, up from 393,000 in 1970. Currently, 1-in-6 single parents is a single father, compared with 1-in-10 in 1970.

The United States had an estimated 5.5 million stay-at-home parents last year: 5.4 million moms and 98,000 dads, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Studies show that close healthy father-daughter relationships foster a
sense of competence in daughters, mathematical ability and a stronger sense of femininity in girls. (I better brush up on my math if I have a girl)

The average number of children per father around the world is 3.5. The country with the most children per father is Malaysia at 3.8 children per dad. (Should I move to Malaysia???)

Jose is the most common name for men who are most likely to be fathers. Ryan is the most common name for men who are least likely to be fathers. (That settles it; tomorrow I change my name to Jose)

The tadpoles of the male hip-pocket frog wriggle along their father's back until they reach two tiny slots that open into the male's hip pouches. Inside the pouch, the tadpoles live on the yolk leftover from their hatching. They pop out a few weeks later as fully formed frogs.

A new sea horse brood begins when the female deposits eggs into a special pouch on the male's abdomen, and the male fertilizes them. (I guess gay sea horses don't have to pay surrogate!)

The South American marmoset may win the prize for most-involved dad. The marmoset mother starts pulling away from her twins a few weeks after they're born. Then the male carries, feeds, and grooms the infants—with help from their older siblings—and may even act as a midwife during birth, grooming and licking the newborn marmosets.

A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks. (Lucky I'm not a sea catfish. Six weeks without pizza and chocolate? No thanks!)

Art Imitates Life

2011-06-23T11:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's funny how life works. I had two friends who dated and broke up several times. Through their experience, I developed the belief that people come into your life for a reason and leave for a reason. I try to believe things, in general, happen for a reason.

As my contract negotiations got underway with the third (and hopefully final) egg donor I learned that she was not OK with the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR). That surprised me because in her profile it stated she was willing to be either an anonymous or identified donor. (I have to admit the concept of "identified donor" was never really explained clearly to me because all are anonymous. My understanding was that "identified donor" basically meant that there was possibly some kind of a chance of some sort of contact at some unknown date in the future in some way, shape or form that was not determined.)

I asked my lawyer to see if she could ascertain why this donor was not amenable to the DSR. What we found out was that she didn't want to be responsible for updating her profile all the time as the contract stated. So my lawyer changed the wording and basically asked her to register and not worry about her profile. This DSR would just be insurance in case the agency closed or couldn't find her or me and some contact was necessary. In the general contract and the DSR part there are no-fault clauses for both of us. If she decides to never tell the agency she develops a disease, I can't sue her. If I decide to change my phone number and the agency can't find me, she can't sue me. If she joins the DSR and a year later cancels her profile, I have to accept it. I understand all of these risks and my lawyer wondered why the donor was not open to this. It's an answer we may never get.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I saw a play and I think it happened for a reason.

Last week I saw a play called "A Twist of Water" about a gay couple who adopted a girl 17 years ago. After one of the dads dies, the daughter decides she wants to connect with more family and goes about finding her birth mother. They eventually meet. (Spoiler alert!) The mother tells her daughter that it was great to meet her and know that she's OK but she doesn't want a relationship with this girl after this one meeting. The girl is devastated. Of course the silver lining is that it brings her closer to her father who she was never really close to.

Watching that was good and bad. Writing this is helpful and scary. I know my child will one day read this blog and I don't want him/her to feel like the egg donor never wants to meet him/her. But at the same time, I did understand the birth mother in the play needed to move on from what happened 17 years ago. She talked about grieving the child about 9 years after she gave her up for adoption. She had to shut the door and not let her thoughts consume her being. I have to respect a donor's decision that she may not want contact in the future because it would be too much to always wonder "what if..." for the rest of her life. It might be better for her to know that she helped someone have a child and be content with just that satisfaction.

I still do get to write a letter to the egg donor to thank her for what she is doing for me. I still do have to opportunity to share information for health related reasons. My lawyer said the agency may be open to sending another letter in the future that is not solely for health related reasons. The contract also talks about the fact that 18 years from now we don't know what the laws will be and children may have a right to find their egg (or sperm) donors. And, as I've said a million times before, no one can predict what the child will feel or want. As we've seen with adopted children or children of single parents some of them want to meet their birth parents and some don't care. Some have great meetings and some meetings are painful or awkward. Maybe it's a little naive (OK...it's a lot naive), but my hope is that my child will have such a good life that the egg donor will be just one small part of his/her history, not an huge void in his/her life.

To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before -- Or So I Thought

2011-06-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

First of all let me say that I am not -- I repeat NOT -- a Star Trek fan. Although I do know that vulcans have blue blood...wait. I just Googled that to make sure I was right and apparently it's green. Clearly the one thing I thought I knew about Star Trek I don't. Although my brother was constantly watching it as we were growing up I managed to tune out all the lasers beam, spaceship and computer talk.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to the computer talk.

When I started my blog I wasn't naive enough to think that I was the only person smart enough to chronicle my adventures. I do remember looking online for other people in similar situations and, in true Michael fashion, I probably didn't know where to look because I ignored all that computer talk. I didn't see a lot of blogs about surrogacy, egg donation and gay parents going through this process. I had hoped that my blog would be found by others who were in a similar situation and could provide support, inspiration and advice.

A year and a half later most of the people following my blog are friends of mine and, as I've said before, the support I get from everyone is so valuable. I also have a few people who I don't know who have become followers. A few months into my blogging a woman joined and has made some wonderful comments on a few postings. Recently, another stranger started following me. After some playing around on the computer (remember...I'm bad with computers) I realized that these two followers had blogs of their own and were in similar situations.

It is a weird connection but I am so excited one of them has a pregnancy and the other recently an embryo transfer. As I look through these blogs I get excited to see the journey is coming to a happy ending for them. It gives me hope that my ending will be the same. I'm starting to feel their ups and downs with them. And while I will probably never meet them, there is a deep understanding of what we all are sacrificing to get our ultimate reward.

I joined their blogs and saw that each one of them was linked to many other blogs. I haven't looked through all of them yet, but it looks like there are blogs from other Intended Parents (IPs), single surrogates, people using surrogates in India, straight couples, gay men, gay women, and more. I am thrilled to see there are others like me out there. I hope to find a blog by a surrogate to see what it's like from her perspective. I'm on the hunt for a good one.

Maybe my final scene in the movie will be dozens of bloggers at my baby's first birthday party and they all brought their own kids. Oscar voters just eat up stuff like that.

I Get Paid to Blog...Sorta

2011-06-01T12:17:00.001-05:00

I seem to do a lot of my writing on Wednesdays and Fridays. Those are the days when I work at my staff job and I'm by a computer all day. So I like to think of it as getting paid to blog.

The topic of the day is money. I got an email a couple days ago from the new nurse at the fertility clinic. I guess she should be called "Glinda" since she already brought me good news. Clearly she's the Good Witch in this story. She told me that another worker at the fertility center who had worked with me during the first egg retrieval got some donated medication and will give those to me. The medications for the egg donor and surrogate are a few thousand dollars. From time to time a cycle gets canceled or a donor doesn't need as much stimualation as expected and someone has left of medication. Sometimes those wonderful people will donate those unused meds to another intended parent (IP). I got some this time. I'm not sure exactly how much and which kind I will be getting, but Glinda said I would save several thousand dollars. It sounds like the bulk of the meds will be paid for with this donation. That's a relief. After all of these legal and medical bills the cost is turning out to be much higher than I had hoped.

Glinda is also good because she told me that my new donor "has a great personality" and had a normal ultrasound. So it looks like things are moving right along for a July transfer!

SHOCKING NEWS!!! (But Not What You Think)

2011-05-18T15:26:00.000-05:00

Um...hello, Ms. Lawyer? Can we make a contract???

Hi, Surrogate Dcotor,this is Michael. Is my donor going to see you soon???

Yeah, it's me again, Surrogate Agency. Can anyone tell me if I can have a July transfer???

It seems like no one has been able to give me any definite answer about anything. I'm assured that everything is still good to go in July but I want specifics! Today I finally got an email from the Wicked Witch of the Womb. She said that my donor has an appointment in early June with the doctor and things really are on track for a July transfer. She emailed my surrogate to double check that my surrogate is on board with that timing. She should be as far as I know.

Then I got some news. It turned out to be a little shocking. Well, not so much the news itself, but my reaction to the news. I think it was even more shocking than the news I got today that Arnold Schwarzenegger was getting divorced because he fathered a child with his house staffer. I believe it was more surprising than the fact the Ralph Machhio was voted off "Dancing With the Stars." It even made my jaw drop more than hearing Ashton Kutscher is probably replacing Charlie Sheen on "Two and a Half Men."

My wicked witch is not going to be working with me any more and I felt a little sad about that.

I know...SHOCKING!

I remember a year ago I thought about going to her manager and asking for a new coordinator. I stuck it out because she really was on top of things and responded quickly to every question I had. Over the year she gave me the tidbit of information about how nice my last donor was, talked with me very sweetly about the pros and cons of a few donors I was considering and today included the fact that she was already looking for donated medicine to reduce my cost since insurance won't cover it. Like I said before, she really has a hard exterior and a nice inside. She's like a...a what...a turtle? No. An egg? That's not it. An M&M? Closer. Well, I don't know what she's like. Come up with your own analogies and post it.

A Journey of 1,000 Miles Begins With One Step

2011-04-29T16:19:00.000-05:00

As you all know (since I know you are all avid readers of my blog), on April 18th I called the new egg donation agency (which is also the agency I'm using for the surrogate) to let them know I picked their donor. As I may have mentioned before, I'm very indecisive when making decisions but once I choose I never look back. After picking this donor I feel really good about my choice. I'm getting more and more excited to get this process going again. It was hard to get through the recent round of disappointments, but now I feel excited and optimistic to start. I guess each step I take makes it a little more real that it could -- and will -- happen.

I waited a few days after picking the donor and didn't hear anything from the agency. I did get money back from the previous egg donor agency. I had to put up a lot of money for travel expenses since the recent donor was out of town. My new donor is local so I don't have travel expenses. It was nice to get a chunk of money back. (Of course a huge part of that just went to taxes...ugh.)

I emailed the new egg donor agency a few days ago to make sure the money was transfered from the previous agency. I didn't hear back. I called them today to find out what is going on and to make sure things are on track because it has been 12 days. I got a few answers. Apparently my donor went to her psychological screening again (donors have to go every time they donate) and passed it. Next we're on to the medical portion of donating. Her file has yet to be sent to the doctor. That explains why I haven't heard much for these two weeks. Whew. Things are on track but we still have a lot of hurdles.

I'm a Hit in Norway

2011-04-22T16:31:00.002-05:00

If you know me then you know I'm clearly one of the least technically savvy people on the planet...at least for my age group. I still may be better with computers than my mother, but she has learned how to Google people and forward funny emails so my lead on her is shrinking quickly. I've been blogging for over a year now and recently found out some interesting facts and figures. It looks like I can only get the statistics for the last twelve months so I think these are based only on the previous year, not the total time I've been blogging. Here's what I know...

1. Today there were 10 views on my page. Yesterday there were 9. (I'm glad to see people are checking in.)

2. I have had a total of 4,957 people read my blog. (I LOVE the support.)

3. Right now there is someone reading my blog in Slovenia.

4. I have had people read my blog in many countries. I have anywhere from 16 to 122 hits from Russia, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Belize and the Netherlands.

5. My blog has had 26 hits from people in Iran. (I'm surprised a blog about a gay Jew using a stanger's uterus isn't banned in that country.)

6. The country that likes my blog the most is Norway. Apparently there are 397 hits from people in Norway. (If the musical bombs on Broadway maybe it'll find success in Oslo and be called "Aksel and Astrid" or "Henrik and Henriette" or "Iver and Alva".)

7. The most hits on one entry was for the posting on November 30th, 2010 when "Chloe" wasn't pregnant for the second time. A total of 124 people read that entry.

8. The runner up for the most hits was for the March 2nd, 2011 entry when my cycle was delayed for 2 months. (Apparently my readers click on my blog a lot more when bad things happen than good things!)

9. I have had 40 hits through my friend's blog about his weight loss but only 13 hits from "Michaela's" blog about her surrogacy process. (Hmmm...interesting.)

10. There have been 10 searches for "Neil Patrick Harris".

I just thought this would be fun to share with everyone.

On a more serious note -- the story you've all been waiting for -- I did pick the donor who I was thinking about using a year ago. The more time I have to sit with this decision the more excited I become. One of the few Yiddish words I have learned over the years is beshert which basically mean "destiny", "fate", or "meant to be". Couples often talk about finding their mate being beshert. Picking this egg donor feels right. It feels good. It feels beshert. Now we wait and pray.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Or, as they say in Norway, "Takk!"

Everything Old is New Again

2011-04-15T16:46:00.000-05:00

I usually believe that things happen for a reason. That's a pretty good philosophy. It works well until I don't like what's happening. Then I pretty much revert back the the "life is unfair" philosophy.

Right now I'm at a crossroad. After searching through the egg donor databases (again and again and again) my mind was overwhelmed. There were some donors I liked who were not available because they were getting married, already in a cycle, training for the Chicago Marathon, etc. There were some donors I liked who had never given birth or donated and that's a big gamble for a lot of reasons. There were some donors I liked who lived in Texas or Colorado and I had to think if I wanted to go through that process of an out of state donor again. There were so many things to factor in when choosing a donor: looks, family health history, donation history, pregnancy history, education level, geographic area, answers on the questionnaires, etc.

In the end, I found four donors who I liked. The sticking point to them all was that none of the donors had been pregnant AND donated. I have two donors who had been pregnant (one aborted and one aborted twice and had one child) and two donors who had donated before but had not produced a pregnancy as far as we know.

Picking a donor who has been pregnant is great because we know her eggs can produce a child. But we also don't know if she will pass the fertility center's screening and if she will respond well to the medication. Picking a donor who has donated before means that we know how she responds to the medication and that she has met the criteria for donating. There is less testing required upfront.

There feels like no good answer right now. Well, I should say there feels like four good options with none of them clearly better than the others.

I talked with the mean nurse yesterday who turned out to be very nice and compassionate on the phone. I didn't feel rushed with her, she was patient with me, and she even was very understanding when I started to cry a little from the stress of this decision.

I don't want to say she swayed me one direction or the other, but she told me she and the doctor were very confident in using one of the previous donors. They had worked with her on her first cycle and she responded very well to the medication. Any girl who is approved must have certain hormone levels which makes it likely that her eggs are viable and healthy. A donor's age alone makes her eggs desireable. There are definitely perks to using a woman who has had a child, but that alone is not a guarantee her eggs are better than a woman who has not had a child.

The donor I'm thinking about using is a Jewish girl who is a teacher, has a master's degree and, I believe, is working on a second master's degree. Those are important qualities to me. She has a good health history, a good work history and I like her answers to the personal questions. She is also the girl I almost picked on my first attempt. She is the one who was picked by someone else right before I was ready to commit to her. Plus, her donor number is the same number I was assigned when I worked for my first video relay company.

Are all of these signs? Does this mean it was meant to be that she's available now and wasn't available before? Who knows. This process - to be blunt - sucks right now. Once again I feel like this is a leap of faith. It's thousands of dollars and time invested and a horrific emotional rollercoaster so approaching this on a gut feeling doesn't sit well with the part of me that is analytical and scientific.

My first donor was amazing and it didn't work out. My gut told me my second donor wasn't right but I went with her because she had some qualities I wanted. It didn't work out and, in a way, I am OK with that. I don't get gut feelings often but when I do, I feel I'm usually right. Should I follow my gut this time, or follow science?

Does anyone have a story about following a gut feeling that turned out to be right?

My Title is Wrong

2011-04-06T16:17:00.001-05:00

I recently entitled my blog "How 1 Man + 2 Women = 1 Baby" and I might have to change that. It might be called "1 Man + 1 Women + 3 Egg Donors + a lawyer + a doctor + 3 agencies = 1 baby".

My first experience with an egg donor was amazing. I was so excited by her and her profile. She was everything I wanted. My second egg donor was kind of picked for me because I was looking for a proven, Jewish donor. There weren't many to chose from who fit that criteria. Now, I'm looking for egg donor #3. I'm still looking for a proven donor, but I'm trying to figure out what proven means. There are some donors who have donated but it didn't result in a pregnancy. And then there are some donors who have yet to donate but have a child of their own. And then there are donors who have donated but the parents froze embryos so we don't know if the eggs are viable or not. So much to think about! I believe my doctor wants me to find someone who has actually produced a child whether it was for someone else or her own child. I need to clarify that a little more, but that seems to be the safest choice.

There are two pieces of good news. First, a message from my surrogacy agency came and stated that my surrogate is on board with me even though there has been a delay. I'm thrilled to learn that I don't have to find a new surrogate. The other pretty good piece of news is that I found an egg donor I like. As I read her profile I liked her quite a bit. I got that gut feeling that we could be a match (like with donor #1 and unlike with donor #2). When I neared the end of the profile it said that she was interested in donating after talking with a gay couple who was going through the surrogacy process. That was so wonderful to hear. As I've said before, I hope my donor is comfortable with her eggs going to a gay couple in case there is any contact in the future. Not only does she seem open to it, but it seems she is inspired by it! The only negatives are that she is not available for a few months and her previous donation has not yet resulted in a pregnancy. I want the doctor to look at her profile and give me his opinion. There are definitely other donors I could choose. I see several I feel comfortable picking. But, at this moment, this one feels right. This whole process is a leap of faith and even though her eggs have not resulted in a child yet, faith and following my gut feels good at times.

Hip Hip Hoo--Shit!

2011-03-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

People say two steps forward and one step back is still progress. Well, what do we call two steps forward and two steps back? Sucky? A waste of time? Pointless? Well, that's how I'm feeling today.

The relief and joy of getting a contract settled with my egg donor was short-lived. Just to start my day off on a sour note, about 8:30 a.m. I got an email from the nurse at the fertility clinic. The email said that my donor is a carrier of some rare disease that destroys the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Having that gene prevents her from donating to me or anyone else in the future.

That's it. Case closed.

Gee, thanks for the personal touch. An email is a great way to hear devastating news like that!

I called the nurse to ask why this wasn't found before and if the gene is dominant or recessive. The second question was more for my own curiousity.

She called back later and left a voicemail. She didn't know if it is dominant or not (although a Google search said that you typically need to get it from both parents). This was not found in her previous donations because it wasn't screened for in the past. Every 6-12 months some agency or organization or something or other decides what needs to be screened in donors. Apparently this is a new addition. The donor and all of the families who uses her eggs in previous donations must all be contacted now to know this bit of information.

On a little bit of a lighter side note, the message, at first, seemed a little annoyed. It was like I was a bother trying to get answers. But I think that's just her general tone. By the end of the message the mean nurse did say that she was sorry she had to give me this news. It sounded sincere.

Then, just to kick me while I'm down, the surrogacy agency called me and basically was harsh with me saying that Chloe wants to go to medical school so we better make this happen soon. First of all, I don't know if Chloe is set on med school any more and second of all I have no freakin' control over this! I said all we can do is ask if Chloe will stick with me a little longer. No one can force her to do this. So we'll see if my surrogate stays with me. I hope she does. I do like her.

I'm feeling a lot now. I'm frustrated with this process. I'm angry that this wasn't found previously (although I understand why now). I'm hurt that there was more admonishing than consoling from the surrogacy agency. I'm beaten down by the failures. However, I still feel like I can't give up. This is something that will define my entire life and I'm not ready to just accept that it won't happen, but I need support now. Not the "Oh...I'm sure it will happen next time" kind because I've heard that too much and you have no way of making that come true. It hurts to hear that because all the optimism in the world can't control science. I need the "I'm sorry it didn't work and I will be thinking about you" kind.

It's a Match

2011-03-25T23:01:00.000-05:00

After some more back and forth over the last few days the egg donor and I finally came to an agreement. Whew. I'm excited that it worked out. I'm even more excited to get to write her a letter so she gets to know a little something about me. I hope that we get to learn a little about each other that humanizes this crazy, legal process that removes the human element. And, like I think I said with my first donor, I want her to feel good about her decision to donate her eggs in general and also specifically to me. Although this back and forth was stressful, it did make me think a lot about her as a person and what it must be like for her to go through this process from her end. It is making me feel grateful.

So now I wait until the end of May. And we all pray and cross our fingers and eat Life cereal for days on end again!

One Sentence

2011-03-16T15:56:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm about to get all dramatic on you for a minute. Be forewarned. The next sentence will be deep and profound. Ready? It's amazing how just one sentence can make you thrilled beyond belief or knock you down so hard you don't want to get up again.

Still reading? Good. Here's an explanation as to why one sentence can be exhilarating or painful.

I've been in contract negotiations for a couple weeks now with my new donor. It has been a very different experience than the first time. The first time felt very amicable and the donor seemed very open to reasonable requests and asked reasonable concessions. This time, I'm feeling like the donor is asking for a lot more. There have been times when I've felt like she is in this more for the money than for the actual donation process. I'm not naive...of course the money is a big reason why women donate eggs. I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a woman who would do this for free. But I also think that the women must get some emotional satisfaction knowing that they have helped someone create a family.

The donor did agree to register on the Sibling Donor Registry which allows me to contact her in the future in the event that my child wants some kind of contact with her. She had indicated in her assessment with the psychologist that she would be willing to do that so I think that alone made me feel like she wasn't in this 100% for the money. The fact that she would even consider some kind of contact in the future seems as though there is some emotional attachment to what she is doing.

I also kept trying to tell myself that our tough contract negotiating was just because she was trying to get what she felt she deserved, not because she is a greedy person. And the same could be said of me. I don't think I'm a bad person, but I'm asking for everything I want. You can't get what you want unless you propose it. For all I know she might think I'm greedy and don't care about her perspective.

But last Friday the big news came. It really changed my perspective on this woman and has made me excited about working with her. The mean nurse at the fertility clinic sent me an email and told me that the donor has been approved pending all of her lab work coming back. Then she added that the doctor "really likes this girl and has worked with her in two other cycles. She is a super sweet and cute girl and I really like her myself."

The fact that this nurse, who is (I won't say mean or witchy) all business and has no time to coddle anyone or deal with any of her patients' emotional states, likes my donor really made a big impression on me. The psychologist's report had some really nice things to say about her too. I like that she's smart and driven and I've been told she's a good patient and follows the doctor's orders well. I think she's attractive. But knowing that this nurse, who I consider gruff, likes my donor shows me that I am getting the eggs of a wonderful girl who knows how to connect with people in a meaningful way.

The joy was short lived. On Monday my lawyer called and said that the donor was getting...ummm...frustrated(?)...with the contract. I'm not sure if that's the right word. Apparently her previous contracts had very little negotiating. Our back and forth on the contract was making her...I don't know...upset(?). It's hard to know exactly what she's thinking because messages are passed from me to my lawyer to her lawyer to her and back the other way. My lawyer did say that she is still on board to donate. Maybe she just wanted to vent her stress(?) with this process. Maybe she wanted to express her irritation(?) with me. Maybe she isn't used to having any setbacks(?). I don't know. But it was hard to hear that she's having a less than ideal experience. I want her to feel good about her decision to donate to me. I think she still does. I also get to write a letter to her after she donates that will hopefully tell her a little more about me and show my appreciation for what she is doing for me. For now, I'm confident my lawyer understands my position and can express that clearly for me. Maybe this expression of dissatisfaction(?) from her is good because it'll make us understand each other a little more and come to a resolution. I know after hearing this I'm willing to make some more concessions because of what I've been told about her perspective in all of this. Some of her points are valid and things I can live with when I think of her as a person, not simply an anonymous donor. I'm frustrated that we have an emotional process (egg donation) clashing with a completely unemotional process (the legal system). Hopefully we'll meet in the middle in the next day or two.

On the plus side, this has given me an idea for a new song. I think there will be a great quartet number in the "Michael and Michaela" musical called "Telephone." We'll watch the message change as it goes from the donor to me through the lawyers just like "The Rumor" in Fiddler on the Roof. It'll be a great comedic song!

Gay Parents in 2011

2011-03-11T16:21:00.000-06:00

A couple weeks ago my ex-neighbor came by to check on her condo. She left her condo probably 3-4 years ago and hasn't been able to sell it due to a number of reasons. She now lives way out in the suburbs and comes in from time to time to check on things and talk with the condo board. This time we bumped into each other.

We started chatting and catching up on life. I mentioned I wanted to move soon. I wasn't really planning on going into the whole issue of having a boyfriend and a baby. It's not her business and, honestly, you never know exactly how people will react.

After a while of chatting things started to come out. I'm not sure if I was sensing it was ok or if I just got to a point where I didn't care if she judged me or if it was something else. Who knows? But I did tell her that I had a boyfriend and we were moving in together to a new place because I was using a surrogate and an egg donor to have a baby.

She was thrilled for me.

She said she had seen two pairs of shoes outside my door from time to time and was hoping I had met someone. And she started telling me all the schools in Chicago to check out and how to get into magnet schools and how she managed to get her daughter into the places she wanted.

I have to say it was a pleasant surprise. Although I don't expect many people to directly tell me what I'm doing is wrong, I also don't expect neighbors who are merely acquaintances to be not only accepting but excited about two gay men raising a baby conceived through a very un-traditional way. Granted, she's a single mom with a bi-racial daughter whose parents were organic farmers before anyone knew the word organic so she's not June Cleaver, but still...

I know with each generation we become more tolerant. And I know that my child will still have a lot to deal with: an anonymous egg donor mother, a gay, Jew...ish, vegetarian dad, a black surrogate, etc. But I also see my child's life as being accepted as normal from the vast majority of society in another 20, 40, or 60 years.

My Wicked Witch of the Womb

2011-03-02T14:09:00.000-06:00

A while ago I think I wrote about my nasty nurse Ratched from my fertility center. She has been so curt with me throughout the entire process. I remember asking her to explain a really, really long document about something complex and medical and she turned to me and said, "I emailed you about this a few weeks ago" with a nasty tone of voice. She doesn't seem to get that this process is overwhelming and scary and I don't always remember every detail because taking an egg from a stranger and putting it into the womb of another stranger isn't a daily occurence in my life like it is in hers.

Last week I got an email from Witchy-poo (as I like to call her) telling me that because my donor didn't come to the fertility clinic in January, our March retrieval had to be pushed to May.

WHAT???

WAIT???

WHAT???

I had no idea what was going on. Last I had heard we just needed the donor to sign the contract by Feb. 26th and then all was good. I emailed her that the lawyer had my paperwork and asked if she meant we'd have to do April. I was confused why it would be a two month delay.

The response was "it is way to late" (yes "to," not "too") to do a March cycle so we are probably looking at May.

Yep...totally ignored my questions.

Through a long and complicated process I found out that my lawyer was just as stunned by this news as I was. I swear I wouldn't have missed something that big. And if the donor had to come to Chicago in January why was I hearing nothing about this until Feb. 22nd?!?!? It just doesn't make any sense.

Seriously, folks, I need some good casting for this nurse. Who can play mean? I think, though, she's gotta have a soft moment at some point towards the end of this film. We'll call it "artistic license" if the nurse doesn't ever warm up to me in real life. If we make her the "hard-assed nurse with a heart of gold" type she could definitely be in the running for an Oscar for this film. That type of character always wins awards. Besides, everyone has a heart. Maybe we'll have a scene of her going home and playing with her baby...or adopting a baby...or going through fertility treatment herself. That will melt the audience's hearts. What about Glenn Close? She played Cruella Deville. Or maybe Kathy Bates? She was mean in "Misery." Other ideas?

So now I'm pushed back two months to a May egg retrieval. The one good thing is now the baby won't be born the week of Christmas. No offense to anyone who was born around that time (like my brother) and there clearly are many, many more important things than that when it comes to having a baby, but I think it's hard to be born right around a huge holiday. We'll just hope for an end of February/beginning of March birth. Derek wondered what would happen if the baby was born on February 29th! That means we'd be the parents until the child is 72 years old. Oy vey! But would we be cool parents or the worst parents in the world if we said, "No dating until you're 4 years old"?

Discuss.

Things That Are More Fun For Straight People

2011-02-09T16:53:00.000-06:00

I was just chatting with a friend on IM. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was reviewing a contract so I could have a baby. It then dawned on me that I think I'm totally getting the short end of the stick here. I decided I should do a comparison about my process of having a baby and the process for straight people to see who has the right to complain more. Here goes...

1. Straight people get to have an intimate, exciting discussion about when they should start trying for a baby. I get to review 40 pages of contracts and hire a lawyer.

Straight: 1 Gay: 0

2. Straight people have to time out when they can try for a baby. My women take medication that makes their bodies fit the schedule of the doctor so we know when the baby will be born.

Straight: 1 Gay: 1

3. Straight people are stuck with the qualities of their partner. I get to choose between a woman who is getting her PhD and speaks several languages, a woman going to medical school who qualified for the Olympic trials and a woman who has her masters degree in an interesting field and is cool with her eggs going to gay parents.

Straight: 1 Gay: 2

4. Straight people can try again in a month if there is no pregnancy. I have to wait several months for the meds to prepare a uterus.

Straight: 2 Gay: 2

5. Straight people have a lot of fun while trying to make a baby. I get to pay a couple thousand dollars every time I try.

Straight: 3 Gay: 2

6. Straight people don't get to see their baby until the baby is at least six weeks old when they go in for the ultrasound. I get to see my embryos at five days old.

Straight: 3 Gay: 3

7. Straight people can accidentally get pregnant when they don't want a child. I can't.

Straight: 3 Gay: 4

8. Straight people can only guilt their child by saying "Mom was in labor with you for 36 hours." I can guilt my child by saying "Making you cost me thousands of dollars and years of my life!!!"

Straight: 3 Gay: 5

9. Straight people may have an interesting story about trying for a year or two to have their perfect child. My interesting story involves a documentary film, porn, and a black mother giving birth to a white child.

Straight: 3 Gay: 6

10. Straight people get stretch marks. I won't lose my figure after the baby is born.

Straight: 3 Gay: 7

Hmmmm...I guess being a gay dad isn't quite so bad.

Did You Know Clowns and Underwear Tossing Can Make a Baby?

2011-01-26T17:46:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine recently sent me an article about IVF treatment. She saw it and thought of me. It had to do with the success/failure rate of IVF and what can help a woman become pregnant. I had seen some of these studies before talking about the success rates of transfering 1 vs. 2 embryos. This one was a little bit different.

This study talked about the increased success rates for women undergoing IVF who were entertained by clowns.

I'm not joking.

It makes sense. We've all heard "laughter is the best medicine" and know of the movie Patch Adams. Basically laughter helps women destress.

Here is a link to the article.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110113/lf_nm_life/us_pregnancy_laughter

I wondered what else I could find about fertility that was weird, wild or wacky. I thought if clowns worked, what else could? I was surprised I didn't find a million different studies. I find article after article of weird sperm facts, but nothing about surrogates.

After some searching I did find one other crazy article about a mouse with two dads. So, in the future, two men can have a baby...sort of. The process, as it stands now, is unethical and impractical and all other sorts of things. I'm including the link. It still doesn't make 100% sense to me but basically some special stem cells from Dad #1 are inserted into an embryo and the daughters that are born only have Dad #1's DNA. That daughter then can breed with Dad #2 and the baby is a child with only Dad #1 and Dad #2's DNA.
http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/14/the-mouse-that-had-two-dads/

I didn't find much else except a few fun facts...

The Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum in Florida has two totems from a tribe in the Ivory Coast. During one year 20 staff members touched the statue's head and eight got pregnant.
Guess I have a reason to go to Florida in the winter now.

Some people say Feng Shui can help get a woman pregnant. There should be nothing blocking your front door inside or outside including parking outside your door. Apparently that blocks reproductive energy. And keep the area under the bed clear but don't clean it.
Finally, a reason to not clean!

You could fly to Naples, Italy. There is an old apartment with a "miracle chair." Legend has it that a woman was sitting in the chair and saw a statue of baby Jesus open his arms. Women now sit in that chair and get blessed. The walls are covered in pictures of babies born to women who sat in the chair.
I've always wanted to visit Italy.

In Congo the Yansi people use their underwear to get pregnant. When the moon is waning you throw your underwear on top of your roof. When there is a new moon, get your underwear back. Apparently that helps a woman become pregnant.
I wonder what my condo association would say if I did that???

When all else fails the web article suggested fertility spells. Google it. You'll see!
Some spells are even free!!!

Back to Square Two

2011-01-12T18:26:00.000-06:00

- "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

- "Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.”

- “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

- “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.”

- “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”

When I googled "quotes about trying" I found a bunch of them. They're so inspirational, aren't they? It was like the cliff notes of "The Little Engine That Could." I should read these quotes and feel like I could conquer the world, right?

What these quotes fail to address, however, is that it takes a lot of effort and energy to try again and again. When you get knocked down so hard it can be easy to just lay down and accept defeat. I think that's why I haven't written much on my blog and I put off looking for an egg donor for a few weeks. It has been hard to get over the fact that the last 10 months of my life - all of the time, tears, money, energy, worrying, etc. - have not resulted in the goal. But at least I'm at square two now, not square one. I have a surrogate who I like. I have a doctor who I like. I even have a lawyer who I'm excited to talk to again. I hope I never see her again after this (except to introduce her to the baby) but I have really had a very positive experience with my lawyer. Maybe that actually puts me at square four?

Looking for a new egg donor wasn't a big decision in some respects. I wanted a Jewish donor who either had children of her own or had donated before and had had a successful outcome. There really aren't many who fit that criteria. I looked through the databases of three egg donation centers in Chicago and basically found one. The donor I considered using the first time but couldn't because someone else picked her had donated successfully but I saw that she had 23 eggs, 16 embryos and only 1 frozen embryo. I don't know the full story but it sounds like a bunch of embryos didn't make it past day 3 or 5. There was a donor who graduated from a top college, was currently in medical school and qualified for Olympic trials -- twice! That was impressive, but she was a first time donor and not Jewish. The other donor I was considering is the one who has donated five times before. One time the parent(s) did not get pregnant but there are some frozen embryos. Another time there was no pregnancy but it was a sperm issue. The other three times were successful including two times using my doctor and one time it was twins.

I asked the agency what kind of girl would donate six times. I wondered if she was just in it for the money. Her requested compensation was also considerably higher than most other girls. Of course I can't get a full picture of who she is, but I have picked up a few details about her including the fact that she has said donating has made her happy, she was described as showing empathy for couples using egg donors, she was involved with the Big Sister program, and she mentioned she is comfortable donating to a same sex couple or a single father. She also agreed to take a lower amount of compensation when I asked. I'm willing to pay a little more than an average price given the fact that she's Jewish, has a high pregnancy success rate and she has a master's degree. Those qualities are important to me and are hard to find. Plus, I just found out she's leaving for Israel soon and will visit her grandmother in NY on the way back home. How could i not pick a girl who is visiting her bubbe after seeing Israel? Oy. I could kvell. I'm verklempt in my ganecktigazoink.

Just a Little Dab of Super Glue

2010-12-27T16:37:00.000-06:00

It's interesting how different waiting rooms have different types of magazines. I go to a barber (yes, he even has the turning barber's pole outside his shop) and the magazines are all Sports Illustrated and Money. When I go to my dentist in Lincoln Park there are a lot of Time and Newsweek magazines. Then Derek and I go to the fertility clinic and we see Vogue and Cosmo. We found out how to know if you're good in bed and what men on the street's sexual new year's resolutions will be. I'm amazed these magazines have been around for so long. Maybe next time Derek and I can take an "Are You Compatible?" test since we all know those tests are accurate.

"Well this is frustrating," the doctor said as we started our meeting.

Yep. The doctor was right. That's pretty much how I felt. And, to add to my anxiety, I just found out I had to think of some sexual new year's resolutions if I wanted to be a "man on the street."

The doctor really had no explanation as to why this hasn't worked yet. I get that this is an art, not a science, but I still was hoping for an explanation. I did get an answer to one of my burning questions.

"So, you can take one egg and one sperm and isolate them," I said. "You can crack the shell of the egg. You can make an embryo grow in a dish for 3-5 days. You can freeze and unfreeze my sperm. You can watch the embryos enter a uterus on a monitor. Why the heck can't you just make an embryo stick to the uterine wall? C'mon...just shove it in there and make the surrogate lay on her side for a couple days. Am I right, doc?"

"It doesn't quite work that way, Michael," the doctor says in his awesome accent that I think is South African but I'm not sure.

Curse the limits of science. (Shake fist in the air.)

"If I touch the uterine lining," the doctor continues, "the lining gets irritated and won't accept the egg. And if the egg does stick but the body doesn't want it to stick, it will just lead to a miscarriage down the line."

"Even if you use a little dab of Super Glue?" I asked hopefully.

OK...I didn't really say that.

Then I asked the question every doctor hates to hear. "If you were in my shoes, and I know you can't really tell me what to do, what would you do?"

"I'd get another egg donor," he said quickly.

Wow! A direct, confident answer from a doctor. Nice. Not really the answer I wanted to hear...but I'm glad he felt confident about a decision. We talked about how the eggs are a major part in the success of surrogacy. My sperm looked fine from what they could tell (remember my five...yes FIVE vials!) and a healthy embryo can be put in a 40 year old surrogate and have no problems. The biggest factor that should be changed with my specific situation is the egg donor. So the doctor strongly recommended I find a donor who has either already has a child or has donated eggs that have resulted in a successful pregnancy. My first donor didn't already have children and it's possible that she is infertile and her eggs will just not result in a pregnancy. We're jumping to a BIG conclusion, but when you're in a situation like mine and it costs time and energy and money for every attempt we want to reduce every unknown possible.

I have been looking at donors over the last week or two since I only have one embryo left I knew that starting with a new egg donor was a distinct possibility. I found one woman who I like. She has actually donated 5 times before and the limit is 6 according to some governing board. If I pick her she'd have to retire. How cool to say she retired at 26! I also saw that the woman I was considering months ago who I couldn't use because someone else picked her is available to donate again. I'll have to check if her donation has resulted in a pregnancy.

When I mentioned I needed a little more fun in my entries someone suggested we go all "Survivor" or "American Idol" on this blog and have people vote for their favorite donors. Every week I could post a new fact about the donors to help people decide their vote. I'm sure there is something totally unethical if not illegal about disclosing information like that on a blog and that is clearly not a way to pick a donor. But the idea made me laugh. Picking the right donor is hard.

Meanwhile, back in the casting department, the doctor will most likely be played by Hugh Jackman. He's got a nice accent.

My Friend Michaela

2010-12-20T23:07:00.001-06:00

I wanted my next blog entry to be something funny and uplifting. I looked at what I wrote a few days ago and it was so depressing. I talked about all the signs I had in my life showing me that I wasn't going to have a baby. That's clearly not doing me any good. So, after failing to find the humor in all that I've gone through, I want to talk about something positive: my friend, "Michaela."

Michaela and I realized a few months ago how our lives have intertwined in such a unique way.

Picture it: Columbia College. Summer of 2001 (I think). A hallway. A young girl comes up to me and says...

Girl: Is your name Michael?
Me: Yeah. (She looks up to me because she's a newbie and I'm about to graduate.)
Girl: Is your last name H*********?
Me: Yep. (She knew me because I was such a phenomenal interpreting student!)
Girl: Did you go to Northwestern?
Me: I did. (Hmmmm...what's going on?)
Girl: You majored in theater, right?
Me: Ummm...yeah. How'd you know? (Should I be calling the cops?)
Girl: You graduated in 199...7?
Me: OK...why are you stalking me???

Maybe that last line didn't really happen.

Michaela was a dance major at Northwestern and she was two years behind me in school. She worked as a performer for a few years and finally decided that she might want a career change. Michaela, like me, wound up looking into interpreting. I'm a big believer that people enter and exit your life for a reason. At this point I didn't know why we connected again.

Michaela and I kept in touch for a while and then she moved out of state. I think we lost touch for a year or two but, through the magic of Facebook, we found each other again.

As I started this blog in February Michaela told me that she was getting close to her own surrogacy journey. As she went through the process and I blogged more and more and told her how wonderful this blogging had (and has) been for me Michaela decided to start her own blog.

Michaela's blog has been so helpful to me. She finds humor in pain like I can't do. She finds hope in adversity which I can't always find. She finds happiness in a frustrating hand that life has dealt her. I have definitely used her texts and calls and blog to help me through rough times.

She is about to find out if her surrogate is pregnant. She'll know in a couple days. I want nothing more than to read those magical words on her blog saying "SHE'S PREGNANT!" It would restore my faith in this process. Plus, Michaela and her husband just plain deserve it. So, as a little favor to me and my friend, please wish her good thoughts.

All's Fair In Love and War (And Apparently Surrogacy Too)

2010-11-30T13:50:00.001-06:00

Last night I got the news that Chloe isn't pregnant again. Last time I cried inconsolably. This time I cried a little but I was more angry and upset and frustrated. I'm at a loss as to what to do next.

I know that this is not the P.C. thing to say, but I'm going to say this anyway: it sucks to see unfit parents having kids when I'm trying so hard and not succeeding. I work for a hospital where about three-quarters of the people are on public aid, many have no job, some don't breast feed because they want to start using drugs again, some are high when they deliver, some are HIV+ with five kids and are completely living off the government, etc., etc., etc. I'm sure if I talked with more of the OB/GYN staff I would get more stories that would blow my mind. I know...it's not nice to judge these people. I know that many of them grew up in an environment that lacked the opportunities that I had. I know while my parents were going to work every day and planning to take me to Disney World their parents might have been absent or struggling to make ends meet or maybe using drugs or in prison. I know this sounds arrogant of me like I think I'm more deserving of them. But right now I just want to be selfish and say that I do.

Derek turned to me last night after we heard the message and said, "I just want you to be a dad." I will remember that for a long time. What on earth can you possibly say to someone who is going through this? Apparently those are the right words. It made me feel supported and loved and was realistic. Sometimes it's hard to hear the "I know it'll happen for you" words of encouragement. A lot of my friends have said it to me and I know the intention behind it comes from loving me and wishing me the best. But sometimes, when I hear that, I just want to say "You don't really know that" or "It doesn't feel like that." After two failed attempts it is hard to say "It WILL happen" because after it seemed like all the stars aligned twice, they really didn't.

I also read "Michaela's" blog late last night and thank goodness I did. Michaela is in the egg retrieval stage and is plunging a needle into her stomach 3-4 times a day for the next month. Not fun. And yet her blog made me literally laugh out loud. Her take on the process is still upbeat and optimistic. I need that right now. Soon I'll get back to blogging about fun topics like why Eva Mendes will be wet in every scene in the movie or maybe I'll organize a protest against Neil Patrick Harris. But I need a few days to recover from this.

I'm off to call the doctor and the surrogacy agency to get more information and see what happens next.

Hey Universe, Are You Listening? You Better Be!

2010-11-27T21:47:00.000-06:00

It has been two weeks since the embryo transfer. My life has been busy so, to be honest, I haven't thought about it all that much. I do think about it from time to time and pray "Stick, little embryos, stick!" Then I go about my day until the thought pops into my head again several hours later and I repeat the same mantra. And, every night, I write a few sentences over and over again in a little journal. I write sentences saying things like: "my surrogate is pregnant now," "I will be a dad," and, as Chloe's uncle says, "Grooooooooow baby!" with nine "O"s because I need one for each month of growth. A part of me thinks it's silly and I know my pen and paper doesn't make an embryo stick to the uterus of a woman 15 miles away, but I also think it can't hurt. There are unexplained phenomena in this world that go above our understanding and so my putting it out into the universe may be just the thing my baby needs.

It has been interesting for me to see as I write these sentences every day how their meaning has changed for me. For a while, I wrote them without really thinking about them. One day I noticed I underlined a word in a sentence. Then I'd underline a different word the next day. Words like "pregnant", "dad", and "baby" started to have more meaning and truth. I started saying the sentences out loud as I wrote them. I'm hoping the universe is listening.

The thought that is always in my head now is "What will my child be?" I wonder if my child will be a teacher or an athlete or a scientist. I can't wait to see what kind of child comes from me. It will be exciting to see my child's personality and interests grow and develop.

The pregnancy test is on Monday. These last few days have been harder than the first week and a half. As we get closer and closer the excitement and nerves increase. But I'm imagining that moment that I'm told "She's pregnant" and the tears of joy that will come after that. This just has to succeed.

Life

2010-11-13T12:05:00.001-06:00

The alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. Derek and I got up so we could make our way to the fertility clinic for today's embryo transfer. I made waffles with syrup. Last time we did an embryo transfer we had eggs for breakfast and later realized the flaw in our logic - we already had the eggs! Now we needed something to make them stick. That's why we ate syrup today.

Right as we left my place I saw "Life" cereal in a shopping bag. I had bought some last night since I knew that Derek liked that cereal and I meant to offer him that for breakfast. All of a sudden, it hit me at that moment: Life! We should have eaten Life cereal!!! I grabbed the box and decided it couldn't hurt to take a few handfuls before the transfer.

When we got to the fertility clinic about 7:15 a.m. I asked the receptionist if "Chloe's" friend, "Steven", could go into room during the embryo transfer so he could capture it on film. I wasn't sure if filming would be allowed. The receptionist said that would probably be ok and she would check with the doctor.

After a couple minutes the nurse called me to go into a room even though Chloe wasn't there yet. Then she looked at Derek and wondered why he wasn't coming too. I'm not sure if she knows that he's my partner or if she just assumed he was a friend but I have to say that it has been so nice to never have felt judged throughout this whole process. The doctors, lawyers, nurses, agency representatives, etc. have never hesitated to use the word "partner" and never looked at Derek with a "who are you?" expression on their faces. Even some of the forms sometimes say things like "Partner 1" and "Partner 2."

Getting back to today, Derek came back to wait with me. The nurse gave scrubs to Derek and me. Once again we said that we wanted the filmmaker to be in the room and we weren't sure how many people could fit. The nurse said she would check with the doctor and there would probably be room for all.

Next, the embryologist came in to talk to me. He said that they had thawed the first two embryos and both were suitable for transfer. That was great news. I breathed a sigh of relief. It's nice to know I still have one embryo frozen for use in the future if I want.

Chloe and Steven arrived a little while later and they were getting ready in another room. The nurse asked Chloe if it was ok for Derek and me (and Steven, of course) to be in the room and she agreed. A few minutes later we all piled into the room: Derek, Chloe, Steven, the doctor, the technician, the embryologist and me. Someone was telling everyone where to stand and sit. It was almost like setting up a shot for a real movie.

I saw the dish with my name on it and my two little embryos! There they were on the screen, magnified 400 times, and they were no bigger than the size of a pea. I watched them get sucked up into a tube and then the embryologist came into the room. This time, it was hard to see the embryos get shot into the uterus. Last time Chloe and I saw the outline of the equipment on the ultrasound monitor and even saw the embryos get shot out. This time, the technician had said it would be hard to see and he was right. I'm not sure why. Derek and I are hoping it's because her uterine lining is a lot thicker this time, but we might be wrong. I'm trusting that they're in there, searching for a place to attach as I type this. A technician checked the tube to make sure that it's all clear before we were allowed to leave the room. He said nothing was left in the tube so the procedure was done and it was time for us to go home.

One day, when my child is small, maybe I'll show him/her the video and say, "That was you when you were 5 days old!"

Now I have 16 days of waiting. I think I might go have a bowl of "Life" for lunch.

Grooooooooow Baby!

2010-11-12T15:52:00.000-06:00

One more day until the embryo transfer. It's getting exciting. I mentioned on Facebook that the embryo transfer is on Saturday and two of my friends said that they had dreams about my baby. One said she asked me how the baby was and I smiled and said, "Great!" I'm hoping that putting all of this out into the universe is telling the universe that I am ready to meet my baby -- or babies. I still have to remember that having twins is possible.

The first time we tried to become pregnant my surrogate took a pregnancy test 12 days after the transfer. Twelve days after this transfer is Thanksgiving day. I'm hoping I'll have something very big to be thankful for this year. Of course the clinic isn't open on Thanksgiving day so I won't find out on that Thursday. The pregnancy test is set for November 29th so stay posted for that news.

From what I remember the embryo takes anywhere from 2-4 days to implant. (I may have that wrong, though.) Regardless of the actual number of days, I know that it's within a few days after the transfer. So this weekend we'll all be thinking about that little baby latching on to the surrogate! And, as my surrogate's uncle likes to say, "Grooooooooow baby!"

On a completely non-clinical note, a friend of mine who is a playwright said he is writing a play about a gay couple adopting a child and he wants to talk with me about my process. How exciting! I'm not only going to have a documentary made about this process AND a Hollywood movie made about my life, now I'm inspiring a play too. If this becomes a movie-of-the-week and someone writes a hit song about me I can achieve an EGOT. (There's my "30 Rock" reference for all you fans.)

On Your Mark, Get Set...

2010-11-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it has been close to a month since I last wrote a post. It makes sense. Not much has happened over the past few weeks since we have just been waiting for the doctor to "reset" my surrogate's cycle. Now we are eight days away from the embryo transfer.

I decided to look for some quotes to add to my blog and sum up some feelings that maybe I couldn't express in my own words. At first I decided I would write "Michael's Soliloquy" and start off with "To birth or not to birth" or something clever like that. Then I remembered I hate Shakespeare and don't understand him so spoofing him wasn't going to work. Instead, I just have a few quotes I found online.

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.
-Marcelene Cox

I have no idea who Marcelene Cox is. I tried googling the name and all I got were her quotes. But I liked this quote because I hope that I will remember this when I am frustrated or angry or stressed. I'm not at the rearing part yet, but I'm at the making part and so far this hasn't been a walk in the park. There have been times when I have forgotten the goal because of the heaviness of a certain part of the process. I have to remember that the good will far outweigh the bad when my dream comes true.

Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Last time we did an embryo transfer I was scared to get my hopes up. This time, my hopes are up. I know I will have a child and I will be a dad. That is the only option in my head right now. A few weeks ago my surrogate went in for blood work and an ultrasound (I think of her uterus...I'm not sure. I don't pay attention to girly parts) and everything was fine. Yesterday she went in for a check of her uterine lining. The nurse called me to say it's at 12.5 mm which is great. The doctors want the lining to be at least 7 mm so she is well above that threshold and this is better than it was last time we did the transfer. Things are looking good. My parents are flying to town today. If we have time we plan on looking at baby furniture. My parents said that they will buy me a crib. A few months ago I wouldn't have agreed to do this, but now I want to start planning. I'm trying to put it out to the universe that I'm ready for this baby!

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
-Phyllis Diller

Just had to add that.

In other news...

Chloe's friend did make a short video of the surrogacy process. He submitted it to a one-minute film festival. There were 26 entries and he took 3rd prize. I hope I get to see it. I asked Chloe is she wanted her friend to film the embryo transfer this time. Maybe that's why it didn't work the first time. Maybe we need my child's very first few minutes of life to be on video. I asked Chloe if she minded having her uterus on film. She didn't. She's so easy going. Plus she mentioned she just watched "Whip It" and wants to go skating. Derek loves the movie "Whip It." Maybe that's another sign I have the right surrogate!

Also, Neil Patrick Harris still has not posted on my blog. I don't care if he has newborn twins, it's not hard to write "Good luck Michael" on my blog. Can we all agree to boycott his show?

On the plus side, my friend who is going through surrogacy is moving along. I just wrote her a note and said that we should arrange a play date for our kids. She lives a few thousand miles away, but I think our kids should meet. Maybe February 19th, 2012? Can I pencil you in for that, "Michaela"?

If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

2010-10-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

At times I feel like this just gets harder and harder. Talking with the doctor was tough...maybe tougher than I have let on. Every time I think about the next try it opens up a wound. Losing the embryos last time was hard and I think time heals all wounds...but it's not healed yet. It still really hurts.

Derek and I went to the doctor together almost two weeks ago. Here is what we learned...

The donor having 13 follicles was on the lower end of the spectrum. We kind of knew that. The doctor said 13 follicles should have given us 10 good eggs and I only had eight. So I kind of lost on that step. Out of the eight that were fertilized usually 50% don't succeed so my seven out of eight was great. And then, out of those eight, having five that made it to the blastocyst stage was about normal. So I had some bad luck, some good luck, and some typical luck. The doctor also said that 2/3 of people who use egg donors have embryos to freeze so I am fortunate that I didn't fall into the 1/3 who don't have any extras.

On November 13th we will try to transfer two more embryos. I have three frozen embryos. There are two ways to thaw the embryos. The first way is to thaw all three embryos at the same time and pick the best two. But, if all three are viable, the doctors will pick the best two and then the third will have to be discarded. It cannot be frozen again. The second way is to thaw them one at a time and, if the first two are viable, then we can save the third one. The only negative with this second method is that the one that is frozen may be stronger than the two that are thawed. There is no way to compare all three and take the best two with this method. That's ok with me if I can keep the third one frozen and possibly have a third chance. The big question I had was how much of a success rate do doctors have thawing embryos. The doctor told me 90% of embryos can be transferred. I like those odds.

So November 13th is the day. Twelve days later, which is when we do the pregnancy test, is Thanksgiving day. I hope that I'll be very thankful for something this year. My guess is I'll have to wait until Friday or even the following Monday, though, to get the pregnancy results. That will be a hard weekend.

My mom told me she had a dream recently. She, like me, doesn't usually remember her dreams. This one, however, she did remember. She had an extremely vivid dream that I had a baby named Richard and he started walking at 5 1/2 months old. OK...that second part probably won't happen, but it was nice that she had a dream about me having a baby.

What Happens Next?

2010-09-14T17:29:00.000-05:00

It has been a week since I found out the pregnancy didn't take. A lot of people have asked what the next step is. I don't have all the answers yet, but I have to meet with my doctor again. My appointment is at the end of this month. And it looks like we will try again in November. Two months is a long time to wait for me, but I think I like taking that time to just get over what happened over this past cycle.

Meanwhile, I just got some emails from the fertility clinic yesterday and today. I have to sign a form to consent to thaw and transfer the frozen embryos and, of course, pay the clinic again. They always want their money! I read one form yesterday and it crushed me again. One paragraph said more embryos will be thawed than I expect to be transferred because not all thawed embryos are suitable for transfer.

WHAT???

I thought I had three embryos left. Now I find out that may not be true? This was a blow when I was already not doing so well. I feel like I need to talk to the doctor to get more information. My mind is just racing with "what if" questions.

So where is the silver lining?

Well, I may have one. On Sunday I met with a friend of mine who talked about the idea of making room in your life for more things to come in, positive energy in the world, and the power of your own thoughts to make real, physical changes even though everything around you is going against what you want. We talked about experiments like how you physically become stronger when you say the word "yes" or tell the truth and become weaker when you say "no" or tell a lie. The mind is definitely very powerful.

The next day I went to work. My job that day was tough. It was from 9:30-1:30pm and I assumed there would be a break at some point...just a few minutes to go to the bathroom or get water. People can't go four hours without a five minute stretch, right? At about 12:00 we hadn't taken a break and there was no mention of one any time soon. As my partner and I wrote notes back and forth to each other I wrote that I hoped they would take a short break. About a minute later someone in the room asked for a break.

Hmmmm...my mind IS powerful!

As my partner and I chatted during the break (we hadn't seen each other in about two years) she mentioned the power of visualization and sending things out to the universe. I thought it was interesting I had two conversations in a row about this idea. I also remembered reading something about an experiment with water. I looked it up online and found this excerpt....

Dr. Emoto found that if he played beautiful music in the presence of tap water, it would then make beautiful frozen crystal formations. He also learned that the written word changed the water. Dr. Emoto taped paper strips on bottles of tap water and then photographed the frozen water. He found that words such as "Thank you," and "I love you," caused the tap water to form beautiful crystals. Words such as "You make me sick," or "You are a fool," caused ugly, distorted crystals or no crystals at all. Dr. Emoto then found that we can cause tap water to form beautiful frozen water crystals simply by praying for the water, by sending it loving thoughts, and by blessing it.

This came from the website http://www.dowsers.com/page52.html

I have never been very religious or even spiritual. But when you're dealing with such high stakes, you'll try anything. During this first attempt I was scared to think the results would be positive or negative. I didn't want to go down either path. I was afraid of getting my hopes up but now that I have gone through this once I'm ready to throw myself into the process. I'm going to ask everyone to really think about my surrogate being pregnant, to pray for a successful pregnancy, and to hope that this next time will be a success. I do think that our thoughts can affect outcomes.

Meanwhile, Neil Patrick Harris is still M.I.A. Hrmpf!

Three Little Words

2010-09-07T16:10:00.000-05:00

After 12 days of waiting I finally got the call. It was about 3:15 p.m. and I literally was walking out of my job the second the phone rang. I saw the 847 area code so I knew it was the fertility clinic. I answered not sure what I should feel aside from nervousness. The nurse said to me, "She's not pregnant."

It took me a minute to figure out what to feel. I thought I had a good shot at getting pregnant. (Well, not me personally, but the surrogate!) I tend to not live in the moment and I worry about the future and immediately I was counting my limited number of chances left. The nurse told me that I should call the doctor to set up an appointment and we would discuss using the frozen embryos.

I sat on a step on the sidewalk crying as I talked to the nurse. Right at that moment a woman walked by and asked me if I was ok. It was sweet to see there are people in this world who are concerned for a stranger's well being. The knife in the heart came from the fact that she was pushing a baby in a stroller. Real life is stranger than fiction, right? You just can't make up this kind of stuff. Right after she passed me by two guys came walking down the sidewalk and asked me if I smoke and had cigarettes. Do you not see me crying on the phone?!?!?

I called my parents. I called Derek. I told them what was going on. I also got a call from the surrogate agency asking if I was ok. What can you say? Not much. It is what it is. No, I'm not ok, but there is nothing to be done. "Chloe" also sent me a text saying she was sorry and asked if I was doing ok. It was very sweet of her to check in with me.

I guess this is part of the process. Other people go through this too so it's not like I'm the only person who has ever had to endure this. I will survive. It's just tough now.

The movie is still in development. My friend Tiffany (a.k.a. the "Michaela" of "Michael & Michaela") has come up with some song titles like "Makin' Babies in the 21st Century" (featuring porn, pipettes and petri dishes), a hilarious cover of "Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof with all new lyrics, and the showstopping "Pushin' Real Hard," an revival-esque gospel number about the birthing process. Tiffany recommended Jennifer Hudson play my surrogate because she'll be great in her gospel song. I'm also thinking Barbara Streisand or Better Midler as my mom.

The Longest 288...I Mean 336 Hours...

2010-09-02T13:33:00.000-05:00

I'm wondering when my life gets to slow down and when I get a break. Yes, I realize the irony of wanting a break at the same time I'm hoping to have a baby. I know parents don't get a break. The stress and responsibilities will just increase and it is a 24/7 job.

Today I had to run to the surrogate agency to pay for insurance. I think I mentioned before that most insurance policies don't cover surrogates. My surrogate has a pretty strong policy that looks like it does not have an exclusion for her while she is doing this for me. I might get the pregnancy covered...but we won't know until the first bill is submitted. So I decided to take out a special policy on my surrogate.

There are a few different options, but not many. I can't remember what all the different policies do. One policy has a $45,000 deductible. I'm not really sure what you get from that but $45,000 is a big risk to take The one that seems to work best for me is a complications only policy. If the baby is happy and healthy then I won't use the policy at all. Let's all hope for that.

I went to the agency to drop off the insurance paperwork this morning and started talking with one of the women who works there. She is a nurse. I mentioned the pregnancy test coming up and how that will hopefully confirm that my surrogate is, in fact, pregnant. My heart sank a little more when I learned that the one test isn't really proof of a pregnancy. There is a hormone called HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) that is measured to confirm a pregnancy. If my surrogate has that hormone it means she is pregnant. Usually that is a pretty good indication of a pregnancy. But my surrogate will have to go back two days later to get her HCG level checked again. That level should double every 24 hours. The waiting gets longer and longer all the time. The big milestone to get through is the fetal heartbeat which happens at about 5-6 weeks.

It's funny that HCG came up in my life today because it came up in Derek's life too. Derek found an application that is one of those "What to Expect When Expecting" things. He punched in the embryo's "birthday" and then it gives him updates and what is happening at certain points during the pregnancy. Today's update talked all about HCG.

A lot of my friends have been asking about "Chloe" taking a home pregnancy test. The results, as we all know, are not always accurate. The nurse at the fertility clinic said that the embryos can take 3-7 days to attach to the uterus. That's why there is such a long waiting period before doing the pregnancy test. I think it's not worth asking for a home pregnancy test. It has certainly crossed my mind, but the wrong answer - either way - is not what I want. I'll just keep thining about sticky things. Hmmm...maybe I'll get a Cinnabon today!

P.S. Still no word from Neil Patrick Harris.

Deja Vu

2010-08-29T23:48:00.000-05:00

Derek and I went out to dinner tonight. I wasn't very hungry and just wanted something small and quick. We were planning on going to Noodles and Co. but at the last minute I remembered a Chinese restaurant in the area. We decided to go there.

At the end of the meal we got fortune cookies. I opened mine up and it said:

"Your present plans are going to succeed."

Hmmmm...same fortune I got on April 21st. Coincidence???

There's Good News and Bad News (This Is a Familiar Theme)

2010-08-27T21:28:00.001-05:00

I guess getting up at the crack of dawn is something that will be normal for me in nine months. I had to be at the fertility clinic at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday. Of course I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was late. I remember seeing the clock said 3:19 a.m. Next thing I knew the alarm was buzzing at 5:00 a.m. Oy vey.

Derek (my boyfriend/partner/support system who just got major points for sending me flowers at work today and who will be played by Neil Patrick Harris in the movie and who was thoughtful enough to buy the surrogate a little thank you gift for our first meeting) and I had eggs for breakfast. We just couldn't resist.

We headed up to the fertility clinic and "Chloe" was already there with her friend who is hoping to make the documentary film about this process. I introduced Derek, she introduced her friend, and we all made our way into the clinic.

The clinic was much nicer than the last time I was there. The waiting room renovations were complete so there were flowers and bamboo walls and art deco couches now. I didn't have to walk past client files to sit in an overcrowded back hallway this time. Clearly the renovations were a success.

"Chloe" and I were called in almost immediately and that left Derek and the filmmaker to deal with awkward conversation and silence. "Chloe" went into one room to change into a gown and I was put in a separate room.

The embryologist came in to talk with me. She told me that embryos, which should be at the blastocyst stage by now, are given a number on a scale of 2-4 for the rating of the cavity and then get a grade of A, B, or C for inner and (I think) outer cell mass. I had four full blastocysts, two early blastocysts and one pre-blastocyst that is called a morula. The four full blastocysts were rated 4AB, 4AB, 4AB and 4BB. That sounded pretty good to me. The other three were not viable at that moment and could be watched for one more day. If they continued to mature I could freeze them. The attrition rate after fertilization is usually 50% so I was doing pretty well.

Then came the big decision. How many embryos to transfer? Fresh transfers have a slightly higher success rate than frozen transfers. If I decided to only transfer one and it failed, then next time I would have to do two. Then I might be left with only one, frozen 4BB for a third time and that doesn't give me very good odds. How many blastocysts I had influenced my decision. How confident I felt influenced my decision. How I felt about the possibility of twins influenced my decision. And, of course, my emotional state of how I would feel trying this two or three times influenced my decision. I literally just paused for a second and blurted out "two." It feels like the right decision.

The embryologist and I went in to talk with my surrogate about my decision to get her approval. We asked how she felt about twins. My surrogate said something to the effect of "Bring it on!" She is so willing to do anything and everything to make this pregnancy happen. It was nice to see her be so fearless in this process.

"Chloe" and I were left alone in the room. We wound up being there for, I think, about 30-40 minutes. I wondered how we would find anything to do to pass the time. We talked almost the whole time. I learned a little about her family, her education, plans for medical school, travel experiences and more. We had a really nice time. After getting to know her a little more I have a lot of respect for her and I like her. I really do. I see how when she wants something in life she goes for it with 100% commitment. Getting to know her as a person and not just as my surrogate makes me trust her more.

When the time came to do the embryo transfer "Chloe" let me go in the room with her. I got to watch the embryos on the monitor hung in the room. I saw the embryos sucked up from a dish into a tube. Then I watched the embryos injected into the uterus. The whole process took 10 minutes or less. The actual transfer was about 30 seconds. The surrogate said she barely knew they were starting before it was all over.

From a clinical perspective, it looked like two little dots moving across the screen. But from a personal, emotional level, I can't get it out of my head that I just saw my child(ren) for the first time! The idea that my child is alive now is amazing. As much as I wanted this child, I want him or her (or them!) even more after seeing them. If it is possible to love a collection of 20 cells, I do.

The surrogate goes for a pregnancy test in about two weeks. It has been about 36 hours so far and the wait is so agonizing.

Today I got a call saying that out of the three embryos that were not fully developed only one became viable. That one grew to a 4BB. So I have a 4AB, a 4BB and a second 4BB frozen now. Somehow I went from 13 eggs to 5 embryos so quickly. That's a harsh reality.

Now I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

On the ride home from the clinic Derek said that the filmmaker was sharing some stories with him. He said "Chloe" has had some people tell her that what she is doing is playing G-d and it is unnatural. It makes me sad to hear that people she knows are not supporting her in what she is doing. I feel lucky my friends have been supportive beyond belief. Is this natural? No. But nasty, hurtful comments like that make me think this film is a good idea. It is hard to hate when you put a face to an issue. I'm sure some people will always be against this. But maybe this movie will make some people will see what an amazing thing "Chloe" and my egg donor have done for me.

Meanwhile, last night I saw the episode of "Friends" where Rachel is in the hospital right after giving birth. Is this another sign? Or does this mean that I have an unhealthy faith in "Friends" paralleling my pregnancy process?

Odds and Ends

2010-08-25T16:37:00.000-05:00

The last few days have been so stressful. My mind is constantly thinking about this process, my life, babies, money, relationships, and everything else. I try to remember that having a child is stressful. If I think this is bad now, nine months from now will be unmanageable. I just have to take things as they come. I have no control over the process right now. Sometimes that helps me calm myself down...sometimes not.

One thing that does run through my head a lot is how this process is so much more for me than for 99.9% of the world. Many people, hundreds or maybe thousands, without money, education, resources, support or even wanting a child, get one. As an interpreter I have seen examples of this: an HIV+ woman having her sixth child, a woman who didn't have $100 for a bite guard but who is trying to get pregnant (and we all know a baby costs a lot more than $100), a woman who barely has the language capacity to understand pregnancy had a baby. But, as I have also learned, I'm not alone in my process. By now about a dozen friends have mentioned that they or someone they know have used sperm donors, egg donors, surrogates or IVF treatments. These success stories are wonderful to hear and in nine months I will hopefully have my own success story to share with others.

I had another sign this morning. I usually listen to a morning radio program if I'm in the car. I almost didn't turn it on. I was close to listening to the tape of my singing lesson. In the end I decided I would listen to the radio show. As soon as I turned it on I heard talk of turkey basters and ovulation. I missed part of the conversation, but I did hear some talk of how little people know of the ovulation/pregnancy process. The DJs were talking about men wanting signs about when it was safe/not safe to "have relations" as they kept saying. An obstetrician called the show to talk about how male and female sperm differ (speed vs. stamina), how many days before a period ovulation happens, and how much more men know about this process now compared with 10 or 20 years ago. One DJ even asked how long sperm stay alive in utero. I knew that thanks to my fun fact I posted in a recent blog entry. I know that anything can be made into a sign if you are looking for them, but I thought that was just one more fun coincidence in my life.

Plus, there is a recall on eggs due to salmonella. Wait...that's not good. Moving on...

I also decided to write a letter to Neil Patrick Harris. No, I have not turned into a crazy stalker. My letter was very simple. I said that I was writing a blog about my surrogacy journey and said NPH should be in the movie of my life and a week or two later NPH announced his own surrogacy journey. That made me wish that NPH would follow my blog. I'm not really expecting an answer. On the off chance that you see "NPH" or "Neil" following my blog, though, you'll know who it is.

I have more casting updates on the movie. My friend (a.k.a. "Michaela") is a dancer and has decided she should choreograph this epic movie which will become a film and, maybe, a mini-series. Her husband will be played by Matthew Broderick since Matthew had kids through a surrogate recently. I think all my interpreter friends need to be condensed into one or two co-workers and I'm thinking Kathy Griffin and Tina Fey. This movie really is going to be an epic. We haven't even started the pregnancy and already I have a cast of thousands. I think we might have to break this movie up into parts like the final Harry Potter book which will be split into two films.

Finally, I will be going to the fertility clinic tomorrow morning at 6:30 (ugh) for the first embryo transfer. I guess I better get used to the early mornings. This is it. After a lifetime of thinking about being a father, years of planning, months of stress, weeks of contract negotiations, days of crying and hours or holding my breath we are finally at a point where this could happen. So cross your fingers, eat some eggs, wish upon a star, rent a Neil Patrick Harris movie, say a prayer, purchase creepy surrogate t-shirts on the internet, dream of babies, buy some booties, watch Phoebe give birth on "Friends," give your baby a kiss or do anything else that you think could increase my chances.

Thanks.

Babies are Everywhere

2010-08-22T23:53:00.000-05:00

I thought, when you ride a roller coaster, the big drops are at the beginning and the ride calms down as you get towards the end. Clearly I was wrong. I recently had an amazing high that then dropped very low.

On Saturday I called the fertility clinic to ask what had happened with my donor. I was told the doctors got 13 eggs. Thirteen!!! What a lovely number. This was better than I could have expected. I felt like 13 eggs would give me a great chance of having a lot of viable embryos.

After the eggs were retrieved they were fertilized. The nurse said she did get the message to do ICSI and assisted hatching so that was a relief too.

Today was the call with news about how many eggs turned into embryos. As I listened to the message it did make my heart pound. It's incredible how one little word can change your life. Hearing a number like "12" would be very different than hearing a number like "3." The magic number was seven. Four of the eggs were immature and couldn't be used. One egg was degenerative. That left me with eight. Of the eight eggs that were healthy, seven made it through the first day of fertilization.

Of course I wanted more. But I have also heard from some people that having 6-8 embryos is average. I'm just trying not to freak out until I talk with the doctor on Tuesday or Thursday.

On a lighter note, babies are starting to pop up in my life. On Saturday I met a friend of mine for brunch with her 2 month old baby. She let me feed him. I was burping him after feeding him. I was watching his head sway from side to side and getting further and further away from the burp cloth. Sure enough, when his head was turned completely to the side facing me, he spit up his milk all over my shirt. Guess that's just my first taste of being a dad. At least I haven't had to deal with dirty diapers...yet.

And tonight I went to rehearsal for a show. I have a prop wallet with $25 in it. I opened the wallet and saw the fake $25. Nothing else was in the entire wallet except some photo holders. There were eight photos and they all were photos of babies. Hmmmm...is that a little bit of a sign? Let's hope.

August 21st: It's the Day of the Retrieval, Y'all!

2010-08-20T16:17:00.000-05:00

My poor donor. She keeps going in for more and more testing. I'm sure she is anxious to get back to her life. She is living out of town now and had to come back to Chicago for the retrieval. The original plan was to retrieve the eggs Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. The final decision is to retrieve the eggs on Saturday since the medications had to be adjusted as we went along and that caused her to be a few days behind the predicted schedule.

At last count the donor had 10 follicles in the ideal size range and 5 more that are small. Not a bad number, but I wouldn't have minded a few more. Here's the to-do list over the next few days

SATURDAY
- eat brunch (probably eggs)
- get phone call about how many eggs were retrieved
- cry (from either good news or bad news)

SUNDAY
- sleep in
- get a call about how many eggs were fertilized
- cry (from either good news or bad news)

MONDAY
- get oil change
- get a call about when embryo transfer will happen (either Tuesday or Thursday)
- buy more tissues in anticipation of crying

TUESDAY OR THURSDAY
- go to the fertility clinic and watch embryos be inserted into a stranger's uterus

THE NEXT FIVE WEEKS
- use up all the tissues I bought on Monday and hope to hear the fetal heartbeat

The transfer day will be either Tuesday or Thursday. It is always 3 or 5 days after fertilization. Most times the parents go to the clinic, but the doctor can call me if I can't make it. I will hopefully be able to go in person. Plus, if the surrogate agrees, I can be in the room with her when they do the transfer. Everything can be seen on the monitor. How amazing is that??? I thought it would be neat to videotape it and then I realized the surrogate probably doesn't want a video of her uterus on YouTube or Facebook. I'll probably have to be content with just watching it myself if she allows me to come into the room.

My current nurse is much better than the mean one I had to deal with in the first part of the process. She noticed some decisions I made on some paperwork that didn't make sense. I think it was because the first nurse did a lousy job explaining the procedures to me. There are two techniques that can increase my chances of fertilization. ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) is allowing the embryologists to hand pick the sperm and insert it into each egg. If I don't do that the sperm and eggs all mix in a dish and we hope the meet. Doing ICSI ensures that the sperm that inseminates the eggs all look good and healthy and nothing odd happens like two sperm entering one egg. The second technique is egg hatching. Women's eggs have a shell on the outside. The shell has to be removed at some point during the process. If I understood it correctly the embryologist doesn't actually remove the shell but will crack it to help the process. I told the nurse to please use both techniques to increase my chances.

Fun fact of the day: human sperm is fertile for 24-48 hours. A bat's sperm is fertile for 135 days. Could you imagine having sex once and then finding out four months later that you're pregnant???

:-/ :-D :-(

2010-08-19T14:59:00.001-05:00

On Friday my donor had 13 follicles. :-/

On Monday my donor had 21 follicles. :-D

On Wednesday my donor has 12 follicles. :-(

Whoa...what happened??? Did the follicle fairy swoop in and take some? How did I suddenly gain 8 eggs and then lose 9? Weren't things going in the right direction?

My nurse told me that the people who run the ultrasounds count follicles differently. Follicles should be 10-18mm and I think 15-16mm is ideal. I knew some follicles were small and may not have eggs so the ultrasonographer (who knew that was a word?) only counted the ones over 10mm. I only have 4 in the 15-16mm range and the others are closer to 10mm. The donor is going to be on medication for a few more days to hopefully help the follicles grow a little more and it now looks like she will donate either on Saturday or Sunday.

The donor's estrogen levels have almost doubled (I have no idea what the number should be but my nurse was very excited by this so I decided I should be excited too). Because the donor is donating for the first time it sometimes takes doctors some adjusting to figure out the right medication levels and combinations. My donor is moving in the right direction and responding to the medication, she's just a few days behind schedule. I asked the nurse to thank my donor for staying a few days past her planned donation date. I'm sure she wants to be done with the medication and see her husband again. I started crying thinking about how much she is doing for me and almost made the nurse cry. In the movie I don't think I should be crying so much. I want a comedy...and to win an Oscar I think I just need one, really good break down scene. That'll be the moment that clinches my award.

I asked about getting up to 30 eggs. I had been told that donors usually produce 10-30 eggs. My nurse said that was correct but 30 is definitely rare and sometimes you get poor quality. She also said most donors produce 10-15 eggs. Sometimes she only gets 7-8 eggs but they are high quality. Hopefully I'll get about a dozen eggs.

Keep holding your breath and crossing your fingers until the weekend. I'll be heading out to brunch on Saturday with a friend and her 6 week old baby. I think I'll order eggs.

I'm off to search the web for a way to contact Neil Patrick Harris. I'm hoping he'll follow my blog.

I'm the Next Neil Patrick Harris

2010-08-17T00:10:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend it was announced that Neil Patrick Harris is having twins born through a surrogate. I found that a little bit of a weird coincidence that he is going through this process at the same time I joked that he should play me in the movie. My friend wants Amy Adams to play her. I'm secretly hoping that Amy Adams is the egg donor for Neil Patrick Harris' baby. If she is I'll have to quit my job and spend the next 9 months trying to contact Neil Patrick Harris to get him to produce and star in my movie. One friend thinks he's not Jewish enough to play me. So the new plan is that Amy Adams will be my friend Michaela in the "Michael & Michaela" movie, I will play myself and get my big break and Neil Patrick Harris will play my love interest. I think it's perfect! Amy, Neil and I all sing too, so when the movie is turned into a Broadway musical we can all still be in the show. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan.

I got some good news today too. The surrogate went in for more monitoring and she is now above the threshold that the doctors want. I was also told she has a "nice quality" for her uterine lining. I never thought I'd hear those words in reference to that. A nice quality of life. Sure. A nice quality shirt. OK. A nice quality uterine lining. Not so much. But I'll take it. So she is ready to take an embryo.

The egg donor was on more medication over the weekend and it seems to have helped. She went from having 13 follicles to 21. The nurse said some of the follicles are tiny and may not produce good eggs. But she also said "overall, it's a great quantity." Again, it may not be optimal, but I'll take it for now. The surrogate will be on medication for two more days and then she'll go in for another check. We'll see if she actually donates on August 18th like my fortune cookie predicted or not.

I'm trying to read up on this whole process of egg follicles and ovulation so I understand it a little more. As a gay man I have to admit I'm not very familiar with cycles and ovaries and other girly parts. (Yes...I am calling them girly parts.) When I interpret ob/gyn appointments I definitely have to ask the doctor for clarification at times. I guess we have proof that my sex ed classes in high school failed a little, although I'm not sure follicle stimulation of a donor to be mixed with frozen sperm in a dish was a common topic 20 years ago. However, in my defense, I do remember one high school girl saying she had cramps so bad she could feel which ovary it was in. After she left the room, a boy - a senior, no less - responded with, "You mean she's going to have a baby?!?!?" I think the sex ed classes were a little lacking and my being gay might not be the only reason hoo-has and bajingas are foreign to me.

There May Be a Movie!

2010-08-15T15:23:00.000-05:00

On Friday the fertility nurse called and left a message. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was holding my breath during the first 20 seconds of the message because I was waiting to hear if it was good news or bad news. It was torture. I finally exhaled when she said everything was OK. The donor has 13 follicles. They were hoping for a little more so the nurse gave her a little more medication and on Monday I might have to order even more. So it's not bad, but it's not optimal right now. Hopefully a few more follicles will grow. I've been told they want to retrieve between 10 and 30 eggs so 13 is an OK number but more is better.

The surrogate needed a little more medication too, but she is very close to the expected results for her uterine lining. So again, we're not panicking, but it's not quite at the level that we all wanted.

The surrogate also contacted me to say that her friend is a filmmaker and wants to make a documentary about her process. She said she needed my permission. I know there is something in my contract with her and my egg donor contract saying that we will keep the other party's identity a secret. So I'm not 100% sure if she needs my permission if she doesn't say anything about me. But I'm leaning towards giving her permission anyway. I think it would be an amazing story for my child to see. I have to talk to my lawyer for sure to make sure this doesn't break the contract, but I don't think I have any issues with this. I'm very open about my situation so this film is not revealing anything new or unknown. A while ago the surrogacy agency sent me a message saying HBO was looking for people who were using surrogates and/or egg donors. I didn't have time to apply but I might have done that if life hadn't been so crazy at that moment. The more I talk about this (and my friend writes her blog) the more I hear stories about people wanting to know more, people who donated an egg, people who are considering a surrogate, etc. Information and exposure can only help bring this process into the mainstream.

I have been calling my boyfriend with updates about the women. I have to say that this process is so much nicer while having someone going through it with me. Of course my friends and family have been supportive beyond belief. As I have said many, many times this blog and the comments I have heard from other people have helped me make it through all this stress. However, having one person who is getting emotionally invested in this with me is calming and nice.

The exact date of the egg retrieval is still up in the air. It is supposed to be this Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Then I finally get to send the donor my letter thanking her for what she is doing. I am looking forward to that.

Time to not breathe for the next three to five days. Keep sending me - and the donor - good thoughts.

"Proudly Baked in a Surrogate Oven"

2010-08-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

Late last week I got the email address and phone number for my surrogate. I emailed her and she recently emailed me back. How on earth do you start a conversation/friendship/business partnership under these circumstances? I have never seen a Hallmark card for this and believe me, I looked. I did, however, find a card celebrating meat, Ramen, samurai time, tea and terrible teeth at http://www.fomato.com/.

There is, however, surrogate themed clothing. Just in case I have an overwhelming urge to buy my baby a onesie that says, "Proudly baked in a surrogate oven" or buy the surrogate a "Yes I'm pregnant. No, it's not mine." t-shirt for Christmas I know I can order it at http://www.zazzle.ca/surrogate+gifts. I might "accidentally" forget to add those shirts to the baby registry.

I will admit it is a little awkward, but I'm sure it will be better as time goes on. My surrogate, as most of you know, hopes to be a D.O. (doctor of osteopathic medicine) so I mentioned that I work in a hospital and if she had any questions maybe I could find out some answers. I figured that was a good way to bond at first. And I sincerely do hope that she is successful in her career path. Why would I want to wish her anything but success? So we'll see where she is in 9 months and I'm sure you'll be getting some updates about her.

I recently posted about suspending my blog for 3 months. Many people wait for the first trimester to pass before announcing a pregnancy. I am a little superstitious and scared to talk about the pregnancy. But then I received an email from a friend who, unfortunately, had lost a baby right around the end of the first trimester and she was already showing. She said people knew and the support she got helped her get through the ordeal. It was very touching to have her open up to me like that since I hadn't known the story. Once again I get amazing support from people I wouldn't expect! So I'm leaning towards continuing my blog.

Approximately two weeks from today (I still don't have an exact date) the egg donor will go in for her egg retrieval procedure. Yep...two weeks. A great interpreting teacher of mine believed life is like a roller coaster. Once you're on it you can't get off until it comes to a stop. I'm trying to think of this process in that way. There's no getting off the ride now. And, in my experience, once I get off a scary roller coaster, I usually want to get back on and ride it again! Hopefully this process will have the same effect on me.

Signed, sealed, delivered

2010-08-01T22:24:00.000-05:00

Hooray! On Thursday I got confirmation that the donor's husband did, in fact, sign the paperwork. Whew. That's a load off my mind. I believed he did intend to sign then contract and I believed he did sign the contract like I was told, but until he got to a fax machine and actually sent it to his lawyer and his lawyer sent it to my lawyer and my lawyer sent it to me I was holding my breath. Now I can breathe again and un-cross my fingers.

For the next three weeks or so I just wait. The surrogate and the egg donor are taking medications to prepare them for their respective jobs. The egg retrieval will happen, I believe, between August 18th and 20th. The two women go to the doctor a couple of times for monitoring this month. At any point, if they are not responding appropriately to their medications, their participation could be canceled. So I actually need everyone to cross your fingers again...even all the sign language interpreters even though I know it's hard to sign that way. It is scary to know that at any moment I could get a call saying everything is off. Please pray, throw salt over your shoulder, pick up a four leaf clover if you see one, wish upon a star one night or do anything else you can think of to help this process. You all have been amazing support so far and I need a little more.

I also got my surrogate's contact information. I just emailed her. It is a little odd to start a relationship this way, but I also am very hopeful that we will have a positive relationship with each other and have a unique bond that is unlike any other. For those of you out there who wonder how I can approach this relationship, the answer is that I don't know how. I am going in with a lot of optimism and peace knowing that she is probably just as awkward with this as I am and we will just figure it out as we go along.

As we get closer and closer to the actual date of the embryo transfer I realize I have to make a decision. I need to decide if I will continue posting or not. I know that most people do not announce a pregnancy during the first trimester and I am back and forth on if I will be ready to announce the pregnancy so early in the process. A major milestone in this process is the fetal heartbeat. A huge section of the contract starts after confirmation of the heartbeat at 6 weeks so that is a possible time to start blogging again. Most people don't announce to the world they are trying to get pregnant on a specific date. I have. I'll have to wait and see what I'm feeling at the end of August.

Maybe I'll use the first trimester for casting! I'm thinking an unknown actress as the donor since she's anonymous. We'll never see her face; she'll always be shot from behind or just a voice on the phone. This has a Best Cinematography Academy Award written all over it. Plus there will be the birth of baby and lots of crying and angst based on a real story so I'm sure we'll get at least win a few awards at Sundance or some independent film festivals.

My movie went from a drama, to a comedy, to a love story to a thriller

2010-07-23T15:40:00.000-05:00

Way back when I started this process I was all emotional about the joy of having a child and what it would mean to be a father.

Then I had the fun of learning about consanguinity, picking an egg and making my...ahem...donation.

All of a sudden a great man popped into my life. I haven't written too much about him, but I'm hoping he's a leading role in this film and not just a featured player.

Then my movie turned into a sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. You know those movies where the bomb is ticking away and the bomb squad is rushing through traffic trying to disarm the bomb before it explodes? You see the seconds ticking down and when there is one second left the bomb experts clips the wire and the clock stops and everyone breathes a sigh of relief? Well, my bomb went off, but it wasn't the end of the world.

All of the contracts were due by 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday July 21st. I needed legal clearance for the two women to start taking their meds. I was trying to coordinate the egg donor's contract (which needed both the egg donor's and her husband's signatures), the surrogate's contract, and the pharmacy. The egg donor gave verbal confirmation she was going to sign it but I spent several days seeing no actual contract. The surrogate and I were back and forth on issues of her traveling out of state and issues of sexual behavior while she was pregnant. (Yes...EVERYTHING can be regulated to a certain extent because it can harm the fetus.) The pharmacy kept pressuring me to authorize the medications but I didn't want to send them out if the contracts fell through. Long story short, the bomb went off. Noon came and went and I still had no signature on either contract.

I called the pharmacy and asked how late I could call to get the medicine out. They told me about 2:30 was the latest they could know.

I called the fertility clinic. I found out the egg donor didn't need her meds for another week. The surrogate needed her medication this Saturday so I had to let them know by Thursday.

By the end of the day I still had no contract. (This is where the meloncholy music starts playing and we cut to a shot of Michael sitting at home crying into a bucket of ice cream.)

Thursday morning no contract as well. I thought the surrogate, who was traveling on Wednesday, would have signed the contract and faxed it back to her lawyer on Wednesday night. No such luck. I thought the donor's husband, who is teaching at a camp, would have had access to a computer at night and scanned his signature in Wednesday night. No such luck. I started to lose hope that I would actually make this happen. I had been given verbal confirmation that the donor and her husband agreed to the contract and the eggs were more important than the surrogate. I had to get the eggs in August or the donor would be gone forever since she would be starting her PhD program. If I lost the surrogate I could survive but how long until I found another surrogate would be anyone's guess.

Thursday, about 12:30 p.m., I get official confirmation that the surrogate signed her contract. Finally! One down, one to go. I called the pharmacy and ordered just her first medication to be shipped out. No use in having a great uterus with no egg!

A few hours later I got proof that the donor had signed the agreement and heard that her husband will be able to sign until the weekend. It is now Friday and technically I don't have a contract, but I'm betting that the donor and her husband are rational, sane people. Do I think that this is all one big ruse to get me to send them fertility medications and then they will keep them for themselves? No. Monday morning I will hopefully have everything signed.

The egg retrieval date will be between August 18th and 20th. We are soooooo close!

I'm thinking Neil Patrick Harris could play me in the film. Any thoughts?

T minus 68.5

2010-07-18T15:28:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday I got some good news. I found out that my sperm is extremely healthy. I called the fertility clinic and asked how my thawed sperm did. I was told that everything looked good and I did not have to make any more donations. I asked the embryologist if he was sure and he told me that he had five vials. (Yep...FIVE!) I asked how many are typically used and he told me the doctors use one or possibly two vials. So yes, once again let it be known to the world I am manly and virile. :-) (Imagine my arms akimbo and me puffing up my chest looking proud now.)

I also found out that a friend of mine started her own blog and mentioned that my story has inspired her to keep a record of her journey. She is just getting started in the surrogacy process. Her first post is wonderful. I'm already excited to see what happens next. (Now I know how all of you feel reading mine. It is exciting.) I told her -- like I've said here before -- that I gain strength knowing that people are following my process and I gain inspiration knowing that three friends of mine shared their stories with me, are thinking about going through the process as well, and are benefiting from my experiences.

Well, now a word of warning to my friends and followers about the ups and downs of this process. Just when I thought everything was going so well I ran into a snag. I'm actually not sure how much of this I can say. Parts of my contracts with the egg donors and surrogates talk about how I'm not allowed to divulge certain parts of the contract so I'll make this a little vague because the last thing I want to do is read a 40 page contract again. I've been staring at them all week and I need a break.

I have had some issues with the surrogate and donor contracts.

The issue with the donor contract is that I didn't have one. I had heard she went in for her consultation with her lawyer last Saturday. I expected to hear a response to the contract Monday or Tuesday. I didn't hear all week. I wondered if maybe she got cold feet and backed out. My lawyer's assistant and lawyer contacted the donor's lawyer and heard nothing. This was completely freaking me out. The contract is due July 21st at noon! Time is running out! Finally, Sunday, at 1:55 a.m., my lawyer sent me a copy of the contract with the donor's changes. Phew! At least now I had some proof she wasn't backing out.

Overall it was good news. The donor did agree to register with the Sibling Donor Registry which makes me happy. There were a few minor details in the contract that I could live with if I had to, but I might try to amend one or two of them if possible. I am hopeful that I will get to use the egg donor I want to use and this will work out.

One down, one to go.

The surrogate contract came to me on Tuesday I believe. I had some small concerns which I could live with and one big concern which scares me. Basically a surrogate contract says that the surrogate is not allowed to travel outside the state in which she is residing after a certain time period because it risks the baby will be born in a state with different surrogacy laws. The last thing I need is to wage a battle in Montana or Georgia trying to establish my rights as a parent. My potential surrogate added one little clause that says she is allowed to leave the state at any time for something related to her education. I say no. I understand why she would want that clause but after recently hearing that my friend gave birth to a baby 6 weeks early I don't want to take that chance. My lawyer suggested adding some language that makes the surrogate consult with her lawyer about the surrogacy laws of the state to which she will travel and makes her financially responsible for any costs associated with that state. Again, I say it's not just the risk of the money, it's the time off work, it's the collection of legal fees from a surrogate who may not have the money and it's the stress of starting off my life as a father waging a legal battle in a far away state. I don't want that. I'm pretty sure I will be unyielding and she might be too. So the surrogate may fall through. I'm not sure yet. I sent an email to my lawyer telling her my concerns and I haven't heard back yet. I now have about 68.5 hours and counting until the deadline. This is starting to feel like an episode of "24."

On a lighter note, I saw a movie called "The Kids Are All Right" yesterday which is the story of a lesbian couple and their two kids from a sperm donor. The kids find their biological dad and start a relationship with him. The movie is a little ridiculous at times and eventually one of the lesbian moms sleeps with the sperm donor. I asked my boyfriend after the movie if he would ever sleep with my egg donor if we meet her. He said that would never happen. Whew...one less thing to worry about in my life.

Warning: Adult Content (Part 2)

2010-07-13T23:43:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I got my results from the genetic testing. It was very good news. The donor and I were screened as carriers for a number of diseases and we both came back negative for every disease. There are diseases that I knew - like Tay-Sachs and Usher Syndrome - and diseases that I had never heard of - like Cartilage-Hair Hypoplasia, Hyperornitheinemia-Hyperammonemia-Homocitrullinuri Syndrome, and, my favorite, Maple Syrup Urine disease in which (I looked this up) your urine does smell like maple syrup because your body can't digest certain proteins.

Today, Tuesday July 13th, was my appointment at the fertility clinic to freeze my sperm. I was hopeful that the room would be a little better than the first time I had to "make my deposit." Let's go through my experience together, shall we?

I went to the clinic at 8 a.m. and the main door had a sign on it saying to go in a side door. There was construction in and around the office. So I go through a side door and the office was under construction and looked like a small war zone. I went around some corner and through a hall and the waiting room was in a tiny hallway where people waiting had to pull in their knees to let someone walk by. It was a little ghetto. I checked in and a nice woman gives me a form to fill out that asks me things like "have you shared needles with anyone recently?" or "have you had Mad Cow disease in the last 30 days?" I'm a vegetarian so that's definitely a "no."

After waiting a few minutes I get called to give a urine sample first. Easy. Then it's time for my blood draw. Now one thing you have to understand is that my veins are the easiest things to find. I don't think anyone has ever missed my vein on the first try. I'm pale and thin and wiry. I'm a nursing student's dream.

This nurse was frenetically looking in every cabinet for something but I'm not sure what. She seems new. She runs out of the "room" (it was like an alcove between the waiting room and the front desk and had no walls) and asks someone where something is located. She comes back into the "room" and opens the one cabinet she didn't open before and breathes a sigh of relief.

Again...I'm not panicking that she's new and freaking out because I know every nurse can find my vein!

The nurse wraps my arm with a tourniquet and hands me a large sperm to squeeze. Yes, you read that right. You know those squishy stress balls people use? Well, this was a white, squishy ball with a squiggly tail coming off of it. It was a sperm squishy ball. I wanted to take a picture of it because I didn't think anyone would believe me. If you don't believe me just Google "sperm stress ball" and you will find it.

So now that I'm squeezing Mr. Spermy my veins are popping out of my arm. No way she can miss because, once again, every nurse can find my vein!

The nurse pokes me with a needle and gets one vial of blood. So far so good. She switches the vial and no blood is coming out. Now she starts to panic by jiggling the needle around inside my arm. Hmmm...not pleasant. She decides to push and pull the needle back and forth inside my vein to try to get the blood to flow. Now we've moved beyond "not pleasant" to "my arm is feeling flush and has an inexplicable sensation." She calls another nurse over.

The second nurse pulls the needle out of my arm and wraps it in more tape than Ecuador uses in an entire year. I guess she thinks that 1 mm needle can sometimes cause a gusher so the pin hole needs to be wrapped up extra tightly. The second nurse then finishes up the job and gets blood from my other arm.

Now the fun part. It's time for the sperm donation. And this is the real one, not the practice one like a few months ago. I'm in a different office and I have high hopes for the room and the cup.

A man leads me into the room. (At least it wasn't a grandma handing me a cup this time.) There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that at least this room is a little more spacious and the reclining chair can actually recline. It doesn't hit the wall like the other one did so I don't have to do this sitting up. The bad news is that there is no video or DVD player, just a rack of magazines with a sign that says "Do not remove magazines from husband room." And no magazines for me. I was at least looking forward to seeing some good movie titles like "Lord of the G-Strings", "Throbbin' Hood (Prince of Beaves)" or something sweet and romantic like "Sperms of Endearment." But I got nothin'.

I look at the cup and I swear it was smaller than the last one. Seriously people??? C'mon! I need a bigger target. These are not the easiest things to control!

Without going into the dirty details, I gave my specimen. I waited around for about 15 minutes so I could know the count. If the count is low I'd have to come back for more fun in the Husband Room and more small cups. The technician said I have about 60 million sperm which puts me in the 80th percentile. (Insert manly snort here.) The count is good but the real test is tomorrow. The lab will freeze my sperm tonight and thaw them tomorrow and see how they do. If they stay strong I might not have to go back at all. If they degrade it would be good to make one or two more donations to ensure I have plenty of strong swimmers.

It's almost midnight. I'm heading to bed. I might have a bad dream about cold sperm chasing me around a tiny cup.

My fate is in the hands of three lawyers

2010-07-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

I thought I had plenty of time. I have until July 21st at noon to get all the contracts signed. No problem, right? The contracts for the egg donor and the surrogates were sent out to their respective lawyers this week. The surrogate planned on having a phone consultation this week and the egg donor planned on meeting her lawyer on Thursday. All is well in the land of Michael's Baby.

Eeeek!!!

The egg donor decided to meet with her lawyer on Saturday, not Thursday so she could have her husband with her.

OK...well I'm now sure she's not Orthodox and that's OK because I still have all of next week to make changes.

Arrrrgh!

The surrogate didn't realize that Ohio is on Eastern Standard Time and she missed her phone consultation. It was re-scheduled to Monday.

Alright...I can live with that, although I might wonder how she didn't know about the time change and why the one waiting for the phone call didn't call the other although may that happened and the one receiving the call wasn't available.

Oh %#*@%!!!

My lawyer is out of town all next week!!!

So when she comes back it'll be July 19th and we'll have 2 days to finalize everything. Hopefully the two women will accept the contracts as is and there will be no more negotiating. If they do then all is well. I'm going to call the lawyer's office on Monday or Tuesday and see what they have. The surrogate and egg donor's lawyers should respond with something early this week. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

This is the part of the movie with a lot of tension. I think I need a good composer who can write good, tension-filled music. Anyone know anyone?

Yes, I cried again this week. And no, it won't be the last time.

2010-07-05T23:22:00.001-05:00

I'm in the contract negotiating part of surrogacy and egg donation. I have two contracts - one for each woman. The surrogate contract is a lot more in depth than the egg donor contract. The surrogate contract is about 39 pages long and addresses so many issues that never crossed my mind. There are stipulations about everything from what happens if there are triplets, forbidding the surrogate to use hair dye, testing the surrogate's boyfriends (if any) for STDs, compensation if she is on bed rest, travel restrictions, doctor preferences, who is in the delivery room, etc. There is a huge section that is extremely morbid about what happens if I die before the baby is born or if the surrogate is hurt and on life support. Anything and everything is addressed. I guess surrogacy has been around long enough and so many issues have come up that it takes 39 pages to work out all the issues.

One thing that was a surprise for me in the contract was that I have to have a will and appoint a guardian by the 20th week of the pregnancy. As if this process weren't trying enough now I have to imagine my death, rank my friends and family and pick who will take care of my embryo for the next 18 years. The good part is that it'll be good for me to get a will made, but this is a stressful decision.

I've been thinking about this for a while. Today I talked with two dear friends of mine and brought up the idea of them being the guardians in the event of a piano falling on my head (which is how I've always thought I'd go). I told them to think about their answer for a long time because I don't have to decide today and it is a big decision - emotionally, financially, time-wise - and I'm asking a lot of them. About 4 or 5 hours later, while I'm sitting in Walgreen's waiting to get my prescription strength toothpaste for my cavity infested mouth, the husband calls. I thought it was weird he was calling me when I just saw him a few hours ago. I answered and he immediately said their answer to my request was yes. I was blown away they decided so quickly. He said he and his wife decided about 10 seconds after I left their place that they would do it they decided to wait a little longer just to make it look like they really thought about it but there was no question in their mind.

As I sat in the middle of Walgreen's pharmacy and cried out of happiness (aha! now you see the title of this posting is true), once again I realized how much my friends love me and how much support I really have in my life. It's an amazing thing to go through anything huge in life whether it be a serious illness, losing a job, or having a baby with a PhD student currently living out of state, a 23 year old black, Baptist who you met for an hour, a petri dish and some magic. (Don't try to convince me otherwise, I'm amazed by the process and I'm sure there's at least a little magic involved.) You really do learn a lot about yourself, your friends and your life.

This movie now needs the guardians too. It's becoming a cast of thousands. Since this is turning into an epic I may need James Cameron to direct. Anyone have any connections to his agent???

I'm at a loss for words

2010-06-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

As we get closer and closer to the egg retrieval I keep thinking I should sit down and write my letter to the egg donor. I'm so excited to express myself to her, but at the same time what can you say to a stranger who is doing something so miraculous as this?!?!? It's hard to start knowing I want to include everything about myself because it may be the only contact we have. I asked the egg donor agency what the egg donor knows about me. They said that she was probably told some general reasons why I picked her but she may or may not know about me being single. The big question is whether or not to tell her I'm gay. I hope that she is happy to know that her eggs are going to a Jewish interpreter. Considering she is Jewish and getting her PhD in linguistics I'm thinking she'll be happy with that. And while most educated people and most secular Jews are not ridiculously homophobic, I do wonder if she would regret donating to help a gay man become a father. Considering the amazing support I have received middle-aged Republican co-workers and grandmothers and manly sports fanatics I highly doubt that she'll have an issue. Nowadays gay parents are becoming more and more common and people have less and less of an issue with it. So I'm pretty sure I'll tell her. I'm not the type of person to hide who I am so why start now.

I was also at a loss for words last night when my interpreting partner bought me a baby gift. I know my mom had bought a gift for the baby a little while ago. She has it in New York. This co-worker's gift was the first one I actually saw and held in my hands. It made it all a little more real. Now that I have contract due dates (in July) and egg retrieval dates (in August) and those dates are coming faster and faster things are becoming more real to me. The fear, the joy, the doubt, and the excitement are all becoming more intense.

Now I'm off to read my 39 page contract with my surrogate. Yep...39 pages. It even includes a two page table of contents. Should i be signing a document so big that it has a table of contents??? I can't decide if 39 pages longer or shorter than I expected. But I definitely know that we won't be including the nitty-gritty contract details in the movie. No one wants to see that. They want to know how I'm preparing for my second, third and possibly fourth donation and if it's as crazy an experience as the first one.

The doctor is in

2010-06-13T15:58:00.000-05:00

I feel like I've been on hold for so long waiting for the next big step. My doctor was out of town (I think out of the country) for about a month and he just got back at the beginning of June. The two women - the egg donor and the surrogate - could finally go and get medical clearance.

The egg donor went on Monday and the surrogate went on Tuesday. Both have been tentatively approved. I have to wait for their blood work to come back and that takes about a week. After that the surrogate will be officially approved and I can go ahead and start with her contract. The egg donor got blood work as well that we'll get back in a week but she also did the same kind of genetic testing I did and that takes about a month to get back. So I think my lawyer and I can get the contract ready (it pretty much is ready) and as soon as we get the results we can ask her to look over the contract and see if she approves of it.

That means I'm kind of on hold again for a little bit.

I do want to write my letter to the egg donor. The egg donor agency I am with encourages parents to write a letter to the egg donor. I believe they said that one letter is usually sent if/when there is a pregnancy and the second letter is usually sent when the child is born. I definitely want to write at least two letters to the egg donor. I think this woman, who is getting her PhD in linguistics and is a donor because she read about the lack of Jewish donors, would be happy to know I come from a Jewish family and I work as an interpreter. (Shhh...we won't tell her I haven't been to synagogue in ages and I worked last Rosh Hashana. We can include that I make potato latkes every year for Channukah, though.) I'm not sure if she gets any information about me at all. I need to ask the agency about that because I'm curious.

A side note is that I ran a half marathon today. I'm not a runner. About two years ago I couldn't even run a mile. But I watch "The Biggest Loser" and watch obese people run full marathons and decided I had no more excuses. I could do a half marathon.

I ran it slowly. I walked part of the way. I'm sore. But there were moments when I thought to myself that if I can run a half marathon - something I never thought I could do - then other things are possible too. The marathon is a mental game more than a physical one and I succeeded so it makes me feel I can succeed in other things too. My crazy, scary, amazing journey of having a child has made me a stronger person as well and if I can do that then 13.1 miles is an easy challenge in my life. During all the stress that life will bring over the next year (and 18 years) I will try to remember that I can do more than I think.

My other little story deals with a guy I started dating. At the last minute I decided to invite him to my birthday dinner on Thursday. I wasn't really sure if he would come or not because going to dinner with a dozen of your date's friends is always overwhelming when anyone starts a new relationship. But he was very sweet and did come.

Right before dinner started I realized that one of my friends might ask me about the baby. I hadn't told him yet. We had had about three dates and I was planning on telling him soon because he should know of my major life plans and it looked like we were both interested in seeing each other more so I couldn't (and shouldn't) hide it for much longer. I pulled him aside and told him of my whole surrogacy/egg donor/baby plans. He told me that for me to do something like this takes a lot of commitment and courage and he sees that I don't back away from a challenge and that is admirable to him.

Whether or not we live happily ever after is not my point of telling this story. The nice thing for me is to see that there are men out there who will not be so scared by this that they will run away screaming. I really felt like dating was going to be impossible since starting this journey. It's good to know that while it may be tough or improbable, love may just happen for me. I need to find someone really hot to play him in the movie! ;-)

Consang-what?

2010-05-31T13:29:00.000-05:00

Paperwork sent to set up escrow account: check

Contract signed with egg donation agency: check

Learned the definition of consanguinity: check

Spit into a...

Wait. Consang-what???

Yep. There's a term for you linguists out there. Consanguinity has to do with the mixing of DNA (blood) from people who are biologically related. There must be a way to prevent my future child from possibly marrying my egg donor's future child. And, since we don't know each others' names, how many children I might have, how many children she might have, etc. we have to figure out a way to know about each other without knowing about each other.

Lawyers are pretty smart. When we sign our contract we can't sign our names. I am "Intended Father Y" and she is "Egg Donor Z" and we literally sign our contracts that way. My lawyer then keeps a paper saying that "Intended Father Y" really stands for my name and her lawyer keeps a signed paper from the egg donor stating she is "Egg Donor Z." Pretty tricky! That keeps thinks anonymous. The one piece of information we learn about each other is I get her birthday and she gets mine. It didn't make sense to me at first. Why doesn't she get my child's birth date? Well, apparently some egg donors go to, for example, Northwestern Hospital to donate their eggs so it is assumed (not always correctly) that the baby will then be born at Northwestern. If the egg donor did a little research she may find that only 5 babies were born at Northwestern Hospital on a particular day and it would be tempting and relatively easy to breach confidentiality. So we only know each others' birthdays. So when my little Mikey grows up and meets little Michelle and they want to fall in love, I can find out if my son's future mother-in-law was born on July 14th, 1982 or whatever particular date I get from the agency. If she has that birthday we may want to make sure Mikey and Michelle aren't half-siblings. But is that's not her birthday Mikey and Michelle can get married and live happily ever after and not have babies with three heads and one arm.

The egg donor contract is pretty standard. There are only three points to discuss right now. I have the option to do three things with the embryos I make: keep them, throw them away/donate to science, or give them to another person/couple. The egg donor has the right to veto my third option. I highly doubt I'll give them away to someone else. If she vetoes that option I will understand. We also have to work out a little bit of compensation since she will be traveling in from out of town so I have to put her up in a hotel and give her per diem. No biggie. The last issue might get sticky.

There is something called the Donor Sibling Registry. It's a website that basically allows anonymous donors to contact their children. It also allows half siblings (if my egg donor donates again my child will have a half-sibling) to contact each other. It's a long and complicated explanation as to how this all happens and there's no guarantee it will happen. But I like the idea that years from now there is the teeny, tiny, possibility that my child might have some contact with the egg donor.

Over the last week or two I've thought about this a lot. If the donor says she's not interested in doing this, I'm ok with it. At first I didn't like the idea of having absolutely no chance of any sort of contact. But I've also slowly but surely come to realize that an egg donor is not a mother. An egg donor is not a part of my child's life. An egg donor is simply an egg...no more no less. And I also get that this woman might be 45 years old with her own family and job and life and having someone new pop up after 18 years is a potentially tumultuous situation.

I do hope the egg donor is open to being on the registry. But if she's not, my child and I will be fine without that option. I'll keep you posted.

Another sign

2010-05-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

I had a friend come over and we had Chinese food tonight. Right before he left I packed up his leftovers and saw that there were four fortune cookies in the bag. I said to myself, "I'll take one."

I open it up and it says:

"Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you."

The fertility doctor plans a few days a month to do all of the egg retrievals. The one in August, which is the one I plan to do if all goes well, would be around August 18th to August 21st according to the IVF coordinator.

Look at the date today. Looks like the universe is trying to tell me something again. :-)

Eggs!

2010-05-12T23:37:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago I went to a psychologist to see if she could help me figure out the pros and cons of using an anonymous donor vs. a friend/known donor. Near the beginning of the meeting the doctor asked me if I had a partner. I told her no. I'm single. She told me that I could find someone. She then "lectured" me for about 3 minutes on how I should use match.com to find a man. I told her I had tried match.com and didn't have any luck. Again, she fixated on the idea that I could find a man.

Hey...crazy lady...we're talking about egg donors, not my dating life!!!

I need to make sure I find a kooky actress to play her in the movie. I'm thinking Carol Channing or Betty White.

The psychologist also told me that the mean IVF nurse mentioned that I just wrote the nicest email. I had recently sent an email to the nasty nurse and swallowed my pride and thanked her profusely for all the work she had done. I thought maybe killing her with kindness would make her nicer. Apparently it worked. I guess this nurse was touched by my email. She is working double time because her co-worker is off for a while. Guess I need to re-think this casting and make her the "hooker with the heart of gold" type in the film.

Eventually we got to my issue. The crazy woman actually had a point that changed my whole thought process. She said the donor is not a mother and I should think about the fact that there is a genetic contribution and a parent which are two separate concepts. Thinking about that was somewhat comforting. Just because someone made a baby doesn't mean that is the baby's family. I hope that I'll be able to provide a life for my child that is sufficient and fulfilling enough that the genetic part isn't a concern. The life that he/she has will hopefully be enough.

The doctor also mentioned that there is a possibility of future contact with the donor and I should ask the donor how she feels about it. So I talked with the egg donation agency and they brought up the issue with the egg donor. Nothing will be determined for a little while. First the egg donor has to be medically approved. If we start negotiating a contract then we'll discuss the possibility of contact more seriously. I asked that there be no contact until the child is 18 and the lawyer said that's typical and also mentioned that the donor is allowed to change her mind at any time. Or, in 18 years, the woman may not be found. There isn't really a legal obligation to have contact, but there is the chance of contact which might be nice for me.

The friend I was considering using was so supportive when I told her I was using the anonymous donor. She said that she knows that I'm doing what I think is best for me and the child and she supports me 100%. She assured me that she wants me to do what is right for me and not worry about her needs and I took a lot of comfort in hearing her say that.

In another couple weeks I should have the surrogate approved and then start contract negotiations. And my egg donor isn't going to the doctor until the beginning of June so no news about that for a while. Next step is boring: setting up an escrow fund for the surrogate. Hooray...another check to write! :-(

Warning: Adult Content

2010-04-22T00:00:00.001-05:00

Has anyone seen the "Will and Grace" episode where Will goes to donate his sperm? He is given all sorts of dirty magazines and can't find one that turns him on so he finds some carpenters in a Martha Stewart magazine. I have to say that pretty much is how the process works. That portrayal was pretty accurate. And if this experience becomes a movie this is definitely the comedic part.

Last week I made my appointment to go to the fertility clinic. I had to get my blood and urine analyzed and do a semen analysis. The fertility center needs to make sure I am free of all diseases and that my sperm is healthy enough to produce an embryo. I talked with a woman who, luckily, had a sense of humor about this process. We had to talk about my "homework." To do the semen analysis I had to abstain from "producing" for more than two but less than five days. So I literally had to "produce" on a specific day to prepare for the test. Much more fun than studying for a history test! I was trying to plan how long I had to be at the clinic to plan my schedule for the day. The woman said the blood and urine tests would be quick and the third test would be, according to her, "up to you." Yep...I guess it really would be in my hands. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

When I arrived I was escorted to a back room where I met a pleasant, older woman. She had a short, gray bob and looked like she should have been knitting on her front porch while tumbleweed passed by. My favorite part was that she wore sandals with black socks.

The lady led me into a small room where I was supposed to produce my specimen. She told me that there were videos and magazines. I wondered if they'd have anything that would work for me. They didn't. The only thing I got was a laugh from the title "American Booty." I had thought about bringing something from home but I forgot. However, had I brought a DVD it would have been useless. This room only had an old-fashioned VCR which plays tapes. Who has tapes nowadays?

Before the lady left me in the room she said, "Take as long as you need."

Ummm...thanks...I think.

There was no bed, just a reclining chair. The TV was hung so high that you'd have to crane your neck to watch the video. The sink was leaking. People were making noise out in the hallway. Hearing a bunch of women's voices wasn't helping the situation. And, just to creep me out a little more, I had to put this paper-like sheet on the chair and I just prayed that other guys were considerate enough to do the same when they used the room.

The woman had given me a cup. The cup was tiny. I won't get too graphic, but let's just say that a teeny cup, a lack of a way to lay down, an unpredictable, upward projectile and gravity do not make for a good combination. It really was quite a feat.

I gave the woman my specimen and filled out a form. She led me to the room for the blood test and gave me the parting advice of "Be well and be happy."

Ummm...thanks...I think.

The blood draw and urine sample were fine. Nothing exciting to say except that they took about 9 vials of blood. Yikes! Luckily needles and blood don't bother me.

I had paperwork to give to the clinic and needed a few questions answered. Plus, I wanted to be tested for some genetic diseases. As an Eastern European Jew who is considering using an Eastern European Jew as an egg donor I want to make sure neither one of us is a carrier of some prevalent diseases like Tay-Sachs or Gaucher disease. Marianne, my coordinator, came to talk to me. Again, she was not pleasant to talk to and made me feel like I was an imposition in her life. I'm sure she's not a mean person. I think she just says an answer once and doesn't want to say it again. When I asked questions I'd get curt responses like, "I already responded to that in an email." And if I repeat her explanation in my own words to make sure we are understanding each other her response is to repeat what she said the first time. That doesn't help me. I'm asking for a "yes" or "no," not the same sentence with a harsher tone. I'm considering asking for a new coordinator. But I also know that I have very few more interactions with her and, on the positive side, she does respond to emails immediately. She's on top of things.

In the afternoon I went to the dentist. He couldn't do the work we planned to do. As I walked to the el I realized I was about 5 blocks from the egg donor agency I'm considering using. I called and asked if I could stop by and my contact woman was available to meet me. I met her and we talked about the possibility of using the egg donor I saw because her schedule is tricky. The donor is in Chicago until mid-May and will be back and forth between Chicago and WI from mid-May until mid-June. Mid-June until early August she will be in WI. Then she has about a month off before going back to school. That 4 or 6 week time period is the only time I could do an egg retrieval with her. It does work perfectly with the doctor's schedule since the doctor has certain weeks he does the retrievals. It somehow worked out just right if I do decide to use her. It's good to know she's a viable option if that's what I choose.

I asked about contacting the egg donor. I know it's anonymous, but I wondered if I could say anything to her. I was told I'm allowed, and encouraged, to write letters to her which would make me feel good. I think it would be great for her to know I'm an interpreter and Jewish since she wants to donate to a Jewish family and she is studying linguistics. From time to time the egg donors do write back, but that doesn't always happen so I'm not going to hope for that.

Yesterday I went to a Chinese restaurant. I got a fortune cookie and threw it in my pocket. Today, after work, I put my hand in my pocket and found the cookie. I opened it and it said...

"Your present plans are going to succeed."

Ever think the universe is trying to tell you something?

I put all my eggs in one basket...and then the basket broke

2010-04-12T23:06:00.002-05:00

A lot has happened since my last update. Where to even begin?!?!? We'll start with the egg donor drama...

As some of you know I had one friend offer me an egg about a year ago. Then, after I put down a financial deposit another friend offered me her egg. But there are issues with using a friend's egg. The concerns are that my friends are older than they should be when it comes to doing IVF (nature is cruel to women's eggs) and, more importantly, there are issues what is her role in my child's life and will she overstep the limits I set up. So I've heard a lot of talk as to why an anonymous donor is better. Well, not better, but easier. But the concern I have is that my child will never know his/her mother. I see that as a big, potential negative. However, after talking with friends who have been raised by a single parent or who were adopted many of them feel like life is just fine for them. As always, you can't predict how your child will adjust to anything.

A few weeks ago I was pretty sure I was going to use an anonymous donor. Last week, a third friend of mine offered me her egg. There are some similar issues and some different issues, but needless to say it's not an easy decision to make with her either. She's an amazing person and the thought of her being my child's mother is extremely attractive, for a lot of reasons, but again, I was pretty set on the donor I found in the data base.

Last Friday I found out that the donor I was considering is not available. (A few days later I found out she's working with another parent so it's possible she'll be available in the future...but we'll see. It is good news that she is going with another person for now because, if her eggs result in a pregnancy, she is then considered a proven donor and I'll have more information about the viability of her eggs.) Finding out she isn't available was a shock and it threw my plans into chaos. I also started to feel pressured to make a decision ASAP because it feels like things are moving quickly now.

I freaked out over the weekend. I talked with some of my potential egg donor friends and the conversations were so wonderful they made the decision even harder. One friend said that before she even considered donating her egg she reminded me she had promised to sleep over 1 or 2 nights a week after the baby was born so I could get some sleep and not do it all alone. The other friend said she was planning out the vegetarian meals she would cook for me so she could stock my fridge with meals I could heat up for the first few days after coming home from the hospital with the baby. She also said that she didn't understand why I was so shocked 3 women wanted to be a part of this process with me. She said from her perspective it makes sense that my friends would want to donate their eggs to me because I mean that much to her and she sees how I treat my other friends. That is the most amazing compliment in the world. If you ever want to know who your friends are, undertake something as crazy as surrogacy and you'll learn so much about who cares about you. I've also got two women vying to throw me a baby shower. So sweet. The support is overwhelming.

Anyway, I contacted two other egg donation agencies just to keep looking and have as many options as possible. I did find a Jewish donor who speaks several languages and wants to get a PhD in linguistics. Her background is Belgian, Russian and Polish and I am Russian and Polish. She currently teaches ESL and Hebrew. She was involved in theater in high school and likes organic food, farmers markets and foreign films. She wants to donate because her sister in law works at a fertility clinic and mentioned the lack of Jewish donors. That's a great match for me. She's almost like my long lost twin. The biggest problem with her is that she has blond hair and blue eyes, but my darker features should win over that! If that's the biggest problem I think that's pretty good. I don't know who I'll go with, but it was a little bit of a relief to see that there are others out there and the one I wanted isn't my only option.

I also went to the IVF doctor yesterday. I liked the doctor a lot. He was very empathetic and explained the process to me. Plus, he has a cool accent. Maybe South African? I'm not sure. I'll need to find some foreign actor to play him in the movies. His coordinator, however, who coordinates all the appointments for the surrogate, the egg donor and me is not my favorite person. She doesn't communicate well and I never understand what she's trying to say. I need some bitchy actress to play her. I'm thinking Pierce Brosnan as the doctor and Shannon Doherty as the coordinator!

Meanwhile, my mom has bought the baby's first book. She bought "Goodnight Moon" and told me that it will be my favorite book because it will definitely make my child fall asleep. It's nice to have my mom get excited about this. I can't get excited yet. There are still too many steps and it's too scary to think ahead. But having someone start to buy things for the baby means it will happen.

She likes me...she really likes me!

2010-03-30T21:11:00.003-05:00

Today was the day I had to decide about my surrogate. Well, technically I was supposed to decide yesterday, but because I'm indecisive I put it off for an extra day. I just needed to think. I talked with the IVF nurse on Monday to ask about STDs again and she didn't have every answer, but she had some. She told me the surrogate goes for medical clearance and, if she passes, then she is approved for 18 months. I asked if I could get another STD test a week before we transfer the embryos and that's possible too, if I pay extra for it of course! She also said that at every appointment with the obstetrician the surrogate will give a urine sample and that will notice if there is any kind of disease. If there is something suspicious we can do further testing. Plus, I can ask for random blood tests. The lawyer said if I ask for a blood test we can ask that the surrogate go within 24 hours of my request. And we can ask her to use condoms any time she has sex. All of this has to be agreed to by her (we can only ask and see what she says) but I don't think anything is unreasonable and it's for the best interest of the fetus so I'm guessing she won't have any major problems with it or she'll counter with a reasonable compromise. We'll see.

Today, at about 9:00 a.m., I talked with the agency and said I'd agree to work with “Chloe”. At 1:49 p.m. I got the email saying “Chloe” agreed to work with me too.

This decision was so tough. And I feel like there's no time to breathe because there is still more to do. It's never ending. Next “Chloe” has to go to the doctor for medical clearance, I'm going to the doctor in 2 weeks for clearance, the lawyers start doing more contract stuff, I have to sign my contract with the surrogacy agency, I still have to think about an egg donor and I have to pay the agency my next installment of money. I keep telling myself that a child is so much work that this is just preparation for the long journey ahead. If I can't handle this then I shouldn't be having a child. I'm just trying to take it one step at a time.

My friend Kristine talked with me yesterday and helped me make this decision. She gave me some good advice to keep in mind throughout this process. She told me that everyone is scared having a baby. My way has some extra issues, but fear is normal. She also told me to think about the outcome because I was getting stuck in the moment. And she said that people just have to make the best decision at that time with the information you have at that moment. I could think this through for days or weeks or a year and still be no closer to a decision. There's some faith and some praying and some luck involved with any pregnancy and getting stuck in my process isn't getting me to my goal. I have to try because if I don't, I'll never achieve my goal.

I need to find someone hot and wise to play Kristine in my movie!

Ummm...so this is awkward...

2010-03-29T00:12:00.003-05:00

On Thursday morning at 10 a.m. I met the potential surrogate. I went to the agency and met with the surrogate, “Chloe”, and two of the women who run the agency. As we started the meeting one of the ladies opened with, "So...this is always a little bit weird." It was when we started, but it wasn't bad by the end.

“Chloe” explained that she wanted to be a surrogate because of three things. When she was about 11 she saw a Lifetime movie about surrogacy and that put the idea in her head. A little later she saw Phoebe give birth to babies as a surrogate on "Friends." And recently her cousin has been trying to get pregnant and she talked about the idea of being a surrogate for her cousin, but the cousin didn't want that. She also said she liked being pregnant and feeling the baby move. I liked that surrogacy isn't an idea that popped up 6 months ago. It obviously has been something she has thought about for a while.

Then I explained why I came to the surrogacy agency and why I wanted a child. I cried. No surprise there.

We went over a lot of the things that must be agreed upon: is “Chloe” ok with me in the delivery room, what are our thoughts of selective reduction if she is pregnant with multiple babies, what are our thoughts on pregnancy termination, how involved do we want to be during appointments and after the birth. For the most part we were on the same page.

We looked at her insurance policy. There is a slight chance that “Chloe”'s policy does not have an exclusion about surrogacy. Many policies nowadays don't cover a pregnancy if the woman is acting as a surrogate. The lawyer needs to read the policy more carefully to know for sure. One of the agency ladies was looking at the policy and said usually an exclusionary clause is a whole paragraph in bold. “Chloe” said that she looked at all the insurance policies at her company and the plan she took was the only one that didn't clearly have the surrogacy exclusion. I have to say I was impressed she read through policies in preparation for becoming a surrogate.

I liked her. However I still have concerns about her sexual history. She got pregnant at 18 and that was a mistake. She got an STD a few years ago which obviously was a mistake. And she became accidentally pregnant again last year. I'm concerned she might get an STD while pregnant with my child. I researched STDs during pregnancies and talked with a couple doctors and found out that, for the most part, STDs can be controlled while the woman is pregnant and the baby can be protected. There's no 100% guarantee, but STDs aren't automatically the worst thing in the world. It's still scary to me, but hearing that calmed me a little. Plus, I can put it in the contract that she has to test any partner before she has sex with him and I can ask her to submit to random STD testings. I'll have to talk with the lawyer about how this works and I don't want this relationship to be based on me being suspicious of her, but I do have to protect myself if I go with her.

The abortion she had a year ago is, according to my lawyer, a very good thing. The law states that the child is mine. However, the surrogate has a right to take care of her body the way she wants to take care of it. That means that if I want to abort the baby for any reason, the surrogate can say no and the baby is still mine. The opposite is true too. She could abort the baby at any time without my consent because, again, it's her body. There are penalties for doing either of those, but of course the money is not the concern when I'm facing an issue like that. But the lawyer likes that the surrogate had an abortion because if she had one for her own child she most likely will not refuse to terminate my child if that is my decision.

I'm supposed to decide by tomorrow. I'm still torn. I went into the meeting thinking I wasn't going to pick her. But I like her. She seems sweet and genuine and serious about wanting to be a surrogate. I give her credit for having a baby at 18 but going to college and getting a job and have plans for a future. I may not know what I'm going to do til tomorrow when I talk with the agency.

However, I did just watch the "Friends" episode where Phoebe is a surrogate and gives birth to her brother's kids. Maybe that's a sign. Out of all the "Friends" episodes that could have been aired, what are the chances I'd see the one about a surrogate giving birth?

:-)

2010-03-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

I signed some paperwork to hire a lawyer yesterday. I had to sign at the line that said "intended father." Wow. I might be a father. :-)

I've got another call to make...

2010-03-18T21:47:00.001-05:00

I feel like I was on the phone so much this week talking with more and more people. I'm losing track of what is what now. This is the first time that I feel so overwhelmed and had to wonder for a minute if I could do this and if it is worth it all. I know it will be worth it. I can put that doubt out of my mind. But whether or not I can do it is another issue. However, I'm trying to remember that if I can make it through this process that will just be proof to myself of how strong I really am. I don't consider myself a very strong person but I'm slowly but surely I'm finding ways to notice my strength.

The good news is I hired a lawyer. I like her so far. We have a meeting this coming Tuesday to meet, sign a retainer and to talk about a million things including preparing for my meeting with the surrogate on Thursday. I like knowing that I have someone on my side looking out for me. She is going to look at the profile of the potential surrogate to give me more specific advice before the meeting.

I also called a second doctor's office. I didn't like them as much. They put me on hold probably a half dozen times during the conversation and couldn't answer several questions. I felt much more confident with the first doctor I contacted for IVF. I didn't realize that after the IVF process is done I switch to another ob/gyn. I thought I used the same doctor for the IVF and pregnancy. They overlap a little because after the embryo is transferred the IVF doctor will continue to see the surrogate a few more times to make sure everything is going well.

I also found out that there are most costs than I expected. I knew the price of the surrogacy agency. I thought we went over every cost. We did. But I didn't know that I'll owe more money to the IVF agency. That's a surprise. However, the good news is that I found out I can use my HSA (pre-tax account) to pay for (I believe) a good chunk of the costs associated with the IVF agency and it's possible my insurance will cover part of it too.

I have a meeting set up with the surrogate next Thursday. I thought I would meet the surrogate with the psychologist. I recently got an email saying that I'll be meeting her with one of the surrogacy agency owners. If we like each other then we'll move on to meeting with the psychologist together. I'd rather meet with the psychologist, but I guess I have no choice. The more I think about this surrogate the more I have concerns. After thinking about this my biggest concern is her sexual history. She got pregnant at the age of 18. That's "oops" number one. She got an STD a few years ago. That's "oops" number two. She got pregnant last year and aborted the baby. That's "oops" number three. That's one STD and two pregnancies. I wonder how responsible she is with her body. The agency said the two pregnancies show that she is fertile and that is a plus. The lawyer said the fact that she had an abortion shows that she is ok with termination if I want to do that and that's a plus too. So there is a positive to that issue, but I see it more as a negative at this moment.

The last piece of news is that last night. at the hospital where I work, I saw a baby being born. Normally I think female interpreters should interpret a birth but I was the only one available. Of course there are ways to place myself that I don't see anything so it was ok. The mom had to have a C-section and I was in the room with her and the father during the surgery. It was pretty exciting to see the newborn baby and hear the first cry. C-sections are relatively quick and it was kind of nice to see one happen in case my surrogate needs to have a C-section. I'm taking that experience as the universe's way of telling me that it's my turn to have a child.

Doctors and Surrogates and Gay Parents, Oh My!

2010-03-13T07:08:00.001-06:00

So this week a lot happened.

I talked with one of the doctors the surrogate agency recommended. I played telephone tag with a nice woman named Jennifer for a while. We finally connected on Thursday morning. I learned a little bit about the role of the doctor in this crazy process. If I use this particular doctor I get assigned a "Third Party Coordinator" who is a nurse. She helps coordinate everything since I am using an egg donor and a surrogate. It's nice to know someone figures out the timing of all of this. Apparently I donate my sperm the same day that the egg donor donates her eggs. Since the egg donor is (99.9% of the time) anonymous my guess is that she comes in the morning and I come in the afternoon or vice-versa so we don't run into each other in the waiting room. But I could be wrong. Regardless, we donate on the same day so the eggs and sperm can be put together. The surrogate comes in 3-5 days later to get the embryos transferred. There is a battery of tests I do, the egg donor does, and the surrogate does before any of this can proceed. There's some basic blood work, std testing, pap smears, semen analysis, etc.

The next thing that happened was huge. I got an email from the agency saying that they have a potential surrogate. WOW! It was only four weeks after I put down my deposit and they told me on average it takes 6-8 weeks to find someone. I really didn't expect a potential surrogate to come up so soon. A little while later I was emailed the dossier. The dossier includes no identifying information, but does include a lot of her surrogacy application which includes: weight, height, age, marital status, education, children, eating habits, exercising habits, smoking and drinking habits, reasons for wanting to be a surrogate, how she will break the news to family and friends, who will support her, insurance status, work status and more. I certainly have a lot to think about now that I have a possible surrogate. There are some positive aspects to her. She has a degree in science, she wants to get a doctorate, she says she is ok working with same-sex couples and single parents, she lives in IL (which has good surrogacy laws), and she has her own health insurance. But some negatives are some less tangible things. She misspelled a few words on her application which makes me wonder about her education level. She had an STD a few years ago. And she is a black Baptist. That in itself is not bad, but I have to say that on first look a black Baptist and a single, gay, Jew from New York don't seem like a likely couple. I would prefer someone who is not very religious, although I do get the impression that she isn't overly religious. The race issue poses an interesting question. When the child is born he or she will have to figure out how he or she came into being. Children try to figure out their history and their identity. My child will have enough to grapple with having a gay, single father. When the child learns about the surrogate and either sees pictures or meets the surrogate adding the race may just be one more piece to an already confusing story. Although, on the plus side, it could make the child a lot more accepting of other races. I guess there are two sides to everything.

The third thing that happened was I talked with a man who used a surrogate. My voice teacher put me in contact with his friend who, along with his partner, had two kids using the same surrogate. The couple lives in Illinois but their surrogate lives in California. Some of the issues are a little different, but some of his advice was really good. He said that he would recognize the surrogate for Mother's Day and her birthday. Making more of a personal connection made him feel like she would be more invested in taking care of the baby. And he mentioned that the motivations/personalities of the egg donors and surrogates are very different. The involvement and time commitments are vastly different so they tend to attract different types of women. One great question he suggested I ask the agency is "Why did you match me with this surrogate?" The agency obviously knows more about the surrogate than I do and I think that's a great question to ask. I also mentioned to this father that the whole process of picking an egg donor from an internet data base and having a stranger carry my child seems odd. Looking at the egg donor profiles seems a little voyeuristic and the surrogate selection is weird and scary. He agreed with me and said that he knew what I was feeling. That was nice to know that this slightly creepy feeling was normal. He also said "after you get your kid the process just fades away." His children are now 5 and 7 and it was funny to hear him try to remember what he did during the surrogacy process because it's just a small, and in some ways an insignificant, part of a long journey.

I like that. I'll have to think about who I want to play him in the movie. :-)

You have a what???

2010-03-10T22:36:00.001-06:00

This week I was calling doctors. I have to get some things worked out with the doctors since there is a lot to coordinate between the egg donor, the surrogate, myself, insurance companies, legal contracts, etc. One of the doctor's offices and I have been playing phone tag for the last few days. But my mind has been on the doctors.

This afternoon I got an email from the surrogacy agency asking me if I had talked with doctors and what my thoughts were about egg donors. And then there was a sentence about the agency having a suggestion for me. I read it quickly and thought it was a suggestion for an egg donor. After all, tomorrow is only 4 weeks after I put down my deposit and I wasn't expecting things to work so quickly. But when I read it again I saw that it was not a suggestion for an egg donor, but a surrogate.

Wow!

I didn't expect that to happen so soon. A few hours later I got a dossier of the potential surrogate. It gives me information about her height, weight, previous pregnancies, health history, eating and exercising habits, her boyfriend/husband, why she wants to be a surrogate, who will support her in the decision, etc.

She does have health insurance which is big because not all surrogates do. However, some insurance companies don't cover surrogacy pregnancies so her insurance may not do me any good. She does have a 4 year degree in biology and wants to pursue a higher degree. Being educated often is associated with better health so that's a good thing. She seems a little religious. I'm a little concerned about her answer about being resistant to selective termination if there are more than two fetuses. But if that's the only issue it might be ok. I believe I will only transfer one embryo and the chance that it will split into three is extremely rare (if not impossible?). I'll have to talk with the doctor about that.

So I have a lot to think about over the next day or two. If I think we're a potential match then I tell the agency and they will arrange a meeting between the surrogate, her partner and myself. I'll keep you posted.

Ahhh...the legal system

2010-03-06T21:46:00.001-06:00

I'm still waiting to hear from the agency to be matched with a surrogate. The agency told me it usually takes 6-8 weeks. It has been almost four weeks so I'm wondering if I'll get a call any day. Could be tomorrow...could be 2 months from now. We'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime I called two of the lawyers who handle surrogacy cases in Illinois. Both of them seem good and knowledgeable and answered my questions well. So I'm sure that either one will be fine. I got a little more information about how all this works.

After I pick an egg donor I will have a contract with her and that only takes about a week or two to make. That contract is pretty straightforward. The surrogate is a longer process. After I get a potential surrogate from the agency, if I think I will like her and she thinks she will like me, we will meet. The meeting will be with the psychologist so we're not two strangers thrown into a room together. If, after the meeting, we think we like each other, we both go to our lawyers and the negotiating begins. That contract usually takes 3-4 weeks to finalize. Not bad.

One lawyer has a checklist of things to consider for the surrogate. She is sending it to me. Some of the big issues are things I have considered, but I'm sure there will be more issues I never even thought about that are on her list. Illinois has some of the strongest laws in the country that protect the parents. Other states range from not bad to surrogacy being completely illegal. My surrogacy agency won't get a woman who lives in those states (at least I think they won't). But some surrogates live just over the border in Wisconsin or Iowa. My concern is that the surrogate will go into labor or need an emergency C-section and will be brought to the hospital 10 minutes away in her home state instead of 30 minutes away in Illinois and that could cause some minor issues. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it causes more paperwork and legal proceedings. Plus I have to deal with the fact that the hospital she goes to may be out of the insurance network. So I'm hoping to get a surrogate from Illinois. If I'm matched with someone outside the state I'll have to seriously consider if it's worth the small risk or if I'd rather wait til a surrogate from Illinois is available.

One example of how Illinois is so good is that when my baby is born the birth certificate puts my name down as the father and for the mother it just says "gestational surrogate" so there is no identified mother.

This week I'm going to try to call the two doctors who were recommended and figure out how that process works.

I only cried once!

2010-02-22T20:09:00.001-06:00

Today was the meeting with the psychologist.

He started out asking me what I knew about this whole process. I knew that it was to talk about what I wanted from the surrogate and the egg donor. So a lot of this wasn't any new information, but we did hit on a few new ideas.

The doctor asked me to just talk about myself and what led me to surrogacy. I told him that this is something I have wanted since I was a child. I have always thought I'd have the wife and the kids and the house in the suburbs (well..the city). After realizing I was gay the dream was shattered and had to be built up again and now it includes surrogacy. Yesterday I was talking with a friend saying that I was kind of lucky I was born when I was. Had I been born 20 years earlier this would have been an impossibility. So while it's sometimes frustrating and sad that this is the process I have to follow and I'm spending a small fortune, at least I have the option of having a child.

We talked about the kind of relationship I want from a surrogate. The doctor said it ranges from business-like to being friends for life. I think I want a more friendly relationship. I know some couples want less involvement with the surrogate because, when the child is born, the parents don't want confusion over who is the mother. One of the small benefits I have is that I'm not threatened by the idea of a woman trying to take my role. And the doctor explained that sometimes it's nice to have a relationship with the surrogate so the child can see that piece of the puzzle when he/she grows up and starts to understand where he/she came from. He mentioned some surrogates like to be friendly with the biological parents because that often helps the surrogate's child(ren) understand what mom is doing. All surrogates must have a child already so that's something she has to deal with during her pregnancy. It can help her child understand what she's doing if there are pictures of me and my baby to help the child understand what happened to the baby inside mom.

The biggest piece of the puzzle is the egg donor. Oy! What a decision. That's what I'm struggling with now. There are pros and cons to both known and unknown donors and I think I need to talk with the doctor and the lawyers before I make a final decision. Using a friend means my child will know his/her mother. But there also are all the issues of how connected will we be and will she be ok not being the child's mother and what if I move to New York and am I comfortable asking her all the dirty details of her family's medical and mental health history? I did find out that the egg donor isn't always 100% anonymous. Some egg donors might be open to certain levels of contact. The field is just so new that no one knows what will happen as the children grow up. The psychologist said that the donor and I may have an agreement to do this anonymously, but "junior" never agreed to that deal so what his or her rights are will probably be challenged as this becomes more common.

One thing I did learn was how to approach the subject of surrogacy with the child. The psychologist said I'm like the perfect storm: egg donor, surrogate and single, gay dad. (Does this child have any chance to grow up normal?!?!?) But research has shown that it's best to tell the child the truth from the beginning. The answers should be age appropriate, but explaining how the child came to be helps the child process his/her history slowly instead of creating a history and suddenly being jolted into a completely different truth. That was some good advice. He even had a children's book that showed how mom and dad usually have a baby and then showed how mom and dad sometimes use a different mom's egg or a different mom's tummy. Pretty cool.

During the two hours I was there I only cried once. I was prepared with tissues but I was doing ok. Talking about the possibility of twins, being gay, a baby with diseases, relationships with surrogates, my parents, etc. didn't get to me. Then the doctor asked how my friends were taking this or if they even knew. I said the support has been overwhelming. I knew that my friends wouldn't be critical of me, but I expected a lot of friends to say "wow...that's a big step" and leave it at that. Instead, I have had so many friends tell me how brave I am, how excited they are, what a good dad I'd be, that I inspired them, etc. It makes me feel like this crazy idea isn't crazy at all. And what's more impressive is that my work acquaintances are equally as excited and supportive. I told the psychologist about Paula. She's an interpreter friend of mine, who is living in the suburbs with her husband and two kids. We're friends because we work together from time to time, but she's not someone I call up and chat with or meet for a movie and dinner. But Paula is so excited for me. And when I bumped into her today she told me again what a thrill she got from me starting a family and offered me any support or advice she could give. As I talked about her and all my friends I cried from feeling so much love from them. So thanks. Paula - start thinking about who you want to play you in the movie.

Oooh...my first blog

2010-02-18T21:46:00.002-06:00

I swore I would never do this. I never really understood the point of blogging. But this experience is going to be exciting and stressful and scary so maybe writing about it will help me cope with it. That plus maybe I'll get a book/movie deal out of it like "Julie and Julia." It's a long shot...but you never know. And maybe this will help others going through the process in the future. I'll have to look online to see if anyone else is doing this before me. Maybe I'll learn from him.

So February 11th was the day of the deposit. I went to the surrogate agency and talked about the process with one of the women who runs the agency. I had met her about a year earlier and wasn't quite ready to put down my money, but I'm feeling like it's the right time now. While I was at the meeting I was fine for about 15 minutes. Then something hit me out of the blue and I just bawled for a while. All my fears just came out. I remember saying it was weird to feel so scared and so at peace at the same time.

She told me that she has some other single men going through the process and asked if I would be interested in talking with them. Yes! I need to email her about that to see if she has found anyone willing to share their experiences with me. That would be a great resource.

I got set up with an account to look at the egg donors. Last Saturday I went into the registry and took a quick peek at what was there. I have to admit, it's a little weird thinking about the fact that I will have a child with a woman I will never meet. I'll meet the surrogate of course, but probably not the egg donor. From what I understand it's anonymous. The egg donors put up pictures of themselves, family histories, a little something about themselves, etc.

Soon after that I got an email from a friend of mine saying she would consider donating her egg. She is now the second friend who has considered donating her egg. There are a lot of pros and cons to knowing the donor. I have to think about it a lot more. But just knowing two of my friends would even consider donating their eggs makes me feel really, really special. I think the women involved in this process - both the egg donor and the surrogate - are doing something amazing for me and they might never fully know how much they will change my life. That's a powerful thing.

I'm meeting with the psychologist on Monday. The psychologist meeting isn't to decide if I'm fit to be a parent. It's just to discuss what I want/expect during the process. There are lots of decisions to be made like "What if it's twins?" and "Do I want to go to all the appointments with the surrogate?" I think it will be good for me to talk on Monday and learn more about the process. It may make me freak out more or feel more confident about this process.

Oh, and I've already called my friends James and Anne to help me calm down when I stress out. You two should think about who should play you in the movie. :-)