Thursday, January 05, 2006
Surrogate update, and beginnings
Ok, Now that I have some free time, I am going to Start our surrogate journey from the beginning.
It all began, when Steve and I met 3ish years ago, before Steve and I decided to get into a relationship we talked about children. Steve has never had children, and because he is a children's ministry Sunday School teacher and a professional Magician, he has always desired to have children. Because of His personality, He truly deserves to have a child of his own.
We talked about Adoption, and we both agreed that is what we would do when it was time to start a family. About 1 year after we met, we were sharing our adoption desires with a family member at church, Not more than 3 days go by we get a phone call, asking us if were would like to adopt a baby that was due in August. We were shocked, this wasn't suppose to happen until another year down the road after we got married.
After many conversations with the birth mom, she wanted us to adopt the baby, we couldn't had been more excited and still in shock from all this! We spent months preparing, becoming very close to the birthmom. I made sure she got to her doctor appointments and took her children when she needed help. Well, she had the baby, we were called, and the baby (crystal) was born at 35 weeks, and needed to be transported to Banger ICU unit and the paper work was signed and off Steve and I went to spend our time with her. The Ronald McDonald House in Bangor was so kind to put us up during our stay with Crystal, we had to go for all her feedings and to keep up with all her medical needs. Sadly after 4 days in the intensive care, crystal was scheduled to leave the following day. Sadly the mom changed her mind, and the grandmother is now raising her. This was very heartbreaking! It truly felt like a death to us. With days of tears, and an empty baby room, I had to keep my mind busy, and didn't want this dream to die. I started searching on line the resources to adopt a baby. I was just amazed of the cost and all the state requirements to adopt with an agency that I started to seek out mothers that were in need to find adoptive parents. I just couldn't get my mind off this quest, it finally came to meeting with our church friends for support and counsel. We were told to take a break, let god do the work. Well, I took about 3 days off from the computer and in my heart I couldn't stop the search, I had emails coming in and they needed to be answered. I had realalized that allot of adoption scamming goes on, on line, amazed! people claiming they are pregnant when they are not, I would say the percentage rate has to be 80 % Scamming to 20% actually looking for adoptive parents. I really believe god has been watching over us, NOT one time did we get scammed, yes we would be contacted by some that were already listed as scammers, but I have done so much research about adoption and how NOT to get scammed that I knew the right questions to ask, and with Maine's strict adoption law, all I had to do was quote them our laws. As soon as they knew money could not be discussed, I wouldn't hear a respond from them, which saved us the potential scamming.
I finally got to the point where we were not going to search out our birthmom on line, we were trying to save funds and going through an agency wasn't in our plans. I came across a site, for surrogate moms during an adoption search, than I started researching that area, I placed an ad, and received 100's of emails with surrogates wanting to help, Some were scammers, looking for someone in the USA to buy them a visa to get them here, to young woman, not knowing what they really wanted, and thought this would be cool, until they realized all the work that goes into it. But, I was blessed to get emails from surrogates that were not able to help us, that have been my friends from the beginning, they have been a wonderful resource and moral support. We were getting to the point we would think we find someone perfect for us, than again, legal talks started and it would end all conversations. I was getting very frustrated and was about to give up, when an email came from a woman, who was one of the first people to contact us, and because of an email misunderstanding we lost contact. But, we were connected again, and we truly feel this is part of God's work. They are a Christian family also, and she had 2 children of her own. Kim and Her Husband live in Penn. Had this desire to want to help out a couple once in her life time, We were a perfect match! Kim and I are lot alike, and I knew this is the one.
Our plans was to start in Jan, but because of the fertility drugs and medical things that need to happen before her doctor said April. Kim and I have spent time on the phone getting to know one another, and soon we will be meeting. We have exchanged family photos and my free time has been spent on a surrogate contract. The State of Maine and Penn, Has no surrogate laws, so its been a bit more tricky coming up with a contract that still follows all the laws that don't exist..(smiles) But a contract is pretty binding, during my research, because the 2 states haven't any laws they fall back onto the adoption laws, however, when push came to shove, the courts fell back onto the contract. Because the cost of a contract can range anywhere between 2000-5000 just to make an agreement between 2 parties, I just couldn't justify that cost when I know, what good is a contract if the mom still has the right to change her mind?? So, with the help of a local lawyer, I wanted to write the draft, instead of her doing all the work and she could just view it, she agreed, so the cost is very low..under 500.00. Kim and I are so open with what we want and we think so much alike that the contract writing, which consist of about 5 pages, was easier than I thought. They say, most surrogate's and their intended parents break it off most during the contract writing. But, again we have been so blessed, I held my breath waiting for Kim and her family to read it and finally got an email saying.."Good Job Debbie" and a few things had come up that we will add to it but it really was a breeze. The next step we need to do is meet with our lawyer to go over the contract and see if I followed all of the state laws from here to Penn. We hope to have that part completed by the end of Feb. I truly feel people shouldn't have to spend such high cost to have a baby, I am talking anywhere's from 15-25000 to adopt and if the mom changes her mind, You have lost allot of money, not the entire amount but enough to put a damper in your pocket book. Surrogates range from Mid 20's -40.000 dollars. And because of our last failed adoption, we are not so eager to give out money. Again, Kim is a blessing! Our money to her will be paid to an escrow which will stay there until the baby is born and she has signed all the paper work given her rights over to us. Than the lawyer will send her the money. I knew when she said that was fine, she was the one, she truly wants to do this from the bottom of her heart and Money is not the Main focus. This way, we are protected not to lose anymore money to have a child. Kim and I plan to do everything that we can do ourselves, to help save our cost. Now, the only thing we joke about, is we could get multiple babies..lol..can you imagine! I tease Steve and tell him, well you asked god for a child, he is going to send you an entire family in one shot! I think its cute. But, god is going to send us what he wants, and we are more than prepared for one, more than that? well, we need to do some serious thinking and rearranging the baby set-up.
Steve and I will fly to Penn in April as soon as Mother nature tells us which date too go and Steve's Love bugs will be be artificially inseminated by Kim's doctor and than the time begins for the "wait" We are hoping the first month takes, but we will keep trying until Kim says, enough is enough, We all feel if its God's will it will happen. If not than we would have to start our journey again, and going back to the adoption mode. We feel we don't know which way we are going to have our baby, we feel God has this in his hands and if its a child we are suppose to adopt, he will make that happen, and the same with the surrogate. We lost contact with Kim and now she was brought back to us, so we will follow this journey and see what will happen. will continue, my journey when I have more to share.
February 17,2006
Well, it time to update the journal again. Steve and I met with our lawyer last night and we are getting very excited with our journey. She is preparing the final copy of our contract.
The time is coming fast, we can't wait to meet with Kim and her family! We also also found out that Maine, is looking into having some statues on surrogacy and hope this will set an example for "tradional surrogate" in place and this will open more doors for parents and surrogate moms. There is also some word that Maine may be opening a clinic in the Portland area, that will make it possible to have artificial inseminations happen without having to leave state to do it, currently no doctor or clinic will do the procedure. So, Kim and I will have to show the state that with good communications, a legal contract and of course a great doctor! that we can do this with one purpose in mind, bringing a bundle of joy to a family that is not able to have any children or more children.
Kim and I stay very close in contact, we share all of our daily turmoil and good news. We are a great support system for the both of us. We couldn't have found the greatest couple to work with.
Although we are experiencing one of the greatest things in life, I just wanted to mention, that my next to the youngest brothers passed away at 33 years old, It is so sad for such a young age, with his own family and children having to go through all of this. I would like to add a prayer for him, and send this little message to him.
"Sean, may god take you under his arms and bless you with happiness, and may he show you the life we all have been waiting for, and that your life in heaven will be pain free, free of medications, and filled with peace in your heart, It is such a sad thing to lose a brother, and may you watch over us, as new life enters our families. I know you are probly laughing at us, saying more grandchildren for Dad and Mom!! I am sure they thought those days were done.!" God bless you Sean, and you will never be forgotten! (In Memory of Sean Collins)
March 23.2006
Today, has been very busy! The contract draft is completed and on its way across the states to Kim in Pa. Our next step will be to wait for Kim to receive it an see if any changes need to be done. If not than its just the signing process. YeeeHaa! This has been allot of work and our Lawyer, KK worked really hard putting all the pieces together!
Kim is now waiting for her next doctors appointment to see when we will making our trip to PA. At the moment we are planning for the end of the first week of April into the second week.
Hopefully soon, Kim will be adding some journals. To all of our friends, send us some baby dust!
God bless! talk soon
April, 7th 2006
Well, this is the best news yet! Our contract, is now completed and we all will be getting it notarized and ready to go! We have been busy making plans for our visit, We have a date!!! We are on a plain April 12th, and our first visit to the hospital will be April 13th, Our appointment is at 7:30 am and Kim will be coming in for your appointment at 10:00 am. We will repeat this process on Good Friday also. Our family and the Young family have spent countless hours preparing for this moment, it sure doesn't feel you can get this far with just a start of an email. It has been such a pleasant experience! Now, what a better week than the holey week to try and have a baby!
I hope to have more photos in the next week to come, from our visit.
Will keep you all updated with the outcome to come. We surely have allot or prayers going out to our family and Kim's.
April 12-14 2006
Now I really have some good things to report! Steve and I have been really excited with our first visit to see the young family, We packed and had everything ready to go, our night sleep wasn't the best with all the excitement in place. We got to the airport and ready to get our tickets when sadly we were told that me missed our flight, I sadly looked at the arrival time for our first layer over instead of the departure from Maine. The Ticket agent was very kind and because it was a holiday weekend, most all flights were booked. I started to panic, but kindly told the agent our need to be in PA. She searched her computer for about 20 minutes when finally she said, I have one plane only that has 2 seats left and got us right on that flight. We stayed on schedule for our arrival to PA. The ticket agent as a kind courtesy didn't charge us for the missed flight, and wished us a blessful trip!
The Trip was great the weather was nice.
We arrived in Pittsburgh and Kim arrived before we did, and with the great use of cell phones she told us where she would meet us. Steve and I couldn't wait to meet her, we hurried to the luggage pick-up area where she would be. Steve and I looked for her, but not quite sure if would recognize her, we heard this little voice, "Debbie"? There she was standing with her daughter. It was such a great moment! Finally after all these months we could meet our surrogate mom. She is a very soft spoken woman, and very pretty. We sat and talked while we waiting for our luggage, but time seem to fly when we realalized that there was no more luggage coming out. We started to get a little nervous, when Kim said, "lets go see if we can find someone to help us" We were finally given directions to the baggage claim office, and was told, the luggage from our plane had already been delivered. We started to get a little nervous because this was all our clothes. We got ready to fill out a report claim form when all of a sudden baggage started to arrive again and there was our luggage!
Now that we had everything we all left the airport in Kim's car, we headed to a restaurant to get dinner and we had a nice time just talking. We talked for a while and left to head to our motel. The weather was quite rainy and they were having an electrical storm, I had never seen so many chain lightening 3-4 going off all at once around us as we traveled. Because our long visit to the restaurant Kim thought we should call the motel. But, No one was answering and she said we could stay at her home for the night.
We had a wonderful time meeting her daughters and we spent a long night looking at their baby photo albums, they were the nicest little girls I have seen. Bryan who is 7 and Kennedy who is 11 going on 16, very smart young lady! We finally called it a night,
Steve and I got up early we needed to be at the doctors office for the lab work at 7:30 am and Kim needed to be there for 10:00 am. Everything was great! The Staff was wonderful! They were so kind and down to earth people. We laughed and joked while waiting for the love bugs to be ready from the lab. There was a 45 minute delay so we just enjoyed the company of Kim. The whole procedure went well.
We spent the rest of our time, having dinner with the young family and just enjoying the company. Bryan Kim's husband was just so supportive of Kim's desires to help us. After our time spent with her, we do trust her a great deal and feel she is the real deal. She seemed very honest and the true desire to wanting to help our dreams come true. We hated to say good-bye, we had so much fun and the whole experience was wonderful. Now we will wait out our time until Kim calls to say, "Steve and Debbie"?? you are having a baby, smiles.
05/10/06
Well, here is our first update after our visit with the Young family. After a few weeks of waiting to see if Kim was pregnant, it was a bit intense I must say. The waiting part is the killer, but unfortunately this was not the month. All emotions was a let down, we all had high hopes and thought this would happen on the first try. So right now we are all in a state of let-down from the high. I feel going through this, its just as hard on the surrogate as it is the intended parents. I know Kim was very disappointed, she wanted so badly to have some good news for us. But, we will try again, The Young family is going to take a nice vacation this month so we will be skipping a cycle so they can just relax. Hopes we all will try again in June.
So, far the journey with the Young Family has been wonderful, Steve and I couldn't had found a better family to work with. I ask all those who reads our journey to send out your prayers for us and the Young family. Help bring emotional peace to all. This is a wonderful journey but at the same time, its full of every emotion imaginable!
June 16,2006
Well, I can see it's time for an update and some are waiting to see what is happening!
Well, as you know this was a very disappointing cycle for Kim in April, she had wanted this to happen so bad that when we got the results she was heart-broken. Well, May didn't fall into the schedule because Kim's family was going on their family trip and we all decided to skip May. Well during this time we planned for our June cycle, well as you all know we cannot predict everything! It started off, with the doctor was going to be out of state for a meeting right when we needed him to do the procedure, now what do we do?? I called the doctor's office and it just so happen the doctor's trip got canceled, whoohoo!! well, at least I thought! Now we had another problem, the lab tech was going to be out on vacation! This is a small clinic and the main hospital has decided to cut staffing which only left one lab tech. Eventually the clinic will be closing, this is a real bummer!!! Now, I am at a point
So, Debbie the wonderful nurse after talking with the doctor gave me a call to tell me that the doctor wanted us to go to another clinic to do the procedure so we wouldn't have to skip another cycle, well Debbie was going to call and set everything up. When you think things are going to work out, I got another call from Debbie telling me "bad news" That doctor is also going to be out of town during the time we needed him..Now what do we do???
Well both Kim and I both decided we didn't really want to miss another cycle and choice to go with the home
insem route. Yes, that's right we would try doing it ourselves. I have spent months researching a method sending these little love bugs without freezing, and decided to go with Bio-Tranz, its a company that has the items needed to send in the mail. Well, everything went well, the package got here just fine and than it was time to ship to Kim.
I was a bit nervous about the traveling time but they got there in the time they stated and stayed nice and cool.
Well, Kim did a morning insem after arrival and will do another tonight, than her last one on Sat morning and we just need to cross our fingers and wait and see....sighs...This is such a different method and it would be great for this trip works for all of us, but if it doesn't we will talk to the other doctor to plan for her insem for next month.
Oct 6, 2006
Well it is time to update...sighs. We had our third attempt at the end of September and sadly to say it did not take.
Kim has decided to end this journey. It is a very emotional journey when one wants to help out another so badly! ThThis was very disappointing to Kim and we all decided to stop. Steve and I are not sure what to do next. The thought of searching out another surrogate is just over-welming! But, we are going to make one more attempt to have a child together. Either with another surrogate, or adoption of some sort. But, this has been a wonderful journey and the Young family was the best!!! We couldnt have asked for a better family to help us out! We will miss working with them but we will stay in contact. We love you KIM!! and thank you so much for taking the time to try and help us!
Jan 2,2007
Well ok, I am back to update all. I am sure some of you have been wondering what has been going on. Well, Steve and I have not given up our journey to have a baby.
Entering into the surrogate world can be very challenging and alot of emotions go into it. It was very hard to end our journey with the Young family, but there comes a time when we all must move on.
So, I placed another ad, in hopes to find another surrogate. That first ad was the hardest, knowing we had to start over again.....it really made me sick to my stomach just knowing we had to start from scratch again.
After a few weeks of emails from ladies wanting to help us, and screening the scammers and emotional scammers, we actually got a few that was real.
But, for one reason or another we were not a match. My desire to search was coming to a very slow end. It was getting to the point I wasn't trusting anyone. I really felt this was it for us.
We than got this email, from a girl in South Carolina, Named Traci. What made me realize that this person was for us, is that sent in another email, photos of herself, family and children along with Driver's licence. I was so shocked that she sent it, I for once believed who I was talking too. After several emails and a chat on the telephone we both decided we wanted to take this journey together.
Traci is 21 has 2 children of her own and is married. She has been researching the surrogate world for a couple of years now and actually attempted a IVF with another couple, but had lost the embryos. She wasn't too fond of the needles and meds that she needed to take and decided to go the traditional surrogate route.
She is just so excited to start!
So, we have completed the contract and I have chosen a lawyer in SC and now waiting to hear back from him to see what lawyer we are getting Traci.
Everything seems like its going so slow! There is not much we can do until the contract is signed so we can go to the next step. We are now in the waiting mode.
Meanwhile we had been contacted by a birthmom. She has asked us to adopt, however, no one really knows if this will happen. We just stay in contact and if she changes her mind that is ok, if not than Steve and I feel, what ever god wants for us, even if it means 2 babies. We believe we want to continue with our surrogate as planned, and not put our lives on hold for a maybe. Although we would feel very blessed if we adopted and had a baby with our surrogate. What more could we ask for!!! God than would have answered every prayer for us and we would be one happy couple.
Meanwhile we haven't had much contact with the birthmom, not sure if she is having email issues or she has chosen to parent, Again, we feel God is in control and ifs meant to be it will happen if not than I was there as a friend.
I will update the website soon with some new photos.
Oh, we have also moved. Steve and I purchased a home, Yea!!! We love it! our new email address is magic4u2c@verizon.net. We only moved about 2 miles from our last home.
Will update again soon!
Sept 27th,2007
U[date!!!
Sorry for the long update, Steve and I have been crazy busy, with the new house and our baby journey.
Well, we did have another birthmom as mentioned above, and she stayed with us for a month.
She was wonderful! But, because of the birth father issues, she had to return home with her son.
She is doing great and making a new life with her new addition.
During our down time, a time to just breath and enjoy "us" we built a new balcony deck, put a huge upright pool and lastly put in a new kitchen floor.
