Tips For Easing the Pain of Fertility Injections
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
Even if you’re not afraid of needles, the thought of daily fertility medication injections can be overwhelming for intended mothers, egg donors, and gestational carriers alike. We’ve all seen those photos on social media – the ones where the newborn baby is surrounded by empty medical syringes – and anyone going through fertility treatment can certainly relate. Injections are a fact of IVF life for most people. There are some doctors who offer an injection-free protocol for gestational carriers – they use birth control pills instead of Lupron, estrogen patches or pills, and progesterone suppo ..read more
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Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
Curiously, the album I had planned to record my second surrogacy never happened, despite how much I treasured the one I’d made after my first surrogacy. Was it lack of time that prevented me from tackling it? Possibly, as I was finishing my own kids’ first-year photo albums around that same time and maybe I was feeling a little burned out. But I don’t think that was really it. The truth is that I really had no reason to make an elaborate memory album for myself because I knew that our first year together – the time we spent as a team,  bringing the twin boys into the world – was not a fi ..read more
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What Is a Three-Person Embryo?
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
Even though in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is no longer considered the least bit experimental, there are still plenty of aspects to it that scientists continue to work on, namely in pursuit of increasing success rates given that it’s still a costly treatment. While improving the process of IVF is one avenue of research, a newer, more cutting-edge aspect is genetic modification using the DNA from a third party donor, which can increase success rates by correcting genetic abnormalities in the embryos a couple creates together. This technology currently exists, and the first baby was born from it ..read more
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Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
I laid her down on top of my legs while I adjusted my bra and gown, pushing both aside so she could easily access my breast. It took us a few times to get a good latch, but within a couple of minutes I could hear the sound that brought a wide smile to my face – swallowing. She was nursing, and nursing successfully – even though this was only our second time at it, she knew exactly what to do. She not only seemed very competent at what she was doing, she seemed very comfortable as well. Even at only a few hours old, I felt she had an innate sense of our relationship – her job was to latch and ..read more
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Sperm Shopping: One Woman's Experience Choosing a Sperm Donor
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
By Alice Crisci My mom is the queen of catalogs. Her catalogs served as our first internet, really. Want to know why you need a “As seen on TV” watermelon slicer? Ask mom’s catalog. Do you need a funny, thoughtful or personalized gift? Check her catalogs. New dress? No problem. Something knitted, crocheted, double breasted, faux leather, bedazzled? She has a catalog for that too. In fact, I dare say, there is only one catalog in the US she has never and will never receive: A sperm donor catalog.   You have to be a certain kind of unique to receive this precious, multi-page, double-sided ..read more
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Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
If my intended parents have been through a lot of pregnancy losses, I tend to think about those losses – picturing them in my mind. Not picturing them in graphic detail though, but rather in terms of how they must have felt while enduring failure after failure. I’m always cautiously optimistic that we will succeed in having their baby – and this is my job, to be cautiously optimistic. Not overly sunny and confident, because I know better. I know there’s too much at stake to approach the surrogacy process with anything more than guarded hope. It feels irresponsible to me to express anything mo ..read more
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Surrogacy and Breastfeeding: What Are the Options?
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
Breastfeeding, for some women, can seem like a natural and logical choice, while other feel ambivalent or even conflicted about it, while some at the outset know that nursing is not for them. Some women decide to wait until their baby is born to make a decision about how they want to feed. How to feed your baby is always a very personal decision. When many, if not most, people hear about a surrogacy arrangement, they assume that the option of breastfeeding is off the table, which is understandable. If the intended mother isn’t giving birth herself, how can she breastfeed? And certainly a gest ..read more
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Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
I was 37 weeks and not ready to let go. I loved being pregnant with these boys, I loved their parents, I loved their family, and I loved the experience of carrying for them. I loved being loved by them; I was living and breathing in the middle of the very love story I’d longed to write since before my first surrogacy. When it came to embracing surrogacy for its ability to bring two families together and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts and reveling in the love created between strangers, in this couple I had more than met my match.      ..read more
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Does A Gestational Carrier Have Any Genetic Influence on the Child She Carries?
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
Gestational surrogacy is often joked about from the surrogate’s perspective as “it’s their bun in my oven!,” which really does sum up the process – an egg from the intended mother, sperm from the intended father, and a host uterus to grow and deliver the baby. The gestational carrier has no genetic link with the child she carries, which is seen as one of the chief benefit of the gestational surrogacy process. Despite the fact that the embryo’s genetic material comes from its parents (or egg/sperm donor), there are ways that the gestational carrier does in fact influence the fetus she carries ..read more
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Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making
Surrogacy by Design - Susan Fuller
by Susan Fuller
3y ago
I paid, and breakfast in hand, waited for her to make it through the checkout line. It was one of the only times, in all nine of my surrogate pregnancies, that I would pay for my own meal. The only other time was prior to the pregnancy when she and her husband went out for dinner with Doug and I after we met with the social worker. In every other pregnancy when I ate with the baby’s parents, they insisted on paying. It was a kind, heartfelt gesture they all had extended to me and something I came to appreciate. At first it was awkward, after paying my own way through the first surrogacy, but ..read more
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