Issue 47: IT'S HAPPENING!

Saturday May 04 2019

Trying to facilitate a successful surrogacy story from another country must be like planning a wedding in Japan without a translator, wedding co-ordinator or even a recce. Where do you start finding a venue? How do you know if the wine will be nice? Where the heck do you source the flowers? You’re partially blind, hands tied, constantly worrying and wondering if you’ve made a wrong decision — and what’s that going to look like on D-Day?

Our D-Day is delayed because Lydia’s uterine lining is still too thin. I feel strongly that acupuncture will help. I am no expert, but I know the theory about stimulating blood flow, calming, settling, helping. Dr Y is sceptical — some fertility doctors actively advocate it, others scoff at the idea. Still, he concedes; even if there’s no tangible truth, there’s certainly no harm. My friend Emma Cannon is a fertility acupuncture expert, and in her I wholeheartedly trust. She helps women to get pregnant every day, she made my periods come back after six chemo-induced years of nothingness and she always talks sense. Many doctors recommend her and her techniques to help their IVF patients. That’s how I met her.

But how to find an Emma equivalent near Lydia in the US? Google, obviously.

But like I said, it may as well be Japan for how blindly we’re jumping in with this. A TripAdvisor recommendation to make our family dreams come true? Sure! Why not? Lydia goes to a little place on a strip mall near her house with some trepidation, but also excitement. Especially when I assure her that acupuncture doesn’t hurt, it’s actually a wonderful experience. I feel calm just thinking about it.

Half an hour later and she’s floating. “I loved it! So relaxing.” But then the downside; they’ve advised her to come every other day until her scheduled transfer. At $100 a pop that’s frankly ridiculous. Are we being duped, much like a foreigner getting into a local taxi that takes the long way round while the meter keeps ticking? Probably, if we’re honest, but herein lies the problem. We just don’t know. We don’t know if it’s bad or good luck that we picked this particular clinic. This is how we feel about every surrogacy decision that we’ve made so far, and we’ll continue to wonder until we have some good news. Otherwise I feel a bit of a responsibility that it could have been so different if only we’d chosen that door, not this one.

But on that good-news note. After we agreed to send Lydia for only a couple more sessions rather than the 12 that we were steered towards, lo and behold the next scan shows that her lining has gone up. Way up! It was stagnating at a low 6, we needed a 7, ideal would be over an 8. The clinic co-ordinator emails to let us know: “Lydia’s scan showed an average of 8.35mm of her endometrial lining, which is great! The transfer will happen this Friday.”

Wait, what? Actual transfer, actually happening? Apparently yes, and with bells on. Whether the acupuncture helped we will never know, but in my heart I think it has. Even further confirmed when a couple of days later Lydia goes in for the transfer (yes you’re reading this right, she’s actually there, in the chair). Needless to say Mr B and I are a picture of serenity. We’re driving back from a lovely lazy lunch, music floating around the car, jaws totally and utterly unclenched. Totally. Utterly.

I’m lying, of course; that lunch was tortuous and our eyes are pranging in their sockets while we stare at our phones awaiting news on WhatsApp.

It arrives. “GUYS.”

“GUYS, GUESS WHAT.”

All caps, this looks exciting. Good news? Dare we hope?

“MY LINING WAS 9.6!!” Lydia was so shocked she nearly jumped out of the stirrups (not advisable for a successful embryo transfer). Dr Fernando was also shocked, and thrilled. The thawed embryo was perfect — she sent us a photo, we may as well be looking at a desaturated bowl of gelatine, but we love the hell out of it nonetheless — and the transfer went perfectly. Perfectly! What the . . ?

Well now. If that isn’t a happy note to end on I don’t know what is. We are at that place we hoped to be at 15 months ago when we started on this long and winding, and sometimes rewinding, road. We have nine days before we get the results (common myth that the two-week wait actually takes two weeks). Lydia has 48 hours to remain in as much of a horizontal position as possible and we have 99 problems still to overcome, but a curtailed embryo transfer ain’t one. If there is a god, it will surely know to direct all its miracle of life vibes to this one strictly horizontal woman in her Miami hotel room. Surely? It’s time.