The Two-Week Wait (TTWW for short)

2019 has been an absolute whirlwind, and with just two and a half months left in the year, it's like we're quickly coming down the other side of the mountain of which I can say with great certainty, has been the best year of my entire life. But it's not over yet - because so much can happen in these next two and a half months. 

Last time I put my thoughts to the Internet blog-style - and yes, so much for my writing once per week (doesn't everyone say they're going to pay strict attention to their blog and then gradually start to abandon their masterpiece?) - Dennis and I hadn't even sold our old condo yet. We were days away from getting the keys to our new townhouse and we had yet to receive an offer on the place we were leaving. To make a long story short, that same day we got our first - and final - offer, two days later we opened the door to our new home, a week after that we moved in and two weeks later, finally got back to our surrogacy journey. The legal agreements took a while: summer vacations, my tendency to leave emails "marked as unread" in my inbox and come back to them weeks later, and the wrath of hurricane Dorian are to blame for how long the process took. But one thing led to another, summer turned to fall and suddenly we were sitting at our next door neighbour's house getting her to witness our completed legal contract. I turned 35 only a few days later, and then before I knew it, I was sitting in between Dennis and our surrogate's husband at our fertility clinic, nervously tapping my feet, as nurses prepped Kay for her first embryo transfer behind the nurse's desk. 

It has to be one of the most awkward moments for anyone - sitting in that waiting room, listening intently for the nurse to call your name so you can either get your eggs sucked out of the wall of your vagina, or get a long syringe shoved up in the same direction with an itty-bitty embryo being plunged into your uterus. Add two more people into the mix and the dynamic is even more interesting. As we moved through that morning, I kind of pictured it like a movie: [SCENE OPENS: Jackie and Dennis are sitting quietly in a chair beside Kay's husband. Both men are playing games on their phones. Jackie appears bored and shuffles her feet, while looking at the clock on the wall. She wonders why she forgot to bring something to read]. Finally, when it is transfer time, Dennis and I get gowned up like we're entering some infectious diseases clinic and we enter the room as the image of our tiny little embryo - the best one of the batch - is projected up on a screen on the wall. We hear the doctor and nurses quietly stating our names, her name, the embryo they're about to put in, how many days old it is (before it was frozen) and every last detail. And then as the embryo gets sucked into that massive syringe and Dennis, Kay and I all hold hands, Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" starts playing in the background. Great, I think, this is a story I can tell this little embryo when they grow up to be a human: "Madonna was playing the moment we saw you for the first time!!" But I don't want to get ahead of myself because the transfer very well may not work, I'm not even a Madonna fan and who knows what 98.1 CHFI will be playing for our next round. 

We've now entered "the two-week wait" which as anyone who has undergone IVF, IUI or surrogacy will tell you, is the most emotionally challenging week of the entire process. For anyone new to third party reproduction, the two-week wait is basically the time between when the embryo is put into the uterus and when you can legitimately find out if the procedure worked. While most surrogates are provided with a truckload of pregnancy tests by their affiliated agencies, the fertility clinic always warns to stay away from those home tests. After all, they're not the most accurate. What surrogates - or anyone undergoing IVF for that matter - are supposed to do is wait the prescribed amount of time (for us it's 12 days) and then get bloodwork done to see what the beta numbers look like. If they're over the baseline, then that's near-confirmation that the transfer worked. However, a second bloodtest two days later is ordered to confirm the upward trend in numbers. If they have doubled, then congratulations - you are pregnant!! 

We're right in the middle of that waiting period as I write this. We have told Kay she can do at-home pregnancy tests if she wants to, but we've asked her not to share the results with us. Because of this, I've been sitting on my hands to prevent myself from messaging her "DID IT WORK??" I'm trying to stay away from Facebook Messenger in general this week - at least as much as possible. It's so easy to get your hopes up and considering our journey has been smooth thus far, I know it's been pure luck up until now and it will be luck that carries us the rest of the way. I'm not a religious person at all and unfortunately, I'm of the mindset that "events are random and meaningless." However, I am stubbornly superstitious, so even sharing my thoughts online right now feels like I could be tempting fate. 

Altogether, our visit with Kay and her husband was so enjoyable. They stayed at our place and after our transfer, we all did some Toronto sightseeing including a trip to the Toronto Zoo, which completely made me forget why they were visiting in the first place. We engaged in a ton of political discussion (may I add that it's so important to share the same political values with your surrogate and her family, especially in the current era) and got into multiple discussions about the upcoming election - the day of which happens to be the same day we'll find out if the transfer worked. We laughed that October 21st could either be a really horrible day, somewhere in between, or it could be amazing. We have no idea at this point, and a huge part of me is trying not to think about it. 

We surprised Kay with a Beanie Boo version of her favourite animal - the sloth - in our second bedroom where she and her husband stayed during their transfer visit.

The TTWW stage is also commonly called "Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise" (PUPO), but I prefer to stay away from this term for the following reason: When Kay shared the news of our surrogacy journey on her Facebook page with an ultrasound photo of the embryo - a white dot at this stage, several people automatically assumed she was pregnant and some asked when we were due. The "congratulations" messages were coming in from all over, much of it with the assumption that we will be successful. The truth is, each try works 40 per cent of the time. Our clinic has informed us that there's a 75 to 80 per cent success rate within two transfers. Those are incredible odds, certainly better than for someone who is trying to get pregnant naturally, but we could just as easily be on the side of 60 per cent, or 20 to 25 per cent after two. Some work on the first try but others fail six times. That's why TTWW is so difficult for everyone involved. We are so grateful for all the support we have received on both our side and Kay's side, but if next week at this time we aren't in the best moods, please forgive us. You'll know why without us having to say anything.  

It's a tradition for surrogates to wear lucky socks with a four-leaf clover on them to their transfer. Kay had received her pair from our agency, Surrogacy in Canada Online, but I also doubled the luck factor by loaning her a four-leaf clover necklace I'd received for my birthday last year. I told her she can keep it until everything works. If she hands it back to me in a little under nine months from now, we'll know project #BabyRosenChung2020 was successful. In fact, if it gets to that point, she can keep the necklace for good.