Pregnancy

At 6, almost 7 months along, this girl is really moving! Sometimes I imagine she is doing calisthenics at 5am when I am not yet ready to wake up. Related, the aches and pains of the third trimester are starting, and so I’m doing weekly prenatal yoga and nightly hip stretches. I think this is helping, because on the nights I forget to stretch, my hips have something to say about it. The pre-birth order process is underway, with my IPs’ lawyer submitting the necessary paperwork. With the CPSA being so new, this is the first time my county’s court

It’s been a busy few weeks! At 21 weeks I went in for my anatomy scan. Since again the IFs were not allowed to attend, I decided to book them a Sneak Peek ultrasound, one of those third-party non-medical ultrasound places. So that weekend they drove to my town, finally met my husband and daughter at brunch, and then we headed to the ultrasound. The session was about 15 minutes long, and we got 2- and 3-D views of the baby, as well as listened to the heartbeat. The dads also got a recording of the heartbeat to take home.

At 16 weeks, I’m pretty sure I’m feeling little flutters, the very beginning of feeling the baby move! I still don’t quite look pregnant yet, but I definitely feel it. I’ve used some of my maternity clothing budget to get some second-hand goodies off Facebook marketplace as well as a few new items from StitchFix maternity. I don’t fit into my usual clothes anymore. I will probably also get a wedge pillow so that I can safely sleep on my back. I had my 16-week checkup and was able to again FaceTime with the intended fathers so that they could

In surrogacy, there’s a whole lot going on in the beginning: matching, contracts, appointments, ultrasounds, blood draws, medications. But as you reach months 2 and 3, things start to slow down. I have really felt this lately! I’m now under the care of my OB. At around 10 weeks, I had a blood draw to check for chromosomal abnormalities. All came back normal, but as the embryos were tested beforehand, this was what we expected. This test also reveals the sex of the fetus, but I already knew since the clinic told me earlier. The intended fathers don’t want to

Once the fertility clinic got my HCG results and were happy with them, they had me schedule my first ultrasound. Since I never have any first trimester symptoms when I’m pregnant, I find ultrasounds to be very assuring. Otherwise, I have no idea what’s going on in my body. I attended the ultrasound alone and I had been told I would not be able to FaceTime or take video during the appointment. But at the last minute, the ultrasound tech did let me take video. So, it was a great surprise for the intended fathers when I sent them a

As I mentioned in my blog post about the transfer, the clinic waits 14 days to have patients get a blood draw to test HCG levels. That’s a long wait! Knowing that if the transfer were successful, I could get a positive on a home test as soon as five days post transfer, the intended fathers and I agreed that we would get on FaceTime early the morning of day 5 and I’d reveal the test “live.” I was so nervous, mostly because I wasn’t sure how we’d handle the disappointment if the test came out negative. But at 6:25am,