Sunday, 19 June 2011

first post - first seed of the journey

So here we are. This is our first post and maybe the first step we take toward the journey of surrogacy in India.
We are an international couple so i guess having our baby in an international way can be an interesting addition to our story. well why not look on the positive side.
I am and Israeli and my dear husband is French. We met in New York when i was there for holiday. We fell in Love immediately and it wasn't long before we got married in London and decided to start our life there.
We waited several months before we decided to try for our first child as we thought of course once we go to bed we will come out with a baby... but reality was different in our case.
After 6 months of trying we started with investigations and we were considered as unexplained . And so our journey in the fertility treatment started sometime in 2005. I Still remember the first IUI treatment. We were sure that this is it. We were so naive that during the 2ww we already started to think about names for the children.  Unfortunately reality hit  us on the face and after few IUI we took step up to IVF. Well, this must be it we thought but here came even a bigger slap. During the first IVF attempt i didn’t have much follicle developed during the stimulation and the cycle was cancelled and we made IUI. The Dr made AMH test and suggested that we may need to consider egg donation as i may have early low ovarian reserve. It was a big blow and we were not ready for it yet. We tried another natural cycle as i read it might be better for “poor responders’ but it didn’t work as well. I decided to go to Israel as i still had my medical rights there and Israel consider to be very advanced and experienced with IVF. In Israel things looked different. The Doctor was more positive and reassuring so we tried. To my surprise first attempt 6 eggs were collected .....wow this was something. From 0 in UK to 6 in Israel – well it is the land of milk and honey after all. Our expectation were high when we learned we also have nice embryo fertilised. During this 2ww we were positive and hopeful but the pregnancy test was negative. 2nd attempt in Israel was less brilliant but still 4 eggs collected , 2 nice embryos transfer but nothing. Negative again.
We decided to go for egg donation at this point. We already warmed to the idea and I learned to accept the fact the my children will not share my genetics. We understood that it is more important to us to be parents and quickly. So we started with the research about egg donation cycle. My Dr from Israel recommended a clinic in Cyprus so we contacted them and there we were on the way to expand our little family in an even more international journey. The donor will be from Russia or Ukraine, the clinic in Cyprus, French sperm and Israeli womb and the child will be born in UK.
But while waiting to get my period and start to schedule my cycle I was late and i had some funny symptoms. My dear friend urged me to make a pregnancy test and me, after all those years of trying and failures could not even think that i might be pregnant. After a few days i decided to test and there it was BFP. Wow  a real miracle that happens to us. Beta blood test was good and the Dr recommended a second one to see the progress – it was good as well. You can’t blame us for being positive this time. Yes we started again to dream about names and what changes we need to make in the flat. Than we went for first ultrasound and we saw the little pea with the heartbeat  flashing on the screen and the Dr said that more when you can see vital heartbeat so its more than 80% live birth and healthy child..... yeah......2 week later we went to another follow up but the heartbeat were no longer there. We were devastated. All this time , all those failures and hopes that were shattered we got so far and it was taken away from us.  But like the song say “I get knocked down. But I get up again. “  So we made D&C and we were up again and looking forward to our first egg donation attempt.
So first attempt i Cyprus was an overall good experience  and already about 5 days after the transfer of 2 beautiful blastocyst i started to feel something and the BFP was  note late to come.
Well yet again you can’t blame us for being positive. After all it a 25 years old eggs this time . so this is it. And again reality have different plans. First Ultrasound was good with heartbeat and second ultrasound heartbeat gone. Another miscarriage. But we are up again. We have nice frozen embryos waiting for us in Cyprus. And guess what – BFP again. That’s it . its got to be this time.
But no. There are still few things we didn’t experienced and reality want to teach us some new staff. So after sever bleeding a week after BFP the ultrasound shows the Sac on the way out. Its probably on the way to miscarry say the Dr. Please come for follow up. Next ultrasound the Sac is still there and growing ....mmmm... this is strange . another follow up and its still there and growing and developing. I started to read about the sac location and realise it might be cervical. Go back to the hospital and show them the article  I printed from the Internet. That’s it. Red lights on – might be ectopic pregnancy. Being sent to another hospital to an ectopic expert and he confirm it too risky and terminate the pregnancy. So now its really bad luck and its got to stop.
Recurrent miscarriage clinic find some minor issues and prescribe me claxane for the next pregnancy/treatment. So that’s good news. It might work next time.
Only that the next time doesn’t happen.
1. more fresh attempt in Cyprus – BFN
2. frozen cycle in Cyprus – BFN
3. Fresh cycle in Cyprus – BFN  -
its was really bad cycle and the clinic messed up and had to give my most of the money back so i decide to try elsewhere. So i try via an hospital in Israel that take the sperm to Kiev and bring fresh embryos is special incubator and the transfer is done in Israel/
4. fresh cycle in Israel – BFN
5. fresh cycle in Israel – BFN
6. Frozen cycle in Israel – BFN
Well we thing the quality of the “flying embryos” might be a problem and we decide to try in a clinic in Czech republic and i added this time also IVIG treatment just in case the is also an immune issue there.
7. fresh cycle in CZ  - BFN  - why why why – its was really good quality nice blastocyst?????
Ask for MRI to confirm a suspicion that i have also minor adenomyosis – this can cause implementation failure and miscarriages
8. frozen cycle in CZ – BFN

OK so 6 years of trying, 3 IUI, 2 IVF, 10 egg donation IFV – enough is enough – we really tried everything and every failure is taking us step back.
So here we are after all this we decided that we need help of a nice lady that will be our surrogate and help us to bring the little baby we are waiting for.
We are considering all options but at this point the option of India looks like the most suitable for us. Not only financially but for other reasons as well.
So we did not yet chose a clinic but we are nearly there. It looks like it will be SI. And now we are making all our tests (again!) and start the enrolment stage.
I hope we will be able to update you on our journey and i hope our post will someday be usefull to others just like all the other blogs we read are so good for us.

1 comment:

  1. Welcome to the surrogacy family!
    Blogging can be very therapeutic. Will be following along in your journey. Your story of BFP was similar to mine, except we had no heartbeat at 7.5 weeks. :(

    Sending baby dust your way.

    ReplyDelete