Baby Mama

One year ago yesterday, we were saying goodbye to our little Giblet and I wrote this post. Guess what we were doing last night...exactly one year later.

Picking out our Baby Mama!!!!

Shut up you say? No joke. It's the real deal and we're almost ready to get this ball rolling!

On Tuesday, I received an email from the donor coordinator at our clinic. Attached was a link and assigned password to the website that houses their donor pool. Our directions were to review the available profiles and submit our top three picks. Each donor profile included a picture of them as a baby, their height, weight, hair/eye color, body type, family profile, genetic history, sexual history...and so much more. Basically, anything that I would want to ask someone about their life or family was on their profile. It was extremely detailed.

We were so confused because we thought that we would just get "a call" to let us know that we had been matched. I guess that we'll just have to learn how this all works along the way. I have emailed the coordinator to ask her what steps are next and an approximate timeline. She hasn't responded yet, so I will post that as soon as I hear. I know that she went over everything in detail during our appointment, but...come on. We had just been told that we had ovarian failure, craptastic eggs, and shitastic sperm. That day was a blur to say the least.

We have chosen to do what is called a split donor cycle. This means that the donor will split all of the eggs she produces and they will be divided equally between us and another couple. It is a heck of a lot cheaper, but has its setbacks. This is where it gets confusing. One couple is assigned primary recipient, while the other is the secondary. If the donor only produces, say, 5 eggs, then the secondary is dropped and all of the cycle goes to the primary. To make a long story short...the secondary could be on lupron/medicines for 3 months waiting for the donor to complete an IVF cycle, and then...zip, zero, zilch. All of that for nothing.

Soooo, of course we spent all Tuesday and Wednesday nights reviewing profiles and laying out the pros/cons of each girl. The only girls they gave us access to were the split cycle donors. There were only about 15 girls to choose from. To top it all off, most of the girls already had a primary couple assigned...meaning that we would have to sign on as secondary. None of the girls really stood out to the point of where we just said...she's the one. We've said all along that we'd like to have someone that somewhat resembles me, but it's not the end of the world if that doesn't happen. I'm 5'8" with black hair and dark brown eyes, and we were about to submit our top pick as a 5'2" blond hair, blue eyed, 105 pounder homecoming queen. And then the craziest thing happened.

I just knew it was God hooking us up.

Three more profiles magically appeared on our screen. I'm assuming they were adding new donors while we were logged on. Our eyes were instantly drawn to a picture of a little toddler on the beach. Huge smile, black hair, dark brown eyes. Her picture eerily resembled me when I was a baby. We clicked on her profile, and she was PERFECT. Her father is even French Canadian like my grandmother who just passed away. As an added plus, she has excellent teeth. If you read my previous post, then you'll understand my tooth fetish. Most importantly, she has done egg donor before. AND she didn't have a primary listed yet, so technically we would be first pick! It didn't show her outcome, so I'm going to ask our coordinator about that. I'm assuming that they wouldn't have let her back in the pool if she had negative results.

Honestly, I don't know what happens next. For all I know, we could start the cycle this month as opposed to April. I'm hoping that this means we get our first pick. As soon as I talk to our nurse, I will have more answers! If you've been reading our blog, then you know what kind of luck Andy and I have. We are trying very hard to be optimistic about the good karma we've had lately. In the end, it will all work out perfectly according to God's plan!

Please check out my sister's NEW BLOG! Yay! I love having new blogs to read...and she is a hoot. She's moving from Georgia to Chicago and I'm going to miss her so much:( Please head over and give her the same awesome support you all have shown me this past year!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas/Holiday! Please pray for us!

Spirit of Christmas Past, Present, and Future

Hmmm. Since I've been MIA for almost TWO MONTHS, I have a head jumbled full of things to write about. Gosh, I hope that I still have some readers left. I've been trying to keep up with everyone's blogs, but it's been crazy around here as usual. My apologies. This post may be all over the place!

We finally mailed in our egg donor application! Actually, we mailed it right after my last post... almost two months ago. k. We figured that we would be more productive with getting everything in line knowing that our doctor could call us at any minute with a match. At our office, they have their own pool of donors and the waiting list to get matched is currently 5-6 months. So, we are basically standing in line with a bunch of other couples ahead of us. We could use an outside agency to make the process go faster, but that comes with a pretty hefty pricetag. We would have to pay the outside agency, travel expenses for the donor, plus pay our doctor.

And that ain't happenin'.

Soooooo.....for the past two months we have done several things to help prepare for "the call". Our nurse said that as soon as we get matched, the ball starts rolling pretty fast. We have to be ready to strike a check and get the cycle going in full force.

I present to you...our baby preparation. Bulleted.

• Refinanced the house. Finally. I threatened to abduct my banker's children and he was on it.
• Sold Andy's car (this past summer).
• Cashed out life insurance policies. As of now, there are no children to get the money anyway.
• Cashed out one 401k account. Hey, prevents taking out another loan. Otherwise, we will get the money when if we retire and have to turn around and pay off our B.S. infertility debt anyway. The penalty will be a heck of a lot less than the years of interest we'll pay on another loan.
• Had two years left to pay on my car, so we just went ahead and paid that off. This way, we free up a car payment to have more wiggle room when we buy Andy another car.
• Disconnected the home phone/internet. Replaced with cheap, unsecured internet. Awesome.
• Cut off cable and replaced with cheaper satellite. Double awesome.
• Canceled my crappy health insurance policy and added myself to Andy's policy.

After we combine all of this with our failed IVF refund and what my parents took out for us, we should be good to go. Since we have the best luck ever, if donor doesn't work out we will need this money to "just adopt".


Now, a bulleted list of what I wish I was doing with this money:

• Go on our 10 year anniversary trip next year. Happy Anniversary.
• Buy Christmas presents for our family. Merry Christmas.
• Take our child to get Christmas portraits made and send out cute little cards. Oh wait. Hello another childless Christmas.
• Pay for our child's education. Hello scholarships. 
• Have the money to raise our children. Hello welfare.
• Retire. Hello work until I'm found dead in the nurse's station.

Now, a bulleted list of what Andy wishes he could do with this money...he really compiled this for me:

• "Buy Jessica a nice diamond ring." Hello rock.
• "Buy myself a nice watch." Hello bling bling timepiece.
• "Go on a month-long cruise through the Mediterranean." Hello babies that we can steal and bring back to the U.S.

Other than this ridiculousness, everything is going good. We recently celebrated the first birthdays of both of our nieces. They are growing up so fast! We also spent Thanksgiving in the mountains with Andy's family and had a great visit with lots of awesome food. A couple of weeks ago, my blog buddy from Arizona came to visit! Her husband will be stationed here in Augusta for the next 5 months, so we showed him around town and got him settled in.

If I can just make it through the end of the year, I will be good. Maybe. This time of year is always centered around children, and it's getting more and more difficult to keep the Christmas spirit. I was pregnant and happier than I've ever been this time last year. I finally felt blessed and complete. I had something in common with most of the women on this Earth. Grrr. Whatever. I'll just sit back and drink smile while all of the cute little families do their thing. And do I even need to bring up Facebook posts this time of year? Pour me another.

At least I can drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol this Christmas.

Bah humbug.