We're leavin' on a jet plane...

Wow, I cannot believe a week from today we are already heading in to MARCH!  Time, please slow down!  I am happy to be heading in to the warmer months, although here in Illinois we have had some record-breaking, unseasonably warm temps for February and I’m not complaining about it.  Last Friday and Saturday it was about 60°, usually this time of year we’ve got several inches of snow left on the ground and the temps are in the twenties or so.  Yesterday I actually went out for a 2 mile walk around my neighborhood & it was so nice to get some fresh air!

If you guys remember in my last post (almost a month ago, yikes) I mentioned that we had our consultation appointment for March 21^st, well as of today we are about 24 days out from leaving for Georgia.  We decided the flying would probably be the best bang for our buck rather than taking the bike.  March is a tough time of year weather-wise for riding, we don’t want to get stuck in a lot of rain, and we would have to take extra days off of work so we decided flying it is.  I booked our flights with Spirit because the tickets plus a rental car for the 4 days was like $600 and I thought that was a pretty good deal.  Has anyone ever flown with Spirit?  They make you pay for all the extras like bags, seats, sodas, etc. but that is how they save you money on your ticket.  I’d love to hear a review.

Now that we have our itinerary set, Amy (our donor) and I have been making all kinds of plans, of course meeting each other is top of the list, followed by lots of food intake, and probably some cocktails along the way.  We’re hoping for an “adults only” trip to Melting Pot for some yummy fondue and martinis, and we are going to try and squeeze a day in with her kiddos too, depending on her work schedule.  I am so excited to be able to know my donor on this personal level and have a friendship with her.  She and I are both very excited to spend some quality time getting to know each other better. 

So much has changed about the way I feel towards donor eggs.  I remember when Joe and I first started discussing using them there was no way in hell I wanted to know my donor let alone have a relationship with her, I was already so resentful towards anyone who we might choose.  I wasn’t going to tell a soul, especially our resulting child, that we used donor eggs.  The more DEIVF became our reality, and the more that I delved in to the process I became excited to openly share this journey and we definitely will be sharing with our child that they come from a donor, and we will tell them about it at an early age.  It would be unfair to deny them the chance to know where they came from, biologically & what their background and heritage is.  If they want to meet her or wish to know more, then that will be up to them.

Obviously we are in the early early stages of this process and still have some big hurdles to jump.  Our consultation will come first, followed by Amy’s consultation and exam & bloodwork, all of which must be cleared in order for her to qualify.  Once those two things have happened then we can move forward with drawing up our legal contract & making payment for the cycle.  Each of these will be a milestone and will bring us one step closer to starting a cycle!

Making some progress...

Now that the DEIVF cat is out of the bag along with the news about our amazing donated eggs, I can also tell you that we have finally set up our first consultation with the clinic that we’ve chosen in Augusta Georgia.  We’re about 8 weeks out, but that’s perfect for what we were looking for anyway.  We set the appointment for Monday March 21^st so we have plenty of time to make our travel plans and more time to take a break before we start.

Last week our donor had a pretty big scare.  She was having intense pain in her uterus and found out she had an ectopic pregnancy and ended up having to have her left tube removed.  I felt terrible for her as I know how hard pregnancy loss is.  She is recovering well because she’s such a trooper and she has an amazing husband, kids, mother, & friends taking great care of her!  Please send lots of good get-well vibes her way!  She has decided that she wants to continue down the donor path with us, despite her current situation.  I am so thankful for that, but I want her to have the time she needs to recover both physically and emotionally so I’m hoping that over these next couple months she will be able to do that.

Since we have to travel to Georgia for this cycle we are trying to figure out the best way to go about it.  We are highly considering taking the bike for this first trip.  It’s about a 12 hour drive in the car so on a bike we will have to add a couple more hours for gassing up, stretching, eating, etc. but we are really hoping to make this work for us.  Any future trips after our consultation would have to either be by flight or car because after an embryo transfer I don’t think the doctor would recommend me being on the back of a bike for 2 days!  We really enjoy traveling on our bike so this would be a good, last hoorah for me before we hopefully finally become pregnant!  We aren’t 100% sure if it will work out but we are going to try to map out a route & see if we can do it. 

Now comes the hard part, the lull between now and our appointment.  We’re looking at just under 7 weeks.  I know the time will fly and I’m going to try really hard to occupy myself with other things during that time.  My biggest goal over the next 7 weeks is to drastically cut my spending.  Now that this has become a solid reality for us, I am attempting to buckle down on all impulsive/unnecessary spending.  This means clothes, going out to eat excessively, and other miscellaneous spending.  Luckily we don’t have many commitments at all this month or next that would require an excessive spending.  I think Valentine’s Day dinner is about the only thing we may spend much on.  I’m giving up the Winter Wine Walk (about $25), we are foregoing gifts for Valentine’s Day, and instead of getting a full highlight, I’m only getting a partial.  I don’t want to take all the fun out of life, but there’s certainly room for improvement!

Sometimes I sit back and cannot believe that this is our reality.  It is extremely painful to think that I may never know what MY child would look and be like, that another woman’s eggs will work with my husbands, but mine won’t, that my line of DNA is coming to an end (I have am the only child of my mother & father and only have a half-brother).   It is a very hard thing to work through, but I have felt for a while that this would be the path we would travel.  I will stay optimistic that maybe one day I will have a biological child of my own, but that is of little importance to me now.  Infertility comes with so many emotions, but DEIVF comes with even more and I can see why some may never choose this path if it were the only option.  For now I am welcoming everything about this DEIVF process with open arms and a positive outlook because this may be the only way that we can grow our family and I am so thankful that this is even an option. 

I am so appreciative of all of the love and support that we have gotten as we announced our news that this is our new path.  We are so grateful and blessed to have such an amazing team behind us and again, we are so unbelievably thankful for our sweet donor & her family for giving us this beautiful gift of life.