Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Time it is a-crawlin

Somebody asked me when I'll be able to share everything I've learned about surrogacy, and I answered, only after this process is done for me. And I'm praying it does not get done for atleast 3 and a half  more months.That is so far away, and time, it seems to be crawling forward.

I have such a long way to go before making it into the safe zone. Even at the the best Indian NICUs, 24 weeks is probably considerably less promising than it is in the western world, where it is not very hopeful to start with. At 28 weeks, you possibly start to have some chance of making it. At some point, I think I'm going to put together a list of studies of what exactly are the realities faced by a baby born at 28 weeks. It is definitely something people should think about before deciding how many embryos they want to transfer.

Yesterday, the risks of pregnancy sort of struck close to home. One family employee's wife is, from the sounds of it, facing intrauterine growth restriction and pregnancy complications with a twin pregnancy. Here is a girl who was not infertile and really young, and should have had no issues with pregnancy. Her doctors told her that had she been carrying a singleton, her chances would be better  She is 28 weeks along, but the thing is she probably wont get to be at the hospitals with a good NICU..apparently her doctors told them that things did not look good. Hoping things end well. Gave her husband a Vitamin D sachet, for what little it its worth, because with a twin pregnancy with no supplementation, she was bound to have been badly deficient.

At my end, the only think I need to worry about continues to be Vitamin D. J cannot take the 2000 IU Vitamin D pills (she claims they make her throw up, but says she can down calcium and iron, which I find rather contradictory). I don't want to keep continuously giving her sachets, and the key is taking it regularly. So now I'm trying to have Vitamin D oil drops sent from America. As things continue to progress (you note that I have gone from saying "if" to "as," which represents a huge leap of faith for me), I will need about a gzillion things off Amazon, which I will somehow have to have sent to India. God I miss Amazon prime.

Once we make it past the 20 week mark (2 weeks away), I'll have to start thinking about fun stuff like telling people at work and how to arrange to feed my baby. At least the latter should make for an interesting post!

8 comments:

  1. I hear you on time crawling by. So happy and encouraged to hear of the progress, though! Wish it weren't the case that NICUs in India and the U.S. have such disparity. Sending prayers for your family employee and also for your baby to keep on growin' (and time to pass quickly!). Curious how the rest of your life is going too...

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  2. Holly, thanks for visiting. I honestly think you are just amazing, the way you are handling all this.

    To answer your question, It is pretty important in any pregnancy, because it is a nature's safeguard to protect against preeclampsia, inflammation (it is a potent anti inflammatory agent), and infection (it is require for the synthesis of this anti-microbial peptide that is the first line of defense against all bugs).

    Studies now show that pregnant women need more vitamin D than non-pregnant women, because you consume a LOT of it. Each gestating baby would act as a vitamin D sink, because the baby needs tons of it too, for many, many processes to go properly. So the more babies you carry, the more you need.

    Finally, many studies have shown that if your vitamin D levels are low, you are at higher risk for preterm birth and pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia and infection, which can result in Pprom.

    All of this is why I suggested you get your levels checked, because if they are low now, then you know what you could do differently if you chose to carry the baby yourself, and that knowledge could be a reassurance in itself, to help ward off some of that fear that will be with you constantly :(

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  3. I have been now going to a ob gyne in my city who also happens to be a teaching faculty for some of the medical colleges in the Pmiddle east region. For my case he routed me to a dr in london who works for a miscarriage research and in their protocol too they mentioned that even prior to concieving women with RPL should be taking vit D. I praised you Jay in my mind when i heard that :) coz you had been telling this all along. He also said that though there isnt a medical test that could prove that vit d is causing the problem but they have seen that it has helped a lot of women in thier research.

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  4. Btw...have you heard of aramex shop n ship?? I think they recently opened in india too. We use it here in qatar all the time and its as good as shopping from the US n UK :)

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  5. Thanks...I checked it out...I have a few questions about how it works, I'll mail you offline :)

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  6. Thanks Kristina...I'll post about that sometime :)

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  7. lol thanks. Ironically, taking too much Vitamin D did not help me (I had the worst time of it when my levels were super high: one BFN and one trisomy pregnancy), but i think a mild increase in my levels did help, because when I first started taking it, my luteal phase length definitely increased. There have been many people who have said that coincidentally or not, they got (and sometimes stayed) pregnant right after they had fixed their deficiency.

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  8. I know :) but since these are on might-help category i still take it. Also, the heat in middle east is too harsh so we hardly get any sun. Drs here prescribe vit D a bit more than usual though.

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