Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Testing, Testing, 1.2.3...

Monday was a great day! My husband and I found some poor sucker to watch the kids all day and skipped town! Ha... just kidding - well, sort of...

Actually, we entrusted the care of our munchkins to my sister-in-law, who was gracious enough to arrive at our home at 5:50 am, and hubby and I rode off into the sunrise to the Philadelphia area to visit the RE office for the first time. It turned out to be an enjoyable and peaceful 13 hours of time together.

We were introduced to the nurse coordinator who will be handling our entire case. She introduced us to all the different medications I'll be taking in order to synchronize my cycle with the egg donor and subsequently building a nice home for my IP's embryo, while suspending my own ovulation. It's amazing what can be accomplished with hormones. The human body is really just one large, extremely complex, chemically-operated machine! We provided blood and urine for all the required tests and super-Hubby survived the dreaded needle!

After reviewing the medications and explaining how I got involved in surrogacy, Hubby and I had the pleasure of spending some time taking some written psychological tests. We weren't to be sharing answers (obviously) but at least we were able to joke with each other a little while taking them, which made the whole process at lot more bearable!

After a quick lunch break, we met with one of the physicians, though likely not the one I'll be seeing regularly. He reviewed a lot of information about how the whole process works, including the FDA oversight of testing and process, and he got a complete history from me, including the location & ages of all my tattoos and piercings. That was something I wasn't necessarily expecting. Our time with the good doctor ended with a physical exam, which included an ultrasound of my reproductive parts. I've never had one done without actually already having a baby in there, so it was definitely a new experience for me. The doctor labeled my ovary as "Picasso-esque," whatever that means! I think it was just a bit of RE humor that must've flown over my head...

Finally, we finished up by meeting with the psychologist, who was kind enough to come to the clinic so we could complete all of this stuff in one visit instead of two - saving us a full day of travel and childcare. Yay!
I really liked her - she was very personable and made our 3 hour interview a good one! We talked about pretty much everything under the sun with regards to myself, my husband, our relationship, our expectations about the surrogacy journey and the IP's. I can say with confidence that I'm certain that if we weren't ready for this, she would've uncovered the issue during this visit and talked to us about it.

So now I get to wait for our results to come in - hopefully by the end of the week and then it's on to contracts. Once that is complete, bring on the meds and we're off and running.... My expectation at this point (based on the information provided by the nurse coordinator) is that I might be starting a birth control pill by the end of July or the beginning of August, which means that hopefully a September transfer is in the works! Can't wait to see...