How do you begin your very first Blog entry? Introductions, explanations, background information… All of these seem so typical. But necessary. So let’s get on with it:

Introduction: I am a 30 year old married female who works as an elementary librarian. I have two dogs, but no children. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s not that I don’t WANT children. I just can’t have them myself. My complex Congenital Heart Defects (CHD) have made it difficult to fulfill my dream of becoming a mother. Difficult, but hopefully not impossible.

Explanation: I am hopeful that I will someday be a mother. At this moment in time, my husband and I are most focused on the possibility of using a surrogate mother to bring a child into our family. We want to place an embryo made from my egg and his sperm into the womb of another woman. Will this happen? I don’t know. Right now I’m doing my research to find out everything I can about surrogacy and the reality of using my own eggs. If we find out that using my eggs is not an possiblity, we’ll move on to other options. But for now, the focus is surrogacy. This is my “Heart Journey” in more than one way.

1. My physical heart has shaped the journey of my life, making me the person I am and taking me down this path towards hopeful motherhood.
2. My emotional heart is taking this journey with me. It goes through ups and downs, highs and lows. This emotional journey will hopefully lead me to my heart’s desire, being a mother.

Background Information:
I was born in 1976 with complex congenital heart defects (CHD), including situs inversus totalus (all organs mirror imaged from “normal”), CCTGV (congenitally corrected transposition of the great vessles: the right and left sides of my heart have been reversed in function due to the switch of the “great vessels”), large ASD and VSD (holes between the top and bottom chambers of my heart), and pulminary stenosis (a narrowing of the pulminary artery).

I have since undergone many surgeries. My first, a shunt, was when I was 5 years old. My most recent was two months ago to fix a lead on my recently placed ICD (internal cardiac defibrillator). The total comes to 16 at this time. Not all of them have been heart related, surprisingly enough!

I met my husband when I was 19 and a freshman in college. We started dating a month after becoming friends. We continued to date for the next 5 years, until he finally “popped the question” on our 5th anniversary. We married 6 months later in June of 2001. He has been there for 12 of my 16 surgeries. He has known from the very beginning that I would not be able to carry his child, but he loves me anyway. We are so lucky to have each other and I want very much to see him become a father.

We originally thought the only option available to us would be adoption. However, a coworker (and my mother) encouraged us to look into surrogacy. At first I was hesitant, feeling I’d be way too jealous of the woman who carried my child. Wouldn’t she bond with the baby? How could she “give up” the child after carrying it for 9 months? My questions were soon answered when I joined an online group for SMs and IMs (Surrogate mothers and Intended mothers). I learned that SMs feel differently about their surrogate preganancies than they do with their own. They never think of the child as theirs and see it as babysitting for 9 months. Rather than “giving up” the baby, they see it as “giving back” the baby to his/her parents. It was such an eye opener. After discussing it with my husband, we decided this was something we wanted to try. Not because we were set on having our own genetics in our baby, but so that we could be there for everything. Conception, pregnancy tests, sonograms, heart beat, birth, etc.

At this point in time we are still doing research. I have talked to my cardiologist and am hopeful that I will be given clearance to use my own eggs. My next step is to make an appointment with an RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist) to find out how feasable it would be for me to use my eggs considering my heart and history of ovarian cysts (didn’t I mention THAT complication?!). If things work out in our favor we will start looking for an SM to carry our child. My hope is that we’ll not only find someone to be a carrier, but also a friend and extention of the family. If at all possible, I’d love to have contracts signed with our SM in time to attempt a transfer next summer. We shall see.

I intend to use this blog as a place to document our journey. Our Heart Journey. Hopefully our journey will take us on a new adventure into parenthood.