The Baby Mama

So I am the Baby Mama (hopefully)...

For those who don't know, 6 1/2 years ago, after 17 months of infertility treatments, I got pregnant with my husband and my's first child. At 16 weeks, I was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP)- say that five times fast! After a few very scary days and 4 months of constant treatment for me, our son was born, early but healthy. When he was six months old I went into remission. The doctors said that it was possible it was a "fluke" thing...that the TTP may never come back..but IF it did, there was less than a 5% chance that any baby would be born healthy (if that baby overcame the 50% chance of not being born at all)..odds that I became aware my son had beaten. The doctors also offered no guarantee that I'd make it either, since there are only treatments, not a cure.

We decided to try anyway..a year later, I relapsed and was NOT pregnant. This time it was even harder to get me back into remission and even then only after taking experimental medications designed to kill all of the disease. The doctors said that if I got pregnant they were pretty sure the TTP would come back again and they strongly advised against it because they didn't think I'd live. My husband and I talked about it..we looked at the beautiful child we had and knew he needed his mother, from that point on, my getting pregnant was out of the question.

We looked at options..we talked about adoption, but that wasn't the right choice for our family. We then read about gestational carriers- my egg, his swimmers, and then someone else actually carries the baby for us. That seemed like the perfect solution! So we went back to the doctor and asked him to harvest my eggs..after much debating he agreed to do it IF I would agree to daily blood draws while I took the necessary medications so that he could examine the structure of my blood cells and if I would agree that if he found any changes, I'd stop and begin treatments for TTP immediately. We agreed..the doc said he needed a mapping of my blood to see what my blood looked like "normally" to compare to. When the blood mapping came back we were stunned with some very bad news..the blood disease was not gone, just dormant. At that point the doctor revoked his permission to go forward with egg harvesting..it was too dangerous..back to the drawing table.

As my husband and I talked about what this meant and asked our fertility doctor for advice, he mentioned egg donors. The concept was very foreign at first...wouldn't that be someone else's baby? Never mind the "how do you choose your baby's genetics?" Still, we reasoned it wasn't that different from adoption, and it would still be genetically and biologically my husband's child as he would still contribute the swimmers. This child would still share genetics with our son..and personally as far as I was concerned a baby is a baby..I didn't feel the genetics mattered. So we went through an agency and got ourselves some eggs!

Now who to carry? We pondered this question long and hard..do we hire someone? can we afford that? and then an incredible person offered! We went through two cycles and ultimately neither worked. We were eternally grateful to our first carrier who had given so generously of herself and her life. We had agreed from the beginning on only two cycles. So we stopped..we froze our remaining 3 embryos and moved on with our lives. We mourned for what we had lost and worked on appreciating all that we did have.

And then 8 days ago...my oldest and dearest friend offered her body. My husband and I agreed to try one more time. He and I go back to the fertility doctor on February 10th to begin this adventure one more time. In the meantime, my *egg basket* and I decided to share this journey.

This blog is mine and hers...it is about friendship, parenting, love and loss...