Looking into our Options

So last time we left off with processing 5 more years of Tamoxifen.  We weren't sure what to do but knew we wanted to expand our family.  We had been looking into adoption.  Initially, we looked into international adoption from a Spanish speaking country, but with Rachel's diagnosis most countries were closed to us.  Knowing several different people who have adopted domestically, we then started looking into that.

While looking at information on one of the adoption websites, we came across the concept of surrogacy, for which we were very unfamiliar.  We started to read up on it and were really excited!  The type of surrogacy in our particular circumstance is gestational carrier surrogacy.  The idea behind this is that a couple will use their own egg & sperm to create embryos via IVF and then a woman, with no genetic link to the pregnancy, carries the embryo (see the info graph below). We were really excited about this possibility. The more we read and talked about it, the clearer it became that this was the direction toward which both of us felt drawn.
 

 Rachel spoke with her oncologist about what her opinion was on stopping the Tamoxifen for 1 month to do IVF and she thought the option of using a gestational carrier to carry our child was an excellent decision.  She referred us to Main Line Fertility in Bryn Mawr to start the discussion.

In August of 2013, Rachel had met with a genetic counselor to see the likelihood that her breast cancer could be carried on genetically to our children.  She had some tests done and went through a lot of questionnaires all leading to the decision that her cancer was not genetic.  Great news!

In September 2013, we met for the first time with Main Line Fertility.  They have a whole onco-fertility program at their clinic where they work with cancer patients to either preserve eggs/sperm prior to cancer treatment or for other fertility options for cancer patients.  They also have a whole department for using a gestational carrier. To spare you many, many details, let's just say that we had a successful IVF at Main Line Fertility in February of 2014.

During this time, we had also been in communication with The Surrogacy Experience, whom Main Line recommended.  We had decided to work with a surrogacy agency because they do all of the background checks, the psych evaluations, the home visit, etc.  Essentially, their job is to match intended parents with potential carriers.

Things were really starting to move in a positive direction - the successful IVF was definitely a milestone in terms of a huge step towards starting a family. But the hard part now was all we could do was wait to be matched. When we signed on with The Surrogacy Experience in April 2014 , we were #14 on the waiting list. We would have to wait until December of 2014 for our first match...