When I first started down the surrogacy path, I thought that I would have to use an agency. First- I didn’t know where to even start- and an agency would know what to expect and would be ready to handle anything. I wish there was an agency for IVF- because I totally would have used that to navigate fertility treatments my first time. Second, I didn’t even have a carrier- and where was I going to find one on my own?

But the more I looked into an agency, the more the costs just spiraled out of control. The cost of a carrier, reproductive technologies, legal fees etc. was already going to break the bank and an agency, in my eyes, would just charge (A TON) extra just to get you organized. As a type-A person, I knew I was going have my ~ish organized anyway, plus, I navigated the hairy world of fertility treatments without an agency, so I thought I could do it. Talk to me next year when- dear Lord help us- when we have a baby with the help of Super Uterus. Maybe I will be sending you all to an agency, but probably not.

So here are some details that I would want someone to tell me about the process of having a child by gestational carrier without an agency:

FOUR WORRY WORTHY CATAGORIES.

1.     Medical - medical clearance testing, getting eggs, transferring. (Worry- will I even have embryos to transfer???)

2.     Psychological clearance- evaluations for me, hubby, carrier, and carrier's sig. fig.  (Worry- will they “allow” us to be parents this way? Imagine if all parents had to get psychologically tested before they could have children….)

3.     Carrier costs- she’s really doing most of the work, and taking care of your baby for 9 months. Includes compensation and expenses related to being pregnant. (worry- will she really give us the baby?? and that’s why the match and trust with your carrier is soooooo important.)

4.     Legal- makes the contracts and deals with the courts so that you can adopt your own baby, or do a pre-birth order. (Worry- does this piece of paper they give us mean anything in the state of NC??)

I'll go into more details about these categories and the individual costs in later posts- in real time, while we experience them. Hopefully by the end of my journey with Super Uterus, our blogs and site, The League of Extraordinary Uteri, will be a resource for future intended parents and surrogates looking for what to expect.

If you'd asked me last year how many embryos I wanted transferred, I would have said two. But now I'm a veteran IVFer and my view on this subject has definitely changed. 
By the time an infertile is trying IVF- they're desperate for children and my judgement was definitely clouded by that- and all the money that we would have to pay for each lottery ticket to get pregnant. The rationale is that if you put two in, there are greater odds that at least one will "stick", as we infertiles like to say. And hey, who doesn't like a good Buy One Get One Free??  But studies show that there is very little difference in pregnancy rates when you transfer one or two. The difference is the rate of having multiples.  With a 2 embryo transfer, your odds of having multiples increases by a ton! Multiples- like twins and triplets- lead to greater health risks for pregnant women and for the babies themselves. No infertile likes the Reproductive Endocrinologist's mantra- but the goal is "one healthy baby" (** and one healthy mama). 
A solution to many infertiles' reluctance to transfer one embryo is insurance coverage for fertility treatments, including IVF. If we didn't have to finance the overwhelming cost of fertility treatments- we would be more accepting if it didn't work the first time. Fewer multiples births would actually decrease health insurance costs for everyone- and that is a product of insurance coverage of IVF.  <<more on insurance coverages in future posts>>
I'm experiencing particular distress because of my own decision to transfer two embryos in the past. With our previous IVF cycle, we had 5 mature embryos, and all 5 fertilized (IVF/ICSI split for ya'll who are in the know). We had good looking embryos- all dividing well with very little fragmentation. We begged our physician to transfer 2 in both a fresh and a frozen cycle. Well- neither of those worked- and here we are with only one frosty left. As I mentioned before, the odds were- if it was going to stick- we would have been pregnant whether we put one or two in. I wish I wasn't so focused on how much money it would cost us to try IVF again, because if we had transferred only 1 each time, we would have three left to transfer (one by one) to our healthy Super Uterus surrogate. Not to mention, doing another IVF to bank embryos carries its own risks with injecting large amounts of hormones and undergoing egg-retrieval surgery. 
Super Uterus actually got me thinking about number of embryos to transfer. She is actually a twin herself! She has a great perspective on the issue and will only allow single embryo transfer as a surrogate. Hop over to her recent Part-time Uterus post for her thoughts on embryo transfer. 

I never thought that I would have trouble getting pregnant. At first we had fun "trying".... but after a few months without success, the scientist in me came out- I began tracking daily temperature, monitoring my LH levels, plotting my cycle length, and describing my cervical mucus. <<yuck. I know. But everything seemed very regular and perfectly cyclic. I went to my regular OB, who told to me just keep trying. Luckily, she still referred me to a Reproductive endocrinologist. Blood tests came back mostly normal- except for AMH- indicative of low egg reserve. Long story short- fertility treatments failed for this uterus. Me and my significant other, The Manager, are now looking for a uterus to rent. Thankfully, we found Super Uterus- a hero who is helping us have our baby.  I relied on many internet friends and resources to navigate my early days of infertility. In this blog- I hope to share with you my story of infertility, advocacy and surrogacy.