wow..........wow.

This is a hard blog to write.  I've been thinking about it for a while but I guess there is nothing to do but start typing...
Today is week 8. Vanessa had an ultrasound today.  My Dr called me to tell me the result.   He told me right off of the bat that the results were "very abnormal" and "both good and bad".    First of all, one of our triplets split.   Identical twins.....yes that makes 4 total babies.  But the identical twins had no heartbeat and neither did 1 of the others.  So we are down to 1.  So we found out that we lost 3 today.
It is hard to know how to express my feelings at this point.  I morn the losses of those babies.  S and I had definitely got used to the idea of triplets in this past week and we've been talking about it non-stop.  We were mentally prepared for 3 additions to the family and we've had tons of fun announcing it to everyone.
Our doctor pointed out the fact that pregnancies with identical twins are very dangerous and that it is likely that the entire pregnancy would have been a failure if the identicals would have lasted a while longer.  So in a way it was a blessing that they miscarried really early.   He also pointed out that now we have 1 healthy baby and a low-risk pregnancy.  This is the silver lining to this very black cloud.  At this point, this pregnancy is safe.  Very good chances we'll have a perfectly healthy baby come July.
This of course means that all of those anticipated trials (bed rest, NICU, financial bondage, etc) are gone.  But that of course doesn't matter at this point. The loss is huge.  This is the 3rd time we've had  a loss of unborn children.  Total of 4 babies.  This definitely hurts..........but we will move on and rejoice in our baby nestled safely within Vanessa.
Now we get to un-announce our triplets.  I don't like this part at all.  Telling people about such a personal loss is never easy.

Perspective

Life has been different ever since 2 days ago.  

S and I were on the phone with the medical assistant at the clinic as the ultrasound was being performed.  We were visiting family at the time and we were in our room with the door locked (so the kids wouldn't come in).  Within 10 seconds they told us that there were 3 sacs.  Honestly I felt like they just told me that there was a 50% chance that the entire pregnancy would be lost.  I know about triplets and the high risks and considering how small Vanessa is it just seemed like it was doomed to failure.  Honestly there wasn't a drop of happiness in the news.  

Here are some of the gloomy statistics on the subject:  

1.      90% of triplets ended up having an extended stay in NICU

2.      We will be 60 X more likely to have one of our babies die in the 1st month of life than a singleton.  

3.      Pretty much 100% chance of c-section

4.      likely to have extended bed rest and hospitalizations for Vanessa

There are TONS of reasons to worry as there are so many things that can go wrong at this point.  S and I stayed in that locked room for a good 40 minutes getting used to the idea.

As anyone who has read Vanessa's blog post can tell, she was not focused on this at all.  She is quite happy and feels at peace with it all.  All of my concerns are valid.  But as Vanessa talked to me a few minutes after the ultrasound she said something that changed my attitude towards it all.  I realize now that what is done is done.  She is pregnant with triplets.  The risks are going to be there whether we worry ourselves grey or not so we might as well celebrate and enjoy the pregnancy as much as possible.  

So as of now I am genuinely excited about this pregnancy.  In fact, I just can’t stop thinking about it.  I’ve barely been able to sleep for the past 2 nights.  Our little lives have just changed forever with this new knowledge.  Honestly, I would LOVE to have 3 healthy babies.  Yes, it will be absolutely crazy  busy but how lucky would that be to complete my family in one shot?    I have lots of family and friends who have already spoken up as being willing to help. And, eventually when this is all said and done we theoretically have $ again and will be able to pay for a mother-helper to help out.  It seem like a much better use of $ than living in a fancy house or having my hair cut and colored every six weeks. We will be fine as long as we have an extra set of adult hands helping out.    And how much fun it will be when they get a little older!   Triplets!   2 cute boys to be little buddies and watch football with daddy; and a girl to tag along with 2 bigger adoring sisters. 

As anyone who reads Vanessa’s blog can tell, she is a intended parent’s dream-come-true.  Today in Relief Society in the ward I was visiting we talked about Angels and how we as RS sisters can be angels.  All I could think about was Vanessa and how much of an angel she is.  And I’ll put a little plug in for Clark too for being so supportive (let’s face it, he is going to be the single parent for a while)  absolutely amazing.  How on earth do you thank someone for for something like this???  I don’t think I could find another surrogate like Vanessa if I searched for the next 10 years.  Infact, I feel sorry for anyone reading this blog who is looking for a surrogate.  Vanessa is one in a billion.  Steve and I are just feeling so blessed right now.

On a different subject, I want to mention something for any potential intended parents in case it helps them in some way.  We made our decision to transfer 3 embryos based on our doctor’s recommendation and also based on the statistics that he gave us.  He told us that for embryos that had been through genetic testing and there were 3 embryos transferred that there was a 3% chance of triplets,  and a 20% chance of twins.  Yesterday I was speaking with a completely different doctor who pointed out that these statistics don’t really apply to us in our situation because of the population that was being accounted for in these studies.  Normally, the only people who do genetic testing are people who are quite old (like 36+) or have some severe infertility issues.  These embryos are then transferred back to old uteruses that might have endometriosis or whatever else.  In contract, our embryos were transferred to a very young and healthy uterus.  Therefore, the statistics he gave us didn’t really apply to us.  We would obviously have a higher chance of more embryos sticking than the older sicklier people.  I don’t know if realizing this before would have made much of a difference  in our decision or not.  I think it would have, but it is hard to say that for sure.  But I just wanted to point it out in case someone out there ends up in our same shoes with a life-time decision to be made in 10 minutes while your surrogate is waiting medicated on the table for the transfer to take place. 

At this point S and I are very excited.  We are joining Vanessa in the optimism of this pregnancy.  I completely understand that people who point out the negative and risks are just trying to warn/protect us because they care.  But I can assure you that we’ve heard it all and were thoroughly warned about it before we even transferred 3 embryos.  So please keep your warnings and negative stories to yourself.  We will rely on the counsel of the best doctors at this point and otherwise continue hoping for best.

And the number is......

We are expecting Triplets!!!!  Due July 21st which probably means they'll arrive in May or June.  Babies will be born via our wonderful surrogate Vanessa.

I know that I'm going to have a few more people on my blog now that I've handed out this link so let me give a brief summary of how we got here:
As many already know, my pregnancies are horrific to say the least.  Our last one was life threatening and we've been advised to not attempt pregnancy again.  We were not content with our family size so we decided to use a surrogate.  We've been trying for the past 20 months(ish) to make it work and finally it has!  The 3 babies are all 100% mine and Steve's.  We are just renting a womb for a while.  This blog has thus far been documentation of our failures.  But hopefully now it will be a documentation of our journey to being parents again.
We are a little nervous, but even more excited about the prospects of triplets.  Our surrogate Vanessa who will be the one going through the misery and bed-rest of it has a very happy bring-it-on attitude which puts us at ease a bit.   Steve and I are SOOO very happy to finally be able to make such an announcement.
Oh, and just an FYI, I won't be posting anything about the surrogacy on facebook.  Come here to comment or ask questions.
Thanks for caring enough to check this out : )
Here we go.........

Gratitude

In this month of Thanksgiving I couldn't have a more thankful heart.
I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father and also Vanessa for helping my dream come true.  Last night I went and kissed my 2 sleeping princesses.  I adore my children.  They are absolutely priceless.  Heavenly Father and Vanessa are giving me a priceless gift.  Yes, I'll be paying Vanessa, but you can't pay the price of the child.  I'm only paying her for her inconvenience and discomfort for being pregnant.
S and I have thus far paid a HUGE sum of money towards our many many attempts at this.  Lets just say we could have paid cash for a home here in Illinois with that $.  When I thought it had not worked I was really distraught at the idea of what we could have used that money for instead of loosing it all.  But now that this has worked, it was worth every penny and I have absolutely no regrets.  I'd pay it all again without hesitation.
I'm so grateful and excited. I'm having the hardest time waiting until December 2nd to find out how many we are having.  Based on the numbers thus far, there is an extremely good chance of multiples.  This is both exciting and scary since Vanessa isn't quite 5 feet tall (not much room inside!).
I've told just a few select people about our pregnancy.  I'm excited to announce it after the 2nd. I know I'll get some interesting reactions but at this point I couldn't care less about what people think.  I now allow myself to imagine going and watching our babies be delivered and bringing them home.  This is going to be the fastest pregnancy every (all of my 9-month pregnancies seemed to last about 5 years or so).

Lastly, Vanessa is about 5 weeks pregnant now.  I was thinking about that fact last night.  When I was pregnant with #3 I was 5 weeks pregnant at Christmas and me and my family had gone to Utah to Visit (from California).  We knew I'd most likely be hospitalized around 6 weeks since that is what had happened with my previous 2 pregnancies.  But by the 23rd (5 weeks) I was already getting sick so we celebrated Christmas on the 24th in the morning and I flew home and Steve and the kids drove the entire way (and mind you it was Steve's birthday).  Honestly, I was scared to death.  I knew what was coming and although we had planned it,  I was terrified. Christmas day I was only able to keep down the juice I sucked out of an orange and by the 26th I was in the hospital for dehydration.  Shortly thereafter my feeding tube went in.  3 weeks after that we lost our baby.   Vanessa is at the same point of pregnancy where I would be hospitalized.  I'm so grateful that I'm not going to be hospitalized and suffer beyond belief this time.  I cry as I write this.  I just can't express my gratitude.  It was horribly ironic that the only way to get what I want most (a baby) was through my horrific pregnancies.....until now.  How do you thank someone for a priceless gift and saving you from such suffering?  I have no idea.

We are expecting!!!!

So very excited to announce the fact that we are expecting!!  We are pregnant!!!  


So much to catch up on.  I quit blogging because
#1 we planned on being done trying and
#2  Blogging was to painful.
Even when I knew we were trying again I didn't want anyone to know because i couldn't handle discussing something so very raw emotionally with everyone.

So, in the extremely shortened/condensed version of what has happened in the past 6 months is that my doctor offered another option we had not tried yet:  Get 2 batches of embryos, test them all for genetic problems, and try to get at least 2 good one's to transfer.  We also found a new way of funding all of this (since we were out of $).  So we decided to give it one last go.
Unfortunately, Jane apparently decided she was done with us.  (this was about 1 month after the last failure). I tried calling/emailing/facebooking about 10 times asking if she was willing to do it again (for more $ this time) and telling her that it was perfectly fine if she didn't want to, but I just wanted to know.  I got absolutely no response.  She wouldn't respond to anyone at the clinic either which baffled them since she had recently told the nurse practioner at the clinic that she'd be willing to do it again for us as many times as we wanted.  Nobody ever got a hold of her so I finally moved on. Through a little facebook stalking I discovered she had an unsuccessful attempt at another surrogacy in september.   I have no ill feelings towards Jane.  she was wonderful while I had her.
Finding another surrogate was a HUGE struggle.  I was burned by so many people and lost thousands to agencies who provided nothing for me.  I figured my best bet was to advertise on craigslist in Utah.  I got all kinds of weirdish people who would respond to me.  They'd send HUGE emails giving me every detail of their life and telling me how they qualified in every way "I've never done anything against the word of wisdom in my life".  I learned to not even read the long emails until I first copied and pasted their names into Facebook.   Most of the time I could get a lot better idea of what they were truly like very quickly on Facebook.  When Budweiser is on their list of favorites and they have pictures of their tattoos I get the point rather quickly.
But then I got an email from Vanessa.  She didn't have insurance which meant automatically that I wasn't going to waste my time with her although she looked wonderful.  Well, see for yourself:One of my favorite pictures of her and her husband.
When I went to Utah and we got together a few times.She is the cute one on the left whereas I'm the completely awfully frumpy one on the right.

Shortly after Vanessa first contacted me we realized that whereas she didn't have insurance, she could have insurance since her husband Clark had just started a new job and was still in enrollment period.  PERFECT timing.  So we got her signed up.  Perfect.  Everything with Vanessa went extremely easy.  Not a single bump along the path.  It just felt so right and she was too good to be true...   Not only that, but she lives within the same zip code as not only the clinic we've been using, but also my parent's house.  Even better! (although I would have used her even if she would have lived in Maine).  
Vanessa is wonderful, I'm sure I'll blog more about her later (still trying to keep this the short version).  Oh, and she is completely fine with me using her name so no code names needed.  I however still prefer my name not be paired with the fact that we are doing surrogacy.  Why? because when we move again in 18 months I want to go to a place where nobody knows my baby(s) are surrogate babies.  I don't want people to be able to google me and figure out that my babies were born from a surrogate mother.
Vanessa has a great blog. Currently it contains a lot more about the details of what is going on.  http://myamundson5.blogspot.com/ 
I'm making this announcement to my blog knowing that there were only a few select people that I gave the link to originally, and that I'm sure most of them stopped following this long ago. We are not going announce our pregnancy to the public just yet (still feeling cautious I guess) and so if you are lucky enough to run across this post, feel privileged but please don't pass on the information just yet.
I just HAD to tell my blog.  Even if nobody out there is reading it.
Lots more to come later.  We'll find out if we are having multiples on the 2nd of december.

THE END

She is not pregnant.  We are heartbroken. 

Going crazy

Maybe blogging this will help.  I doubt it.
I'm not sure if I'm going to survive until Wednesday.  I just need to know the answer...pregnant or not pregnant.  With every passing day I'm growing more and more anxious and nervous because Jane told me she bought a bunch of pregnancy tests and she'd call me the minute one turned out positive.  When she was pregnant with our baby that miscarried we had a positive result by day 6 (I'm fairly sure).  We are at day 7 now and I've heard nothing.  I know that that doesn't mean anything conclusive, but it just makes me nervous.  1 blood test tomorrow, one wednesday.  
Going blue from holding my breath....