Surrogacy as it goes.. How it's been..

Hello all!
It's been quite a while since I wrote anything.. and I'm sure what has been happening over the last couple of months most of you already know from following me on Facebook. But I feel that the time has come that I have to write it all down; as a record for posterity, and as an act of respect for the little life that I'm so blessed to be holding.

On October 8th 2011 I drove down to PA for an embryo transfer. The couple that I decided to carry for is an established family with three other children in NY. Their mom carried the older child and then twins, but doctors decided it was unsafe for her to carry again because all of her children were born premature and her pregnancies were very difficult. The couple had two embryo's still frozen, and the thing I remember her saying that made me believe that they were the type of people I could be confident carrying for was when she told me 'they're my babies, I can't just throw them away'.

Two embryo's were transferred.. and then we waited. and waited and waited. Impatient me of course went out and bought a box of 3 home pregnancy tests. The first one (5 days after transfer) was negative. The second (7 days after transfer) was also negative. I became quite discouraged. I had a scheduled blood test on the 9th day post-transfer.. but I also had one home test left. I contemplated not using it and just waiting.. but I really couldn't just let it be. 8 days post transfer I got a very faint positive on the HPT. I was thrilled. My IPs wanted to wait for the official blood work before getting excited, but sure enough the next day it came back positive and they were absolutely thrilled.

The next couple of months were a little rough. I didn't have a lot of morning sickness because of the medications that the clinic had me on to maintain the pregnancy. I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks to measure the baby and make sure everything was growing well. Everything measured perfectly. We worked on getting insurance set up, however because of the regulations with insurance in the state of Connecticut, we were not able to get private insurance, and I was not able to use my state insurance for any of the pregnancy costs. We were stuck.

Luckily we found the wonderful Childbirth Connections Birth Center and midwives in Danbury. My first appointment I was 14 weeks. I lost 4lbs between the initial ultrasound and that date. However shortly afterwards I regained my appetite and I gained 7lbs in the next 4 weeks. Things looked good, baby's heartbeat was strong, and I was starting to feel movement.

We had an anatomy ultrasound scheduled during my 18th week. The tech was not happy about doing the scan at that gestation and wasn't able to clearly see the heart and the head as she wanted to; so I was scheduled to come back in 3 weeks, when I was 21 weeks. We did, however, find out that the baby is a girl!