Chocolates and smiles

As I'm back tracking with these post I'm keen to catch up to the present date.

So I'm going to fast track through the next few days....

Scan showed 8 folics today, we were praying for 6 good ones. That's our goal. That's step 1.
Injections continued as usual, and date & time for egg collection was set for 2 days.

Old Delhi  & the zoo was on the list of attractions today...
The Zoo was massive and they are defiantly trying to fix it, it's got most animals you
Would imagine a zoo to have. Just smaller enclosures.
I saw these 2 children walking toward people asking for money... I was taking photos of them,
They spotted me and ran straight up to us....  I gave them what ever change I had, but then gave them whatever eatable was in my bag, water, breath mints, Vicks lollies.... Lol
That's when I realised money isn't what's brings a smile to there faces but these treats. They were totally excited!!

Old Delhi. One word. Intensely Crazy!! Ok 2 words...
We jumped on a bike taxi, and he was to ride us through the spice market. However,
The noise and chaos was too much for me. 15 mins in and I asked him to take us back to the car.
It's the one placed I wanted to see but never got there.

One thing that broke my heart everyday was to see the amount of homeless people and kids on the street. On every corner someone was sleeping under a sheet of plastic or just on the cement.
I wish I could have helped more, however we decided that later, after the transfer we should visit an orphanage. But until then money wasn't what gave these kids a smile, it was simply, Sweets.
We bought a lot  of chocolates, fruit & water bottles, and at the traffic lights we gave them 
Away. The smile on these kids face was priceless.

"Now india is also your home" ~ Tara Gandhi

Every morning started out the same, wake up go for breakfast & then driver would pick us up  and take us to hospital for daily injections.  ( ps, I'm off eggs for a while, overdosed at breakfast )! lol
Then we had the whole day to do whatever....... We decided to go to a tourist info centre, so we can get ideas as to where to pass the time. We didn't mention that we were in Delhi for 25 days, but instead said we were here for 10.. everyone said why for so long!!?  all the tourist attractions can be done in 2-3 days. Ugh! Funny cause they were so right!!!

One morning the injections had started to take effect, moody, headache and just feeling crappy! I was grateful  I was doing this away from home this time, there was no need for me to put on the "I'm ok" and smile for work and everyone around me. I could be crap & moody and grumpy and the only person who dealt with it all was my husband..... But after so many cycles he was used to the mental me. Bless him.

One this particular morning I just wanted to go back to hotel and be moosh, not talk to anyone or hear the sound of a busy Delhi, anything! However the day before we spent in hotel and did just that, so felt sorry for hubby, we decided to go to a few museums. Quiet time. Sort of.

Lets not forget we are in India....There's ALWAYS people around, and its never Quite. lol

We started at the Indira Gandhi, museum. Daughter of "Gandhi". In all honesty that's all I
knew of her. But Wow!! what an amazing woman, to achieve all she did and her passion
for her country, amazing!
The museum was once her home, that has now been transformed into rooms of photos and a memorial to her and to her son Rajiv, who was also assassinated. ( not on the same day )
The Garden path she walked down, the day she was assassinated
has been transformed to resemble a glass river, I must say its been done ever so beautifully its
a shame what it represents.

We then made our way to the Gandhi Smriti Martyrdom site.
Ok.......now Gandhi I know!!!!
Walking into the room where he spent his last days,
reading his word that surrounded the walls, looking at the photos of all he achieved, the sense of
harmony and peace entered you whole body, and gave me a feeling that I have not felt in a very long while, a spiritual feeling that I really cant put into words.
A Beautiful garden where thousands would gather just to pray meditate and be in his presents, also marked a beautiful memorial site as to where he was shot and killed.
I was able to enter the prayer room on the gardens, you have to take your shoes off, (as you do I'm most religious places in India )
the paintings are spectacular, almost like a Mosaic with so much colour and variance.
I was so pleased as to how well kept everything was.

Our diver come up to us with a massive smile and said some thing about Gandhi's daughter,
well, at least I think that's what he said, he was so excited I didn't understand what he was saying,
he repeated it twice, but....I got nothing.
As we were walking to our car I noticed a cool 1960 old white car, with curtains on the back window, that wrote Government car.... I said even politician come to feel peace and be enlighten here. That's when the driver said. Gandhi's GRANdaughters car.!
That's what he was trying to tell us, that Gandhi's granddaughter was inside the office.
Weeeellllllll, I wanted to meet her. So, I spoke with the security and we mentioned Australia and Greece, he went inside, and would you know it, she agreed to meet us!!!
She was in a meeting and stopped it, I don't think he was impressed...lol

Her name is Tara Gandhi, she's 74 or 78, petite and stunning!! Her eyes were burning through me.
We spoke for a while, she loved that we were both from Greece and Australia and that we love both our countries, she talked about Gandhi, and how he was as a grandfather, she showed us the spinning wheel he made, and we of course took photos.
I told her about the surrogacy and thats why we were in India, and her reply was,
 "Now India is also your home"

Bless this woman, cause a switch just clicked within me.

Valuable lessons. Food & Shopping

The next few days of injections were standard. Am very glad i choose to have them done at the hospital. It got us out of the hotel.
I thought we would meet other couples there,  but the times that were set for  my injections
no one was really around.

I have a Question for those who have been to India,
Have you been randomly approached by people, ( men ) and they just start giving you directions on where to go to eat or shop or just start asking you where your from???
cause we got this all the time.....

Our hotel was a 5min walk from Connaught Place, an out door shopping area,
about 2mins into our walk this guy approached us, just randomly started talking to us &
giving us directions on where the Nike store is, Randomly!!!
I didn't  want to seem rude, so i just  answered  "it ok, we just want to go for a walk, thank you",
 Now most people would leave, but he just kept walking with us. Then he said, you guys are staying at The Park Hotel right.....?  ......... mmmm, this didn't sit right with us, we didn't answer him, He continued to say,  i work there and just finished a night shift. He spoke about the hotel like he knew it very well. He then proceeded to tell us about a tourist information place that wasn't far from where we were walking and offered to walk us there..... We just kept politely saying, "we're  just happy walking around, on our own, thanks"
Still he stuck by us, V was getting annoyed so he started to ask him questions about the Hotel,
he seemed stuck for answers. By this stage our walk had taken us away from the shops.....and then i noticed his hands, covered in tattoo's........... There is NO WAY our Hotel would employee someone with tattoo's. No Way!!.  So i got out my phone pretended to take a call and then said to V in Greek what i thought was going on. I  then said.., " we have to get back to the hotel now, our friends are waiting for us" and just like that we spun around and walked off...
He still tried to follow, and i just turned to him and said, "wow, your walking with us again... you should  come back to the hotel with us, so our security guard can see who you are, cause I'm not good with names.... and i wont remember yours tomorrow......what your name again?"
He smiled and said, i have the rest of the day off. I'll just go now....
Lucky. Yep!!
Don't know what could have happened but, it was a lesson,
Be street smart....and your voice is your greatest wepon.

Connaught Place. This out door shopping area has a great deal of shops if you like street shopping, however, the streets are full of dirt, with piles of cement blocks and bricks everywhere, it seems its under construction, but its more like an earthquake had just happened.
But a good selection of shopping that aimed toward mainly men.

This shopping district also has a second level, we found a great Restaurant/Bar there call QBA (pronounced as Q ba) real good food great atmosphere both day and night.
We spent a lot of time here.
However for some western relief..... we would go to Select City Mall, or The Promenade
or Emporio, these are all massive shopping centres that were just a little break from the chaos on the streets. With some amazing restaurants too.
We ate alot at LaLit Hotel, first cause it was close to our Hotel, second we never got sick there, and the food selection is amazing and third...... IT'S A STUNNING HOTEL!!

Looking into a strangers eyes

The taxi was 40mins late. I hate being late. Our appointment was at 1pm with Dr Shivani.
Poor Raul coped a mouth full as we didn't get to Hospital till way passed our time.
Thank goodness we still made our appointment. Needless to say after this day all drivers were
15-20mins earlier to pick us up.

Dr Shivani is a gun! getting straight into it after my scan prescribed dose for injections.
like she said "we don't have to worry about your body & prepping for pregnancy" goal was get lots of eggs, the more we get the more we can play with.

I normally would give myself the injections, however this wasn't a prepared syringe.
It involved mixing powder with liquid and although I've done that before too, it was done at home. I didn't feel comfortable doing all that preparation in a hotel bathroom. Plus the most important factor was that all medication has to refrigerated. To many things can go wrong in a hotel.
The cleaning staff may switch of refrigerator, or the may take card out of electrical socket, or even blackouts. So when i was asked if id like to come to hospital every day for my injects i said yes.
We didn't come all this way to have treatment go wrong because of no electricity.

The following day after my injections we arranged to meet Dr Shivani at the clinic.
We were shown around and introduced to staff, some, most of whom id been in contact with via emails many months ago. putting faces to names now was nice.

The clinic was amazing. We were shown every department. Seeing all those women waiting for there interviews to be assest to for the possibility of a surrogacy journey was incredible.
Walking passed them, i actually wanted to hug them. I didn't, but looking into the eyes of some,and maybe it was me being emotional.....but there was a sense of hope.
They may be giving us our biggest dream, but we in turn are giving most of them some dreams too.
The money they will receive from being a surrogate would benefit their whole family.
This income is more than they would see in 5 plus years.
See it as you will, these Indian women are doing what they can to assist their families.
In my eyes they are extraordinary.
Bless them.

Touch down! INDIA.

The next few posts will cover our 25 days in India.
SCI clinic
Hotels.
Where to eat. ( this was always interesting )
Where to just pass the day.
And of course our baby foot step together with SCI.

January 26. We finally arrived in India. Late night arrival and sooooo many people. It reminded me
Of the day after Xmas sales. We finally made our way outside, now to find our driver Raul...

We didn't book at the Svelte or Hilton. I got a really good price at The Park Hotel New Delhi.
It was close to Connaught Place. A massive shopping area. Lots of restaurants too.
I must say, that most the staff were wonderful and helpful, however I had to purchase a bottle of dettol  to clean our bathroom. I just don't think our cleaner understood my version of clean.
The hotel over all was nice but far ( approx 25-35 mins) from SCI clinic and hospital.

We had 3 days to just chill and recover from flight before we met with Dr Shivani.
On our drive to Hotel Raul (taxi driver/owner,)  explained the price and hire
times for his taxi services.
(which later changed, cause of the distance to our hotel )

Everything felt surreal, we walked outside our hotel And door guy would always greet us with "Namaste" which I love! We took the whole prayer hand position and bowed. Loved it!!
Walking onto the street we would be swamped with cab drivers and took took
Drivers (a local little cab) all wanting you to jump in.

The first sounds you hear stepping out onto the street is beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!
The sound of the car horn is heard ALL. THE. TIME.... 22million people live in Delhi and they
All beeeeeeeep at the same time. Its full on.
I think one of the coolest things, we saw were the monkeys just jumping around tree to tree, fence to fence. In the middle of the city. We thought they were cool, but the locals think of them as pests.
And yes, you had to be careful they didn't jump on you or scratch you.

Street food was everywhere, and if your like me and love the whole experience of food,
I wanted to try everything. But. I couldn't. I didn't  want to get sick or catch any type of bug.
We are in India for a reason. It's as simple as that. The experience of "tourist" was in moderation.
So I wouldn't even let my husband try street food until all the treatment was over. Lol

For the first 3-4 days we ate at the hotel. Food was good. Didn't get sick at all there.

The day come to go to SCI. I wasn't nervous. I thought I would be, but in all my
Ivf cycles the injections were the easiest part. It was the drugs and injection that had to prepare my body for a pregnancy that were harsh and hormone controlling.
Like I have  said. "it's hard enough to handle our god given natural hormones let alone the artificial ones" 

This is the website for the hotel. 
http://theparkhotels.com/m/locations/newdelhi/index.html

Rooms are small. 

A little shout out, a big thank you. & next trips

At this stage I really must say that Meg & Margaret Have been amazing. Answering All my questions even the dumb ones. Emails were out of control, but these women did everything they could to answer as quickly as possible.

Not to mention the wonderful team at SCI. Sympathetic and very supportive, this clinic was wonderful compared to what we have come across here at home.

V still O/S, but would be home in 2 weeks. I arranged to speak with Dr Shivani and talk about next steps & a reason as to why it didn't work.
Simply put, frozen only has a 40% chance.
However she is an amazing doctor, when I told her about the amount of miscarriages I've had and fertility clinic basing it on NKT, she simply said, that's controversial, sounds more like you have a problem in your  uterus. (I hadn't gotten to the part of endometriosis yet) this Doctor worked out in 5mins what my clinic hadn't in 6yrs. YEP! Pissed!!!
 But couldn't focus on that. (ok was extremely angry for a few days) But.....
........ Baby comes first. No one or nothing else mattered.

We arranged to travel to India and do a fresh cycle in late January 2013.
Hopes were high again for this one.

But a much needed break was due & time with my husband was waaaay overdue.

Booked a trip to Bali and spent Christmas & New Years there.
Peace & Bliss plus a lot of Princess treatment was the key to recovery.

Was an amazing trip, fist 3 days we didn't leave the pool. Woke up went straight to the pool ate lunch and dinner there, then we were tired from doing nothing so even slept by the pool. For a bit anyway ;)

It was the first time we just chilled out. No talk about baby. Just chilled and laughter a lot.
We were giggling all the time, at dumb things but mainly that my husband just cracks me up. His English is ok, it's not his first language, but when in another country and the locals English isn't great either and you leave your hubby to tell the cabbie to take us somewhere cool for a massage, you may end up somewhere that massages, but it's not the traditional way! LOL!!

Peace x

3 wonderful women & 1 special woman

Husband still overseas. Everything felt so surreal. Cant believe we are doing this. Surrogacy.
Another woman carrying our baby. Truth is. I was mad. Mad that I couldn't do this. But more so  that we didn't think about surrogacy earlier. Time wasted on ivf.

Opening my email and seeing Surrogate profiles. Man. Sh!t just got real.
Reading through all 4 profiles, looking at the photos that were attached. How to choose?.
There was a transfer date set,  And that was in 4 days... Couldn't wait till the morning to share with V.
I showed my family and a friend. We all leaned toward the woman who's smile was inviting. Lame, but its what felt right., Except for the amount of children she had compared to the others and their diet& age  the profiles were kind of the same. All i wanted was V to help me pick.

Finally I got hold of V. Clearly the face of these women had no real base on our decision.
All women are at the same stage, are healthy and are in the "right form" medically to have the embryos transferred.
We based our decision on that the surrogate a year ago gave birth through the surrogacy program to twins. This appealed to us,  as we were transferring four embryos there was a chance she could fall pregnant with twins, triplets , but the chances of all four taking was very low.
Done. Decision made!!

Transfer date came. All four embryos survived the thawing. All four were transferred.
HOPES WERE HIGH! Embryos survived boat trip & survived thawing. The signs were good!!

All I heard from those who knew is "it's your time" " be positive".... oh and baby I was on cloud 7.5, not cloud 9, cause I still had to remain grounded, still had to remain real. Things can go wrong, but come on! It looked positive.

So the 2 week wait began. Thank you to some beautiful people, the time passed.
 No emails to say, anything bad in that time.

Then the day arrived. The surrogate had her blood test. Now we wait. More waiting.
I didn't get an email till 7pm.
.........Unfortunately the hcg levels showed a negative pregnancy...... Some beautiful words were written as to how sorry the clinic was.
The blood rushed from my head. Not. Good.

Everything just got hard again.

167 emails & a boat

Wondering how i was going to find a shipping company to send our embryos, I rang and spoke with our fertility clinic, and asked to speak with the embryologist. I told them what i was doing, and mentioned surrogacy & India. She seemed really uncomfortable with what i just told her, so i quickly responded by saying you have no idea if my sister lives India and I'm using her as my surrogate, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge. In saying that, we both new that that wasn't the case. Yes i was snappy. But i'd had enough of this clinic pulling me in the direction they wanted.

We both choose not to mention the word Surrogacy again. It just seemed better that they thought they were packing my embryos to be transferred to a destination of my choice.

They gave me a name of a company, but the price for shipping was huge!! I spoke with SAM, and she gave me the details to the company they used. Bless her, cause she saved me, in more that one way. :)

The process was a challenge. Because my clinic had frozen our eggs in a liquid nitrogen it was stored at -194dgrees. It's was a new method of "snap freezing". The shipping company could only store at -187 degrees.
Problem, well, yes and no. Yes, cause you really don't want a change in temperature, and No cause its frozen at such a high temp that little bit may not make a difference. The decision was left to me.
 I emailed the embryologist with my concern. Then to top it all off there was the defrosting solution. Trust me the embryologist was using words I'd never heard of and I was at that moment wishing I'd paid more attention in chemistry at high school. The solution used by my fertility clinic here is custom made, and they are not allowed to send it or give it to any other clinic.
 STRESSED OUT is the word to describe myself now.  With some reasoning they gave us a product that could be purchased online that is similar to their custom made.
The decision time For both circumstances, risk yes, but its all a risk anyway.
Not kidding The emails between myself and the clinic and the clinic with the shipping company and the shipping company and myself and not to mention the advice of the clinic in India. we reached the 167 emails.

After weeks of back and forth, we put all our eggs literally into one big Canadian ship.

Within 6 days the ship had arrived in India, and the following day all embryos were

Safe and stored in their new home SCI, just chilln and waiting for transfer date.

Next step. Choose a surrogate. 

My Surrogacy #Tweet

Early September 2012 after watching a 60min program about a couple that has been waiting for 5yrs
for the "OK" to collect their adopted child, i was discussed with the amount of BullSh*T red tape.

I took to twitter to hashtag #60mins and just let off a little steam. At that very same moment i received a tweet from a customer of mine who follows me on twitter, saying adoption unfortunately is not the best way to get a child.... Immediately we went off the public page and were Direct messaging.
She told me she has just returned from India, where she used a Surrogate.
SURROGATE!! this was brilliant! we spent hours on the phone the next day, she cave me all her contact details to the clinic she used, and even some others she looked into.

I called my husband who was still overseas dealing with a family issue, told him everything about surrogacy and without thinking twice we were both excited and on board with the whole idea.

Try googling Indian Surrogacy Centre. It.Will. Blow.Your.Mind.com! soooo many to choose from so just like anything good, i went with those recommended to me.

I researched 3 surrogacy clinic's in India including SCI the clinic my customer,( now a very good friend, who i will refer to as SAM,) used. And 3 clinic's in America. however the American research was short lived.The price tag attached to a Surrogacy was way, way, way, waaaaaaaaay, out of our reach.
And Thailand wasn't even on the cards, mainly because, the surrogate who gave birth to your child was listed as the birth mother and the process for you to obtain a visa for your child would mean you had to "Adopt" your own child.

Within 2 day i received emails from the clinics in India. All gave a very detailed information right of the bat. But because i had someone with inside information from Sam, i was able to ask and look for things most may not.

Questions.
The list. After reading the information sent
1 - After the baby is born, who's name is on the birth certificate.
2 - Once the surrogate has given birth, who takes care of the paper work. Are we meant to run all over India?.
3 - The success rate of the clinic
4 - Price and all the additions (cause we know there's always extras)
5 - the surrogates, who picks them. How well are they looked after.
6 - the hospital visits for surrogate.
7 - media coverage of the clinic and the doctor.

SCI, came back with the most professional answers, and my gut told me this was the clinic for us.

Questions about the doctor that was very important were answered in the information sent.
Dr Shivani. She together with her Husband own SCI. She is the only fertility Doctor, and
You have no idea how this right from the start sounded perfect to me.

So......the Surrogacy journey had began.

The next step was what type of cycle to choose. Because my husband was still overseas
and i was on a roll now, blood was pumping and excitement and hope was in my heart again.
We had frozen embryos from my last ivf cycle, we decided to send some of them to India.
Now....how is that done???
Shipping of course.

Adoption. Plan L,M,N (almost half way through the alphabet)

A few weeks after my miscarriage finding out my baby was healthy almost sent me into an abyss. [ i asked to have it sent away for assessment. To find the cause of the miscarriage]

The doctor was speaking to me, She kept talking about a chip and a new test, or something like that, but all that kept going through my mind was, the last course of drugs I took to prevent this form happening was the harshest I'd ever taken.

Can I do this again???

Not sure about the next few days... I just couldn't seem to get my head around it, and still coming off the prescribed drugs sent my world into chaos.

I remember my councillor saying to me. She was amazed that I'm still standing.

Only Thanks to my Amazing husband and the wonderful support group of friends & family.

After my miscarriage it seemed as though everywhere I looked someone was pregnant or just had a baby. Baby's where infornt  of me and I didn't have mine.
I needed to find a path that lead me to my dream. So after an emotional battle my focus now became baby & not pregnancy. Everyone & everything took a back seat. Nothing was more important than this.

It's amazing the amount of times the word "unfair" pops up. Especially when you hear people say "we didn't want a 3rd or 4th baby" or "the timing isn't right for us, for this baby". I only have these words for people who say things like that, USE PROTECTION! FFS!! Take the pill & use a condom. Cause when you given a gift, don't take it for granted.

I knew my body needed recovery time, so one night I spoke with my husband, V and we both agreed.
Adoption. We don't care what Colour skin the baby had or from where the baby came from. We both knew we just wanted a baby. We have so much love to give that this was the best option rather than another cycle of ivf.

Knowing the little I knew about the process, that it can take up to 5 yrs. I really thought that, would be in the top 10 of difficulties. Boy, was I wrong. That 5 yrs wait was the least of the issues.
 We went to the first available seminar which happened to be in the same week we inquired.
4hrs of information, that was not comforting at all.

Basically the amount of counties Australia has dealings  with  have declined over the last few years, and we are left with in my opinion, very few. This was later explained, and is partly due to child trafficking. Then each of those countries have a certain criteria we need to meet.
For example China.One point said, if you have "A" Traffic Offence you are no longer suitable to apply for adoption in their country. [ criteria for Australian citizen] I thought they meant in the year you choose to apply, but no. They mean Ever!! I had 5 traffic offences already, and it was only May!
Other countries had an age cut off & others asked for home visits and assessments for a few years.
But the worst part of it all was the no guarantee's. You can be on the list for years and not be selected.  If you are on the adoption path then you are not allowed to seek elsewhere. This and lots of other things didn't sit well with us.

We still didn't want to waste time, so while still thinking about adoption, I looked into adopting from Greece. This seemed like a good idea but the red tape there was almost as bad
As bad as Australia. With the additional obstacle, the Australian government not allowing you to enter with your child until you have both lived Overseas for 12 months.
Everything was just hard. So many children who need a home, who need someone to love them, who need a family and all that we kept coming across was more paper work & more obstacles more red tape.


At the seminar we attended, i ask how many adoption happen with Australia a year. Now i cant remember if she said in reference to South Australia or Australia, but her answer was, one! ONE!!!

This post is a few years old, but in my opinion, with the slight information given to us at the time not much has changed.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/36942.html

.

Pregnancy Fail.

If you have never experienced a miscarriage, you will never know or understand how it feels.
You will never understand that crippling loss.
 To hear your baby's heart beat one week, then silence the next.

There are a few reasons that i can think of, that a miscarriage will occur. (actually they are the ones that i have experience)
I'm sure there are other reasons, however  please keep in mind I'm writing this and only drawing on my own experiences.
I'm not a Doctor, so i cant mention any of the medication that was given to me to try and  help sustain & keep my pregnancy.

The fetus ( in my opinion it can be call a fetus until you see a heat beat at about 6-7 weeks, then i don't care what doctors say, I'm calling it a baby from then onward) may have a chromosomal abnormality. Ok, now, this is when some family & friends may say " think of this loss as a blessing, your baby may have been born with a problem"
I must say, that each time i miscarried before the 6 week mark i did focus on those words.
However, once you hear your baby's heart beat, those words stand no value.
Yes, the reasons that i have written above may still occur up until the 12 and even the 20 week mark.

Then there are NKC (Natural Killer Cells) we all have them, they fight & kill off anything foreign in your body.
When you have a very high level of NKC, your body sees a pregnancy, a baby, as something foreign.
Then your body goes into attack & kill mode. Whether you pregnancy is a healthy one or not, it's irrelevant to NKC.

Endometriosis, this can make things very difficult for women to fall pregnant. It grows like a spider web. Most times it can be lasered off, but if it grows on the muscle of the uterus it cant. It prevents the uterus from expanding. Basically to get rid of it, a hysterectomy is needed.

With all this happening and doctor telling us that we have less than double figures for success the odds were  kind of against us. We decided my body had taken enough. We can keep trying, with lots of new and different drugs but mentally, physically & emotionally i can not go through all the heartache and the "motions" again.
It took 8 months to detox and even feel like myself after my last miscarriage.
So, after a very long emotionally battle i had to come to terms that i can not carry a baby.


I'm going to include some sites on this post, to help better understand a miscarriage, so that if you need help or know of someone that may need guidance this may put them if anything, on the right path.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art179546.asp

http://www.bubhub.com.au/directory/find/miscarriage-grief-loss-helplines/

http://www.bearsofhope.org.au/a/242.html

Plan a,b,c,...g (lucky there are 25 letters in the alphabet)

Let me start off by saying that when you, [ whether married or not ] 

decide you want to add a baby to your life, you really never

 imagine that You or Your partner will have a problem. 

And that a little bundle of joy, would become the biggest 

obstacle of your life, so far.

Our story starts off with our first pregnancy being twins.

 Then miscarrying at 11 weeks.

A year later with no success. Our journey of fertility specialist began.

With 6 ivf cycles and miscarriages. All between 5-11 weeks. 

I can fall pregnant but can't hold onto  a pregnancy. Our fertility clinic, found i have  NKC,  [ Natural killer cells ]  which I thought for six years was the cause of my miscarrying. 
In September 2012, i was so Frustrated with The clinic,  i changed Gynaecologist.  She suggested a surgical procedure of a  laparoscopy and a hysteroscopy,  where She found I have endometriosis and it's also in the muscle of my uterus.

 Endometriosis  on the muscle of uterus can't be lasered to be removed like else where, only suppressed. Eventually its looking like hysterectomy is in my path.
So more new drugs to suppress..........nope, i dont think so.

You see, The last ivf cycle in Feb/March 2012, They suppressed my Nkc & hormone levels so much I could not even identify with one part of me, that was me, & results of the blood test on last cycle showed my estrogen levels were not even showing on the charts. Which explains the anxiety, depression and panic attacks. i remember saying i feel my mind, body, heart, all being so disconnected. The medication as we now have found out sent me into a depression that's similar to how women get with menopause + migraine that were very intense. 

Hospitalised with bad hyper stimulation & toxic levels reaching 12 times higher in my liver than normal. Which put me on a list of not having an embryo transfer when i was due. 

But with a lot of yelling at the doctor [ I felt a little bad about this, but, remember, badly hormonal, what did he expect! ] he transferred one embryo. 

I miscarried at 8weeks.

Options given were....some type of insertion of a chip into my uterus. 

more steroids, more drugs, & basically,  it's become a game of Russian rullet.  Fall  pregnant, take drugs, and if i miscarry change the drugs, and better luck next for next time.  
   

LESSONS -- Fertility clinics have 20plus doctors, that's 20plus opinions. Gets confusing when one tells you to stop a pill & another tells you to up the dose. Ask to only speak with your doctor, and only change anything if they say so.
Also, request blood tests every week. And really when you feel like something isn't right. They won't want to & say it's not necessary, but if I had insisted I may have not ended up with high toxins in my liver & put in a state of depression. 

The beginning

 Hi,

I am about to share our journey of fertility. Challenges that have now lead us on the path to
Surrogacy.

India. A country that I never thought I would visit, but now holds the key to our dreams.

In brief my Husband and I have have been married for nearly 9 years, and our attempts  to have a baby has been in the works for 8 of those.

This journey has challenged us both individually and as a couple.We've gained a new found respect for each other, and our commitment to wanting a family is stronger than ever.

By writing this blog I want to be able to give my baby a the whole story of the, what, where and how they finally came into our arms. And i'm hoping that by talking openly about these things, friends and family can look if they want to. But if i can help anyone even if it be only one person that is going through something similar, it will be all worth it.

This is my Journey, and im ok.
 I've learnt to dance in the rain. :)

Will post soon about our Baby Steps.
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