Random updates

I keep forgetting how pregnant I am. This morning I was thinking it was about 16 weeks but then I counted it out and I'm 18 and a half weeks.  This pregnancy has been weird.

Elle brought home a menu she made in school when they were playing restaurant.  On the regular menu was "ledduce", "carrotts", "salid" and "food". On the dessert and drink menu were beer and Oreos.

Joseph is going to have a solo in the upcoming school concert. He's going to be doing the rap portion of "Everybody Dance Now". I plan to tape it and play it to myself every day for the rest of my life.

Our family took a three day trip to Duluth to see the sights and eat at some Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives places.  I cannot say enough good things about The Duluth Grill. It was so good we went twice in two days.  If you go for breakfast order the scotch eggs.  They look funky but they are AMAZING. I also can't say enough bad things about Grandma's. Bad service, loooooong wait times and crappy food.  If you go order whatever you want and then feel bad about it because you could be eating at The Duluth Grill.

If you ever go to Duluth try to take Joseph with you because he will want to visit the Maritime Museum and he will keep talking about it and calling it the "Merry Time Museum" and you will find it so cute that you will be forced to buy him whatever he wants at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

I'm going to be going on another eating road trip this weekend.  My dad and I are going to Kansas City where we will have BBQ and other assorted bad for you foods.  I haven't gained any weight so far this pregnancy but my plan is to shatter that record with smoked meat and other sauced foods.  Shut up.  It's good for the baby.

Peace out

I've been going to a dentist who is totally overhauling my mouth.  Before I got pregnant I would get gassed like crazy before I would let her work on me.  Now I squeeze a stress ball and try not to scream in terror.  It's been ... fun.

I've gone in for work several times now and every time my dentist has remarked on how groovy my teeth are.  It was only today when I was walking out that I realized (rather sadly) that she has been saying my teeth have a lot of grooves and not that my teeth are really radical and hip.

:(

Catching up

What's new with me? A few things. Someone needs to invent a thing that takes the blog posts out of your head and types them out.  If I had that I would update my blog a dozen times a day.  Since there is no such thing you get this list of news items instead.

1. Baby A continues to be awesome.  I had another ultrasound and she is bouncing and behaving.  I will have another ultrasound in a few weeks to find out if she really is a she.

2. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the day we adopted Joseph.  That's pretty cool.  When he headed downstairs to go to bed last night he said "Good night!  I love you! I'm glad you adopted me! I like being part of this family!"  He might have said that because we had pizza for dinner and gave him some money to buy music on his ipod.  I'll take it though because that's just darned cute.

3. Elle had a couple of scary days of bad stomach pain. I ended up spending two days in the ER with her as doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. At one point she had to have a procedure done that was really uncomfortable and the whole time it was going on I was holding her hand and the nurse was telling her "It's almost done! After this you'll be all done!" and then we had to re-do the procedure and Elle looked at me with big, sad eyes and said "But you told me there wouldn't be any more uncomfortable things!" and then my heart fell on the floor and broke into a million pieces.

I think future teenage Elle will appreciate me not sharing all the details of her ER visit so I will keep some of it private.  The long and the short of it is that sometimes shit happens.  And when it doesn't happen you might need to stay in the ER for a while. And sometimes there are bladder infections.  (Sorry future Elle.)

4. My first surrogate baby turned 4 the other day. Nothing really else to add to that.

5. I got a Vitamix blender.  It's the best thing in my house.  I even like it better than my family.  My family can't make fancy coffee drinks and the blender doesn't leave it's shoes randomly scattered all over the floor. I'm not being paid to say this or getting anything in return for mentioning it.  I just want you to know that you need one of these blenders.  They're a little expensive (unless perhaps you have a very generous intended mother who buys it for you) but it's worth every penny and then some. Fair warning though, if you get one you're going to want to spend all day making smoothies.

What the hell is happening on PBS Kids?

I've been thinking a lot about what will happen when this baby is born.  Now that there's just one now I figure I have a pretty good shot at a VBAC.  That makes me pretty darn happy.  Since this will probably be my last birth* I want to try and make it as good as I can.

I'm thinking I want the kind of birth I had with Little A.  (Not to be confused with Baby A.  Or A, one of my IFs from last time or A, my IM from this time.  I wish people had considered using other letters of the alphabet when naming all these people.)  The parents were there, Jesse was there, my doula/best friend was there.  I felt so happy and supported and when I did the whole thing without an epidural I felt like Super Woman.  I would like all that again. And maybe with one more little addition.

I think I would like Elle to be at the birth too.  Joseph is out of the question.  He could never handle seeing me in pain and he hates the sound of babies crying.  But Elle is different.  She loves the surrogacy process.  She goes to ultrasounds and lab appointments with me.  She watches when I gets shots and puts a band aid on me after each of them. She likes to lay her head on my tummy and talk to the baby.  I think she would really like to see the whole thing all the way through.

I asked her today if she thought she would like to be there when the baby is born.  The answer was a very enthusiastic "YES!"  Of course I explained that nothing was for sure and we would have to see how things went but that if she was interested we could talk about it more.  Then I told her that she would need to know that sometimes when the baby comes out it hurts the woman but that the woman is ok and will feel better after the baby comes out.  Elle rolled her eyes and said "I know that! I saw a show on PBS Kids and there was a woman having a baby and she said it really hurt."

So apparently she's all ready to be there at the birth.  PBS Kids has taught her well.  Or something.

*Probably.  Maybe.  Perhaps.  I don't know.  I really do love doing what I do.  This pregnancy has not been easy or smooth but damn, I love having babies.

The 1%

All last week I felt like I was on a death watch.  Just waiting for my next ultrasound so I could see that the last baby had stopped growing, waiting for the next step, waiting for it to be over.

I was 99% certain that Baby A was not going to make it.  I prepared myself emotionally for the worst.  I felt a black cloud hanging over me.  I felt like when people looked at me they knew what was going on and I wanted to defend myself.  "It's not my fault!  I did everything I could!  I followed all the rules!  I didn't want this to happen!"

When I went to the ultrasound on Wednesday I was ready to hear the bad news that I was 99% certain I was going to hear.  I tried to shut out that little voice that said "But maybe?  What if? Could there still be hope?"

The ultrasound started and right away I thought I saw a little flicker of movement.  Then nothing.  I must have imagined it.  The technician worked for a while without saying anything.  I watched the screen closely.  There it was again!  Movement!  And suddenly a lot of movement!  The technician laughed and said "That one is letting us know its still ok."

And oh, she's so ok.  She moved and wiggled and bounced around for the rest of the ultrasound.  Her heartbeat is good and her gestational sac, while a little on the small side, is still in the normal range.  She's a little fighter and I feel like she's going to beat the odds.  She blew away that 99% of uncertainty and sadness.  Every time she wiggled I felt a little happier and a little lighter.

You guys?  I think she's gonna make it.  I think in 30 weeks or so my IPs are going to have the baby they've been wanting for the last 15 years.  Eeeeeeeeee!

Ouch

Sadness hurts.  It physically hurts.  It settles into you bones and weighs you down.  It stiffens your muscles and makes your joints ache.  I am hurting right now.

We are facing the fact that this pregnancy is not going to last much longer.  Baby A is not going to make it.  People are being very kind and saying there's still hope and that miracles happen but I know that's not going to be the case here.  There are issues with these embryos that make it almost unbelievable that all three implanted.  The fact that I've made it to almost 10 weeks pregnant with one of them is statistically nearly impossible.

Obviously that doesn't make things any easier.  I'm angry with the doctor who made the choice to transfer these embryos.  I can't go into a lot of detail out of respect for the privacy of my intended parents but I will say that I feel like we were all led into a bad situation by a doctor who was either careless or incompetent or ... something I don't have a word for.

So now we wait.  I'm still pregnant and as far as I know Baby A still has a heartbeat but we'll have more ultrasounds to see when that changes.  I'm not going to lie.  This sucks.  This a million times harder than a failed transfer.  I can't even imagine how my Intended Parents must be feeling right now.  My heart breaks for them.  I wish I could do something to ease their pain.  I'm very emotionally invested in the pregnancy but they are having to deal with the loss one, two and then all three of their babies. 

I will be ok. Yesterday was hard.  Today will be hard.  This next week will be hard but I have the support of an amazing network of family and friends and fellow surrogate sisters.  If you're the praying kind or the good vibe kind or the well wishing kind please direct all of that to my IPs who I know are going to need to heal from this. 

Nobody said it would be easy but no one that it would be so hard

If there is one thing I have learned as I have gone through three surrogacy journeys it's that nothing is simple.  You never move forward in a straight line.  It's one step forward and two steps back.

This pregnancy started out with a one in a million shot of triplets.  That was scary but there was relief at the next ultrasound when we found out only two babies still had heartbeats.

Today I had another ultrasound and we discovered that only one of the babies still has has a heartbeat.  The other one looks like it stopped growing a week ago.  Pretty much right after my last ultrasound.

The good news: I saw the heartbeat and saw the little baby wiggling around.  It's measuring right at nine and a half weeks like it should.  The bad news: The gestational sac is only measuring about seven weeks.  Of course it's too early to tell what's going to happen and if there's something wrong.  If there is nothing can be done so we just have to sit back and watch and wait.

I don't have a good feeling about this.  I'm scared that this last little one will not hang in there.  My heart is broken for my IPs.  I never wanted to carry a litter of babies, one is enough.  If I can just hang on to this one little baby I can be happy. 

So for now I wait and I rest and think good thoughts and I look forward to/fear what the next ultrasound brings.  Please think good thoughts too.  Not for me but for my IPs who have so many hopes pinned on this last little heartbeat.

And then there were two

One of the benefits of my best friend working at the clinic where I get my prenatal care is that she gets to do some of my prenatal care.  Another benefit is that if if I text her to tell her that I'm about to get an ultrasound she might text back to tell me her patient for that time slot didn't show up and do I want some company?  And I can tell her that I do and then she can come to my ultrasound with me.

So that's how we came to find ourselves (plus Elle) in a little dark room staring at an ultrasound screen together and waiting for the tech to tell me what we were looking at.

Baby A looked great.  Measuring right on track with a good heartbeat.  Baby C looked great too.  Everything was it was supposed to be.

I knew as soon as he skipped measuring baby B that there was something going on.  I looked closer and I couldn't see a heartbeat but I thought maybe it was just the angle and that perhaps I wasn't seeing it.  As the tech finished up with Baby C my friend whispered "Jen, there's no heartbeat there."  The tech nodded.

I don't remember exactly what my reaction was but I burst into tears and started shaking.  I'm going to be honest here and say something that might surprise you.  I was crying from relief.  I wasn't sad or upset, just relieved.

There are a lot of risks associated with carrying triplets and my IPs were facing some hard decisions.  We were facing a long, scary pregnancy and it was not something that I was completely overjoyed with.

Now I feel like everything has fallen into place.  I can DO twins.  I know I can carry twins for a long time and deliver them as big, healthy babies.  When I saw that ultrasound I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.  I slept better last night than I have since the first ultrasound.

That's why I was so glad to have my best friend there. Not everyone will understand why I was ok with seeing that empty dark spot on the ultrasound but she gets it.  I think most other people will understand too sooner or later but not everyone could stood there in that dark room, hugged a pantsless, lubed up me and said "I love you. I'm so glad it worked out this way."

Now I get to focus on growing a perfect set of twins for some very excited parents.  As I said on facebook, this is probably the last time time I'm going to be pregnant (unless a certain set of dads ask me to have more babies for them (hint, HINT)) and I want to enjoy every moment of it.  And right now I'm going to enjoy eating homemade mac and cheese for three.