MY SURROGACY JOURNEY

MAY/JUNE-2014 

 

DONATION, RETRIVAL & IVF: The donation, retrieval and IVF were all to be done in California. I decided to take my friend with me and turn it into a bit of a holiday.  I had been to Los Angeles before when I first looked into the process of surrogacy in 2009 so was familiar with the surroundings.  I had been emailing my egg donor who was also going to be in LA at the same time so we decided to meet for coffee (a glass of pino would have been great but no alcohol for her till retrieval!). Note its extremely non-standard for an intended parent and egg donor to meet, most agencies do not even reveal the name of the egg donor to the intended parent/s and vice-versa but it really comes down to the individuals to find common ground.  Anyhow I had the most amazing donor who seemed happy to meet so we did.  I have to admit I was very nervous, I wanted to make sure I looked good so I got my haircut and looked extremely dashing even if I do say so myself.  The donor was lovely, so relaxed, so down to earth, liberal, really nice smile, she was so good looking (most donors usually are) and easy to talk too.  I got her (and my surrogate) a nice necklace from Tiffany’s to say a big thanks for which she was extremely grateful. My donor had been a donor before but had not met the couple in that example but seemed very happy we had met. The more I researched donors I was shocked as to how many girls did this, it was not widely spoken about in the UK but a lot more open in USA. By now it did get me thinking as to what my friends & family in London would say about this but for now that was not on the top of my mind as I had many months to think about that.  At present I was just happy as to how smoothly this was all going, I had read/heard horror stories about peoples journeys and how it had taken people two years to get to the point I was at in only six months from signing the contracts, I don’t know if it was luck or fate but something or someone was on my side so I kept remaining positive and continued to enjoy each piece of the jigsaw as it came to me.

 

For the day of my "donation" all I could remember was the episode of “Coupling” where Steve (Jack Davenport) had to do his “donation” - note the room they gave me was nowhere near as glamorous as how it looked like on TV! Donation and egg retrieval went well and I was once again “skint” – I mean the amount of money that was going out of my bank account was insane, I am sure the bank was wondering what I was doing but it was all worth it.  I decided to relax for the last couple of days in LA, my friend and I went for some nice dinners, visited the local temple, went strawberry picking and decided to enjoy my last year of freedom so we hit the nightlife in West Hollywood which I discovered beats the nightlife in New York hands down.

 

CONFIRMATION OF PREGNANCY: I was told from the start not to get my hopes up for a first time pregnancy especially that I only wanted to implant one egg at a time as I wanted to mitigate risk of multiple births. I had mentally been prepered to do three to four cycles of IVF. To my pleasant surprise I received confirmation of pregnancy on 24-June-2014, I was four week and two days! It was a miracle in my eyes that all this happened first time, I was so happy, I could not believe it all happened so fast!!  I could not get over how much luck was on my side, everything was going so smoothly, the most stressful aspect to-date was deciding which bars to hang out at in LA as it had only been a short trip. I was once told that to gain something in life there are times when one should learn to give something up. I actually had not sacrificed much in this journey to date so I said to myself to pick the worse habit I have and to give it up till "baby Anjali" was twelve weeks old.  I decided to give up alcohol for the next eight weeks so I could pray for a healthy first trimester. I was so happy, I was four week "in" but a little sad I could not really tell anyone as I could not deal with any questions right now so just told my three close friends and continued to write my website which surprising was very therapeutic 

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Pronunciation of Anjali is Un-jah-lee, not ONjahlee or ANjahlee