Today's the day!!

Today is... the first day of the rest of my life! The conclusion to months; well spent months, but long and torturous months; months where I was held captive by fear. What fear you ask? Fear of people miles away.. Fear of the problems they could cause for me and for this sweet baby girl I called S.... The potential for problems was great. These people had already shown their desire to 'make me pay' by using their attorney to demand the abortion and threatening me with litigation to make me repay all the expenses accrued by the surrogacy. They had shown a desire to create difficulty with their actions during the last weeks of my pregnancy, the refusal to cooperate with the adoption plan, lawsuit filed in CT, and their refusal to tell anybody what their intentions were! They showed their inability to respect boundaries by trying to manipulate hospital personnel to get what they wanted. They showed that they didn't really care about the baby's best interests, only their illusion of control. I spent a lot of time during the last weeks of my pregnancy and the first few weeks of Baby S's life stressed about the possibilities that existed for someone to come and screw everything up. There were so many variables; so many ways that someone could come in and delay the adoption process, make it so that I couldn't ethically give up my rights, make me fight even more to ensure that Baby S was in a good place with people who clearly had her best intentions in mind. After July 11th, there was only one thing left. The courts have in place a 21 day appeal period during which an appeal can be filed to contest the relinquishment of parental rights. My lawyers advised me not to release any information to the public (i.e. blog, newspapers, even my facebook page) during this period simply to alleviate the slim chance that anyone would come and suggest that the publicity was of detriment to the welfare of the child and therefore be able to reinstate their rights. So it has been my steadfast duty over the last 3 weeks to keep it quiet still; to make sure everything was finalized before opening everything up for the world to read. So.. here we are.. it's all open, and there's nothing left for anyone to do. The story is public, we're talking about writing a book, maybe turning this into a movie. We'll see where it goes, but one thing is for sure. Baby S is safe with her adoptive family, and I am free to go about my life as I wish. Best part? Unlike most surrogacy legal matters, this was not filed in a confidential hearing, and there is NO non-disclosure agreement. Anyone can go to Tolland Family court and request the court documents for the Kelley case filed in May. And I can talk freely about the entire thing. (Although I have been advised not to name names of the IPs and asked not to release the last name of the adoptive family)