Let’s make a baby!

So I’ve started my cycle! It began Tuesday of this week. Yippy. I’m not exactly sure if that is normally cause for such celebration, but I want to get this baby making show on the road. I’m excited. Yesterday I called the doctor’s office to let them know that I’m ready and raring to go. *such disappointment* The recipient isn’t quite ready she’s just finished her first mock cycle (http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer?pagename=lrn_wamo_deg). This is a general overview of the process. I will likely update this with some better sources. I’m not sure how reliable this sours is, it covers the basics.

I’ve got to take care of myself and contact the doctor’s office when my next cycle begins. I should be starting my injections on Christmas.

I started my first IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) cycle last Christmas. The first one was hard, the process normally takes a couple of months, the first cycle lasted months. I began on 12/25/08 and completed it in March. It’s a hard process to sync up two women’s cycles, I would be ready, and the recipient wasn’t and vise versa. It was eventually a successful cycle, the baby should be/ should have been due any time now. A November baby – a gift just in time to make his or her parents very happy this Christmas!

I wrote about the previous IVF cycles and posted them on my Facebook and MySpace pages for friends and family to read but I took them down because the experience seemed to personal, and I had recently ended a relationship (he did not approve of this process) and I was beginning a new one (I wasn’t sure how his family and friends would feel about my choice) I still feel that this is a very personal process, but I want people to know more about this. It’s important to me, and I feel that it’s important to women that are having issues conceiving or those deciding whether or not to donate eggs. It’s not all glitz and glamour for sure, it’s not even a way to make some quick cash. You have to believe in what you are doing, be informed about the health risks and other issues down the road. It’s hard, physically and mentally. I have a supportive family, a wonderful partner and friends who have stood next to me each step of the way.

For the previous two cycles I’ve signed papers allowing my biological offspring to seek me out when they turn 21 if they choose to. I have to make sure that whomever I intend to marry is comfortable with this (so far he is).

This process is confusing for my grandparents, they ask if I get pictures of the child, like a feed the child style program, photo’s letters updates and so on. No, that isn’t how this works. The recipient can authorize me to know that a child was born, not the sex, no information about how many children are born, only that the process has been truly successful.

Since my community is smallish, and my own circle of friends (network) is expanding on a explosive rate I will also try to maintain some anonymity just in case my current recipient is out there searching the Internet for information herself. This likely isn’t the way she wants to meet her egg donor, she might not want to meet me at all. (can’t wait to describe the selection process, it’s like a dating site)

If anyone has questions, let me know. I’ll do my best to answer them.

More to come…. I’ll post some of my old entries and some pictures from the previous cycles soon. This weekend most likely.