Creating Life is Amazing, Any Way You Do It

I got home from work last night at 12:30am. After four hours of sleep my alarm clock began ringing telling me it was time to wake up for a very long day of appointments and then working my eight hour shift in the hospital. My sister had to drop off her very grumpy 4-year old at daycare at 6:30am to join us for the morning spent in Cincinnati. We could have no coffee, or in my case-sugary beverages like a capachino or mocha-and we could have no food before any of our appointments. We had to be fasting for one of our blood tests. At almost 7:00pm, I don't know how I am going to make it another 5 hours before I get to lay my head down on my pillow!

Despite my pure exhaustion, we got a lot accomplished today and I am very happy we are a few steps closer to making some babies.

Our first appointment for the day was with the psychologist to knock our our psychological assessments. While Alex and I met with the psychologist to share where we have been and we are going on our journey, my poor sister had to take a nearly 600 question psychological evaluation. Why? Because apparently this is the federal government's way of ensuring a psychopath does not become an egg donor. I think about a fourth of the way through my sister wanted to shoot herself in the head to be honest! I knew this appointment was going to be annoying for her, so I wanted to show her our appreciation for taking the time out of her day she could have slept in or used to spend more time with her daughter. Before we went into the building I gave her a card with a heartfelt message and a gift certificate to local boutique store hoping she could treat herself to something cute on us. I got a voicemail a few hours ago from her thanking me for it...so I think it helped her to know we aren't taking advantage of her kindness and appreciate more than we can really express.

We knew we would be discussing with the psychologist our plans for raising our children that were created from my sisters eggs. As a social worker there are certain things that I am absolutely positive about from experience working with children in the foster care system and children who have been adopted at birth. I believe EVERY child wants to know where they came from-good, bad, or ugly. I believe in being honest about where children come from because they will find out on their own if their parents do not tell them and that could create a boat load of anger towards the parents they were not prepared to deal with. So long story short...Alex and I agree 100% that if we conceive and give birth to a baby that is created with my sisters eggs, our child(ren) will be told about their very special creation. They will be told that their Aunt Ashley loved us so much that she wanted to help us have a family. They will be told that I am their birth mother, and she is their biological mother, or mother by DNA. They will be told about their siblings in Heaven who were created before them. They will be told that their cousin Raegan is their most special cousin of all, because they are half-siblings. Do we know exactly how or when all of this information will come out? Not at all. Most likely in bits and pieces and whatever is appropriate for their developmental age. The really cool thing is that we found out today there are children's books that we could purchase to explain to our children the very special way they were created with so much love through egg donation. Aunt Ashley will be the coolest Aunt of all...I'm sure of that:)

Following our appointment with the psychologist, we took a hop-skip-and a jump over to the fertility clinic to meet with Dr. Hofmann and his staff. First up on the agenda-Alex's semen analysis. We won't know the results until Friday most likely. Hopefully those vitamins he's been taking has helped. Second item to tackle-signing consent forms that indicate our wishes for our embryos in several different scenarios. The scenarios included: death of one partner, death of both partners, divorce, termination of IVF treatment, and failure to pay embryo storage fees. Our options for each of these included donating the embryos to a specific person, donating the embryos to the clinic for anonymous embryo adoption, and destroying the embryos. These questions really showed us how much we truly value to creation of life, even before a heartbeat ever develops. In none of the scenarios did we choose to destroy the embryos. Why would we waste such a gift? Why would we not offer these tiny miracles to someone else who would love them just as much as we would love them? If we are fortunate enough to have an excessive amount of embryos that we do not need because either our family is complete or because we are both dead, I pray to God that we can provide another couple with the gift of life through our donated embies.

Once our consents were completed, we had our blood drawn (for the 164 thousandth time for me) and gave our urine sample to finish up our medical screening that is required before we start our IVF cycle. Then Alex left and he and Ashley headed back to Minster so he could go to work and she could pick up her daughter from daycare. I stayed and met with the embryologist and financial coordinator to finish up the morning appointments we had scheduled. The embryologist was absolutely AMAZING!! He spent a lot of time showing me videos of how he selects the good sperm from the semen sample and injecting them into the eggs. Then he showed me the latest and greatest technology called IMSI (Intra-cytoplasmic morphologically selected injection). Technology is absolutely amazing...seriously, a computer program that magnifies sperm by 800 and tells the embryologist which sperm are the very best to select based on the size of their heads, shape of their necks, and amount of tails? It was pretty fascinating to see this. This procedure reduces the miscarriage rate by improving the quality of sperm that are selected to fertilize the eggs. I don't know if we are going to have to do this procedure or not-but its good to know that if we need it, it's available at the clinic we have chosen to go to. He also showed me videos of how his lab does the pre-implantation genetic screening biopsies on blastocyst stage embryos and videos of embryos developing by cell division. I am stoked that this clinic and lab takes pictures of their patients embryos before they transfer them-one more thing we can use to show our babies how they were created!

The creation of life is absolutely an amazing process. It is a beautiful symbol of love. No matter how you create your family, remember-any way you do it is beautifully amazing!