The third trimester was exhausting for me, and was by far much different compared to my own pregnancy, than the other two trimesters. With my daughter, I was a bit tired, but never felt exhausted, and I never felt like I just wanted her out already. However, with surrobaby, I was more than exhausted and pretty uncomfortable, especially during the end. He decided to sit very low for the entire trimester, and I think he had fun kicking my bladder all day and night. Although total opposite from my own, it was still a great feeling to be able to grow him. During this time, it was very clear that I was pregnant, and had to figure out how to navigate talking to people about the pregnancy. I have a lot of face to face with clients in my field, so I ended up having to decide who I revealed it was a surrogacy pregnancy to, and who I just let congratulate me and let them believe it was mine. Basically, if I had a relationship with the person and knew I would see and speak with them again, I would explain a bit how I was carrying for someone. Most of the time, people were over the moon and very interested in the topic. I had a handful of people tell me about their experiences with infertility and how much they appreciated hearing about what I was doing. During this trimester, I did find myself more distant from intended mom. This was not on purpose, but I was just so tired from my lack of sleep, work schedule, and trying to entertain my children, that I wasn’t as enthusiastic about gushing over everything, especially since surrobaby was pretty much just growing at this point- no big milestones. Mom from my perspective, respected the space I needed and I really appreciated that. It took a layer of stress off and made the pregnancy a bit easier. I kept her up to date on all the appointments- and there were definitely a lot in the last trimester. We had an ultrasound and a non-stress test done every week for the last 6 weeks. Thankfully, my job was very supportive of the pregnancy and I did not have any issues at all going to any appointments.
