Operation Baby Spaceship – Transfer Day

Like so many in the infertility and child-loss communities, Malcolm and I know that a successful IVF transfer does not always mean a viable pregnancy. As I write this, we are in the two week wait. As you read this, it’s later. I have created this buffer to protect our hearts and allow us time to process what is happening in real time before sharing it with the world. Just because as you read this I’m ready to share this part of the story does not necessarily mean I am ready to share what happened next. Please be patient.

Operation Baby Spaceship: The Days Leading Up to Transfer

As I write this, Transfer is two days away. By the time you are reading this, we will know whether or not the transfer was successful, and whether we will be announcing a pregnancy soon or not. I am protecting my heart and Malcolm and Brooklyn by delaying these posts and giving us all time to process.

Operation Babyspaceship: What’s a Little More Stress?

Sometimes it feels like if it’s going to be our story, it can’t be smooth.

Once again, I have created a buffer of time between writing this and releasing it so that we can take our time to process quietly without feeling obligated to share more than we’re ready to. Thank you for your continued understanding.

Operation Babyspaceship: Is this our month? Is this really happening?

Today as I write this, but a while back as you read it, Brooklyn started IVF meds. She’s taking Gonal-F, an injection med that I have had a bit of experience with. If things go well, we should be doing a transfer at the end of the month! I am excited, but I’m also feeling a lot of “I believes it when I sees it.” It doesn’t feel like reality yet. I guess that is both the blessing and the curse of being the intended mom and not the person taking the meds.

These Targeted Ads Are Leaving Me Feeling… Violated

We started trying to grow our family over a decade ago. Back then getting the odd ad for car seats, baby toys, maternity clothes… It left me feeling hopeful. We made wishlists of baby items, discussed where we’d put the crib… Came up with enough names to have many kids: one girl and five boys. We even had cute twins names picked out for boys (girls names have always been a struggle for us to agree on). I had all the pregnancy apps to track our pregnancy with Widget (Lily) and registered for care packs that would arrive around the time she was due. At 18 weeks it all came crashing down… But despite me hiding the ads, deleting the apps, unsubscribing, and opting out the ads didn’t stop. And at Easter 2016, a care package arrived for a baby who had been gone for five months.

Surrogacy – The Coin Flip Results

I am writing this just two days after my previous post, but I know that by the time you are reading this, more time has passed. This buffer is here for me and my heart and to protect Malcolm and Brooklyn as well.

The blood work had to be redone. We are out of the running for this month. We have completed almost all of the paperwork. Malcolm and I met with Dr M2 on Friday and she went over the consents that we needed to sign, and I am uncertain if we need one more appointment with the IVF nurse or if it was just Brooklyn who needed that. But the IVF meds have been ordered, and Brooklyn will be able to pick those up when we are ready. When will we be ready?

Surrogacy – Waiting on a Coin-Flip

I’m writing this today knowing that I will not be posting it until we are much further along in our journey. I’m creating a buffer because I need it. It’s the start of a new year… 2024… The year our journey to become parents reaches its final chapter. Two embryos left, one surrogate ready to go. And by this time next year I expect to definitively know if I will ever get to be a mom to a living child here on earth. Honestly, I know it might sound doom-and-gloom from the outside, but inside there is peace. By this time next year I will either have a living child in my arms or close to being born or I will have no more maybe-babies in deep-freeze limbo. They will have had a chance at life! That is amazing!

Creating a Shop for Infertility Related Doodles on Merch

Back when we were first starting out on our surrogacy journey, I started making some doodles and got the idea to put them on tee shirts using a print-on-demand method and hosted through a sleeping pet-project of Malcolm’s. That didn’t go so well, the shop was jankey and pretty much everything I did just broke it further. That coupled with my poor marketing skills, the shop has lay dormant for the past couple of years.

Recently my creative spark has been reignited and I have started doodling again. This time around I have started creating my own shopify account and the learning curve is steep (maybe not the best use of my time while working on a master’s program and working) but here we are!

One of the things that deterred me last time was the feedback I got on pricing, I had people tell me that they liked my designs but with shipping the prices were just too high. So, this time around I am going to be transparent about the prices and the profit margins.

A Long Overdue Surrogacy Update

I realized that the last update that I gave about how surrogacy was going was back in July. I think at that point in time I was hopeful that by this December we would have updated that we had a surrogacy pregnancy underway. Spoilers: we do not… Yet.

PCOS is More Than Just Infertility

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, but I just couldn’t do it… In part because full time work and full time school leave very little time for much else, but really, that’s an excuse. I was feeling ashamed.