Sunday, June 29, 2014

It's getting real

So what has happened since my trip to SD and back?  A LOT! 

Well, got my contracts, reviewed them and had to get them finalized.  Note to self (and you if you want to be a surrogate) Make sure you have your bases covered. Or as they say in Big Brother ~ Expect the Unexpected!! Expect you will be pregnant with twins and will have to go on bed rest.  What will that mean for you? Child care cost, lost of wages cost, house cleaning cost, if your significant other has to take time of work cost. Yes make sure you have ALL of that covered!!  Do not sign if you don't.  If you don't think you will be able to make things work and this becomes a financial strain on you then it will cause problems.  That is not something you want when you are trying to do something to help another family.  If you don't want to have to worry about this, then only sign up to transfer a SET (Single Embryo Transfer). Just ONE baby. Although things could still happen, then chances of it go WAY down!!  Some things were not very clear to me.  The agency gave me a benefit sheet to sign that gave me the breakdown of cost but it wasn't my contract.  So I figured this was the basic information and anything extra could be discussed.  Well I was wrong.  This was put in the contract and not up for discussion.  Now that may seem crappy, but I will say that things change for me (the IPs) and went quickly so I am not sure if this would have been discussed more otherwise. I didn't sign the contract right away.  I contacted other surrogates and asked a lot of questions.  One even allowed me to review her contract so I could see how comfortable or not I was with what I had in front of me.  After looking it all over I was relieved.  Some parts of my contract were more flexible then hers.  My compensation would be enough to cover cost should something come up (well according to my calculations) So I moved forward and signed my life away. 
 
 
After that was done I got the thumbs up to start Meds. I was already taking birth control ~ this is to help sync my cycle up with the donor ~ and baby aspirin ~ this is to help the flow of blood to the uterus where the embryo will need to implant.  I need to be nice and "fluffy" in order for the embie to get comfy, settle in and grow! I started with Lupron.  This is a daily injection I give to myself in my stomach. It's actually not bad, doesn't hurt and is easy to do. The only side effect I am having from it is headaches.  I didn't have any for the fist couple of weeks but got my first one this past Thursday and it turned in to a migraine!! Ever since I get one daily and they are annoying. I do to the IVF clinic tomorrow to get my blood checked and ultrasound and if all is well I will start Delestrogen.  This is an injection that I will give myself in my booty.  So tonight I decided to watch a video on it.... 
 
 Yep.... That's how I feel. My mouth dropped open, my eyes popped out, my stomach turned over and over.... I'm not prepared for this injection I have to start giving myself.  I am nervous as heck to do it but I will.  I hear the anticipation for it is harder than actually doing it.  I also have heard there is a trick to doing it so that it is easier on my.  First I need to Ice the area for the injection, heat up the medicine so it goes in easy, rub it in and then put a heating pad on it after .  These are the tricks to make it not hurt so much. I was going to show you a picture of needles but after looking at a few I decided this was best:
 
 
This is a happy place I want to be thinking about instead of those long 1 1/2" Needles.  Well ~ time for bed.  I have a big day tomorrow.