Thinking ahead (on vaccination strategies)

Today marks 32 weeks. Rather unbelievable. I've started buying stuff, which freaks me out quite a bit. I have to make a significant purchase/decision soon: the mattress. The options for cribs in India don't seem so bad. The options for mattresses suck. They are all made of PVC foam or are "antibacterial,"which is just a fancy sales gimmick, but is actually far from ideal. And pillows. OMG, does the Indian baby market abound in these. I shudder to think who would buy, for example, this product. Despite the rather appalling lack of consumer awareness, surprisingly, the incidence of crib death is lower in India than that in many other countries.

So I'm going to have to buy my mattress from the US, or get it made myself (you can get gaddi makers to do it, and could could source cotton materials yourself). For multiple reasons, I would rather go with option #1; right now, I'm thinking Naturepedic. If anybody has any thoughts/ideas on this subject (also on making your own mattress; I'd love to, but I have little know-how), I would love to hear them.

A few days ago, I told a really close friend of mine, who had a baby 6 months ago, that I was going to be having a baby soon. She was my roommate when I first started trying over 3 years ago, and was incredibly supportive then. Her reaction when I told her now blew me away: she offered to express and freeze breast milk for me! I'm not going to turn this incredible gift down. If I get even a few days worth of partial feeds, it would make me feel so much better. She is such an amazing friend.

Finally, we come down to a controversial topic: Vaccination. As an immunologist, I was initially appalled at how early vaccinations start in the US. Then I compared the Indian schedule to the American schedule, and I realized that the American one is actually a tad better in comparison. In the US, only the HepB vaccine is given at birth; here 3 vaccines: HepB, BCG, and the Polio vaccine is given at birth. All three are for diseases a newborn is unlikely to catch in today's day and age, especially if you come from a situation where the baby will be kept mostly isolated after birth, which would cut down the TB risk. I am sure these were designed keeping the poorer section of the populace in mind, but none of these is anything my baby is at risk for.

Indian rules aside, overall, vaccine policy in the world is rather flawed, although everybody who attacks vaccines seems to be making the wrong argument. I spent a good part of my career studying the cells that the vaccines are directed towards, so every time somebody told me about a a bunch of vaccines that would be given when the baby was 6 weeks old,  I would get a headache, because the immune system of young infants is not yet ready to optimally respond to a vaccine, because it is still developing. If you give a 6-8-week old baby a bunch of vaccines, it will not result in optimal protection; very far from it actually, it could mildly hamper the immune response towards the targets. Additionally, if the immune response is not optimal (which is very likely if 6 vaccines are given together at 2 months of age), your child may be protected for the next few months, but despite boosting, may not efficiently develop long lived protective immunity in the form of memory B cells, which is supposed to be the goal of a vaccine. All this is covered very well in this Nature Reviews Immunology article; I would urge the doctors (especially any pediatricians) visiting this page to read this.

 Moving away from the efficacy of multiple vaccines given at two months of age, vaccines given at birth are even worse, and are most likely utterly useless, for multiple reasons. One important one is that they will most likely be neutralized by the antibodies that the mother passes to the baby in the last trimester. For example, most mothers have strong immunity against Hepatitis B, and their antibodies, which protect the baby for about 20-30 days, will most likely neutralize the vaccine that is given at birth. So why bloody bother giving the vaccine at this point?

Another downside is that the vaccines themselves are a terrible jolt to the system. There is  no concrete evidence to indicate that the vaccines cause autism or have any long term side effects, but still, to err on the side of caution and also to ensure that they work in the way they were intended to work, I would rather wait till my baby was older (atleast 3-4 months) before I started vaccinating, and then go for a very staggered schedule, with longer intervals (3 months maybe) between boostings.

Yet, I understand the dilemma faced by both parents and medical officials: what if you cannot isolate your baby, and you have to travel with them, or send them to daycare regularly from an early age? If you are a parent with a micropreemie, the situation would also have to be handled differently. 

But, when it comes to full-term/close-to-term babies who can stay home and relatively isolated for the first few months of life, there is a better way available to do things.  Yet, the truth that doctors will not tell you (possibly because they do not understand it themselves; the only ones who would would be the immunologists who have an in-depth understanding of B/T cell biology) is that that very early vaccinations produce crappy/inefficient immune responses, and the longer you wait to vaccinate, and give fewer vaccines at one time, the better the immune response and the efficiency of the vaccination. Keeping the last point in mind, there is one alternative vaccination protocol from Dr. Robert Sears that has been doing the rounds; It is popular, as well as controversial. My opinion is that some aspects of this protocol (giving only two vaccines at a time in the first year of life) may produce better results than the regular protocol. It would be interesting to study antibody titres in babies subjected to the two schedules. Maybe that would put an end to all the bickering and the uncertainty. However, I am not too enamored of the dragging out of the vaccinations in the Sears protocol after the first year of life; somebody mentioned that even the most well meaning of parents could just lose track of the vaccinations if they are being dragged out, and that seems like a fair point. After babies are no longer classified as "infants," their tolerance and their immune robustness is closer to that of an adult, and the kid gloves (ha ha) could come off partially at this point. This is especially so after 2 years of life, when they start responding well even to polysaccharide vaccines. But this is an incredibly complex area, and my simplified take does not even begin to touch on some of the other issues (for example, is it better to get chickenpox as a kid, or be vaccinated against it).

In my own case, if I can manage relative isolation (no daycare/travel for the baby, and as little contact with the outside world for the first few months of life as possible), then I'm going to delay the start of vaccinations for as long as I possibly can (maybe up to 4 months). Ideally, I would have loved to start vaccinations only after the baby crosses a year of age, but unfortunately, we cannot live in a bubble for that long. There are additionally multiple ways to ensure that your baby's fledgling immune system is as optimized as possible, but that is a topic for another post.

An epiphany

After reading many, many neuroscience studies (she has to edit them), a really good friend of mine told me she thinks she may have ADD (attention deficit disorder). She gave me a long list of symptoms, which made me go like, huh, I have a few of these issues myself: I zone out/am completely oblivious about the things that do not interest me, have a hyperfocus and a startling attention for detail for the things that do, and have major procrastination issues. Do I have ADD?? Probably not, given all the things on the list that I have to answer no to. But then again, to play the devil's advocate, maybe I do have a very mild form. One of the things I did not know how to answer: Do you have problems starting/finishing projects? I start/finish projects at work just fine (I managed to get myself a PhD, and that is the mother of all projects). But I am rather lazy outside of work. I don't do art. I don't volunteer. I don't cook/bake. I started vocal lessons and I abandoned them. Basically, I need to feel passionately about something to really work at it. Outside of work, the only place I have ever applied myself is in this area.

This morning, I woke up with a startling surety: I want to write a book on surrogacy in India. I never thought I would write anything other than scientific manuscripts, and this would be one heck of a project. After the birth, I had planned to write an in depth blogpost about what I have learnt, how you need to protect yourself when you get into this, and what needs to change for the betterment of the surrogates themselves, but what I have to say is so much more than what can go into a few blog entries.

Plus, if I really wanted to help people figure out the best way to proceed here, I would have to do so much more research, and the only way to work up to that level of commitment is to, well, commit myself to something big.

I think I am fairly well poised to be the person that provides a good accounting of this topic: I've gone through this firsthand, while living here, and the information you glean while going through this process is astounding. I've actually been to the hospital appointments and seen what happens. I have a clear idea about the financial side of things, and BOY, let me tell you, that stuff needs airing. The social aspects need airing. Surrogacy in India needs to be made more transparent, and change (through legislation) needs to happen, on many, many levels. I'd like to help that along, in whatever small way I can.

How DOES one go about this? I decided I would not do this half-assed. I would try to find an agent and a publisher, and then proceed. The first step involves putting together a book proposal. Then, I can go agent hunting. Ulp.

I hope this is a project that is not a one-day/month wonder for me, and will end up making a bloody strong case for me *not* having ADD. 

Checking in: 29 weeks

Random things in bullet points:

• My OB did get back to me after I finished my last post, saying that the surrogate DID need to be given the anti-D shot. Her assistant had not put that on the report. I then had to get the prescription ordered and get the surrogate to Dr. Bhansal who agreed to give the shot, and I reluctantly decided to get the ultrasound done too, because we were going there anyway. As I was on my way there (with slight trepidation in my silly heart as I was going alone for the first time to an ultrasound), my mom called and told me she had missed her flight and could make it there anyway. YAY. Thank you Universe.

•  I got proof that fetal biometry readings should be taken with a giant pinch of salt: Remember a while ago that I was mildly nervous that the head circumference (HC) was in the 12th percentile? This time, it was around the 50th percentile, while abdominal circumference (AC), which was around the 50th percentile the last time around, had now fallen to the 7th percentile. The only thing that has been consistent is the femur length, which is around the 80th percentile in each scan. So yeah, fetal biometry, not seeming hot, really.

• I also met a lawyer to take care of the legal stuff for getting the baby back to the States. Her first question was, where did you do your IVF treatment? She asked me this because there are apparently some doctors in Delhi who have put other people's embryos in a surrogate, and the poor parents have a bone jarring shock after birth when the DNA test revealed that the baby was not theirs. If you are a foreign national who planned to return to your home country with your baby, things get impossible, and there are families in limbo and babies in limbo because of this. Horrifying. She did tell me that she had handled some surrogacy cases coming out of the Malpani clinic, and they had been ethical and did not pull such horrifying cons. It is unbelievable that there would be doctors out there who would do stuff like this.

• The baby is just past 29 weeks now, and should hopefully approaching 3 pounds soon. Still so utterly tiny. Nearly every day, I google fetal survival and fetal weight and go over information I should be able to recite in my sleep by now. Previously, 28 weeks was my safety mark. Now, it is 34 weeks, where the only issue a baby may have may be an initial inability to suckle. It is also getting more real now: I've been my own person my entire life. It is terrifying and exciting that I may be getting a little person who will take over completely. 

• I told my aunt (who I am pretty close to) the news. The last time I told a family member I was trying this, their reaction was so ugly that I was badly burned and decided not to tell anybody in the family till the baby was here. In contrast, my aunt's reaction was wonderful. She just kept repeating that she was happy for me that I am getting a child of my own, but so sad that I had gone through 3 miscarriages and such a difficult journey by myself, and that she was just so glad that my parents had been there for me and had known all along. It was a lovely, lovely response, and I am so lucky to have her in my life.  

More glimpses of the realities of surrogacy in India

J goes to Hiranandani hospital for her routine OB-GYN checkups. I went with her for her very first checkup, and it was an intensely disconcerting experience. There are about maybe 12 surrogates gathering and waiting for anywhere between 1-3 hours. The OB-GYN's assistant shows up, and starts seeing this procession of women. They get a doppler check and their blood pressure and weight read, all while the next 3 patients are queuing up on the other side of the curtain while the first patient is in the bed. My mom likened it to the situation in the poorest, most strapped municipal hospitals, where she worked briefly as an intern

After that first painful experience where I waited over 3 hours for a 15-min cursory check complete with an ancient-looking doppler, I never went again, and instead only go with J to the wonderful, detailed ultrasounds that are run at the Mediscan testing center by the very capable Dr. Bhansal.

This past Wednesday marked 28 weeks, and J went for her checkup at Hiranandani. I contemplated going, but I decided to just trust the system and sent her off with all the reports and expected her to get both the Rhogam shot and much discussed mandatory steroid shot. Too many times where I decide to just trust the system here, it has turned out to be a Bad Idea. But that is a topic for another post.

I talked to J after the appointment and find that no injections were given. I then try to find out what happened. If you go to an agency like Surrogacy India, they have this system where all the reports are scanned and uploaded and are available online for the parents immediately. Here, with the Malpani Clinic, there is no such centralization. I've spent 3 days waiting to find out what exactly was done at that visit. The surrogate handler claims that she gave the report to the receptionist at the clinic, who then claims to have emailed it to me. No such email was received. The handler claims she reminded the receptionist of it again one day later, and that she apparently mailed me. No mail was received. I've asked the doctor what was happening, and have received no word. I am SO very glad that I have to deal with this system only for another 10 or so weeks.

But here is the deal: they don't give the steroid injection at the hospital, they only write the prescription for it, and expect that some local nurse or some local doctor will give it. In the case of the Malpani clinic, the person who gives the shots is no trained nurse, but the handler herself.  A little background on the handler: This is a woman who has gone through surrogacy herself, comes from the same socio-economic class as the surrogate, and is partially literate, but at best studied till high school. In general, these are not people who are professional and impartial: they may not above lying for the surrogate (remember the story I posted about the handler who helped a 42 year old surrogate propagate a lie that she was 28?). 

In this case, the handler will give the shot at her home.I have to pray that the she is atleast trained in sterile techniques. I asked my RE about this, but as with most situations, I got resounding silence.

Here is the other thing: J told me that Dr. Malpani thinks that the Rhogam shot at 28 weeks is not necessary. He has not bothered communicating this directly with me, and nor has the OB-Gyn.

The person who did seem to think it necessary is Dr. Bhansal. She is a fetal metal specialist who works with high-risk pregnancies. She is also the go-to person for detecting fetal anemia, and is also the go-to person to give transfusions in the situations where it does develop. I'll have to talk to her about the necessity of this again. I totally hear you guys about the many places that do not give this prophylactically at 28 weeks. The one reason why I'd be more concerned here is because this is a surrogacy, and J may not be as prompt as required if something goes wrong (if she falls, etc).

But, in happier news, we have crossed the 28-week mark. This is the point after which the complication rate falls considerably. I was supposed to go in for an ultrasound tomorrow, but my mother will not be in town. A while ago, my friend M told me to always take my mother with me to the ultrasounds, because she is my lucky charm. I take that advice very seriously: she has come for every appointment, and I'm far too chicken to go in without her now. The next ultrasound should happen in the middle of next week.  

Also, I want to celebrate the surprise (to me anyway, I had NO idea) pregnancies of 2 bloggers who are very close to my heart, who have stopped actively blogging. I think it is rather cool that two such very wise women who I thought were actually quite similar (in their outlook on things and their utter sensibility)  are so synchronized with their pregnancies; they both just crossed 24 weeks. Adele and Arohanui, so very happy for the both of you!

Checking in: 27 weeks

ICLW (IComLeavWe) collided with my vacation in the lovely Maldives. I naively thought I could comment from my phone while I was there (HA), but none of that happened. But anyway, I got away and snorkeled and gazed at insanely blue water to my heart's content. I got back last night and I'm still getting my bearings back.

Tomorrow marks 27 weeks. I have not bought a single thing for the baby yet. Not one bloody thing. Almost all my essentials need to come from the States. I have to figure out how to transport baby bottles (I'm going for stainless steel ones), a gzillion tins of Myenberg Goat's milk powder, and random things like DHA and vitamin drops and probiotics (formulating a very useful post on this one, which will most likely go up on my new blog) and blackstrap molasses. I'm far too terrified to go shopping for cribs and onsies yet. None of this feels real. I wish I could get the gender now---in some funny way, I feel like this would make all this seem a little more concrete.

Next week marks the timepoint to give the steroid shots, and J would also have to get the Rhogam shot or its equivalent. Turns out in India they have a monoclonal IgG shot available that is free of thimerosol, but it comes with its own wrinkles. I'm trying not to overthink and read the literature and decide whether to forgo the 28-week shot or not (there is some mild controversy here) or think of the nebulous risks of giving the shot, or the more easily imaginable repercussions of *not* giving it.I'm so PISSED that this pregnancy has to go through this easily avoidable issue. 

I asked my mother to talk to the NICU chief at the hospital that has the milk bank, and that conversion was again a door clanging shut in my face. No milk (they get super low amounts, apparently); they advised me against a wet nurse because even if you screen for diseases, you miss out on the window period where they could have contracted a disease but do not test positive for it yet.

All in all..hello formula from day 1, goodbye milk. I totally get the desperation of parents to get breast milk to their babies,if only for a few days.  There is a rather poignant/sad yet comical story I heard about a mother who was desperate to get her baby milk after she was born from surrogacy. She paid the surrogate a lot of money to provide the milk on the sly (the doctor had told her it was not in line with their policies), not realizing that the doctor had given the shots that made the surrogate's milk dry up. They apparently tried for
days and nothing happened. I can only imagine the collective frustration of everybody involved.

How important IS breast milk? Apparently, as a baby, I got no breast milk either (and maybe did not suffer at all for it, or mildly did---these things are impossible to judge), and the same will be true of my baby. It is impossible to gauge how your choices hurt or help things along, and I've been determined in theory to not beat myself up for things I cannot help...yet...that stupid urge to nitpick my choices and wonder about what the possible repercussions could be just does not go away. Parenting lesson #1, maybe?   

ICLW #3

Welcome to ICLW! Excuse the typos- I'm typing this post from my phone.

A quick introduction- my story has to strech back to when I was 25, when I decided that if I did not meet the right guy in the next 5 years, I was going to try to have a baby by myself.  To my own shock, I went ahead with this audacious plan the month I turned 30. I tried to get pregnant. I succeeded on my first try. I lost that pregnancy. I tried again two months later. I lost that too. I took a year long break and tried again, only to have the worst pregnancy/loss ever. At this point, I had severe pregnancy PTSD, and the thought of having an ultrasound to see if there was still a beating heartbeat made me sick with anxiety. I returned to my India (the country I grew up in) for the more affordable fertility treatments (including surrogacy)  and the support of my family. My first IVF was an unmitigated disaster. The second (where I designed my protocol myself) resulted in about as good a response as one could hope for, and a surrogate, after rejecting 3 of my high grade day-5 blasts, got pregnant with one of them.

That pregnancy hits 26 weeks tomorrow. It took a lot of superstition squishing to get me to participate in ICLW-- the first time I signed up for this, I discovered a pregnancy loss about 2 days in. I'm trying to recite this mantra from one of my favorite books: Hope strengthens, Fear kills. Well, not literally, but you can miss out on quite a bit just because of your stupid, irrational fears. So here I am, kicking one of my superstitions in the nuts and hoping it does not reciprocate.

My blog is not just a recounting of my story...I'm a scientist and an information junkie, and I'm determined to make this experience as positive as possible by dispersing how much ever information I can. And this I have done, to the point of making your eyes glaze over. If you are so interested, the 'Science of Infertility' page summarizes a good part of it.

So welcome. Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to reading your stories!

25 weeks...and a shocker

First, thank you all, all the people who "derlurked." I've saved the blog addresses of those who were not on already my reading list, and I look forward to reading your stories.

Apparently, there is an ultrasound every month from this point on. I was pretty darned happy to hear this, and I went back to Mediscan, where I've had all ultrasounds done so far. This is a lab chain that specializes in fetal testing, and the doctor here is one that I absolutely have come to like and respect. Her name is Vandana Bhansal, and I highly recommend this place (and her) for antenatal testing.

The ultrasound was going well. Dr. Bhansal then casually asked J what her blood type was. Both my mother and I were shocked out of our wits when she replied "B negative." Negative?!?! That means she does not express the Rh antigen. I do express it, as does my donor.

Rh- moms need specialized attention when they are carrying an Rh+ baby, because if there is is mixing of fetal and maternal blood, the mother will make antibodies against the fetal Rh antigen. Those antibodies can then cross the placenta and can cause fetal anemia and jaundice. Severe anemia can even result in fetal demise. If the mother is sensitized to the Rh antigen in one pregnancy, then all the later pregnancies are at risk. To prevent this, the mother should be given the Rhogam shot at 2 points: at 28 weeks of pregnancy when the chance of fetal blood mixing is 1%, and at delivery, when it goes up to 10%. If an Rh- mother has a miscarriage or trauma during pregnancy, the Rhogam shot is administered at that point as well.

Now, Rh negativity is sort of rare. It is high in the native American population, and rare amongst Caucasians. I thought it was rare amongst Indians as as well...I found out that it was more common than I thought, coming in at about 10%.

  

I never dreamed that a Rh- surrogate would be selected, especially given the masses of women available for surrogacy in this country that are Rh+. I never got the surrogates initial  screening tests (I had to literally  badger my RE for the initial thyroid testing results); had I seen this, I would have gone with somebody else. I'm shocked that I had to find out by accident, and I am so grateful that I got Dr. Bhansal; had I not, this may have never come to light, and I'm not sure if my RE told the OB specifically about this, or was aware of it. 

So here I am, having to live with this wrinkle as well. We immediately had her tested...as of now, she does not have antibodies against the Rh antigen; she has received one of the two mandated injections (the one given at the time of birth) following all her pregnancies. Not being the sort to take chances, we will have to administer the Rhogam shot during pregnancy as well. Now, Rhogam used to contain thimerosol (ethyl mercury) as a preservative. It was recently removed in the version administered in the US, but I don't know whether the older version is still in use in India. I'm stuck with the headache of ensuring that a thimerosal-free version is given. 

All was well in the ultrasound too: the thing that made me slightly worried is that the head circumference growth is lagging--it went from above the 50th percentile at 19 weeks to the 12th percentile at 25 weeks. The one thing that is absolutely ahead is femur length, coming in at the 84th percentile.

 I'm trying not to think about microcephaly, and I'm trying to remind myself that I have an absolutely tiny skull as well, and was apparently incredibly low birth weight (under 4 pounds at 41 weeks!!), and I turned out to be perfectly healthy. This baby is sort of like how I've been all my life---small head, long legs, so worrying is stupid,right?

Say hello (International Delurking week 2014)

After 3 years of trying to have a baby, I have finally reached “viability.” Today marks 24 weeks (!!). This is a milestone that I did not think I would get to, and when I find myself passing it, I feel like it needs a wee celebration, if only in my own head.

Coming to the topic of this post, Mel announced that this was International Delurking Week. I am a huge fan of that concept.

When I first started blogging, I made an intense effort to connect with other bloggers and find new blogs regularly. Now, I barely find time to post all the things I want to talk about, and when I find a new blog I want to follow, it is quite by accident. This seems like a great opportunity to find many blogs at a single go. If you step out of the shadows, say hi, and share your blog address (if you have one), I would love to follow your journey, just as you follow mine. I will probably be a godawful commenter for the most part, but I will be there silently reading, which is hugely comforting in itself.

If you do not have a blog, step out and say hello anyway.

Finally…we all fall into different camps here. Are any of you single moms by choice? Are any of you Indian? Are any of you an incredibly rare combination of the two, like myself? Are any of you fellow recurrent pregnancy loss warriors?

Please, tell me your stories, and connect with me, and with each other.

No choices, no milk

I had an interesting consult with the OB today. Incidentally, she is the doctor who handles most of the surrogacy cases in Mumbai (apparently), so she is also the person with the most experience in dealing with surrogacy, and that should not be taken lightly.

But what I heard was distinctly disheartening. Remember that choice to waive the steroid shot that I mentioned? She clearly had told me that the first time I talked to her, but today she told me that it is her protocol, and she is going to do it. I could try some things to prevent that, but that would be both counterproductive and foolhardy, so I will just have to go with the flow.

I then asked her whether J could express colostrum and feed the baby (followed by pumping after the first couple of feeds) for as long as she is in the hospital with the baby? She was like...nope. No surrogate can feed the baby. They actually give them shots + pills to dry up their milk as soon as birth occurs, so even if both parties (the birth parents and the surrogates) want to do this, they cannot. She basically told me, this is my protocol, take it or leave it. Unfortunately, I do have to take it, and the sooner I make my peace with all this, the better.

Just FYI for people doing surrogacy in India: Dr Pai in Anand, Gujarat allows/encourages breast feeding.

In the defense of the people in Mumbai, there is a logical reason they shut off the milk supply: if the milk flow is established, and there is no baby to drink it afterwards, there can be breast engorgement that can lead to an abscess. I had already factored it in, and had naively thought that J could go donate at a milk bank (she lives really close to one) and maybe make some money (I hope to god they pay them) and everybody could win, if she was open to this. But nope, her milk supply will be shut off immediately after birth.

AAh....the stuff I wish somebody had told me about, before I signed up for all this.

I also heard a hair raising story about a surrogate, which is an excellent illustration of why one needs to thoroughly investigate the situation before initiating surrogacy in India: A surrogate shows up with insanely, dangerously high blood pressure at a mere 10 weeks of pregnancy. She claimed she was 27 years old. The OB refused to believe her, and on further grilling of the handler, it was revealed that she was 42 (!!!) years old. Her daughter had been kicked out of her home by her own husband (I think) who had told her she had to produce Rs 200,000,  to get back in.

This woman,  in desperation, lied about her age and her medical history and entered a dangerous pregnancy to get that money for her daughter. The surrogate handler propagated the lie, and I have no clue what the RE was doing.

 Everybody was shortchanged here....the poor woman who was the biological parent, the poor baby, and the surrogate, who risked her life for money. Such a situation can only be prevented by investigating the heck of out the surrogate, investigating her previous medical history as thoroughly as possible to ensure that this is not for 5th of 6th or 7th pregnancy...they can lie about this as well.

 Bottom line: based on everything I've heard and my own experience, I''ll say this to anybody who is thinking about surrogacy in India: Ask a LOT of questions before you start. Make sure your doctor has investigated her past pregnancies as well, and has gotten her previous medical records from whereever her last pregnancy was, all of that. I'll come up with a comprehensive list of things to investigate before you start.

A new year, and an interesting quandary (blanket steroid shots!)

Today marks the completion of the 23rd week of pregnancy. I have such hopes for this new year. As I hugged my parents at midnight, each of them whispered to me that they hoped that this turns out to be the year where I finally get what I've been striving so hard to get. I hope so too.

2013 was a lot of things for me, but I hope I can get to remember as the year in which the most important thing in my life came to be.

As for this new year...I hope it brings good things to as many of you as possible.

We did the glucose tolerance testing. In an odd turn of events, I have the 2-hour glucose levels and the glycosylated hemoglobin values, but not the fasting levels yet. The 2-hour glucose level was 94, and the glycosylated hemoglobin came back at 4.8%. Both tell me unequivocally that J does not have to worry about diabetes. YAY!

I have to go talk to the OB tomorrow to discuss one important point, and it is something that will probably make a lot of jaws drop: In India, apparently, every surrogate pregnancy is considered a high risk pregnancy, and what they do is give every surrogate the steroid shot at 28 weeks to induce fetal lung maturation, no matter what the individual situation may be. The first time I heard this, I nearly bit the head off the poor hapless doctor's assistant who informed me about this, because this seemed insane. Even my very restrained mother freaked out when she heard this: a blanket steroid shot?!

The benefit of a steroid shot far outweighs the downsides (it can negatively affect the developing  immune system of the baby; it can aggravate gestational diabetes in the mom, and so on)  in a situation when pretrem delivery is imminent, and this shot has helped improve the health of innumerable babies worldwide.

But to give it in a perfectly normal pregnancy? Obviously, they make the decision to give this based on the statistics. Apparently, most of the surrogates are preterm (At or before 36 weeks), for any number of reasons: a higher incidence of multiples pregnancies, poor nutrition, low vitamin D levels, the strain of having borne many children, etc. Additionally, when they are not under the supervision of a doctor, if things move very quickly say, around 32 weeks, then there may not be time to give the shot: the situation IS different from that of a regular pregnancy.

But a blanket shot when things look fine? This is such a difficult call to make, and I have the choice of refusing this shot. I just don't know what to do. If any of you have any input to offer one way or the other, it would be most welcome.

Also, I have majorly revamped the "Science of Infertility" page, summarizing a lot of what I have discovered/realized in the past year. It is worth a read especially if you are still in the trenches.