Homebodies Are My Heroes!!

I have gained a new appreciation for my life as a homebody.  I have always been one—I prefer to be in sweats over jeans, flats over heels, on my couch versus a bar stool.  All the way back as far as I can remember.  But over the past year, it’s gotten to be a much more appealing way of life.  When I’m going through a cycle (about to begin my third), I don’t consider my body mine for the time being.  A couple picked me out of a pretty amazing lot to be the one to—hopefully—give them a child.  I don’t take that lightly.  I am humbled to even be considered, and it’s an honor to be chosen.  For the month-ish long timeframe that I go through a cycle, my homebody routine goes into an extreme mode.  And I look forward to it every single time. 

I go to work.  I tend to the 80 employees and all their hopes and dreams all day long and I leave promptly (and happily) at 5:00.  By 5:30, I am in the park for my run.  Around Day 6 of injections, I turn the run into a power walk because things start to jostle.  By 7:00, I am at the market getting dinner, usually a salad from Gelson’s.  If it’s a Friday, I’ll get cornbread, too, because it’s a Friday, and well, it’s cornbread….  I’m home by 7:15, I’m showered and seated on the couch just in time to watch the news (and by “the news” I, of course, mean Access Hollywood).  I eat, I watch a little Law & Order and I’m in bed by 11. 

Because of the routine of nightly injections, I can’t very well go out, I don’t go to friends’ houses, I put myself under house arrest and I cannot tell you how amazing that time is.  It’s time for me to focus on keeping myself in the perfect, uninterrupted state to ensure that everything that my body goes through is a benefit as opposed to a detriment.  I look forward to having this time.  I look forward to getting back to some semblance of a routine after the craziness of the holidays—and even when it’s not post-Holiday season, it’s amazing how great having a routine feels.  It’s like a vacation.  But at the end of the vacation, you aren’t tan, you don’t have pictures; instead, you have an amazing sense of accomplishment and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for your couple’s having chosen you, for being able to experience something so incredible and participate in something so great. 

I’m gonna have a t-shirt made:  HOMEBODIES ARE MY HEROES.  Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

-Kate, BHED donor

L's Story: Part Two

We went through donor after donor with this particular agency, and they kept flaking out on us.  If they didn’t change their minds immediately, they would string us along and then quit on us.  Or, they would take 2 months to return the contract and say it must have gotten lost in the mail.  Just what you need to inspire confidence after you go out on a limb to use an anonymous stranger’s DNA to start a family.  And if the donors from this agency weren’t being difficult, the agency was.  Their follow up was abysmal and their attitudes even worse.  It was very discouraging.  Then, late one Friday night I noticed a donor of interest posted on the BHED website.  She was the first donor that had caught my attention before we were strongly encouraged by our clinic to work with this FL agency.  She had been unavailable at the time, some months earlier, and I just happened to notice that she was posted again.  So I sent an email and Lisa called me shortly after.  This donor had become available almost mid-cycle due to some strange circumstances and it became possible for us to jump right in, so we did.  

While that cycle didn’t pan out for us, it brought us to a wonderful clinic in VA and to BHED.  We have found BHED’s donors to be educated, responsible, and pretty much all-around wonderful girls.  Their staff is supportive and extremely diligent and they go above and beyond to make this experience as smooth as possible.  They know a lot about their donors and they spend a great deal of time selecting them and teaching them about the process so they are ready, willing and able to see it through to the end, no small feat.  For those of you who have not been through a cycle yourselves, it is not for the faint of heart.  And to go through it to help an anonymous couple start a family is pretty remarkable.

Now, onto the remarkable part of our story.  After a year of trying to cycle with various donors and then finally finding BHED, we were matched and the donor was cleared and we were ready start.  Well, almost ready to start.  The donor had gotten her period and was on the pill waiting for me.  I returned from a business trip expecting to start my period early the next week and for some reason, I decided to take a pregnancy test.  Not sure why, I don’t normally take them.  Well, imagine our shock to find out that a little stick was telling me that I was already pregnant.  I think we were in denial at first and since I had gotten pregnant once before and it didn’t take, we knew it was still a long shot.  So, we made the decision to go through with the donor cycle as well and to freeze the embryos.  It had been such a long, hard journey to get to this point we just couldn’t risk having to start all over again.  Our donor did wonderfully, with 19 eggs retrieved, 11 fertilized and ultimately 4 blastocysts frozen for future use.  We are very grateful to BHED for their support and really cannot say enough wonderful things about their organization and its dedication.  I hope our story provides you with some encouragement to press on when things look bleak and some hope, because despite a diminished ovarian reserve, a blocked fallopian tube and sperm that doesn’t survive 24 hours, anything can happen.  I wish you all the best of luck.

-L, Recipient