Pasta and the Planned Pregnancy

My family lovingly jokes that I am over fertile. At almost every family event there is at least one joke made to this fact. My husband is told not to look at me, because he might knock me up at the buffet, Fertile Myrtle gets thrown around and my favorite nickname is one given to me by my brother, Pasta Sauce or Pasta for short. He figured out early on that calling me Prego was entirely too over done and with that “Pasta Sauce” was born. 

As most of you know, I have three gorgeous daughters, but just like this is my first time being a Surrogate, it’s also my first planned pregnancy. 

Yes, the nicknames and jokes have merit! My husband and I have been fortunate in the fact that we have never had to really plan a pregnancy. They just kind of showed up!

Since it has always been a little too easy to conceive, I worried that I would have a hard time getting pregnant now that all eyes were on me. I know, sounds crazy, but I had my insecurities just like everyone else. Now that everyone is counting on my body to do what it normally does so easily, am I going to be able to do this? What if I used up my special baby making powers?

I wasn’t alone in my fears; everyone seemed to be a bundle of nerves, although I seriously doubt my cousins were worried about my baby making powers being used up. N & R had been down a very long, painful journey for a lot longer then I had been in the position to help and I’m sure were just as worried as I that this new journey was going to another bumpy one.

N and I started our respective medications about the same time, I took a medicine to get my body ready to receive N & R’s embryo at the transfer and N started getting shots to get her body ready for the egg extraction. Once N’s eggs were extracted and R did “his part”, I started another medication to prep my body for pregnancy while the embryos grew in the lab. N & R got daily updates on how the embryos were growing and we talked daily about the excitement of it all.

After 5 days in the lab, a few embryos were ready. N, R and I met early on Implantation Day and nervously awaiting the procedure.  The whole thing took less then an hour and 30 minutes of that was me lying very still to make sure the embryo “stuck”. We talked nursery ideas, told jokes and funny stories to pass the time and when the nurse came in to kick us out, the whole experience felt a little too easy. That  did nothing for my fears, but we went out to breakfast and focused on only the positive.

Waiting 9 days to find out if you are pregnant is the worst! I felt different, but thought it might be my mind playing tricks on me. We were warned against taking an at home pregnancy test, for fear it would show a false positive or false negative. Each day we got more anxious, but we survived the wait and finally the day came!

After getting my blood drawn, N and I went out for pedicures to pass the time. I will never forget nagging the nurses to run the test immediately and begging them to call us right away. I will also never forget the excitement when N’s phone rang, 45 minutes later, in the middle of Wal-Mart’s nail place. I’m sure the pedicurist and fellow Pedi Patriots thought we were insane, jumping around, laughing and crying all at once, but we didn’t care. With a “Hello” and a simple nod from N, our lives changed forever. 
We were having a baby!