Tracking cycle

Here’s an update on all things surrogacy. A warning in advance that you might find out Too Much Information about me from this point on, so read at your own risk ⚠️

Today, Friday 5th April is the fourth day of my cycle with my period having arrived on Tuesday. I’ve never had so many other people, and men at that, excited about my period arriving! In theory we (we? this is a shared period clearly!), only have one more period left before I get up the duff and no more Aunty Flo for 12 months at least I hope! ‼️🚩🌹🦞🚨For our IVF clinic Repromed and our Fertility Specialist, Dr Hilary Whittle, we are doing a Tracking Cycle. Essentially we are tracking that my body does what it’s supposed to do during the month, so in May, we can implant a little embryo and feel fairly certain that we have done all that we could to make sure it’s home for the next 9 months is shipshape.

To give Matt and Brendan the full taste of pregnancy and pre-pregnancy, our aim is for at least one of them to be at every appointment. This might sound logical and easy, but there are a lot of logistics to juggle to make that happen. I guess if one of them was a woman they would have to attend every appointment because the baby is in their body. But hey, if one of them was a woman (I wonder which one it would be???), we probably wouldn’t be on this surrogacy journey together anyway! So for the scan at Repromed today at 10am, Matt met me there. He worked from home in the morning to make up some hours, and I had the morning where I didn’t need to be in front of a maths class. I made it back to work for Recess and ready to face some year 9s with a coffee.

But back to today’s info – the scan is to check that my body did indeed shed the lining of my uterus resulting in the period for that month. Sorry all, as I said, too much info. How does this scan happen you might ask? Well in this biz, we call it Dildo Cam! 🍆 That’s right. It’s an internal scan done with a phallic wand, with a condom put on it, and then lube, and then we have an internal ultrasound essentially. Leading up to this, I go to the toilet in the adjoining room and come out with a sheet around my waist. Matt and I laugh and realise our friendship must be pretty secure as I shuffle onto the bed, bringing my nether regions to the edge and then my legs rest up on stirrups – I’m covered up of course! This is the second time that Matt has been in that room with a woman naked from the waist down, and another woman, the Sonographer, with a pelvic probe – Jen was in the same room and position in January for her egg collection.

The lady doing the scan didn’t have much of a sense of humour but she was very professional. She checked the lining of my uterus, my ovaries (which had 8 follicles in them I was surprised to hear!), and checking for no cysts or polyps. We essentially got the all clear and were told Hilary would call me later in the day.

We all get on famously with Dr Hilary and have been in touch with her outside of appointment times. We feel a bit special that’s for sure! Being the first same sex couple in South Australia to go through an IVF clinic for surrogacy, I think Hilary is pretty invested in our team. I’ve been with her for 2 of my 3 egg donations so we have been working together for 2 years now. Anyway! I waffle on. When Hilary called there is one small issue that she would like me to get checked out. She’s nearly totally sure it’s a non-issue, however if the first embryo transfer doesn’t work, which we all know it’s going to work first time right?, then if we have ruled out this issue, we can look at other possible things. The issue is that I have a slightly ‘boggy fundus’ or ‘boggy uterus’. What words! Those who have had children know that your uterus never goes back to its tip top shape post birth, it’s always a little more relaxed or boggy in this case. In the IVF world, they have found that other women with more extreme cases of what I have and combined with other symptoms, may have Adenomyosis. In our surrogacy world, women with severe cases of Adenomyosis may need a surrogate to have a family.

So, what next?

Firstly we do a blood test on Wednesday in 5 days time. That’s at Mawson Lakes between 7:30-9:30am and is trying to track when I ovulate. My hubby Glen is away for the week so I juggle getting the morning routine done, Ewan off to childcare, Emily off to school, then meeting Matt at Mawson Lakes about 9ish for a quick blood test. Then both of us off to work. Surrogacy is so much about logistics.

On Tuesday the 16th at 11:30am at the Dulwich Repromed clinic, we will all meet for another blood test and a scan to check for the Adenomyosis. Apparently they used to do MRIs for these sorts of checks but the results have been great with the ultrasounds. I’m sure the results will be fine – we follow doctors orders right?

That will be Day 14 of my cycle, so the bloods help to check that ovulation occurred. The significance of that is that my body needs to be ovulating, because in May when we do the real thing, the embryo is implanted 5 days after ovulation.

I’ll spell that out here in case this is new for anyone. When Jen had the eggs harvested for her egg collection in January, that was at the point of ovulation when her googies were plump and ripe. They then fertilised those eggs in the lab with Daddy Brendan’s sperm and the cells multiplied and multiplied for 5 days. These 5 day old embryos are now resting in the freezer, next to the chops and snags! In May, when we pinpoint the day that I ovulate, 5 days later one of those embryos is transferred into me. So one little egg spent the first say 14 days of it’s life in Jen, then 5 days in a lab getting all groovy with Brendan’s swimmers, (fast forward some months of quarantine), and then the remaining 260 days of pregnancy inside my juicy womb! What a team effort this is ☺️

Today was so exciting for me as it finally got real. Having dildo cam, with one of your Baby Daddies sitting next to you, brings this Surrogacy Safari to the realm of realities. Counselling ✅. Lawyers ✅. IVF clinic approval ✅.

It’s a funny thing. Matt and Brendan are so appreciative of me and juggling my life to fit all of this in. I know how sincere that is and feel 100% supported in this with them. I also feel lucky that I get to fulfil my dream of being a surrogate, and that I have been blessed to find two lovely people to help my dream become a reality. Now enough gushy thanking of everyone. Let’s do these tests and then get pregnant next month!!!

A photo of the screen and the devices at the scan. The dildo cam is in the second photo, even though that photo was 2 years ago at one of my egg donations. You can see the probe in that one!