6 Days To Go - Congratulations?

What's the fun in being a surrogate if you can't have a ridiculous sense of humor?

There's this line of amazing surrogacy t-shirts I always told myself I'd get, but never did:

- My oven, their bun
- Their Peas, my pod
- (triangle with a pregnant lady, a husband and a wife) It's complicated.

The last one is my favorite. So you get a picture!

So, one of my favorite stories was after the delivery of my first surro baby.  The baby and mom stayed in my room with me because they were out of rooms in the hospital and I didn't want the mom to have to spend her first couple days as a mom only seeing the baby in the nursery for small amounts of time. At one point, the mom asked if she could leave the baby with me for a couple of hours so she could go buy a new car and car seat that were safe for baby.

Sure, why not. I really didn't mind.

So here I was holding the baby and the nurse walks in and without really looking at me, she looks at the baby and says, congratulations! She's beautiful.

To which I respond. Thanks, I'll tell the mom you think so.

She looked up and suddenly realized that small Asian baby didn't belong to me and had a panicked look on her face.

To avoid alarms going off (literally), I let her know I was the surrogate and the mom had stepped out. I did have a wrist band that matched the baby's.  She checked. Laughed it off. And left the room.

We're still holding out hope that at this delivery one of the nurses in the room won't realize it is a surrogacy so Justin can watch the baby born then say "That's not my baby!"

However, with the mom and dad standing in the room it probably won't work.

7 Days To Go - Look At That Baby Bump!

For those of you that don't know. I have been pregnant 6 times and delivered 7 babies.

3 of those are mine, the others are not.

When doing surrogacy (IVF in general) you get this amazing experience of knowing exactly when the baby is in your belly. You get to find out your pregnant super early into your pregnancy and get blood tests and ultrasounds almost every week to check things out.

AND if you are an overly sharing kind of person, like myself, your group of people know all about it to.

BUT there's this odd thing that happens. When people know you are pregnant they make comments about your baby bump.

I get it. I love seeing my friends' growing belly (shout out to Angie right now with the cutest baby bump ever).

But, during those first few weeks...you are not seeing my belly growing with the life in there. You are just seeing past pregnancies and growing older fat.  This my friends, is not a baby bump. This is leftover chub from pregnancies past. Also, it is my love of carbs (breads, nachos, and pasta - I could live without sweets).

So my friends, if you want to comment on how cute my baby bump is. Don't. Just hand a plate of nachos and tell me you appreciate my nacho belly.  Until I'm like 4 months pregnant at least, then you tell me my baby bump is cute (and still bring me nachos).

This is my nacho bump.

8 Days To Go - Let's Talk Uterus

The awkward phase of when people start talking about your uterus like a new pair of shoes is an odd one.

When you first start the surrogacy journey they have to do a medical approval. So, a fertility doctor checks out your insides.

So, as I lay there with the doctor examining things he asks if he can take some pictures to keep for training because I have a "perfect uterus". That was an odd statement. I agreed and moved on.

Then, you start your injections and the goal is to get a uterine lining to a certain thickness. So, with every surrogacy they check it out and you get a "good to go" or a "let's wait another week".  I've been lucky and always been "good to go." This also means I have heard more than once that my uterus looks good for a transfer. I mean, that's the goal, but it still gets talked about all casual like.

Maybe this shouldn't be weird to me. I mean, at this point it isn't, but at one point it was.

However, I think the most unusual was during my transfer last week.  The Doctor does one last check before the embryo transfer. As he does, he says something about my uterus looking great. It's perfect for the transfer, but then he adds (to the nurse in the room) "She has a magic uterus. She's 3 for 3 (3 transfers 3 pregnancies)".

So, there it is. I have a magic uterus.

9 Days To Go - Jordan Doesn't Tell Her Friends

So after the embryo transfer you have to go on bed rest for a couple of days.  That meant on Thursday I was stuck on the couch and couldn't get the kids from school.

My daddy came to the rescue (Justin had a meeting at work).

Normally the kids go to an after school program until I get them after work, but since Papa was picking them up they went straight to the front gate to be picked up.

Jordan, was not a fan of the "different" after school pick up. You see, Jordan doesn't like unnecessary attention.  She tried to hide her broken arm back in the day so people wouldn't notice it and ask her about it.

So, she was not a fan of people asking her questions about why her Papa was picking her up after school. In her words...

Then I'd have to tell them my mom is on bed rest. And they'll be like OH NO is she OK? And I'd be like yeah, she just had a baby put inside her so she has to rest. And then they'll be all confused and I'll have to tell them you are a surrogate and then they won't know what a surrogate is so I'll have to explain that. That's just too much talking.

10 Days To Go - The Bruise

I'm postponing Jordan's story for now to share the not-so-exciting part about surrogacy. Probably the worst part by far.

The injections.

WARNING there will be a picture of a portion of a very small portion of my rear end.

27 shots in 19 days. Saying it that way doesn't seem so bad actually.

Looking at it my sharps container isn't all that bad either.

Up until today, they had been going pretty well. The injections go in the upper/outter quadrant of your butt cheeks. Each side was speckled with small pin prick holes like a cluster of small red freckles.

Super cute.

But something went terribly wrong. I'm guessing I hit a blood vessel, but I don't really know how this all works.

I remember the first time they walked me through the injections and then they were like, "and now go home and do it for the first time completely unsupervised-untrained idiot" (that's not what they said, but that's how it felt). I prepped the needle and was like, how can these trained professionals trust somebody they walked through 2 minutes of training with stab themselves with real medication for the next several weeks?

But I did (well I told Justin how to do it).  I think sometimes the lack of really knowing what we are doing shows.  And it looks like this (for reference its slightly bigger than a quarter).

It looks significantly worse than it feels. It actually hurts no more or less then the other side that remains freckle faced.  The worst part is trying to find space around it to do the next shot.

11 Days to Go - Taylor Tells Her Friends

So, I should have started the countdown yesterday...but I didn't.

I'm off to a great start with this being a better blogger this time around. 5 points for me.

So yesterday was the transfer. The pregnancy test is 13 days later. I feel like that is SO much longer then before, but even having done this 3 other times, I actually don't really remember. Probably because each baby sucks a little of your brain power out with it.

True story.

I'm going to start with a surrogacy story relating to my children.  One about Taylor (today) and one about Jordan (tomorrow).

Surrogacy #1 - Taylor Tells Her Friends
One day, I go to pick up Taylor from school and run into her teacher.  Her teacher sees my large belly and congratulates me. 

EVERY time this happens with a surro pregnancy this choice runs through your head. Do I just say thank you and move on because I don't have the time to explain the situation. Or do I explain it isn't mine and prepare for a several minute long conversation about being a surrogate and answer all the questions to follow (FYI, I'm an open book so I don't mind answering them as long as I know I have time).

In this instance, I chose to say Thank You and move on. I had dinner to get home and make.

Apparently, later in class the teacher had talked to Taylor about being excited to get a new baby in the house. To which she promptly responded, "We're not keeping the baby, it isn't ours". To Taylor, this was a normal statement. We had done a pretty good job (apparently) explaining the situation to the kids. Taylor then of course added it was a Chinese baby in my belly.

I got a phone call.

I was told Taylor was telling people that I was having a Chinese baby and we weren't keeping the baby. I told the teacher she was correct. However, I'm not horrible so I also actually explained what was going on. She was relieved. And also asked if we could ask Taylor to not share it with her friends anymore because it was causing too much confusion. I agreed.

Round 4 - The Baby Boy

For those of you that don’t know already. We are in the midst of our 4th Surrogacy. I did such a great job blogging about my 1st surrogacy journey. It was hit or miss with my 2nd. I had high hopes for my 3rd, but after announcing the transfer was successful, I dropped off the face of the Earth.

This time, my hopes are once again high. I’ll keep you in the loop on the craziness.  I’m starting today (on my lunch break) with an update on what’s going on.

I’m 2 weeks into meds (go here if you want to know what they all do) that consists of 2-3 shots a day and pills.  Shots are the worst. Like really.  If you missed it, you can find a video on Facebook I took trying to do my own injection. I did it…finally.

This Thursday is baby transfer day.  I’ll be getting a baby boy embryo transferred. This is their only embryo (and likely their last) due to medical issues one of the IP (intended parents) is experiencing.

As per usual, I will do a count down to pregnancy test for you all.  So, starting Thursday, you will get a series of blogs leading up to the announcement of whether the baby stuck.  This time, the blogs will each tell a horribly awkward, embarrassing, frustrating, or just weird story related to things you get to experience as a surrogate.

I’ll also try to end each blog with a link to the surrogacy FAQ I created forever ago so for those of you that don’t know what exactly is happening you can read up. Also, Justin and I are open books so ask us any questions and we’ll be more than happy to answer.

Click here to read the surrogacy FAQ I created to find out more about surrogacy and our surrogacy journeys. 

But for now, admire this beautiful baby girl (Surro Baby #3) and be praying that her baby brother is strong, healthy, and ready to hang out in my belly for the next 37 weeks (ish).