Davide Butson-Fiori

Another Lose, Another setback

I don't know how to start this email except with the plain fact, the surrogate has had a miscarriage of the fetus at 16.5 weeks. I am devastated to say the least, sad to know that a life with fingers, toes, heart and fingerprints, is lost.

Today was the day the doctor was to do the amniosentesis, this was to tell me if the fetus had downs syndrome or other abnormalities. In two weeks I would know if there was a problem, then if there was I would have to make a decision. However after the sonogram there was no heartbeat to be found, then lots of bleeding and then the miscarriage. It is like the body has decided that the fetus was not healthy enough so it let it go, like it just was not meant to be. If I think this way it takes away a bit of the pain of the loss, because if there was something wrong with the fetus I would have had an awful time deciding to keep or to let the baby go. For me this might have been a blessing, I hate to think that but maybe it was for the best.

I don't know where to go from here, I do know that I will still have a child. However I am not sure if I will continue with the two frozen embryo's from the donor I used the first four attempts. I may use another egg donor, I will consider all my options. I am blessed with the gift of options, something I never imagined before. I am determined more then ever to become a father, it may take longer and be more painful then I every dreamed but I will not be deterred from my goal of having children.

So stay tuned and with your support and your love I will have the gift of life, and it will be perfect in its own time. Thank you all, I love you so very much.

dbfiori wants to keep up with you on Twitter

To find out more about Twitter, visit the link below:

http://twitter.com/i/062f3b585acd6e0b37a2f953fe84b241d104ab12

Thanks,
-The Twitter Team

About Twitter

Twitter is a unique approach to communication and networking based on the simple concept of status. What are you doing? What are your friends doing—right now? With Twitter, you may answer this question over SMS or the Web and the responses are shared between contacts.

This message was sent by a Twitter user who entered your email address. If you'd prefer not to receive emails when other people invite you to Twitter, click here:
http://twitter.com/i/o?c=YuC6KcG9rC%2BEdpENiuShwJtkqp7mWGXG30CiBk1gjg0%3D

Bleeding, lab tests and bed rest...

I haven't been posting anything here on my blog lately because I thought the bad news I received nearly three weeks ago would turn out to be just a minor set back, however the news just keeps getting worse for my unborn child of 14 weeks.

I will begin with the news from three weeks ago, I received an email from the Dr. in India stating that there seems to be some bleeding. An Ultrasound was made and it showed a healthy heart beat but a dark triangle which indicated some bleeding behind the Placenta was also in the picture, the course of action would be to do some tests and put the surrogate on bed rest and of course to stop the bleeding.

The surrogate went on bed rest, the bleeding was stopped and the tests were done. The next thing for me to do was to wait, I thought of posting the news on my blog but I thought that if I didn't talk about it or write it down it wouldn't actually be happening. Unfortunately it was all too real, the wait for the results again was interminable. It took nearly two weeks to get the results, there was mourning in Hyderabad over some official persons death and the lab was closed. I have a hard time with the waiting, it seems to be the most difficult thing for me to do these days. Especially when after the wait is over I get increasingly worse news, this time was no exception.

I received the lab results from the multiple tests done, the reason the tests were ordered to begin with was the bleeding. The bleeding behind the placenta usually signifies a problem or chromosomal abnormality in the fetus, the bodies sign that there is something wrong. 25-50% of the time this will in itself lead to a miscarriage. So with all that on my mind I eagerly read the lab results, it said and I am paraphrasing here. The nuchal translucency measurement was high, the HCG levels were high and the PAP A levels were also high, this all means that these markers (as they call them) all point to a positive for Down's Syndrome.

I can't tell you how I have dreaded these two horrible words, I thought of all the things that might have contributed to this factor. And in my case none of the reasons for this happening is consistent with this pregnancy. The egg donor is not old, the egg donor didn't smoke, the surrogate doesn't drink or smoke. The more I research this it comes clear to me that it just happens sometimes, but the odds are so big. Well I am getting ahead of myself, there are also a number of other things that can be going on too that will give a positive to this test.

The next step is to wait until the 14th week before they can do a more definitive test, an amniocentesis, this will be able to confirm if there is anything abnormal with the fetus including downs syndrome, turners syndrome or any number of other abnormalities.

What keeps going through my mind is, Why Me? I am sure other parents feel the same way. It just seems to me that everyone I know including my family is just popping out babies with no effort or problems. Why then is this such an ordeal for me and so painful and sad? I know I need to be strong and just wait, and I will of course what else is there. But I however just want to scream so loud, I know also that there are others that have gone through much worse for sure. This does not stop the feelings I am having, I wouldn't want anything like this to happen to anyone.

Moving forward I will not wait to update you on my blog, I find that it is important to let my friends and family  know what is happening as it is happening. If anything it's the support and well wishes I get from all of you that keeps me focused on the reason I am going through this to begin with, thank you again for all of your love and kind words. It's that kind of love that I want to pass on to a child.

The most beautiful 5mm spot ever

Well here it is, the first image of the baby. It's only 5mm but how beautiful is that? Wow...I am over the moon with the fact that I am pregnant again. A lot of people say to me that I should not talk about the pregnancy until after the first three months, but I can't not talk about my joy. Even if God forbid something does happen, I still can not keep my feelings of joy quieted.

So, I am going to hope for the best, I am now at the 5 week mark and have another 7 weeks till I get to the important three month milestone...so I will keep praying and crossing my fingers. I also want to thank everyone out there for their constant support and love, it is much appreciated no matter how little or how often received. Enjoy the first picture of my baby...I know i will again and again.

love to all,
Davide

WOOHOO..... Im pregnant! Yippee

IT'S OFFICIAL THERE IS A PREGNANCY

Today Friday the 10th at 11:30pm I found out that the surrogate tested positive for pregnancy....so once again I am pregnant. It is even sweeter the second time around. It is also very odd to me that the day I decided to log back on and join the real world and share what I was going through is the day that I got the news that once again I am pregnant.

So if all goes well we are looking at a late march delivery...woohooo, just before my birthday in April. I am very excited and now feel that my life is back on course after drifting in the doldrums for the past two and a half month's. I also felt an extra burst of energy today, went to the gym, started planning again for all the projects I wanted to do and started preparing for the future once again. Wow something is aligned and I am stoked.

I love you all and thanks for being here with me....

Davide

Finally a definition of a true STAR

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night  At Morton's.' (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life.  Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last  Column... 
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it.   This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write  it.  I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started.  I loved writing this column so much for so long I  came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a  long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to.  It still brings in the rich  people in droves and definitely some stars.  I saw Samuel L.  Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before  that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator,  in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.   But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..?  I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important.  They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated.  But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in  front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all  look up to.

How  can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?  Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails..

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.   A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq .  He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.  Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A  real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad .  He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station.  He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it  exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies  were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of  trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with  incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines.  The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.


There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament... the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.  Now you have my idea of a real  hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters  This is my highest and best use as a human.   I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be  as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or  Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald.  Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a  devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son  to the parents who had done so much for me.  This came to be my main task in life.  I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's  help).  I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining  years.  I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York .  I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He  has placed in my path.  This is my highest and best use as a human

Faith is not believing that God can.  It is knowing that God will.

Disks, Embryo's and Paint = AWOL

HELLO ALL,

I've been away for a long time, I can't remember the last time I posted something. I do remember the reason why I haven't, it was the miscarriage. It hit me harder then I thought, manifesting in physical and mental issues. Let's start with the physical, I have a herniated disk in my neck, between L5 and L6 to be exact. This has trapped a nerve that for over a month gave me constant pain, now just a constant pins and needles feeling in my hand. Still recovering, I am happy no surgery was needed.

The mental, well I did go a bit mental. I became a hermit and I renovated my apartment, I needed a fresh new start. And I needed to keep myself busy for the two month wait till the next attempt. I am not sure that this was a good idea, now I am happy I did it. But the stress of the renovation and sleeping amongst the dust and paint fumes surely didnt help the physical state I was in.

Now the renovation is done, the pain in my neck is subsiding and I will have the answer to the question, Am I pregnant? this weekend.

To fill you in on the baby news, it runs down like this. the surrogate used in the first transfer was used again because of her age and because she successfully became pregnant the first time. So we had to wait for her to have one cycle before attempting again. Once she did this she was then made ready for the transfer of the embryo, two embryo's were taken from the freeze and only one survived. I now have only two embryo's left.

Two weeks ago the transfer of the one embryo was made an here we are to date, two weeks later and they will be doing the pregnancy test any day now. So here we are, here I am, hmmmm, I will hopefully be posting very good news in the next couple of days, if the news is not good  then I will move forward again, and again and again till I have a child.

Thanks again for all your support and stay tuned. Much love, Davide

Davide Butson-Fiori wants to keep up with you on Twitter

To find out more about Twitter, visit the link below:

http://twitter.com/i/a075bd2848b146ed6f51d85bc40e465c70c3778c

Thanks, -The Twitter Team

About Twitter

Twitter is a unique approach to communication and networking based on the simple concept of status. What are you doing? What are your friends doing—right now? With Twitter, you may answer this question over SMS or the Web and the responses are shared between contacts.

This message was sent by a Twitter user who entered your email address. If you'd prefer not to receive emails when other people invite you to Twitter, click here: http://twitter.com/i/optout/96243199f8c6402763cafa2a8513692b2865324b

SAD NEWS TODAY

While I write this my face is becoming flush and my head is spinning, and I am just a bit numb. There has been a miscarriage, during routine ultrasound today they could not find a viable heart beat. I was told this happens in about 10-12% of all pregnancies, however this still doesn't soften the blow of my loss.

I will try again, I am not sure when or what the process will be but I do have four embryo's left, so there is still a chance of a successful pregnancy.

I am not really sure what more to say now, I will write more later when I can make more sense of this sad day.

xxxooo

Love to all of you for your support

The Second Ultrasound

Can't really tell you what is going on here, but the dark spot is growing very fast. This shows the yolk sack, not really sure what that is, I will do some research and then fill you in. I also found this really great website that has a IVF due date calculator, it says that I am seven weeks and a day pregnant today and that the due date is November 29th. I will confirm with my doc but all very exciting.

An Ultrasound, and Disco lights

It's official, I am pregnant with a single embryo. The ultrasound was taken this weekend and it confirms a pregnancy, the doctor said that it is the dark spot surrounded by the white rim. I guess it is the dark spot on the left and there will just be the one child, I think that it is the best this time around to be blessed with only the one.

Now begins the long wait, there will be another ultrasound in ten days to check the heart beat. I checked an IVF due date calendar and it asked for the date that the egg was retrieved and it gave me a due date of November 29th. So this child will be a Thanksgiving child, and what better time for me, this is my favorite time of the year. And now I will have my favorite holiday's plus one, thanksgiving and all my friends and family over for dinner, then the birthday of my child and to top it all off, Christmas and New years. This will be the happiest two months of the year for sure, I can't wait.

I have to share just how I heard that it was official, where I was and how I felt. It was a typical Saturday night in Hong Kong, I met up with my friends Michael and Giorgio for a tasty organic chicken at Peak Cafe in Soho. After-wards we headed our way down to Pacific coffee for an espresso for Giorgio and an espresso machiato for Michael and me. Then we decided to head over to a birthday party where we met other friends and the hunt began, well at least a bit of a scan. There was the same crowd as always, however this did not keep us from looking for possible mates, dates etc. There were the drunks, the partiers, the visitors, the coupled, the usual. For me the one's I liked always lived somewhere else and where in town for just an evening or two, I chose to stay close to Giorgio and Michael and just do what we do, talk about the show unfolding in front of our eyes.

We then decided to head over to a local bar down the street, we entered and were hit with a waft of smoke. I have to tell you, I have never been happier since I quit smoking but it does make me a bit of a vigilantes when it comes to having to smell others exhaled smoke. With the threat of having our clothing suck up the odor of a hundred burning cigarettes, we enter and there they are. The partiers, the coupled the visitors the desperate and the drunks, so again much of the same crowd from the other party. We get our drinks, Giorgio has switched over to water and Michael and I are still on Cosmo's, we are from NYC after all. I know, what a cliche.

The conversation is the same, we meet someone and it goes like this, where you from? How long are you here? do you like Asia? What do you do? How long are you here? There never here for long, they have a love hate relationship with Asia and they are usually a designer of toys, underwear, handbags, accessories etc. Checking in on the factories to make sure their designs are being manufactured correctly. I digress, so I stood and listened and sipped my Cosmo, chatted with the boys on how there are some new faces, but more or less the same crowd.

I then felt a vibration in my pocket, retrieved my phone, opened my mail and saw the ultrasound. I had a feeling of joy come over me and excitement I hadn't felt all night, I had to get out of there. It all started to come clear to me after I got that email, there will always be nights like this. But, I will have a child to go home to, or better yet keep me home. I will of course look forward to my usual weekends with the guys, but not feel so disheartened with my options so to speak. I will still hope to meet someone that will be a part of our lives, I just don't think I will ever find them in a smokey bar on a Saturday night.

So I wait, and soon will come Thanksgiving, and a lot of giving thanks for everything that I have to be thankful for, like my friends and my family plus one. The most anticipated addition to my family, a child, a healthy and happy child. Thank you.