For the past week or so I have been busy writing my journey on becoming pregnant and having little Cody for a LGBT parenting book. So far I have written up to the point of Cody's birth, I will continue to write about our little man's fight and our journey not only as LGBT parents but also as parents of a CDH survivor. I hope to finish the rest in the next week or so. Any comments and suggestions are always greatly appreciated.
Me and my Civil Partner Sharon have always wanted children ever since we got together in July 2008. We looked into and tried many different methods to have a family of our own. We thought and talked about adoption, we looked into co-parenting with another couple, we tried artificial insemination at home but none of them were working or sounded right for us.
So in October 2012 we went to the Gay lifestyle show and saw the ideal way for us to have children of our own through becoming an egg donor and in return getting free IVF to have the family we always dreamed of. At the time I was 21 and Sharon was 41, so with Sharon being too old to be an egg donor I willing became the egg donor and the one to carry our baby. We picked our sperm donor from the clinic's own sperm bank as that way we didn't have to have it imported or screened for diseases it was already done for us, we picked a donor that matched Sharon's Asian background so that the baby would be more like her as well as me. We had to go through all sorts of test and procedures including a full physical examination (including a pelvic exam), a transvaginal ultrasounds to evaluate my fertility and the health of my ovaries, blood tests to test for a variety of diseases (including STDS and AIDS) and do genetic testing , we even had to see a counsellor before we could be consider an egg donor mainly to see if I would be able cope with giving my eggs away and how would I feel if the recipient got pregnant with my eggs but I didn't.
Once the clinic found a suitable recipient treatment started, mine and the recipient menstrual cycles were regulated to match, I had to take hormone injections for about 10 days to stimulate my ovaries to produces a load of eggs, I had to be monitored every couple of days or so to check the development of the eggs. When the eggs are mature enough I had to have another injection so the egg collection could take place in a couple of days time. The egg collection took about half an hour or so to complete, I was under general anaesthetic so was asleep through the whole procedure, afterwards I was a little sore and in pain but nothing that I couldn't handle. The eggs were divided equally between me and the recipient the donor sperm we had chosen was added to the dish containing the eggs in the clinic's lab.
The clinic phoned me the next day to let me know the outcome of the fertilisation and they then arranged for me to come back to the clinic in about 4 days time for the eggs to be transferred. Me and Sharon choose just to have one egg transplanted back as with me being young I was more likely to get pregnant first time. I was put to sleep again when they transplant the egg into my uterus when I woke up I was fine, I didn't really feel any pain just a little uncomfortable. I did a clear blue pregnancy test at home about 10 days later with Sharon by my side and I was pregnant.
After being disappointed so many times in the past, me and Sharon were delighted and so happy that we were finally expecting a baby of our own, but our happiness was soon shattered when we went for my early pregnancy scan and they found nothing we were devastated.
We talked with the fertility nurse about the scan she gave us a few reasons why nothing was showing up on the scan which included miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or the egg could have implanted later then they thought it had, they advised me to have blood tests every two to three days so they could keep an eye on my HCG level, over the week the HCG levels continued to rise which was a good thing, at the end of the week they offered us another scan and we finally saw a little sac measuring 3.2mm, we were over the moon to finally see the start of our baby, they stopped the blood tests and wanted to see us within a week or two so they could see the heartbeat.
About two weeks later we went for the faithful ultrasound that would tell us our baby had a heartbeat, I have never been so nervous in all my life, as me and Sharon sat there in the waiting room waiting for the ultrasound I started to panic and cry at the thought of them saying something bad had happened to our baby, when they called us in I was in a pretty panicked state as soon as she started to do the ultrasound she said “We have a baby and a heartbeat” to this day them words still echo through my head. We both started to cry with happiness that our baby was ok and that we could finally start looking forward to being parents.
We had a few difficulties early on in the pregnancy with some people coming to terms with the fact that me and Sharon would be a same-sex couple raising a child together, but after a while they came to terms with it and now couldn’t be happier for us and our little one. As well as the usual 12 weeks and 20 week scan, me and Sharon paid to have two private scans done one at 16 weeks to find out the gender and a 4D one at 28 weeks. My pregnancy went smoothly and without a hitch till right at the end, when at 39 weeks I went in for reduced movements and found out our baby had his bowels in his chest and had a condition known as Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia CDH for short. The first thing I thought was that we would lose our baby as I only ever heard of it on one born every minute and sadly that baby didn’t make it.
The next day I was sent to Sheffield's Jessop's Wing to be formally diagnosed that our baby had this often fatal condition. Over the next few days we didn’t even have time to really sit back and think about it I was sent all over Sheffield for different scans and tests. Our baby was given a 60% chance of surviving normally these babies are only given a 50% chance of surviving but with our baby’s being diagnosed so late on in my pregnancy and with them believing it had happened after 28 weeks they were more optimistic.
I was booked to have an induction 5 days after our baby was diagnosed with CDH, I was very scared that we may lose the one thing in our lives that we had worked so hard for and excited at the same time at the thought of finally being able to meet our baby.
My waters broke in the early hours of Thursday morning after been induced the day before, I was taken to the delivery suite but no matter how hard the midwifes and doctors tried my body wouldn’t dilate and every time they turned up the induction drug our baby’s heart trace would go bad. After trying nearly all day the doctors decided it would be best for me to go down to the operating theatre and have an emergency caesarean during this whole time Sharon was right by my side. After a very emotional and exciting day our baby boy Cody was born at 17:05 on his due date by emergency caesarean on Thursday 7th November 2013.
Me and my Civil Partner Sharon have always wanted children ever since we got together in July 2008. We looked into and tried many different methods to have a family of our own. We thought and talked about adoption, we looked into co-parenting with another couple, we tried artificial insemination at home but none of them were working or sounded right for us.
So in October 2012 we went to the Gay lifestyle show and saw the ideal way for us to have children of our own through becoming an egg donor and in return getting free IVF to have the family we always dreamed of. At the time I was 21 and Sharon was 41, so with Sharon being too old to be an egg donor I willing became the egg donor and the one to carry our baby. We picked our sperm donor from the clinic's own sperm bank as that way we didn't have to have it imported or screened for diseases it was already done for us, we picked a donor that matched Sharon's Asian background so that the baby would be more like her as well as me. We had to go through all sorts of test and procedures including a full physical examination (including a pelvic exam), a transvaginal ultrasounds to evaluate my fertility and the health of my ovaries, blood tests to test for a variety of diseases (including STDS and AIDS) and do genetic testing , we even had to see a counsellor before we could be consider an egg donor mainly to see if I would be able cope with giving my eggs away and how would I feel if the recipient got pregnant with my eggs but I didn't.
Once the clinic found a suitable recipient treatment started, mine and the recipient menstrual cycles were regulated to match, I had to take hormone injections for about 10 days to stimulate my ovaries to produces a load of eggs, I had to be monitored every couple of days or so to check the development of the eggs. When the eggs are mature enough I had to have another injection so the egg collection could take place in a couple of days time. The egg collection took about half an hour or so to complete, I was under general anaesthetic so was asleep through the whole procedure, afterwards I was a little sore and in pain but nothing that I couldn't handle. The eggs were divided equally between me and the recipient the donor sperm we had chosen was added to the dish containing the eggs in the clinic's lab.
The clinic phoned me the next day to let me know the outcome of the fertilisation and they then arranged for me to come back to the clinic in about 4 days time for the eggs to be transferred. Me and Sharon choose just to have one egg transplanted back as with me being young I was more likely to get pregnant first time. I was put to sleep again when they transplant the egg into my uterus when I woke up I was fine, I didn't really feel any pain just a little uncomfortable. I did a clear blue pregnancy test at home about 10 days later with Sharon by my side and I was pregnant.
After being disappointed so many times in the past, me and Sharon were delighted and so happy that we were finally expecting a baby of our own, but our happiness was soon shattered when we went for my early pregnancy scan and they found nothing we were devastated.
We talked with the fertility nurse about the scan she gave us a few reasons why nothing was showing up on the scan which included miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or the egg could have implanted later then they thought it had, they advised me to have blood tests every two to three days so they could keep an eye on my HCG level, over the week the HCG levels continued to rise which was a good thing, at the end of the week they offered us another scan and we finally saw a little sac measuring 3.2mm, we were over the moon to finally see the start of our baby, they stopped the blood tests and wanted to see us within a week or two so they could see the heartbeat.
About two weeks later we went for the faithful ultrasound that would tell us our baby had a heartbeat, I have never been so nervous in all my life, as me and Sharon sat there in the waiting room waiting for the ultrasound I started to panic and cry at the thought of them saying something bad had happened to our baby, when they called us in I was in a pretty panicked state as soon as she started to do the ultrasound she said “We have a baby and a heartbeat” to this day them words still echo through my head. We both started to cry with happiness that our baby was ok and that we could finally start looking forward to being parents.
We had a few difficulties early on in the pregnancy with some people coming to terms with the fact that me and Sharon would be a same-sex couple raising a child together, but after a while they came to terms with it and now couldn’t be happier for us and our little one. As well as the usual 12 weeks and 20 week scan, me and Sharon paid to have two private scans done one at 16 weeks to find out the gender and a 4D one at 28 weeks. My pregnancy went smoothly and without a hitch till right at the end, when at 39 weeks I went in for reduced movements and found out our baby had his bowels in his chest and had a condition known as Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia CDH for short. The first thing I thought was that we would lose our baby as I only ever heard of it on one born every minute and sadly that baby didn’t make it.
The next day I was sent to Sheffield's Jessop's Wing to be formally diagnosed that our baby had this often fatal condition. Over the next few days we didn’t even have time to really sit back and think about it I was sent all over Sheffield for different scans and tests. Our baby was given a 60% chance of surviving normally these babies are only given a 50% chance of surviving but with our baby’s being diagnosed so late on in my pregnancy and with them believing it had happened after 28 weeks they were more optimistic.
I was booked to have an induction 5 days after our baby was diagnosed with CDH, I was very scared that we may lose the one thing in our lives that we had worked so hard for and excited at the same time at the thought of finally being able to meet our baby.
My waters broke in the early hours of Thursday morning after been induced the day before, I was taken to the delivery suite but no matter how hard the midwifes and doctors tried my body wouldn’t dilate and every time they turned up the induction drug our baby’s heart trace would go bad. After trying nearly all day the doctors decided it would be best for me to go down to the operating theatre and have an emergency caesarean during this whole time Sharon was right by my side. After a very emotional and exciting day our baby boy Cody was born at 17:05 on his due date by emergency caesarean on Thursday 7th November 2013.