Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Christmas in Mumbai...hoping for good news from Rotunda...

Unfortunately, our go with a frozen cycle in the Fall was unsuccessful.

We did decide on one more try - we'd really like to have kids; many of our friends children are growing up very quickly and we'd love to have that experience before we get too old.

We feel like pros - repeating the same steps over the past several months - select a surrogate, start on the medication, travel to Mumbai, lots of visits to the clinic and then the transfer. We spent a lot of time doing ultrasounds, being excited about the good number of eggs (14) and their reasonable quality (4 As). The retrieval was two days before Christmas, with the transfer completed the day after Christmas. We've spoke with Dr. Kadam at Rotunda, and everything is proceeding smoothly.

Great news for another couple - they learned that their surrogate was successfully pregnant while we were there. Another success case out there. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we can be added to that list... We'll hear whether the pregnancy is positive about January 10th.

Lessons learned on this trip:
1) We paid more attention to getting lots of protein and water after the transfer, which made the post-transfer recovery go much faster.
2) Staying at the Marriott was much more pleasant than staying in a 3 star hotel. With all the stresses, and the holidays, this trip was much more enjoyable than our first Mumbai trip. And they have really, really great service.
3) I don't know about most people, but the list of tourist sites we missed on the first trip was quite small, so we didn't actually see much that was new.
4) We continue to love the Indian food, but stayed extra safe and ate only at very reputable places that cater to many westerners. No sense in getting sick in the middle of a cycle.
5) After the Mumbai bombings, security is up, and visitors are down. This was good for us - less traffic and better hotel rates.
6) Even if you've done this before, the whole process is nerve wracking. Our hopes are high...