However, things went a little quicker for me. My husband and I were sitting at the airport waiting to go home after the medical evaluation and I got a call from the fertility clinic. They wanted to go ahead and schedule my transfer date! Since I was going to do a frozen transfer and the IP's wouldn't be able to make it stateside, they only needed to work with my schedule. The date was set for December 21st and I was beyond ecstatic! Of course, that was still contingent on getting the contracts finalized and my body cooperating over the next month to get ready to accept the embryo.
As you might have noticed so far, there is no 'typical' time frame for things. I took months and months to match but then things moved very quickly once I was. Others may only take a few weeks to match, or the contract phase takes forever, or pinning down a transfer date may be a little more complicate. There are so many variables in surrogacy and no 'normal' to go by. It's a lot of waiting, a lot of patience, and a lot of ups and downs. You have to be prepared for anything.
Moving on, so my tentative date was set and I had passed my medical and psych evals, next was medications. I had been on birth control pills (bcp's) this whole time so my first instructions was when to stop those. I took my last one in late November and went into a monitoring clinic (my local ob/gyn) a week later for an ultrasound. The purpose of the ultrasound was to check my uterine lining and get a follicle count. That evening the fertility clinic (FC) called to let me know the results and go over further instructions. That night I received my first injection! I had known that it was a part of the process but wasn't looking forward to it. I had several printouts from the FC and directions on how to give one so I handed that all over to my husband and just closed my eyes :)
And it wasn't so bad. The injection has to be done intramuscular, which meant it had to go in my backside but my husband is so awesome that all I felt was a little pinch. Phew! I have heard a lot of stories about side affects of the medications or soreness at the injection site but I have been lucky and haven't experienced any of that!
So once the transfer date was set, I received a calendar leading up to it that detailed when and what medications I would start and when I had ultrasound appointments. The first medication I started, like I said, was progesterone in injection form. But there are others too. When a woman conceives naturally, her body begins producing hormones in order to support a growing fetus. When you go through IVF, your body won't be producing those hormones for a while yet because it has to realize that it has a need for them so that's why there are medications. The injection of progesterone is done every three days. About a week or so after I began them, I also started another form of progesterone that was in a dissovable tablet. This went under my tongue and was taken, along with another kind, three times a day. I actually started setting my alarm on my phone so I wouldn't forget to take one and so I would take them the same time every day. Along with all the medications, I also had vitamin supplements-prenatals, folic acid, and DHA. You can see why having an alarm and a calendar would make things easier :) You do NOT want to miss a dose of anything because that could mess things up for the transfer.
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| Not an actual picture of my meds, but pretty much what my counter looked like when my box of meds and vitamins arrived! |
I had medications, vitamins, and ultrasounds all set but that still left one really important thing. The contracts. Now, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail with what is in a typical contract but I will skim over it. The contract is in place mainly to protect the IP's and the surrogate throughout the process. Every little detail is in and I went over it myself, again with my husband, once more with a friend who had been a surrogate before, and then finally with an attorney. Once all the terms are set upon by both parties, they are signed and finalized. That means that things are cleared to move forward. It was really exciting to get to that point! Like I mentioned previously, most people I had spoken to had said that it could take a month or more to get contracts put together. I was really lucky-and surprised-because I think we had ours together and signed in a little more than a week! I think that just solidified how right it felt to be working with my IP's. We were totally on the same page about everything and because of that, things moved very smoothly and quickly. Seriously, they are really awesome people!
That pretty much sums up what my experience was like prior to the transfer-which of course is the most exciting part- so I'll talk about that next!
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