IVF Land on Surrogacy World

Christy called me the Anti-blogger the other day since it has been so long between my posts. I have been so interested in the medical side and the adventure to Mexico that I have had much to share about my investigation into IVF and Surrogacy. We had a successful pregnancy test and have gotten through the iffy stages and are flowing through a very boring healthy pregnancy. It is very nice to have a surrogate that is drama free. So this leads me to my issue of the day. What is left for me to blog about? Your normal IM would write - "We went shopping today and bought this cute outfit!!!!!" "It was so much fun!!!!!" I would tell you to - "just kill me now" if I was forced to write about clothes and shopping - But our child does need a dad so I need to play it conservative and just stay away from the topic as much as possible. And the fact that we have a girl coming takes away from the fun of telling Christy that I will dress our boy in pink. I am busy with t...

Here is the pictures from the ultrasound. If you look closely you can learn Paco's sex.

The Karotyping final results are in and Paco is healthy all the way around. The pregnancy is in the boring stage and our last OB visit had a heat beat at 168 beats per minute. With the DNA testing completed we know what if we have a boy or a girl. But, I am not sharing. At least not today. We wanted to make sure that we had a viable, healthy baby before we shared the information with our family. Now that the testing is completed Christy has gone and shared the information with her family, however mine is still in the dark. Until this Saturday. Paco is having a party. It is a coming out party. In 3D. My Mom and Dad get to meet the new granchild for the first time at a 3D ultrasound. At this time Paco will come out of the closet and let everyone present know the real deal. Is Paco a Boy or a Girl?

We doubled down on 21 and won. Check out the Celebration. Paco passed the FISH test . He is beating one animal after another. Easily. The FISH Basketball Court. Paco is off camera. A baby without Down syndrome will have two fluorescent signals corresponding to their two number 21 chromosomes . A person with trisomy 21 will have three fluorescent signals corresponding to their three number 21 chromosomes. Paco has two number 21 chromosomes! Win number one. And then came the FISH testing . A typical FISH analysis will tell you how many 13, 18, 21, X and Y chromosomes. These are the chromosomes that can result in trisomies for humans. Paco only has two of each - so he is a winner across the board. He swept the competition. Christy has claimed that his prize will be a Gold Fish. She says "You beat the Fish - You get a Fish."

When you are told that they are testing your future child for Downs and that you have a 1/69 chance of having it based on your age alone - that sounds bad. Horrific really. Then when they do a visual test it comes back inconclusive - that sounds bad. Horrific really. However, when you look at the odds and breakdown that 1/69 actual means there is a 1.44% chance we would have Downs and a 98.56% chance of having a healthy baby . That sounds positive to me. It's the first time - in our whole IVF life that the odds have been on our side. Squarely, on our side. I mean when doing IVF we had higher odds for getting triplets (2-3%) then we know have for getting downs. Clearly it happens, but it is rare. Also, 70-80 of Downs cases can be determined straight from the visual of the nuchal. This means that we really have a .0432% of having a Downs baby since Downs couldn't be visually determined. That gives us a 99.9568% chance of having a healthy baby . Which number would you rather have ...

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Nothing comes without a cost on Surrogacy World. Everything has it's odds, it's percentages, it's success or failure rate. Today, we had the nuchal test done. And as expected it was inconclusive. Which means we can wait - weeks for more data - that will also be inconclusive. Or more forward with a CVS test that has a loss rate of 1 in 200/300 depending on who you talk to about the procedure. Oh, the joys of parenthood. The goal today was for a skinny neck. A neck fold at 3.0 or greater has an 80% chance of downs. 4.0 or greater has a 100% chance of downs. An average neck fold is 1.4 - 1.8 regardless of age. Our was a 2.35. Which of course is inconclusive, but a higher number then the doctor is "comfortable with." More testing is suggested. We had bloodwork done today. With a second bloodwork test done in 3 weeks. Based on our age we will likely "screen positive" which really just means we "don't know" if you have Downs, b...

Today is our nuchal scan. The happy thoughts of the test are few. One positive result is that we should get to find out the sex of the baby. That is fun and exciting, but really "just the spoon full of sugar to make the medicine go down" as Mary Poppins would say. One silver lining, in a test full of horrors. The real fact of the test is that we will get a number. They will tell us what our chances are of having a child with Downs Syndrome. Not a definitive number that puts your fears to rest, but a vague number that just brings on more questions. An answer that might not bring peace, but doubt. And maybe more tests if we have a negative result...... Our peaceful, boring, healthy pregnancy could get spun around today. Or worse, simply put in limbo for weeks, so that we can do nothing, but worry. Oh, the joys of parenthood. Today, we will get our child's Downs number..... It will be 1 in ____________ 20 yrs 1 in 2000 30 yrs 1 in 900 35 yrs 1 in 356 36 yrs 1 in 240 38 yr...