Halfway!

I made it to Halfway! I am definitely growing as is she! Honestly this has been my most difficult pregnancy. The nausea is still there in the background. Now the heartburn and indigestion are kicking in. The aches and pains are being amplified. I am not sure I would want to do this again even if the doctor said it was OK. I am getting older and it is getting more difficult. But then I see other people I know that have much worse issues with their pregnancies and think how lucky I am. 

Time

It has been a while since I have posted I have just been busy. Losing one twin was hard but we have had to move on from that and things are good. So at my first doctor appointment they do early diabetic screening if you have certain risk factors. I have multiple risk factors so of course I took the test. I failed the one hour test and moved on to the three hour test. You can only fail one of the 4 blood tests they take and I failed two. One by 6 points only! So normally you are diagnosed at around 24 weeks and you have to check your sugar 4 times a day. I was diagnosed at 12 weeks so I have 28 weeks of watching my sugar and carbs. It is really hard because I have a sweet tooth! You want your sugar under 120 two hours after every meal. Mine has been under 100 all week so today I got to splurge and eat a little cheesecake. I went to the doctor again last week and they did a blood test that can determine certain chromosomal abnormalities and she said it will also let us know what the sex of the baby was. They said it would take 2 weeks for the results. That was good because I had a 4d ultrasound scheduled for that time period. With this ultrasound the parents can get online and watch the ultrasound live and hear what is going on. That is exciting! When I got a message I had results on my patient portal I checked it not even thinking about what it might be. It was the results a week early! So now I know the sex and asked the dad's if they wanted to know or be surprised next week with the ultrasound. Of course, they wanted to know so I will be delivering a girl come August. I have to vent about the midwife at my doctors office, first she told me that because of my age and number of c-sections I have had I should probably not do this again. That I already knew so it was not a surprise. Then when she looked at my blood sugars she said you have the days but next time could you put dates. Her reasoning was that I could reuse the ones I had just given her. I was baffled because I don't take my sugars for her I do so to make sure the baby and I both remain as healthy as possible. Why would I make them up that wouldn't serve me to well. She was just kind of condescending and acted like I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted to remind her that this is my 6th pregnancy I think I can handle it. But I kept my cool and just let her give her speel and move on.

Mixed Emotions!

I had an ultrasound appointment this week and the results broke my heart and warmed it at the same time. This is hard for me to write about because it was a hard experience to go through. When we were doing the procedure the doctor determined that one of the twins failed to progress. My body and the other placenta had absorbed most of the baby. That was crushing but in that he also found a baby that is thriving. There is one baby in there growing well and had a strong heartbeat of 168bpm. It is hard for me because for most everyone, except the parents, it is something that happened to them not me. And yes it wasn't my baby but I was excited about it. This was very unexpected and a big shock. Now we are focusing on the remaining baby. I was finally released from the fertility clinic and will be moving on with my OB. My medication will be tapered and I will be done in lest than two weeks.  I am excited that we have a healthy pregnancy and just have to believe it will continue that way! Wish me luck!

Long time

It has been a long time since I posted on here but most of you who follow me on Facebook you have gotten updates. Those of you who have not seen my pregnancy blood test went from 145 to 1425 to 3440ish. Then last week I had an ultrasound and was able to video chat with the parents during the procedure. We saw two sacs and two heartbeats! One was 114 and the other was 124. They implanted one from each father and one of each sex so it looks like I will be having a boy and girl again. The nausea is of course horrible again. The clinic has started me on Diclegis. This is my first time using this but with my boys and the twins I took Zofran, which has since been deemed unsafe to take during pregnancy. It is a medication you take twice a day to prevent the nausea and vomiting. It works good but I have had some breakthrough symptoms. You can up the dose if needed but I am waiting to do that if it gets unbearable. I am beginning to taper off my medications so hopefully the injections won't be happening for much longer. I am not sure how much of that I have shared so I will say I now take 2 pills in the morning (levothyroxine, and Diclegis). Then one injection everyday and one Mondays and Fridays. Then I take Prenatal vitamins, baby asprin, vitamin D, and Diclegis at night. Also I do two vaginal suppositories a day. So needless to say I can't wait to finish with them. I know how important they are to the process to I don't mind taking them but as soon as it is safe I will be happy to stop them. I have another ultrasound in two weeks to make sure they are growing correctly. Wish me luck!

Bedrest sucks!

Well the transfer is done! It went great! The worst thing was the strict bedrest for 2 days. Laying in bed all day is not as fun as it sounds. It gets really boring but I got through it. We were in Portland for four days but barely left the hotel room. First of all it was cold after the sun went down. Also we are in a new town with no transportation. John did go out on his own while I was in bed and he found a few blocks filled with food trucks. I had a brat that was delicious and he had tacos. It was delicious! The room service was good though. It was good all in all and everything went well. Now we wait to see if it all worked out.

Transfer Time

Well I go for the transfer in 5 days! Everything is in place, the kids, flights and hotel. We are traveling tomorrow to take the boys to Ohio. They will be staying a week with our families. Then we leave bright and early Monday morning for Atlanta. This flight will layover in Denver! I read an article written by someone involved in the clinic I am working with now and it really explained the reason for surrogacy with people from Israel especially gay couples. There you have to go through a lot of stuff and meet many qualifications to even be considered for surrogacy. Thus the reason why many of them come to the United States. There are many intricacies that I did not know about and this article opened my eyes to the differences. Please keep me in your thoughts Tuesday!

Waiting

This is the hardest part of the process. We have a potential transfer date and have started the medications. We had some major discussions with the plans. The clinic prefers that you wait until the lining check (mine is in two weeks) to make plans because once they get those results the transfer date may change. However if you wait too long then the flights can be outrageous. So the agency, parents, and I talked and decided that we should just book the flights and hope for the best. The agency has been able to change flights with medical reasons. She also mentioned that Southwest has no change fees so if we could find flights with them that would be ideal. The thing about Southwest is they do not have assigned seats just boarding groups. This means John and I might not be able to sit next to each other. After checking out their website I found out for $15 per person per trip you can get early bird check in which means you get to check in 12 hours before everyone else. This means you will get a higher seating group. So we made the compromise with that. Then we found out they don't fly out of Chattanooga which is so much closer and we would have to go to Atlanta, an almost 2 hour drive, to fly out. That sucks but again we will compromise because it costs so much less and if we so need to change it then we don't have to pay the fees just the difference in tickets. Now everything is in place and I just have to take the medications diligently and wait. It seems so close yet so far. We have everything planned now we wait!