IM e-mailed me last night and is full of positivity and excitement after getting the bits yesterday for us to start trying. I feel such a warm glow to know that I'm part of the journey to make their dreams come true.
She told me that she couldn't resist this crib she'd seen on eBay and bought it. I think she's still fearful of things not working out but I like to think that her actions are telling me she has hope and whilst there's hope...
I'm just eager to get started NOW but there is necessary stuff that needs to be sorted out first still. IM has done a sterling job on the contracts and sent me over a copy yesterday which is another thing ticked off the list. Now it's just the sexual health checks and I think we're good to go. With my cycles as they are, I'm estimating it'll be middle of May will be our first attempt.
Thursday 25 March 2010
Wednesday 24 March 2010
'What next?'
Some of you may be thinking 'what next then?' Well the next stage is for us to draw up contracts. Surrogacy contracts are not like normal contracts, they are not recognised under UK law as being legally binding on either party. It's more like a formal agreement if you will.
These contracts handle every eventuality you can think of. From what scans will be carried out to what would happen should an IP die. It's give and take and most matched couples will tweak them to their own needs.
M has kindly agreed to take over the contract stage and is nearly done and will send it over shortly for me to look at.
Myself and hubby are waiting to get our sexual health checks done, this is not strictly necessary but for obvious reason, wise to have done and in our case, IPs requested it and we're more than happy to oblige.
IPs are shopping today for everything we'll need. All the tests and kits, pots and cups and that sort of stuff.
And we are also arranging my life insurance. Very necessary as I have 3 children to consider should anything happen. Pregnancy is not without risk.
So, that's where we are. Moving forwards, I'm still on Cloud 9!
These contracts handle every eventuality you can think of. From what scans will be carried out to what would happen should an IP die. It's give and take and most matched couples will tweak them to their own needs.
M has kindly agreed to take over the contract stage and is nearly done and will send it over shortly for me to look at.
Myself and hubby are waiting to get our sexual health checks done, this is not strictly necessary but for obvious reason, wise to have done and in our case, IPs requested it and we're more than happy to oblige.
IPs are shopping today for everything we'll need. All the tests and kits, pots and cups and that sort of stuff.
And we are also arranging my life insurance. Very necessary as I have 3 children to consider should anything happen. Pregnancy is not without risk.
So, that's where we are. Moving forwards, I'm still on Cloud 9!
Monday 22 March 2010
The First Meet
I was talking to 4 particular IPs at once. That's the thing about surrogacy I find most odd, you have to almost hedge your bets and juggle all the friendship balls. It's basically that you build a friendship and see who you click with the most, you can't help everyone which I really felt bad about. Apparently IPs expect you'll be talking to others and there will be losers along the way.
It became apparent that 1 couple weren't ready to actually take things forward, I liked her a lot though. We'll keep in touch for sure. Another couple got the go ahead to give trying for their own baby one more whirl, I'm thrilled for them and will stay in touch to follow that journey to hopefully a joyous end. The 3rd couple were lovely, there was nothing that put them in 2nd place, it just happens that way, things slightly more click with someone else and the 4th couple, well, I felt a connection with them almost straight away.
IM (Intended Mother) tried for a lot of years to get pregnant but in the end it wasn't possible. She had a total hysterectomy and that was the end of them trying for their long awaited baby themselves. She told me in one of her first messages that people thought they were serious and straight laced, I guess that had put others off. At first it felt stilted conversation, almost like a dating site where neither wanted to put the other off. We moved onto FB messaging and then she told me she couldn't access from work and to e-mail her, for some reason I was hesitant of e-mailing personally but I did and we started to speak several times a day. We both started to relax and warm up, it started to feel like it was flowing instead of polite chit-chat.
That was back the begining of the year and continued, we text and e-mail and talk on our small surrogacy board. I asked what we should do next and she suggested meeting in person. My heart was beating so fast as I typed back agreeing. I am not a social person, a people person. I feel clumsy and tongue-tied, awkwardly filling silences in conversation so I was anxious from the word 'ok'.
My IM is the sweetest, she put a ticker up counting down to our meet-up. She would tell me as the day drew nearer, how excited she was. How nervous her hubby was, even down to wondering what he should wear! Then our day was here.
We met, I was afraid it would be awkward, we wouldn't know how to greet each other appropriately but she met me with the widest smile ever and I just hugged her tight. We were all as nervous as each other but it felt so right at that moment. Knowing *I* had made her smile that wide was wonderful, I'd made her happy already and we hadn't even agreed to work together at that point!
For 2.5 hours, we sat and talked, and ate, and laughed. We laughed a lot. Her and her husband were wonderful, asking enough to be interested but not too much to make me feel as though I was at an interview.
Our time was soon up, we had to get back to the children and they had to start the 2 hour drive home. More hugging, more grinning, I don't think IM stopped the entire time we were together. IM and I had discussed how to tell one another the outcome, whether we wanted to work together but we'd decided that we'd 'just know'. And I did. I wanted to wait, to find out what they thought but I couldn't help myself, just 20 minutes after we parted ways, I text them telling them. Then I nervously waited a while until my IM text back with a yes from their end! I was thrilled, absolutely ecstatic.
As soon as IPs made it home, IM e-mailed me, full of thanks for the wonderful thing we were about to do. I don't think I stopped floating on air all evening and my thoughts last night were filled with nothing but them and the adventure we were about to embark on.
This is IT, this is really happening. Really really happening!
It became apparent that 1 couple weren't ready to actually take things forward, I liked her a lot though. We'll keep in touch for sure. Another couple got the go ahead to give trying for their own baby one more whirl, I'm thrilled for them and will stay in touch to follow that journey to hopefully a joyous end. The 3rd couple were lovely, there was nothing that put them in 2nd place, it just happens that way, things slightly more click with someone else and the 4th couple, well, I felt a connection with them almost straight away.
IM (Intended Mother) tried for a lot of years to get pregnant but in the end it wasn't possible. She had a total hysterectomy and that was the end of them trying for their long awaited baby themselves. She told me in one of her first messages that people thought they were serious and straight laced, I guess that had put others off. At first it felt stilted conversation, almost like a dating site where neither wanted to put the other off. We moved onto FB messaging and then she told me she couldn't access from work and to e-mail her, for some reason I was hesitant of e-mailing personally but I did and we started to speak several times a day. We both started to relax and warm up, it started to feel like it was flowing instead of polite chit-chat.
That was back the begining of the year and continued, we text and e-mail and talk on our small surrogacy board. I asked what we should do next and she suggested meeting in person. My heart was beating so fast as I typed back agreeing. I am not a social person, a people person. I feel clumsy and tongue-tied, awkwardly filling silences in conversation so I was anxious from the word 'ok'.
My IM is the sweetest, she put a ticker up counting down to our meet-up. She would tell me as the day drew nearer, how excited she was. How nervous her hubby was, even down to wondering what he should wear! Then our day was here.
We met, I was afraid it would be awkward, we wouldn't know how to greet each other appropriately but she met me with the widest smile ever and I just hugged her tight. We were all as nervous as each other but it felt so right at that moment. Knowing *I* had made her smile that wide was wonderful, I'd made her happy already and we hadn't even agreed to work together at that point!
For 2.5 hours, we sat and talked, and ate, and laughed. We laughed a lot. Her and her husband were wonderful, asking enough to be interested but not too much to make me feel as though I was at an interview.
Our time was soon up, we had to get back to the children and they had to start the 2 hour drive home. More hugging, more grinning, I don't think IM stopped the entire time we were together. IM and I had discussed how to tell one another the outcome, whether we wanted to work together but we'd decided that we'd 'just know'. And I did. I wanted to wait, to find out what they thought but I couldn't help myself, just 20 minutes after we parted ways, I text them telling them. Then I nervously waited a while until my IM text back with a yes from their end! I was thrilled, absolutely ecstatic.
As soon as IPs made it home, IM e-mailed me, full of thanks for the wonderful thing we were about to do. I don't think I stopped floating on air all evening and my thoughts last night were filled with nothing but them and the adventure we were about to embark on.
This is IT, this is really happening. Really really happening!
Here I Am!
Well, as the domain name suggests, this is a blog about my journey to become a 'tummy mummy' aka a surrogate.
I'm a first timer and although I've researched it to death for years now, spoken to a ton of people both professional and with personal experience on both sides of the surrogacy fence, I remember being utterly confused about the whole thing and not knowing where to even begin. So, I thought this would be a good blog to follow my journey from start to (hopefully!) finish.
I guess it'd be good to start from the beginning, right? OK, well I've always been interested in surrogacy, just the thought that it must be wonderful to help someone else achieve their dream. I think I first knew about it and gave it serious thought before I even had kids of my own. Ironically it took 5 years to conceive our first child, that only served to fuel my surrogacy calling - knowing what it felt like to long for a child and think it would never happen.
So, back to the story....Over the years, we've (hubby and I) discussed it on and off but hadn't completed our own family and so it was just talk. I did google every so often and joined a board or two to lurk and read but never took it any further.
We realised we were done having children ourselves when we had our 3rd in March 2008. Our hearts were full, our sanity stretched paper thin and our purse strings very much at breaking point. So hubby had the big snip, actually whilst I was still carrying baby#3, and that was that. The baby factory was closed here.
Again, thought of surrogacy drifted in and out of my mind again until just before Christmas '09, I decided I'd actively look into it and google and FB search became my friends. It's still very much underground, if you do google and find sites, they are mainly American as that's where surrogacy is more acceptable and you can legally advertise for/as a surrogate. There are 2 main UK groups but they are mainly closed to non-members, IPs (Intended Parents) have to pay to join but surrogates get in free. I didn't like not being able to view before I took the plunge so I didn't hang around for long.
I always said I could only do Host Surrogacy (aka Gestational Surrogacy) where you use the IPs egg and sperm but the more I researched, the more I felt differently. I could do Traditional Surrogacy. When you consider that a lot of women won't do TS, use their egg, and that most people searching for a surrogate don't have eggs or can't use them then that's a lot of people you might help, being denied straight away. And when you add up the cost of IVF for the surrogate and the cost of getting the IM cycling with them, for HS, you can see why most IPs go the TS route. It's cheaper, more straight forward, faster and has a better success rate as you're not introducing 2 entirely foreign things (sperm and egg) into a foreign environment.
I know some people baulk at the idea of using their own egg, that's biologically related to them and I understand that. As long as you've researched and played out all the scenarios in your head and thought about it long and hard, if you're still ok with being a TS, go for it I say.
So, back to my journey, I did find the courage to put my profile on one site and had contact from one lady, we exchanged just 2 e-mails and she went silent on me. To this day I don't know what I did or didn't say or do but it did hurt my pride and took a few days for me to realise that it obviously wasn't meant to be.
I found several on FB though and saw people basically advertising themselves which actually, is illegal in the UK but still, social networking knows no bounds! LOL So I made contact with one lady who was advertising, to make friends more than anything, and it snowballed from there...Soon I was getting more well known, surrogates are in demand and IPs talk about ones they know who are yet to be matched and I was invited to a more private board.
That was where the real surrogacy journey began...
I'm a first timer and although I've researched it to death for years now, spoken to a ton of people both professional and with personal experience on both sides of the surrogacy fence, I remember being utterly confused about the whole thing and not knowing where to even begin. So, I thought this would be a good blog to follow my journey from start to (hopefully!) finish.
I guess it'd be good to start from the beginning, right? OK, well I've always been interested in surrogacy, just the thought that it must be wonderful to help someone else achieve their dream. I think I first knew about it and gave it serious thought before I even had kids of my own. Ironically it took 5 years to conceive our first child, that only served to fuel my surrogacy calling - knowing what it felt like to long for a child and think it would never happen.
So, back to the story....Over the years, we've (hubby and I) discussed it on and off but hadn't completed our own family and so it was just talk. I did google every so often and joined a board or two to lurk and read but never took it any further.
We realised we were done having children ourselves when we had our 3rd in March 2008. Our hearts were full, our sanity stretched paper thin and our purse strings very much at breaking point. So hubby had the big snip, actually whilst I was still carrying baby#3, and that was that. The baby factory was closed here.
Again, thought of surrogacy drifted in and out of my mind again until just before Christmas '09, I decided I'd actively look into it and google and FB search became my friends. It's still very much underground, if you do google and find sites, they are mainly American as that's where surrogacy is more acceptable and you can legally advertise for/as a surrogate. There are 2 main UK groups but they are mainly closed to non-members, IPs (Intended Parents) have to pay to join but surrogates get in free. I didn't like not being able to view before I took the plunge so I didn't hang around for long.
I always said I could only do Host Surrogacy (aka Gestational Surrogacy) where you use the IPs egg and sperm but the more I researched, the more I felt differently. I could do Traditional Surrogacy. When you consider that a lot of women won't do TS, use their egg, and that most people searching for a surrogate don't have eggs or can't use them then that's a lot of people you might help, being denied straight away. And when you add up the cost of IVF for the surrogate and the cost of getting the IM cycling with them, for HS, you can see why most IPs go the TS route. It's cheaper, more straight forward, faster and has a better success rate as you're not introducing 2 entirely foreign things (sperm and egg) into a foreign environment.
I know some people baulk at the idea of using their own egg, that's biologically related to them and I understand that. As long as you've researched and played out all the scenarios in your head and thought about it long and hard, if you're still ok with being a TS, go for it I say.
So, back to my journey, I did find the courage to put my profile on one site and had contact from one lady, we exchanged just 2 e-mails and she went silent on me. To this day I don't know what I did or didn't say or do but it did hurt my pride and took a few days for me to realise that it obviously wasn't meant to be.
I found several on FB though and saw people basically advertising themselves which actually, is illegal in the UK but still, social networking knows no bounds! LOL So I made contact with one lady who was advertising, to make friends more than anything, and it snowballed from there...Soon I was getting more well known, surrogates are in demand and IPs talk about ones they know who are yet to be matched and I was invited to a more private board.
That was where the real surrogacy journey began...
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