"I am Optimistic"

“I am optimistic.”

Those were the three words that really stood out in Dr. Samit’s latest email update. We didn’t get detailed numbers as to the size or the beta hcg levels or any of that, but we did get a positive email.

The second ultrasound was scheduled for Tuesday and it sounds like it went well. You tell me:

“good news the sac is growing in size. Her blood work is all normal. I am optimistic. We just have to wait. I shall give you a pic as soon as possible.”

All I can think of is: “Are we really just seven months and a few weeks from little baby Hyderabad (no that’s not the name we chose) coming into the world?” Seriously?

I know, many more hurdles and much more waiting. But this is good news for now.

And “I am optimistic” that we’re going to have a celebratory drink or two this weekend with friends in DC.

PS- I really want this first trimester to pass so that we can start to buy cute things, think about baby’s room, and start to act like excited parents-to-be instead of worried humans waiting for medical updates every week :)

No Jumping the Gun

No jumping the gun.

That's what I have to keep telling myself. C and I have become pros at Google-ing the very limited info that we receive and quickly becoming "pros" at surrogacy. Actually, we have no idea what end is up really and it's kind of funny how wrong we are sometimes.

Over the weekend, we received an update from Dr. Samit. It started with "Finally some luck.' And then said that they did the ultrasound on Saturday and they did find a "tiny gestational sac." I'd post pics but they weren't able to send them due to "technical reasons." The gestational sac appeared a few days later than usual but according to the doc, this can happen sometimes.

He also let us know that the surrogate is on complete bed rest and they will do a scan again on Tuesday to check on further growth.

With this information in hand, we quickly resorted to Google where we found out that a small gestational sac could be a problem... that if it doesn't grow and measure properly, the pregnancy will likely not be viable... that showing up late could be an issue... and on and on.

I sent a note to the doc thanking him for the news and asking if it was indeed not as positive as we had hoped for. He quickly responded and said that actually, this is exactly what we hoped for and that the gestational sac is good news.

In our rush to figure out what this all meant and to try and put some sense to it all, we missed the fact that finding a gestational sac on the ultrasound was exactly what we should have been waiting for. Google has changed the world, for the better I think as knowledge can spread like a wildfire now. But it's also caused a bit of information overload. Case at point.

So for now we're in a good place. And we wait to hear more following the next ultrasound.

Thanks to everyone who has given their support and perspective to the situation. It's what makes sense of this entire thing.

Patience is Overrated

As you've probably gathered by now, we're taking the Apple iPhone 4 route to dealing with the waiting part of this whole process. That is, we're pretending nothing is wrong and avoiding really analyzing things day to day.

Ha.

No seriously though, things have been super busy at work and in general so time is going somewhat fast. But not fast enough. The ultrasound was done yesterday and late, late last night we got an email from the doctor saying that:

"the endometrium is thick and the blood levels are good but the gestational sac has not appeared on usg. sometimes the sac appears late. we will repeat another scan on saturday morning. no reason to panic."

Hmmm. What does this mean? It means (at the very least) that we now have to wait until sometime Saturday to get another update on this. Though we're a bit discouraged since you'd think that they should have been able to see the sac. Right?

It's been one of those days...and not necessarily the news we wanted. But, I guess we have to be patient and see what happens.

But patience, truly, is overrated.

Fireworks

It was a rainy day yesterday and the gloom made me sleepy. A big Thai dinner helped put me into a solid sleep... Until 3 a.m. when C decided to roll over and wake me up and ask me to check my email to see if we heard anything from Dr. Samit (since it was now Friday afternoon in India).

Like clockwork, we got an email at 2:22 a.m. that said we have a "good sign" and that the surrogate's beta hcg levels have more than doubled since Wednesday afternoon and are now at 64.32 miu. Yippeeee. That's the news we were waiting for. After laying in bed with my mind racing, we both eventually fell back asleep. Until the dogs decided they needed to play at 5:45 a.m.

We're excited. And nervous again. Because now that we've gotten good news, we have to wait. How long, you ask? 10 days or so. That's when good 'ol Samit will do an ultrasound to detect a potential heartbeat and gestational sac. Good news for now though, and that's all we can ask for.

It's been an interesting process thus far. We've had the most interesting signs. C having dreams of little baby girls, our favorite TV shows all the sudden focusing on babies or surrogacy (ie. Brothers and Sisters). The night we await a response from the doctor about the latest beta hcg levels, we're woken up every few hours by noise, by dogs, by C. And interestingly, C was frustrated the other night and went out to take a walk and the first thing he saw was a baby's one-piece shirt thingy laying on the ground. He turned around and came back upstairs...in a bit of shock.

I know we can't look into every little thing for a sign of hope, but there have been different things that have happened that you couldn't easily turn a blind eye to.

We're off to have a late-morning margarita shortly. It's the 4th of July weekend after all. And deep down, we have something really great to celebrate.

Happy Fourth of July.