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).

Day 16 of 17 (New Mexico to Arizona)

From: Farmington, NM
To: Williams, AZ
Miles Driven: 345 / 4,864 Total
Miles Hiked: .7 / 13.5 Total

Today we went to the Grand Canyon.  After entering the park there were some canyons that looked big, which made seeing the actual Grand Canyon that much better.  We started with the Desert View Tower which was pretty stuffy and honestly not the best view of the day.

Next, we drove along the rim making several stops at the view points and turnouts. Now at this point it is important to tell you that this was the extent of the day I had planned.  Driving, parking, viewing, and repeating. So, here I was in flip flops and no sunblock.

BUT, after stopping at the Visitor Center we decided to do a portion of the Rim Trail. It was totally worth it. Only .7 (of the 2.2) miles, but flip flops aren't the best for wanting to get out on the rocks and being the white red head that I am, I was burning within a few minutes.  I made it 15 days without really a significant burn (a little pink at most on a few days), but now I am red nearly head to toe.

However, it was great that all the kids were in a pretty good mood today (not a common occurrence the last few days).  If you haven't seen the Grand Canyon I do highly suggest it. It wasn't the "prettiest" thing we saw this trip, but there has been nothing I've ever seen that made me feel so small. Like seriously, how insignificant am I?

Day 13-15 of 17 (New Mexico)

From: Los Alamos, NM
To: Farmington, NM
Miles Driven: 902 (last 3 days) / 4,519 Total
Miles Hiked: unknown / 12.8 Total

Rest assured, we are not dead. We were just merely without internet for a couple of days so I'm catching up on 3 days worth of traveling.

On Saturday we went to Bottomless Lakes State Park.  It was hot, but the waters was amazingly cold which felt great. The kids saw paddle boats and asked to try them so Justin agreed and they headed out. At first, they were fighting over who was going to paddle, but they eventually gave up leaving Justin to do all the paddling.

We only spent a short time at the lake though since we had a long drive to Mayhill.  Don't worry, nobody has heard of it. So how did we end up there? Justin joined this Facebook group, and one of the admins is this Pastor.  This Pastor was visiting Anaheim not long ago and posted about it in the Facebook group. We met for dinner and we all very much enjoyed our time (kids and adults).  So when we talked about driving through New Mexico on our trip we figured out a way to make it possible to drive through Mayhill where Pastor Matt Henslee preaches.

The house we were staying in was next door to the Henslee's and we were greeted by their 4 girls. The kids instantly started playing and we pretty much spent the next 2 days hanging out, eating, and honestly (at least for us) enjoying the best 2 days of vacation.

After church on Sunday, we headed to White Sands National Monument to go sand sledding. So when you see what looks like snow pictures, know this is purely white sand. It was STUPID hot, but if you dug your feet into the sand far enough at least the sand was cool.  We didn't last very long though since the heat was quite overwhelming and although sledding down the sand dunes was awesome, climbing up was exhausting (especially in the heat).

Overall, a fantastic few days, but I'm glad we're on the last few days of our trip. I'm ready to be home.