Some inspiration...

A couple of days ago we had the pleasure of meeting Sophie. Sophie is 9 months old and she lives with her two Dads in Sydney. (Sophie and her two Dads were in London visiting family). It was such an inspiration to meet a family that was created in just the same way we're planning. Sophie is so gorgeous.....

This made us realise that we're a bit isolated here in London. Apparently Sophie knows four families a bit like hers in Sydney. So a project for January is to find some neighbours who are in our shoes. Any suggestions welcome....

Meanwhile, our 8 week scan was completed on Monday and again, everything is normal.

Normal is our favourite word right now....

Merry Christmas All....

We have a heartbeat...

138 bpm to be precise.

Everything is normal so far.

We wish for a happy pregnancy!

A Singo on the way!

Our 5 week scan was done today and it shows a healthy singleton pregnancy. 

Two very excited Dads-to-be here!

Our surrogate is doing fine and everything so far is normal - long may that continue!

Happy face x 1000.

I thought you might like to see how the good news was shared with us...

Dear Philip & Adam,

cOnGrAtULaTiOnS...!!!

We hope you are doing fine.

We are here to give you a good news that we have done Beta HCG test & the beta value is 187.38,which is very good.

We would like to congratulate you as you are pregnant now.

We all are very happy for you and wishing you lots of happiness and love.

We wish you Good Luck for this beautiful journey ahead.

Some news...

Yesterday we waited all day for some news.  Refresh, refresh, refresh.  Still nothing. 

We've been holding out on you.  We began another cycle - the last of our frozen embryos - the other week.  And this time we cultured to blastocyst. 

We were quietly optimistic until the day of our test - we've even been working on a shortlist of names!  But as the day rolled by the tension was becoming unbearable.

Finally at 9.30pm, refresh one final time before calling it a day.  You have 1 new mail.

Our beta score is 187.

After our last experience we're not letting ourselves get carried away.....  But the news is as good as it can be at this stage.  We are sending all our good wishes to our wonderful surrogate and hoping for the smoothest of journeys.....

No Joy

No luck this time around.  But we still have enough frozen vials of hope for another round soon.

Fingers crossed....

The Big Thaw...

Today we're thawing four embryos and so hoping for a good survival rate.  And so I consulted the Google oracle to find out more.  Apparently about 70% of embryos survive the process of thawing.  And interestingly not every cell of an embryo has to survive the thaw to be viable.  I also learned that whereas freezing takes 3-4 hours, thawing takes 45 minutes!  Somehow all this detail seems important to us.

Apparently the next stage is to 'culture' the viable embryos for a day or so before transfer.

More important, perhaps, is that we now know that a pregnancy test takes place 12 days after thawing rather than 12 days after transfer. So now after a couple of months of calm, this means we also know the exact date of our next pregnancy test.  So we're back to the now familiar territory of waiting and hoping for good news....

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