Baby or blubber!?

Decided I should probably grab a 'belly shot' sooner rather than later so I had something to compare it too at the end. I'm still not convinced that much of this is baby... in fact the ratio is probably more likely 80% fat, 20% uterus! lol

But I am definitely feeling more 'pregnant' lately. I am already starting to waddle when I get out of bed in the morning and my body realigns itself after tossing and turning all night thanks to those pesky pregnancy dreams (last night's was set in medieval times, that was interesting). I had been feeling little fluttery movements, but haven't noticed them as much this week. We have been really busy with the business though. Oh - and I've discovered that if I get out of the car too fast, I make the round ligament pain under my belly SO much worse!  This is another of those things that I'd forgotten about from the last pregnancies - it seems to be specifically associated with this 4month stage where the uterus is big enough to emerge from the pelvis, and a lot of stretching and growing is going on. It's probably not really 'pain', just a tight, uncomfortable feeling. But this too will pass.

I am part of an online surrogates community now too. Which is a little bizarre to me. I'm not normally good with online groups of people, prefering to do things solo or just keeping my actual friendship/family group close. But it has been incredibly eye-opening to read through other women's experiences - and to learn a lot of 'what-not-to-do' situations!

Actually, the biggest benefit I've taken from the group is how similar all of our experiences have been. I had assumed that I was alone in my experience of not having everyone in my frienship network agree with what I was doing - but in actual fact nearly every surrogate on the group has had the same thing happen. And it's nearly the exact same wording/concerns these people express too:

'I think it's selfish of you to do this'
'What about the impact to your family? Did you think of that?'
'You should only do this for family, not friends'
'You're only doing this to grab for attention'
You haven't supported me in my hard time, now you're too busy with the surrogacy'
'You're never going to be able to give up the baby'
'I have a feeling something bad is going to happen'
'I don't agree with the process. I think it's wrong. They should just accept that they can't have kids'
etc.

One poor surrogate was getting this kind of bullshit from her twin sister! Angry that the surrogate pregnancy had coincided with her accidental pregnancy, and that the attention wasn't all on her.

I don't have any solutions to this strange phenomenon, but do find it really curious. I've struggled a lot with my own personal situation of this after being confronted and subsequently 'unfriended' by someone I'd known for over 16yrs - and actually least expected this from. But decided quite a while ago that I was giving too much weight to the negative minority at the expense of the positive and supportive majority. (It's always the way though - you can have 100 people support you on something, but it only takes one negative voice in the croud to plant the seed of doubt and shake your focus).

Perhaps the trick is to see the single negative voice for the weight it actually has, rather than prioritising it so much and giving it a greater power then it deserves. Easier said then done in a lot of situations (especially when this voice is coming from your twin!) - but everything is a journey. A process. And this is just another expected bump in the road.

Who knows what the future holds...

13 week scan

Baby's parents flew down yesterday so we could all attend the 13wk scan. Our egg donor came as well - so it was a full room for the scan! The technician managed to capture some very clear pictures of bub - including this crazy 3D one.

It really does blow my mind each time I see the baby again as to how human it is already. We think about these things in terms of something not-quite-formed yet. But we could see details like finger bones and kidneys and even the hemispheres of the brain!

Even though this is my third time going in for a 13wk scan, the magic never dulls. This is truely a miracle.

Timing

When I was 6 weeks pregnant with my first pregnancy I remember walking around in a state of bewilderment and shock and amazement. This had actually happened for us. We'd had a dating scan and seen the tiny sack, fetal pole and yolk sack. I had a due date (the day before my 25th birthday). And I felt like nothing could touch me. Life was perfect.

I was already imagining my body with a huge pregnant belly, and how much fun it would be to be able to tell my friends and family who didn't already know yet. I caught up with my best friend of over 20 years for morning tea, and we were discussing all things morning sickness and sore boobs and what I could expect over the next few months (she already had a 2yr old). She was a wealth of information, but also so gracious about my first-timer naivety.

Then she casually mentioned that she was pregnant too.

I didn't think I could be any more excited! This amazing person that had been in my life since we were just tots ourself was going to share this pregnancy journey with me. There is only a few weeks difference between our own birthdays, and I think we both went into 'future-imagining' mode thinking about the awesome bond our children would share only having a few weeks between their birthdays as well.

My daughter was born towards the end of July, and her son was born at the start of August. We spent a LOT of time together when our babies were little and started a small playgroup. She was my 'go-to-girl' for all things parenting, breastfeeding, sleep-settling, and nappy-brand-choosing. Life was good.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son, my friend was already 5 months into her third pregnancy. So it was a novelty to be pregnant at the same time again, but the time difference was big enough that by the time I was actually starting to show, she already had a newborn in her arms. There was no one in my immediate frienship group who was due around the same time as me. So it was a different experience to be doing it 'solo' as such.

My son was born the day before a huge cyclone hit north qld. The property damage to the towns in the path of the storm meant work opportunities for my friend's builder husband, so they relocated the family up north. There would be no baby-catch up dates this time around. I still continued to attend the playgroup we had started though, which was now full of friends with kids of all ages. But I did miss that shared sense of 'I know what you're going through' that you develop with a mum that has a baby the same age as yours. Babies grow so fast in that first year that even a few months seems like a crazy difference.

When I was contemplating this surrogate pregnancy, I think I just assumed that I'd probably be doing the pregnancy thing solo again. And this was actually what sat best with me. I wasn't sure how I'd go if friends of mine were delivering babies around the same time as me. Yet keeping them! (obviously!). But one of the things I've quickly learnt is that just because something happened a certain way with a previous pregnancy, does not mean it'll happen that way again (this also translates to morning sickness!).

So far both my friend (yep, the same one as the last two pregnancies!), and my cousin are sharing this pregnancy journey with me. My friend is almost exactly a month ahead of me, this time with her fourth pregnancy. And my cousin and I basically share a due date. This is her first.

As with most things that happen in my life unexpectedly, I usually have a few days where I chew over the new information, write about it, process it, talk about it, process it a bit more - then move on. And this was no different.

I have no control over who else in my world will be sharing this pregnancy journey with me. What I do have control over is how I react to the timing of it. I can get all stressy and anxious and imagine future scenarios where they have a baby in their arms and I don't, or I can imagine visiting their babies in the future and feeling an extra special connection to them because of our shared experiences.

And it's honestly the later scenario that feels most real to me. I'm so excited to share this journey with these special women, and take the next steps on this very unique life experience.

Why choose altruistic surrogacy?

Hi.

Welcome to this brand new, squeaky clean blog.

I've been blogging for some years now, mostly to do with my pet-keeping hobby and craft business, though I did flirt with the idea of a 'chronicles of motherhood' blog when my children were very young and my sanity levels were questionable. I didn't have a lot of positive things to write back then though, so I decided against it. Though I've always kind of wished I'd had the guts to stick to it, to write how I was feeling and document those painfully slow days with a new baby and an toddler barely out of babyhood herself.

But I didn't. I self-censored myself. Things did get better. We all got used to our new lives, the baby grew up into a nearly-toilet-trained handsome little boy and the toddler is now a very well spoken pre-schooler. And I love them with every fibre of my being.

My husband and I were told early in our marriage that we'd have a lot of trouble concieving a baby naturally thanks to some rather serious health complications we'd both faced in our teens. We tried for a long time, then resigned ourselves to the assisted fertility process. We purchased health insurance to help us pay for the priviledge of becoming parents, then discovered that we were pregnant with our daughter within a fortnight! And 18months after her arrival to the world, we were welcoming her little brother.

Our family was complete.

It was late last year, around the time when families are gathering together to celebrate christmas and people are making their new years resolutions, when a passing comment between my hubby and I led to the idea of looking into surrogacy. I had managed two successful pregnancies, not without minor complications, but at the end of the day both babies had arrived safely and very well cooked (9lb and 10lbs!). We knew our family was complete, but there was that little part of me that wanted to experience pregnancy one last time. But without the newborn at the end!

I also wanted to give back in 2013. I wanted to do something to help change someone's life for the better. Our business was working well, but selling craft kits and handmade plushies wasn't exactly making a meaningful difference to anyone. Surrogacy would. Being able to grow a baby for a family who otherwise would have no other means to bring their child into the world was such an incredible concept.

I started an extensive google search. And I learnt a LOT! It was actually really overwhelming in those first few weeks of learning. And quite a few times I questioned whether or not I could actually do this.

In Australia surrogacy is only legal if done altruistically. That means no payment for the actual process of carrying the baby. You do need to be reinbursed for any medical costs, transport to appointments, parking costs, loss of income from attending appointments, medications required, therapies used etc etc. But no 'wage' for being a surrogate. You do that just because you want to.

Once the embryo is transferred to your uterus (in the case of gestational surrogacy, when you're not genetically related to the baby), it actually becomes YOUR baby legally. This means you, as the surrogate have the legal rights to decisions around what happens with the pregnancy/fetus. So you would really need to trust your surrogate! Also, once the baby is born, it is still legally the surrogate mother and her partner's child. Even though they both have no genetic contribution! A parentage order is made through the courts after the baby has been in the care of the actual parents for 28 days, and the legal guardianship is transferred to them.

The reverse of this is also true though: if the intending parents decide at any point during the pregnancy or following the birth (before the parentage order has gone through) that they don't want the baby - then legally the surrogate and her partner are 'stuck with it'. In the eyes of the law it's their child. Obviously they could choose to terminate (if early enough into the pregnancy) or adopt the baby out following birth. But both options would be horrendous emotional minefields.

There's a process of counselling and personality testing for all parties involved, as well as separate lawyers for both the surrogate and partner, and the Intended Parents so a 'surrogacy agreement' can be drawn up. This is a ridiculously expensive piece of paper that outlines what will happen over the embryo transfer, pregnancy and birth, but isn't worth the paper it's printed on, because it all comes back to the fact that the surrogate has the legal rights. Again, you would REALLY want to trust your surrogate here in Australia.

So after coming to terms with all that a surrogate journey in my country would entail, and deciding that it was still something that I felt compelled to do, I set about familiarising myself with the world of families seeking surrogates. Surprisingly there didn't appear to be a great many of them (which I think comes back to the fact that it's illegal to advertise that you need a surrogate, or would like to be a surrogate! They do like to make a complicated process just that little bit worse). But I did stumble across a family who's story struck a cord with me. They were the same age as my hubby and I, and had experienced a similar background with some serious health complications that had led them to this situation. We started emailing and over a matter of months came to know each other quite well!

Obviously there is a lot more of the story to fill in between then and now, but I'm chuffed to say that we are currently 10wks pregnant with a very precious surrogate baby. I have been writing a pregnancy diary for the baby, and for his/her mum, and will share some of those extracts, and this unique journey as it unfolds over the next few months. But I think for now I've probably prattled on enough :)