How surrogacy found us, and why it gives us new hope

Our original plan was to complete one final IVF procedure this year and throw in genetic testing for good measure. This is the only major testing we haven't yet carried out and it *may* give us some answers. For those who understand the process of IVF, we planned an egg retrieval and fertilization, but instead of transferring on a five day plan, we agreed with our doctor (for medical reasons) to freeze all embryos on day one and carry out frozen transfers at a later date. If this didn't work, the plan was to accept defeat and move on to domestic adoption.

Enter Jenn.

Jenn is a friend who was aware of some of the struggles we have been through, and not knowing if surrogacy would be of benefit, offered to carry a child for us.

Chris and I discussed the idea at length and it wasn't difficult to come to the decision that it would give us the best possible chance to be successful with IVF. If we had searched out a surrogate ourselves we could never have found someone better than Jenn. Not only is she a great person, but she has carried two children of her own AND carried twins as a gestational surrogate.

Statistics show the best results for IVF happen when the eggs are retrieved from one person and the fresh embryos transferred to another. The medical reasons are complex and generally there are far fewer couples who need to go to these lengths. Fresh transfers are also more successful than frozen ones so having the opportunity to do a fresh transfer is an amazing gift for us.

Using a gestational surrogate gives us a new hope that IVF just *might* work for us. It has so much going for it and maximises the best possible outcome for IVF. It's something radical that we've never tried before, and the best part.....Jenn is proven to be very good at pregnancy!

We are so excited to be starting this journey. Whatever the outcome we know that this will be a positive experience for us.

The simple facts

Our story is complicated. We have been through many years of infertility testing and unsuccessful procedures. I won't go into uneccesary detail other than to say there is no simple explanation to why we are unable to conceive a child. There is only so much failure it is possible to live through before it's time to give up and move on. We are so very blessed to have already expanded our family by adoption, but call us greedy if you will, we believe our family would be enriched further by more children.

In the land of infertility the simple questions others are asked cannot be answered quite so easily.

"How many children would you like?"

The answer is not, "We would like *insert number here*", that's way too simple.

The answer is "We would like the number we are blessed with, and we would hope that is at least one!"

When persuing adoption, for the most part the parents are in control of the number of children being adopted. Unless there are unusual circumstances (sibling groups and suchlike) when choosing to adopt one, one is the number of children who join the family. In our case, we were hoping to adopt two and were overjoyed to be referred a set of siblings, we couldn't have hoped for a better outcome.

However, when persuing assisted reproduction the control of the outcome is not so simple. For each of the six IVF cycles we have been prepared for the possibility of multiples, it comes with the territory. It worked well to mentally prepare us for the adoption of twins, but so far biological multiples have not been on the agenda. Each IVF cycle starts with a blank page so back to the question our answer to this upcoming IVF cycle is "We would like however many we are blessed with, and we hope that number is no more than two!"

As to what our future may hold, we just don't try and speculate anymore. If our family is complete with our current two, we will be forever grateful to have them in our lives, if we are blessed with more we would be estatic, we are happy to raise as many as we believe we can emotionally, financially and physically care for.