Plagarism and the Egg Update

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?

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???

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 dollars 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

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

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

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 did 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

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!