October here we come

We got the beta results on Thursday, it was negative. I took it pretty hard, I wanted this to work so badly for Heather and Brandon. I know that they've taken it hard as well. Negative cycles are never easy, period. We will be doing another fresh cycle probably in October.

Transfer Complete!

This morning we transferred two 3-day 8-celled embryos! We have dubbed them Milo & Otis for the time being. The transfer went great, and it was wonderful to have my Brandon there with me, since he was unable to go to either of my previous two transfers. Heather and her Brandon (we need nicknames for our Brandons) were there as well, though positioned well away from all the action! The embryos looked beautiful, and I have high hopes for Milo & Otis.

The best part for me by far was finally getting to meet Heather & Brandon. I've known Heather online for years, from SMO and then on Facebook, and meeting in person was exactly how I expected it to be. I wasn't nervous, it wasn't weird... I felt like we've been friends forever! Sometimes you just 'know' when something is right, and this is one of those times. I knew before that this was the right decision, but getting to meet Heather and Brandon finally just really solidified everything for me. I'm so excited that we're doing this!

So after the transfer, Brandon drove me home, which was fun laying in the backseat for 3 hours. I've been on the couch ever since. Brandon had to go take care of something at work, so my friend Robin hung out with me for a while. She brought mini-cupcakes and we devoured them while watching old episodes of Friends. Not a bad Saturday afternoon. Now I'm just waiting for Brandon to come home so we can watch Eastbound and Down and have dinner later...much later... like after I digest 83 mini-cupcakes.

So, fingers crossed, baby dust & happy thoughts! Heather brought me 10 pregnancy tests, and I'm going to try to wait until Thursday evening before taking one. Try being the key word there.

Ivy

What's Gonna Work? Teamwork!

After delivering a beautiful baby girl for my friends K & J in December of 2010, I knew right away that surrogacy was something I wanted to do again. My life since then has taken a couple of unexpected but amazing turns, and as it's finally beginning to settle down my husband Brandon and I decided that we were ready to help complete a family. We tried a couple rounds of IVF with a couple earlier this year that didn't work, and dude to embryo issues we had to part ways. I was feeling so down and defeated, but fate works in mysterious ways. My friend Heather, whom I've known since I first started looking into surrogacy in 2009, saw on Facebook that I was looking to match with another couple and sent me a message. A couple hours on the phone later, and bam! We were matched!

It's been a couple of months now and after jumping over what seems like 238 hurdles to get here, we are finally ready! We've both been on all kinds of fun injections for a few weeks now, and Heather and HER husband Brandon are on their way now to our clinic for one more ultrasound and she should get the go-ahead to do her trigger shot and do her retrieval on Wednesday. Assuming all goes as planned, we should be transferring two embryos to me on August 13th! *fingers crossed*

Heather and I decided to team up to blog the entire pregnancy from both of our viewpoints. So check back in soon and hopefully we'll have more exciting news soon!

-Ivy