Doom? No Doom?

Well now, things seem like they might actually move along after all! Not just in surro-land but in general. I was starting to think that perhaps the Mayans were right, and this year was the year we all found ourselves doomed. Every time I thought we were getting ahead and making plans and taking steps forward, something would come along and clothesline me in the face with a two-by-four. I daresay the bruises were starting to show.

Interesting the things that laying flat on your back with a proverbial egg swelling on your brow will make you think, though.

Anyway, our illustrious IVF physician has decided that because Wiggle Worm has a little dimple at the very bottom of her back, it could possibly, maybe, theoretically suggest that there may have at one moment in time been the slightest, remotest chance that she could have been possibly, maybe prone to the mildest, minutest hint of spina bifida. Maybe. Possibly. So I’ve been prescribed 5mg of folic acid per day, starting as soon as it arrives. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest; I.F. is paying through the nose to have every chance at the healthiest baby possible. I just think it’s funny that a dimple above someone’s butt is a concern. I’m probably a horrible person or something. But I digress. The point of this was to state that the pharmacy that the IVF clinic uses wanted $44 for a month’s worth of these pills. I talked to I.F. and decided I’d check into the cost of 5mg of folic acid every day for a month through WalMart. $17. Before insurance. Evil as major corporations are, I can see why people use them. Fortunately I.F. found a way to get the supplements for free, so neither of us have to pay a cent for them.

Hubs has an interview a week from tomorrow for a real, live teaching gig about two hours north of our current home, for the 2012-2013 school year. In his field and everything. A couple of my uncles have suggested that he take a deck of cards up and ask for ten minutes of the interviewers’ time, to teach them to play Pitch with 9’s and 5’s. It’s an old family game, and hubs is VERY efficient at teaching people to play it. He taught the munchkin to play months ago, for about ten minutes, then she never picked the cards up again till this past weekend, where she very quickly STOMPED me and my grandmother.

So if he gets the job, we’ll be moving to the same general vicinity as munchkin’s father. I’ll have to commute to work, but there are several people in my building who ride down from that area, so it won’t be a problem getting in. And the ex gets out of work before school lets out for the day, so he and munchkin could see each other every day for a couple hours till hubs and I got home from work.

And my nursing school plans may yet come to pass as well. If hubs gets this job, we’ll have health insurance coverage and a proper income, which is the biggest thing. Assuming he does indeed get the job, I can spend this pregnancy looking up grants and scholarships for school, and get all the paperwork lined up and done in advance, so the financial burden of school won’t be much of a burden at all. Once this baby is delivered, I can apply to schools for the following fall semester, submit my scholarship and grant applications, and if accepted, I can give my current job plenty of notice that I’m leaving. I can work evenings while I go to school to help pay the bills. Depending on what kind of scholarship and grant info I find, I can choose between a technical school where I could get my associates in nursing, take the NCLEX-RN and then get a job, and take RN-to-BSN classes through my job. Or if the package I find is good enough, I could do a four-year program, then do midwifery school and start my practice after that. Food for thought.

But I’ve rambled on long enough now, and I should shut up.

Contractions

The agency sent me a draft copy of this surrogacy's contract yesterday. I read it on my new phone which was novel, but admittedly a bigger pain in the tuckus than it would have been on the computer. I won't bother with the details; it was basically the same as the last one, except this time we're opting out of legal counsel for the creation of the contract, because it's basically the same as the last one.

Last time we did this I was all a-dither, waiting anxiously for the next step and getting badly impatient with everything I saw as an obstacle. This time, I'm pleased to do it again, but I have a better sense of how things work, I think. I realize that the IVF clinic has many more patients than just me; that the agency is dealing with lots of different people in lots of different situations in lots of different stages of the process; that there are processes involved in each step that must be carefully followed to ensure everyone's protection.

Holy crap, I've grown up!

Ideally I'll be pregnant by May, but I'm not going to get all worked up if I'm not. It'll happen when it happens. Besides, I've got tons of other crap to deal with before then anyway.

I had to send a copy of the contract to my employer's HR department too. Of course, I already know what it's for so I just did the same thing I did last time: redact, redact, redact. They don't really need to know the dollar amounts, and they certainly don't need to know IF's name or address. I got the Big-Boss-Man's blessing a couple weeks ago, so as far as my job is concerned, I'm good to go. Personally I still don't see why they need to know about it at all, but ah well; such is bureaucracy.

So once the contract makes its way back to the agency, I just have to wait to go down to the clinic to get tested. Then back to the dino-shots (leuprolide, which my friend misread as liopleurodon, hence "dino-shots") then on to the embryo transfer. This time I don't have to sync up with a donor; we's usin' babysicles! HA! But seriously, I'm told that I.F. is in discussions with the IVF clinic about the timing of thawing the embryos for transfer.

And I think that's about it for now. I'll post more as things happen. :)

Round 2?

I got an email from the fertility clinic yesterday, informing me that they are going through the embryo thawing process with Wiggle-Worm's father, and that they will be contacting me soon to schedule testing for me and for hubs. We don't have to run the full gamut again; just blood tests and UA's and a quick chat with the social worker. I'm already on the same brand of birth control pills the clinic had me on at the beginning of last cycle, and I have a pelvic exam scheduled with my GYN for next week.

I am SOOOOOOOOOO glad we don't have to sync up with the egg donor again. I have come to the conclusion that those hormones make me flat-out insane. Last summer, after I started taking my dino-shots (leuprolide), hubs was invited by his local best friend (whose name has become "Other Wife" as far as I am concerned, and therefore I shall refer to him here as such) to spend a week down south with a group of friends. He went, with my blessing.

Or so I thought.

While he was gone, I underwent some strange and, I must admit, strenuous mental gymnastics, and somehow blamed Other Wife for taking my husband away from me. I hated him and wished for his death (not really; it just sounds good) for some time thereafter. We have long-since resolved this issue, and have learned that while I am on hormones for getting pregnant, hubs is not allowed to leave the state. For any reason.

All seems to be going well as far as moving along; my employer has dealt with surrogacy now, so there won't be so many hang-ups in communicating what's expected. So that's good.

Ladies & gentlemen, we are back!

Back To It

While my body finishes repairing itself from Princess Wiggle-Worm's birth, we're getting the paperwork started so that it's in place and we're ready to do an embryo transfer for Surrobaby #2 in probably January or February. This time, fortunately, I won't have to play the cycle-syncing game, and the clinic knows to give me a little more of the meds that build up the lining of my uterus this time around.

Hopefully this will allow for less hormonal fluctuation, because last time, poor hubs and a very close friend of his caught the brunt of a meltdown last time. They've since been warned not to plan any long trips while my body adjusts to a new hormone regimen.

(>_<)

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

As of five days postpartum, I actually fit into my pre-pregger jeans! WOO HOO! Granted, that's still a size 16 but hopefully it suggests that I may even wind up smaller than that by the time I lose all my "baby weight!" Then again, I'm not entirely sure how long it takes for said "baby weight" to finish coming off. It may be that I won't get an inch smaller. Here's hoping, though!

Thankfully, "the girls" are no longer melon-sized lumps of adamantium. Cause yeah. That. Hurt. They seem to have returned to something akin to their original state. Milk production has slowed dramatically, and having acquired birth control pills once again, hopefully the milk will cease to flow in short order.

I'm also on my third day back at work. Part of me missed being busy and having things to do. The other part still really hates getting out of bed in the morning. I'm looking forward to getting back to riding my bike to work in the mornings, though. Only a couple more weeks to go!

Whining (aka. Baby Blues)

Day three home from the hospital, day four since delivery. This, I think, is about the right timing. Well, I wouldn't call it "right" per se; I feel miserable. But the timing is appropriate for Baby Blues to set in. So instead of wallowing for days on end, I'm going to try to vent now and hopefully this will allow me to logic my way through the rest of it.

I've been living in a state of perpetual engorgement since Sunday evening, and had just begun to think that I had trained my breasts to scale back on production when I got a phone call from I.F. saying that he and Princess Wiggle-Worm were heading home. Now, this is wonderful news! Except, it turns out he wasn't going to come down after all to pick up the breast milk I've been expressing for him since I left the hospital. Yes, yes, I've agreed to freeze it in case he can come back and get it, but it might have been nice to have been given a little bit of notice, so I could scale back on expressing more than I had been. Since Sunday, I have made Dolly Parton look absolutely prepubescent. Now I'm bound up so tight my ten year old is proportionally larger-chested than I am. This. Is. Painful.

And no one has come to visit or called. Which bums me out, but I can't expect people to drop everything, either. They have lives of their own.

Urrrgh... Sore.

I'm finally at home. Hubs took me out to a lovely meal at Outback. I ate a real-sized meal for the first time in WEEKS! WOO HOO! Of course, I really like what eating small meals has done to my shape, so I'm calling this my splurge and will be returning to a far more moderate menu henceforth. But WOW, did I enjoy my lobster tails, 6-ounce sirloin and sweet potato, and yes the cheese fries we shared were DELICIOUS!

I've been expressing breast milk for Princess Wiggle-Worm too. I was having trouble at first, because basically, my nipples were clogged. Now that I've roughed them up to the point of *ouch* the milk is flowing much more freely. No colostrum from THIS Holstein, ladies and gents; I produce the real thing. This makes Daddy and the nurses happy, as the Princess has a bit of jaundice. (Not to mention that breast milk is just better for babies than formula.) I'm not sure whether I'll be asked to continue doing so yet, but we'll figure it out tomorrow when I go pick MY princess up from her father's house and drop off what I've pumped this evening and what I pump tomorrow.

My breasts are sore, my bits are sore, and overall I feel like I've been beat up and rung out but overall satisfied. And the best bonus: I get to sleep in my own bed, snuggled up with Hubs for the first time since Wednesday! -GWEE!-