If you want to make God laugh...

Wow.

I feel like it has been forever since I last updated, and it kind of has been a while. That is partly due to the fact that I was first waiting for anything interesting to happen that would warrant creating a post, and then during that time waiting for surrogacy stuff to happen, life happened.

So basically we are not much further along in the process, but some progress has been made. I received the first draft of contracts, reviewed it with my lawyer, made a few teensy weensy changes and sent it back off to Tori and Mikie's lawyer to review. Hopefully we can all give it the green light and get to the signing and notarizing step! Luckily, everything seems to be going very smoothly with the contract part. That is probably due to the fact that this journey is more at the level of friends, versus a journey with perfect strangers. It really makes things easy when you already have an open line of communication so there aren't any crazy surprises that make you run for the hills or make your heart jump in your throat. I know some matches can fall through due to contract issues, so I am happy to say that in this instance contracts are no big deal.

We are all set up to do our psychological evaluation for April 17th. I had already been cleared a few months back and done my MMPI testing (which is a psychological test of adult personality and psychopathology) by the same counselor, but I have to do a real quick update and then Tori and Mikie will have their private session, And then lastly we will all four have a session together (Tori, Mikie, Ryan, and I). Contracts absolutely have to be finalized at least 14 days prior to a transfer, but the psych evaluation does not have the same time constraints. To be on the safe side, the counselor told us she would go ahead and email our surrogacy coordinator nurse at the clinic to let them know I have been evaluated and cleared previously, so this second screenign is more of a formality and to make sure we are doing things by the book.

They say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. God must be rolling on the fluffy, white cloud covered floor of heaven in a fit of laughter then because my period was suppose to arrive around April 19th. That would make me 10 whole days late as of now. PANIC! MAYHEM! PANDEMONIUM! At first I kept telling myself, oh it will show up tonight or tomorrow morning. I've gone almost 6 years now without having any more little 'oops' or accidents. It is seriously not that hard to NOT get pregnant. I'd be damned if it happened the month before I am suppose to get pregnant with someone else's baby. I was 99% certain that I was not pregnant. I've been pregnant before, I know the symptoms and what to look for and I had zero. In fact, I was having all of the normal symptoms of starting my period, such as irritability and breaking out, but without any crimson flow. Just my luck. When you don't want your period to come, it always makes a grand entrance. When you want your period to come, it takes its sweet time. Such is life. Anyways, I decided to try all the trick in the book to jump start aunt flow. One trick I have heard is to megadose on vitamin C. But to do this, I first needed to make sure I was truly not pregnant. I ran to good ol' Walgreen and bought myself a 3 pack of red dye pregnancy tests and immediately went to my sister-in-laws house to pee on them. Her house is sort of becoming the unofficial POAS (short for Pee On A Stick) house. I figured since I have been a high HCG producer in the past, and as already late that if I were pregnant, the line would be clearly visible. So I take the test, wait the required 3 minutes, take a peek, and was satisfied to see that it appeared to be a BFN. Since I share my journey with a FB support group of fellow surrogate and they all knew I was expecting my period, I decided to post a pic of my negative pee stick. to my surprise, instead of them agreeing that it was indeed a BFN, my surro sisters were telling me they saw a squinter! "I think I see a line" "Give it more time to dry and then recheck it", "take a new pic in the natural sunlight" and "Look at it with this filter on the photo" were all the comments I was receiving. So of course my mood flipped from being calm and reassured to HOLY FUCK WHAT IS GOING ON!!! NO NO NO NO NO!! I examined the pee stick in every single room of Kristina's house. Took a million different pictures from different angles, asked for Kristina to look at it with her own eyes, and we both deduced that there did seem to be A line, but it wasn't THE line. Sometimes you eyes can just play cruel tricks on you. When Kristina was trying to get pregnant, she too swore that she saw faint lines on her pee sticks but they were negative. Then there is also something known as an evaporation line, in which a line appears, but it is not always in the correct place where the dye should light up, or its a greyish color, not the pink. I decided to not stress over it and to retest in the morning with some fresh pee. To my relief, there ws absolutely no line whatsoever on the second and 3rd retests, and my surro friends with their super powered surro eyes confirmed that it was indeed probably a fluke and that the following 2 tests definitely looked negative. Phew!

But why am I still not bleeding!? I decided to go to my doctor on Monday and see about getting a prescription for a medication known as Provera. I have had to take it in the past once before due to irregular cycles. I swear, my body is healthy, but sometimes it can just be a little bitch. Excuse my french, but I drop swear words often. So part of getting prescribed Provera pills is that the doctor has to confirm you are not pregnant. Telling them you took at home pregnancy tests and got negatives is not good enough. they need irrefutable proof, so I was sent off for blood work. Everything came back all honky dory, and I picked up my prescription the next day. On top of taking those pills, I also decided to go ahead and put my workouts on hold. I have heard that extreme physical activity can sometimes cause irregular periods, so I would rather miss out on a few days at the gym if it meant my period would finally decide to show her ugly face. There are times in your life when you want the clock to hurry up, and then there are times in your life when you want the clock to just stop ticking or go snail speed. Every day I have wished that the day would not end because it meant another day had passed that I couldn't call up Tori and tell her my period had finally arrived. I hate it. I hate thinking I am being a disappointment or making their hearts freeze in fear. Even though those thoughts have creeped into my head, I have tried to keep them at bay so as not to stress myself out. I know stress can play an important factor in period cycles as well. Man, being a woman is tough! So many factors come into play and have an effect on you. I usually describe myself as a stress-free person. Stress just rolls right off me. Namaste! or maybe it doesn't.... maybe I am just a good faker? Even at faking myself to believe I am not stressed?

I carry a lot of things on my shoulders but I never actually stop to say "OK, help, I am drowning here". Instead I just keep doggy paddling on, trying to catch my breath and saying everything is A-OK. I got this. My mind doesn't feel the weight of the stress, but maybe my MIA period is trying to tell me something. I'm a full time student, work a part time job, and my husband's hours got cut so we are living off of basically half a normal paycheck without all his wonderful overtime pay (oilfield industry.... never thought I'd ask for $3 gas prices to return), have a 5 year old son who participates in some type of sport every season which requires practices and games, shopping for gear, etc. He only attends daycare 3 days a week, which are for the days that I am in school, so my 'off' days I am not really off per se. I am helping my sister in law with her newborn son periodically, babysitting (and getting lots of wonderful snuggles) when she needs to run a few errands, chauffeuring them to doctor appointments, working on an average of 2 papers a week for school, plus a major project, cleaning up after an 85 year old and 5 year old and trying to keep up with the demands of having dinner ready every night like a good little housewife should, although I have admittedly been slacking on the dinners (sorry babe), taking Grandma to get her hair done, which always inevitably ends up taking at least 3 hours out of my day, and to put the cherry on the top of this hot mess, I possibly fractured some part of both my arms  (feels like elbow on left arm and possibly radial or ulnar on my right, I'm not sure) while at a birthday party at a skate rink, so it is off to an orthopedic next week for more xrays and diagnosis. I'm hoping it is nothing serious. Oh, and I was assigned that task of planning a little family vacation for this upcoming weekend. Got it all done, but I am starting to feel drained. And so here I sit, still no period. It is absolutely maddening. I cannot wait to graduate in May and hopefully just be coasting through a pregnancy by then.

It is kind of a weird thing to say.... that pregnancy is calming. Usually when a person gets pregnant is when all hell breaks loose, but to me, pregnancy is the easy part. It is all of the little things that have to be done prior to get there that really piles on the stress. But the growing part is kind of cathartic to me. I'm in my element when I am pregnant. Of course these feelings may change over time as my body gets older and used up, but for now I am relishing in it.

As I mentioned a few sentences earlier, I am going on a little family trip since it is a long weekend due to the Easter holiday. We are taking Hayden to Sea World, staying at a hotel on the River Walk, and then going to Schlitterbahn. I would like to start my period sometime at the beginning of this week so that I can finally go in for screening, but something tells me I should put my money on starting my period while at the water park because that just seems to be how life works. Maybe I need to go put on my nicest panties and white shorts to see if that will coax my period to show, because it obviously has a sick sense of humor.

So that is all for now. Please send me bloody vibes!! Baby Fisher/s said they are getting cold sitting in that freezer at the clinic and can't wait to be in my warm fluffy uterus! Haha!

 The BFN pregnancy test that scared us into thinking it was a BFP,
but it was really just an evap line. Test your eyes... do YOU see anything??

 Our weekly snuggle time with Hutch. Hayden is such a proud cousin

(L) My almost 6 pack, taken right before I quit working out, so now its more like a 1 pack
(R) At the Skate Rink for my sister's 80's themed suprise Bday party where I injured my arms. I was going for the grudge rock look, like K. Stew in the movie The Runaways.