Growing My Family Tree (post cancer)

Before my diagnosis my husband and I had the discussion of getting ready to grow our family. It wasn’t until we got out of the big city of New York and moved to Chicago that we were ready to settle down. We knew we wanted to grow our family, but let’s be honest, NYC wasn’t the easiest place for us to do that. Not that we couldn’t, but financially we weren’t ready and honestly I wasn’t mentally ready. 

We didn’t know that it would take us four years before we would hold our beautiful little girl in our arms. Before I started my chemotherapy, my husband and I met with a fertility navigator to talk about how to preserve my eggs and create embryos to freeze for a later date. We then met with a psychologist to discuss having our family via IVF. The entire time I sat in the chair I cried. How was I supposed to think about fighting for my life, but at the same time talk about bringing another life into the world? I was still in the “why me” phase and in disbelief that this was actually happening to me. We talked about the medication (tamoxifen) that I would be on after my treatment for 5-10 years to help prevent the cancer from coming back. With this all being said, I was informed that I wouldn’t be able to carry a child while on this estrogen receptor modulator (endocrine therapy). So to even have a chance of having a child with my genes, I would need to go through the IVF process all while not knowing what was going to happen through my treatment and how I would even be able to have this child. 

My husband and I met with the fertility doctor, filling out forms and having tests. I never thought I’d have to answer the questions I did. Do parents that have children naturally have to worry about what to do with the eggs or embryos if they aren’t used or how to store them or how they are going to be carried to create a human? No, they are just able to have sex, the sperm goes up the tubes and finds the egg and there you go! Now I fully understand that many couples these days have to find other ways to have families due to infertility or genetic problems. Believe me I feel for them, however at this time I was just so mad and didn’t care what everyone else’s problems were. I didn’t want to be stuck every day with the estrogen (that could be harmful to the start of my cancer treatment) and go in every other day for blood work and an ultrasound. I started the process of ovarian stimulation. Who knew that this would be the last time my ovaries would serve a purpose in my body (the last period I would have as well). I was told that I would need one to two weeks of ovarian stimulation before my eggs were ready for retrieval. This didn’t put any more stress on timing for starting chemotherapy. NOT! I wanted a family, but I just wanted to get rid of the cancer in me first. My body was slow to respond to the medication I was taking so it took a little bit longer for me to have the eggs removed.

As soon as they were ready I was sedated and given pain medication. The eggs were removed from the follicles through a needle connected to a suction device. I had a lot of eggs removed, but that didn’t mean that I would have that many embryos. The first week we went to the fertility clinic my husband provided semen sample. The sperm would wait to be mixed after the egg retrieval.  After the retrieval, the healthy eggs met up with my husband’s sperm and the medical team attempted to create embryos. Not all of the eggs were fertilized - we had 7 embryos! All of this would be put on hold.

A year later I would finish with my final dose of Herceptin. It was time to start living without monthly exams - ultrasounds, bloodwork, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. I was not ready for this, but I needed to move forward. One of the things that came up was our family, if and how we would grow it. I told my husband that we couldn’t grow our family until I was ready, but honestly I don’t know if I ever will be 100%. I’ve always had anxiety and depression and then on top of that this cancer diagnosis didn’t put me in a great place. I knew that I couldn’t focus on cancer for the rest of my life though and that it would be a beautiful thing to consider growing our family sooner than later. March of 2016, my husband and I had a very long and deep conversation about how this would happen.

I talked a lot about tamoxifen and babies with my oncologist. While there was no true research to show that if I got off the tamoxifen that it would come back, there also weren’t facts stating that it wouldn’t come back. I had already made a lot of decisions that took a lot out of me and I just couldn’t get myself to a place of stopping medication that was supposed to keep the cancer away. This being said, now what? Surrogacy? Adoption? These were words that never came up when we first started talking about kids. I had a family member that was adopted so I was familiar, however surrogacy? What was that? How could we go the route of adoption when we wanted to have one of our own? I was open to it, but I knew my husband really wanted one of our own. Could I convince him?  How would we pay for it though? I mean how would we pay for the surrogate?  

We decided after many hard and emotional conversations that I would not get off of the tamoxifen. I cried a lot about this knowing that I was giving up naturally carrying our child. I already had lost the opportunity to breastfeed, but now I was going to give up part of what I thought made you a woman and that was carrying a baby for 9 months. This loss would eat away at me for a long time. I would finally come to terms with it, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Now that I wouldn’t have the embryo implanted in me, what would we do to have kids? I continued the adoption conversation, but it didn’t really go anywhere nor did we do any research on it. I think I was more open to it for the first time than my husband. He said he would consider it but as I already mentioned for him having one of our own was important. I was the one that put us in this position so the least I could do was consider the surrogate route. We first talked about using a family member. As we researched what the role of a surrogate was, we found out that unfortunately the family and friends that we would consider wouldn’t be qualified.

Personal qualifications for a surrogate:

• Age between 21-39 years old

• BMI between 18-32

• Non-smoker living in a non-smoking home

• No history of criminal activity

• Surrogate and partner must agree to psychological testing

• Must agree to a home check with all persons and pets currently residing in the home

• Stable, responsible lifestyle

Medical qualifications for a surrogate:

• Have given birth to and be raising at least one child

• Uncomplicated pregnancies and deliveries as documented by prenatal and delivery records

• Able to provide OB/GYN records and a clearance letter

• No history of clinical mental illness

• Financial qualifications

• Not currently receiving welfare, using Medicaid, or supplemental security income (SSI)

• Financially sound started researching surrogacy agencies here in Chicago and started the meetings and conversations. 

*From Conceivabilities

We then started researching surrogacy agencies here in Chicago the feelings and emotions continued to stir. I couldn’t believe that this was what we were doing. I still think about those days and how difficult it was for me to get through. Both agencies we met with had the same system in place, but the one we chose just gave us a better vibe when we were sitting in their office talking about their match process. 

Now it was time to sign on with Conceivabilities - a surrogacy agency in Chicago - to hopefully grow our family. It would be a long road ahead, but we were blessed with someone so beautiful at the end that it was so worth it!

Stay tuned for the surrogacy journey!