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| Olivia Craters of the Moon-Idaho |
On Tuesday morning September 20th Jaiden, Olivia and I left for Boise. We had a great travel day driving down, stopping at Craters of the Moon State Park and eating Idaho mashed potatoes :) . We arrived just in time to check into our hotel, clean up a little and drive into town to meet Bridget and her family for dinner. It was the first time my girls had met Bridget and her family and it was the first time I had met Bridget's mother Vickie, son Jackson and youngest daughter Austin. It has been a pleasure to introduce our families and support crews! We hope to be able to see them a lot more over this next year. Our dinner really exposed how incredibly busy Bridget is as a mother in her life. With 3 kids, a career and being pregnant, she has a lot of responsibilities. She had been miserable all day with morning sickness and still made it to meet us for dinner. I felt terrible for her because she couldn't even eat. We left relatively early and headed back to our hotel for the evening where the girls and I made it an early night. All I could think about was our ultrasound in the morning!
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| Bridget, myself, Olivia and Jaiden after our heartbeat ultrasound- Boise, ID |
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| BABY SIGLER |
The next day was the day that we had been waiting for since August 22nd; September 21st, our heartbeat confirmation ultrasound appointment. This appointment was the difference between the super exciting pink lines on the pee sticks and the actual visualization of a tiny, beating heart. We left the hotel first thing in the morning to meet Bridget, Shawn and her daughter Austin at ICRM. We were all escorted back to the smallest ultrasound room I've ever seen, or maybe it just felt that way because there were 8 sets of eyes watching the monitor, 1 (Cody) of which was half a world away watching via internet video streaming in the very early morning hours of Papua New Guinea. We didn't have to wait long to see the tiny little heart fluttering. YAY!! Even more exciting and relieving for me was to see that there was only 1 heart, 1 baby! The nurse was quick with the ultrasound because their clinic was only the monitoring clinic. Their job is to simply confirm a heart beat and take a measurement for age. We measured 0.95 cm which was exactly 7.0 weeks gestation-which was spot on to our dating. The nurse was kind enough to give Bridget 6 ultrasound pictures to keep, which she gave to me! I later put these in Cody's birthday card when he returned home from his last hitch. The sweetest little welcome home present. Our trip home was very quiet and uneventful. The girls slept most of the way, we had beautiful fall weather and I had plenty of time to daydream and reflect. Life between Idaho and Montana is ever so sweet.
We returned home and still had 9 more days until Cody came home from work. The girls picked up where they left off with soccer and volleyball every day and I started filling in a little more than the usual at work. Finally seeing our heart beat on ultrasound and unfortunately knowing how poorly Bridget was feeling was great reassurance to us as intended parents for increased positivity and hopes of a successful pregnancy. With this forward motion and pregnancy confirmation I've had some difficult times in understanding my feelings. Herein lies the problem with why I haven't shared any news and updates since September. Every time I sit down to write and express our excitement, love and gratuity for Bridget and thoughts for our future I'm paralyzed with a writing block. I'm not sure how to accurately express my very mixed feelings.
I'm confused because I have experienced pregnancy, twice in fact, and this time I am having a child with Cody and we are experiencing everything very separately and from a distance, both with each other and with Bridget living in Boise. It's heartbreaking for me to know that Bridget is celebrating her wedding anniversary with her husband, enjoying a nice meal and bee lining it home just in time to throw it all up. Each night I think about Bridget giving herself one more progesterone injection and how much pain it causes her, while my greatest discomfort at night is not going to bed at a decent hour. It makes me feel selfish, not because it's my choice to not carry our child, but because I am hundreds of miles away, across a state line, eating my dinner and feeling fine. I feel sad for Cody because he doesn't get the opportunity to live the day to day life of nine months of pregnancy with his wife, seeing all the glory and gory first hand. He still gets the craziness of his wife, but that's forever. ;) I wonder about the girls and how it must feel to know they will have a sibling soon, but also be experiencing this pregnancy from the sidelines- and suddenly one day bring a baby home. Gestational surrogacy is amazing, beyond anything I ever understood and at times still continue to understand. I feel selfish for being thankful to have been able to carry 2 pregnancies and own those experiences. All of these feelings have compressed my joy, it's hard to experience happiness when others are uncomfortable. I certainly do not want to overshadow anyone's feelings in all of the different aspects of our pregnancy. So writing, which usually comes easily has for once been very, very difficult. I spent all of October letting myself explore how I felt, what I am able to feel and observing how our family is feeling. I haven't made much progress, but for me, writing is therapy, so after 4 paragraphs of trying, please feel this with me...
On September 22nd, the day after our heart beat confirmation ultrasound our nurse coordinator at SRM contacted me for the last time to inform us that we were officially released from them as the fertility clinic and could schedule our first OB appointment with Bridget's OB Dr. in Boise. She went over final instructions for Bridget finishing her medication and giving herself injections through October 25th and congratulated us on our pregnancy. So exciting and simultaneously terrifying. Up until this point we have had a contact at SRM that Bridget or I could contact at any time with any questions or concerns we had. Bridget's OB Dr. recently retired and is no longer seeing obstetric patients, so she needed to choose a new Dr. and have her medical records forwarded before we were able to make our appointment. Bridget did a lot of research to find the perfect Dr. for her and us, we had some difficulty getting our records faxed to the new clinic, but we were able to schedule our appointment and finally everything fell into place. When Bridget scheduled her appointment she was told that we would be having another ultrasound prior to meeting our Dr. and having her first OB appointment. Thankfully her appointment was during the month that Cody was home from work, so on October 18th Cody and I drove down to Boise for a morning appointment on the 19th. After a long day of driving, a uniform change- NLCS game 2 Dodgers vs. Cubs, we fell asleep celebrating a Dodgers WIN and a quiet evening.
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| Grabbing suckers for the drive! |
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| We made it! |
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| Go Dodgers! |
Our appointment was at 9:30 am and Cody and I were actually wasting time before meeting Bridget and her husband Shawn at the clinic. Cody was so excited he couldn't sit still, breath, speak clearly or quit smiling! St. Lukes in Boise is where Bridget's clinic is and right next door is the hospital. The access is going to be incredibly ideal and comfortable. After getting lost next door in the hospital Code called B and we found our way to the clinic. Seeing Shawn and Bridget again, even for a short time is always such a pleasure. The guys have so much in common with their jobs and experiences it gives Bridget and I the opportunity to chat and talk about the pregnancy and juggling our children. :) A constant thought of mine is about how thankful I am to be able to have a comfortable relationship with Bridget and Shawn, even when I'm short on words our conversations are easy and enjoyable. The bond and work that goes into creating life, having the same but separate goals, milestones and outcomes with a person and family that were strangers merely a year ago is the quickest transitional relationship I've experienced. When I met Bridget I couldn't wait to text her every day to get to know all I possibly could about her. Once we started talking I was so at ease, really feeling Cody and I had been blessed with a surrogate who was the perfect fit for us. Months later, multiple visits, 2 weekends in Seattle, continued texting and this visit was again confirmation that Bridget is exactly who we needed and are fortunate to have be our surrogate.
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| Walking into the clinic |
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| St. Luke's- Boise, ID |
On our way to the clinic I was panicking that we'd get to the clinic and the staff would be overwhelmed by our appointments where there were 4 people in the room. Do we have to explain to everyone each time what our situation is? Bridget informed me that she had already told the clinic our pregnancy was a surrogate pregnancy. She is always thinking..one step ahead of me. Our ultrasound was the first part of our appointment. We were situated in our room, I pulled out my camera to record parts of the ultrasound and take pictures, I was soooo ready. Cody taps my shoulder and points to a sign hanging directly in front of my face, that I'm obviously not paying any attention to: NO CAMERAS, NO VIDEO RECORDINGS OR PICTURES, NO CELL PHONES. Well, bummer! As soon as the ultrasound touched Bridget's stomach we saw our baby! 4 weeks ago at our ultrasound the baby was a ball of cells with a tiny fluttering heart. Today we were able to see our healthy, growing baby! We saw it's sweet little nose, hands, legs and strong heart. 170 beats per minute in fact. We were 11 weeks pregnant that day and on ultrasound the baby measured 11 weeks 4 days! Again kudos to Bridget for always being one step ahead of the game. :) The radiology tech was wonderful in letting us ooohhh and awwwww for awhile, which allowed us to watch the baby wiggle all over the place, stretch (completely stretched out legs and tiny feet!) and be mesmerized by its tiny heart. With our hearts beaming and a pocket full of pictures we were escorted to an exam room where a nurse took all of Bridget's medical history. The nurse was great with talking with Cody and I and including us in this initial appointment. Next we met Dr. West, a highly recommended Dr. by Bridget's surrogacy support group and friends alike. He was an immediate hit with Cody- He's a Dodger's fan and they spent some time discussing the game the night before. We felt instant comfort with Dr. West. He was soft spoken with Bridget, Cody and I. Bridget was prepared with her concerns for her morning sickness and very proactive in giving Dr. West all of the information he needed to know. Throughout the appointment I kept being in awe at the questions and medical detail Bridget gave Dr. West because they didn't even cross my mind. Another reason I know she is always doing her best and looking out for Cody and I in an area we are so unfamiliar with. Dr. West is also allowing us to be flexible with dates for when we are able to do our gender ultrasound as to be sure Cody will be home. Between now and then he will see Bridget one other time for a routine monthly visit. I am hoping to be able to make it back down for this appointment, but unfortunately Cody will be back at work. Dr. West is also so pleased with Bridget's delivery history that he offered the option of being induced up to a week prior to our due date should she choose. One more wonderful tool for surrogates when it comes to planning. He also offered the opportunity for us to make an appointment for a tour of the labor and delivery and explained that in most surrogacy deliveries we will have a pod with Bridget so she has a room and we have a room with the baby after delivery for everyone's comfort. We have been blown away by the efforts of Bridget, the staff at the clinic and the projected hospital experience as they guide us as intended parents and a team with Bridget to create an as organic as possible birthing experience. As we left the clinic, I felt that they had all adequately wrapped their arms around us and will take wonderful care of us. I couldn't have dreamed we'd ever be here, but here we are today on the brink of having the first trimester under Bridget's belt.
Cody and I spent the first hour of our drive home analyzing every little detail in the ultrasound pictures, immediately sending pictures to our families. We finally feel like we have a little room to breath and relax, knowing that our baby is growing, by the best person imaginable and we have a clinical team that we can trust and feel comfortable with. Deep breath innnnn and outttttt. We are SO pregnant! :)
When I was struggling with writing and trying to grasp what was happening and transpiring in our lives I was gifted a sign to keep digging into my feelings for understanding. My favorite author released a new book. I had pre-ordered it months ago, so when it showed up on my doorstep the timing couldn't have been more right. Jodi Picoult's latest Novel is called Small Great Things, coincidentally it is based on a controversial story about a labor and delivery nurse. I stood in my dining room, holding my new treasure and daydreamed all of the incredible things happening in our lives. From the girls success's in school and athletics, to Cody's job and now our baby, our life is full of many small, great, things. And to that...I write.
XO.
E
