MicroblogMondays: Five Weeks Five Days

Today, we have reached five weeks five days.  I get asked a lot about my feelings regarding where we are in this process.  It has been quite interesting to be the intended mother and not the person being pregnant.  I continue to struggle a little on the frequency of getting information from Annie about her feelings.  I ask her about once a day. Some days I don’t ask.  She has told me that she would tell me if she is feeling something other than good.  But I feel that I should still ask because I do care a lot about how she is feeling.  Last week, she was feeling good earlier in the week but on Thursday, she told me that she had been feeling tired and very grumpy for two days and was seeking prayers for grace and compassion.  I took her fatigue and grumpiness as a great sign but I felt bad for her that she wasn’t feeling good.  But like she said, I don’t have to feel bad because she signed herself up for it.  But it’s at times difficult that I am not the one feeling anything.

Last week throughout the week I woke up every morning feeling anxious about all the things that have been happening in this country with the new administration.  In disbelief, I wondered for the first time in my life if it was the right choice to bring children into this world.  The direction that this country is going has made me really nervous.  At the same time, I know that I have to put my complete trust in God’s sovereignty.  But the events that were unfolding in the last few days definitely made my feelings of having children via surrogacy even more complicated.

I received an email last week from our surrogacy agency and the paralegal for our attorney discussing about the first payment for Annie.  In the contract, it stated that a beta 20 days post 5 day transfer would be done and a payment would be made to our surrogate after confirmation of the continuation of the pregnancy.  However, since we weren’t going to do a beta and were going straight to the first ultrasound, our agency had asked the paralegal to send the first payment to our surrogate.  It made it a little bit uneasy for me to issue the payment without confirming the progress of the pregnancy.  Agency said that we could always have my RE order a 20 day beta (which happened to be yesterday, but it would be done today since yesterday was on the weekend).  My anxiety went way up once I saw the words “20 day beta”.  I did not want to have to see another beta number for this current pregnancy in my life.  I did not want to wait all day for the number and feel nervous about it.  I wrote Dr. E to ask her for advice.  This is what she said, “Pay her for it.  I don’t do 20 day beta.  Never heard of it before!  Everything will be fine.  Only reason to do it is if she has spotting or anything like that.”  So with that, I authorized for the paralegal to issue a check for Annie.

Annie is so great though.  She knew that I was a bit anxious about the pregnancy.  For my satisfaction, she bought two FRER and peed on one on 11 days post 5 day transfer, the day after our second beta.  It was pretty dark for that day.  Yesterday was 20 days post 5 day transfer.  I woke up to her message on my phone with an awesome picture of a FRER.  The test line was way darker than the control line.  It appeared that her hCG was so high that the test line had pulled the color from the control line.  It means that she is still very pregnant.  It is very reassuring to know that the pregnancy has progressed.  I try not to post anything that may be a trigger for others in this blog post.  If you go over to the left side of the blog, you will see a page for the pee stick images.

Time has been going kind of slowly as we wait for the first ultrasound.  At the same time, it has been very exciting for Bob and me to talk about the very good possibility of bringing home a baby or two in September.  I know we still have many months ahead of us, but I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I can’t wait to get to that point.