From the daddies!

K, one of the daddies, agreed to write a post about everything that has happened until now!  Thanks K for writing an AWESOME post!

(They wish to remain anonymous, hence the photoshopped faces)

"Hi everyone!  First off, we would like to thank you all for the tremendous support you’ve shown Christie and M (and the boys!) throughout this process.  We knew from the moment we first met Christie that she was the perfect match for us, and that’s just been reaffirmed day after day.  We’ve been together for almost 13 years, and have been talking about building a family since just about a week after we met (when you know, you know, right?), so we’ve had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for this whole process – but mental preparation will only get you so far, and finding Christie has been an absolute godsend.  (And she didn’t even ask me to say that!)

 

After the transfer, we had all the internal battles you might expect.  Do we test early?  Do we want to know?  How would we deal with setbacks or less-than-encouraging news?  We wanted to be cautious, and it took all the energy we could muster to quiet down that little voice (OK, big voice) in our heads screaming TEST TEST TEST!  We knew that Christie would be peeing on all the sticks she could get her hands on, but we decided to be more measured and wait until more time had passed before learning the results.  Originally, we planned to wait until our first beta.  I asked Christie how we would get the results from the clinic, and she said she wasn’t sure whether the clinic would call her directly, or whether our fertility clinic would get the results and then call us.  None of us liked the idea of waiting for the fertility clinic (would it be an e-mail?  phone call?), especially since that would mean we wouldn’t be (cyber-)together when we got the news.  So we agreed that we’d wait  until 10dp6dt to get the results from Christie.  That way, the beta would be either a confirmation of what we already knew, or would be a last gasp of hope if the HPTs were negative.  And, more importantly, we’d all be online at the same time to share the moment.  And as it happened, we were visiting our closest friends (Dr. R and his husband C) at the time, so we got to share the moment with them.  We scheduled a Skype for 5pm Eastern on Sunday.

 

We woke up Sunday morning and were bursting at the seams, so we asked if Christie and our Coordinator Extraordinaire (CE) (who has still managed to keep up with us second-by-second, even though she’s on vacation in Europe!) could move things up by a couple of hours.  Luckily, they both agreed.  Even then, we were balls of nerves in the hours leading to our Skype call.  We tried to distract ourselves with work, but neither of us could really concentrate.  We’re both really protective of each other, and neither of us wanted to get overly excited just yet, in case we needed to be strong to support the other if things didn’t go as hoped.  We text with Christie all the time, and in the days leading up to our call, Christie had used the present tense to describe POPCORN.  After each message, we dissected every word to uncover hidden meaning.  Christie was great about not revealing anything to us, but we couldn’t help sifting for clues.  We put the brakes on our thoughts running rampant by reminding ourselves that Christie is an optimistic person, and she might not have had a positive HPT yet, and was just being optimistic that things would work fine eventually.

 

So, back to the Skype.  Even though the transfer went really well, everything still seemed so theoretical.  And we knew that the outcome of the call could change all of that to very, very real.  But as we connected to Skype, neither of us really knew how real “real” would be.  We had a few technical issues at first (who knew connecting video from the US Southwest to the East coast to Europe would have glitches?), but finally got everyone connected.  We made a very brave attempt to feign patience once we were all connected.  At first.  It was great to see everyone on the screen, especially the boys, whose smiling faces gave us a reminder of why we’re doing all of this.  Luckily, we didn’t have to wait for what we were there for.  Christie held up the test showing “Pregnant.”  I keep using the expression “over the moon,” but it doesn’t even begin to express how happy we were to see that!  It did, indeed, all become very, very real.  But in the best way possible!  Everything we’ve hoped, dreamed, planned, and pined for all became concrete with just one little digital word on a screen.  Instant disbelief, relief, amazement, emotion… and anxiety!  Suddenly, our minds shifted from “what if she is?” to “what do we do now?”  There are so many milestones yet to come, and we’ve read about them all, but now they weren’t just words from the Googles.  Now they are real world steps that will lead to POPCORN becoming our baby.  When Christie mentioned that we’ll have betas, then heartbeat confirmation – heartbeat! – it really drove home that we aren’t just talking theoretically anymore.  It’s our daughter or son.  The family we’ve always wanted.  And we couldn’t be happier that we got to share the moment with Christie, M, the boys, and our Coordinator Extraordinaire!  Once we were able to breathe (and form normal words – I think I pulled a muscle from smiling so much), we invited our friends Dr. R and C to come into the room to join in the celebration.  True to form, they had champagne chilling to toast the happy news.  While we make every effort to stand in solidarity with Christie and everything she’s having to give up for POPCORN, we made an exception to drink some bubbly!  (The celebrations continued for many hours thereafter.)

 

So thank you to Christie, M, the boys, our CE, and to everyone supporting us along the way.  We know there’s a long road ahead but, thanks to pee sticks, it is now a very real road with a very real POPCORN."