Happy Thanksgiving

Do you do the black friday shopping?  I don't but I am impressed by those who do.  I don't like crowds so it's not my cup of tea.  I did make Joe go to Sears last year and buy laundry detergent for half price and that has lasted us a year (and we do four loads of laundry a day between his work clothes, my work clothes, basketball clothes for the boy and just regular clothes). 

We are having a quiet Thanksgiving at home today.  I have to work a bit at job one and do a bit of typing but not much of either.  We will be baking and just vegging out mostly. 

27 weeks 4 days pregnant now and just cruising along.  This baby is really active.  I am thankful that things are calm with the pregnancy and praying for no early labor. 

Basketball started last Friday with a scrimmage.  Confusingly the boy warmed up with the varsity and wore the red varsity uniform but the actual kids that played varsity wore white.  So he played jv in the varsity uniform.  The coach said he wanted to designate the three players who were both jv and varsity so that people would know they were both.  Weird.  The coach also talked to us after the game and told us that the boy is the first freshman he has ever put on varsity at the beginning of the year.  He said that other have worked up to varsity mid way through but he has never started a season with a freshman on varsity.  The real season starts next Monday.  There's an in town freshman tournament and an out of town varisty tournament, both all next week.  We will be heading to the out of town varsity tournament.  Luckily it is only about 30 minutes from my job so I can just go straight from work. 

Saw (aka chased after) the grandbaby for four hours the other day.  Man you forget how busy they are.  She is adorably but ornery.  She talks constantly but we're not sure of the language...I think Swahili, Joe thinks German. 

And that's about it for us here.  Hard to believe that in 12ish weeks the Canadian will be here, I will be done with pregnancy and moving forward into other areas of life.  I think I have decided to take a huge plunge and really change my/our life in a certain way and I am excited and nervous.  Only good things to come.  :)

What I have learned

I have been in the surrogate world for a long time and as I sit here, nearing the end of my surrogacy days (yes I know I've said that before but I feel in my bones that this is my last surrogacy...I really am done, finally), I realize what a gift the whole experience has been.  On a message board I belong to, there is a post about what we have learned as surrogates and as I was reading through the responses of others, I came across one response that totally sums up my feelings on surrogacy.  So courtesy of Susan, here's what surrogacy has taught me. 


I've learned the most gracious gift of my lifetime thus far,

I've learned how to let go and love at a distance. Being a surrogate mother has been some of the most beautiful and sad moments/days/months/years of my life!

I've learned that I've given back to the Universe what it gave me, life.

I've learned how to respect those opinions that may not be like mine.

I've learned that I've taught my boys a very deep meaning of giving to others.

I've learned that some feelings you experience in surrogacy just simply don't have words to express them.

I've learned that giving "life" was a gift I was meant to give to others



I see so many people talking about surrogacy lately.  It's the hot topic I guess.  But to those of us who've been around the surrogacy world for awhile it's not a hot topic, or the latest thing, or the new way that celebrities get babies.  It's just a part of our lives, this wonderful aspect of our already full lives.  For me, the time has come to move on.  I'm too old, my kids are too busy, my uterus has been occupied too many times and cut too many also.  I don't envy the new surrogates starting out...it's a different world now and I fear government regulation is not too far down the road.  I think a part of me will miss surrogacy but a part of me will be relieved.  I can lose weight and get healthy and actually stay that way.  I can focus my time and energy on myself and my family.  But surrogacy will always be a part of my life.  There will be six babies in the world that I helped to create through surrogacy.  There will be four families that I helped to expand their definition of family.  Together these men and I not only grew babies, we made families, turned men into parents, turned parents into grandparents.  What a ride it has been. 

14 more weeks with the Canadian and my life will change forever.  For me there is no going back...who was I 8 years ago when I first explored surrogacy?  I was a mom to kids that ranged in age from 13 down to 6.  When I deliver my kids will range from 21 to 14.  I am excited to see what the future brings for me and my family and to see what the next adventure might be. 

It happened like this

Want to hear a funny story or two?  Let me tell you about the 20 week ultrasound.  Fairly hilarious. At the time I still hadn't bought a car and was driving the great black beast still.  I wanted to be able to meet the guys at their hotel and give them a lift to the ultrasound so they would not have to navigate.  So I asked the neighbor (62 year old bachelor man) if I could borrow his Honda.  He said sure.  What could go wrong, right? 

Soo....as I'm driving away from the house the check engine light comes on.  I call the hubster and he says yes he knows this, that the car has an appointment next week and it's just a sensor issue.  Surely he wouldn't let his pregnant wife take off on a 50 mile journey in the neighbor's broken car so I continue on.  At the next stop light I glanced in the back seat and noticed how dirty the car was (like cluttered dirty, not really dirt dirty).  Anywho, I then noticed cigarette papers in the back seat and other assorted items that led me to wonder just a bit about my neighbor.  I got to the hotel and confessed to the guys that I had my neighbors car and was not altogether sure that I wasn't driving a mobile drug lab so maybe we should just take their rental car...which turned out to be a minivan. 


Soo...we drive to the ultrasound place and they have no idea it's a surrogacy.  She calls us back and looks at the guys in a confused manner.  She asked who the father was and I said I didn't know (we put in 2 embryos and only one took so yeah...once again I'm pregnant with an unknown).  She got an even more confused look on her face and whispered in my ear, "So you brought both possible dads to the ultrasound?"  I knew what she meant but in the spirit of the day I calmly said yes, that they were both possibly the father and we would find out after the birth who the father was.  She was great to the guys but continued to shoot me "wow you are a big fat whore" looks.  It was hilarious.  On the way out one of the guys pulled her aside and told her it was a surrogacy but by then I think it was too late and she didn't believe us. 

Just another adventure in surrogacy.  My life is going to seem so boring after I retire.  :)