One Year ago today our rainbow baby arrived. After having a stillborn then 7 months later being diagnosed with Breast Cancer I was told I could never carry again.
Finding the perfect surrogate is interesting to say the least….its a different kind of Match making.
We were lucky to find an incredible agency to help us navigate it all, after we had to pull the plug on our first surrogate at the last minute ( the night before transfer!!) we found our perfect Match.
Its funny when you match with a surrogate you can express how, what, when basically anything you want out of this journey. My only answer to her was “ call me when there is a baby” my husband did not have the same answer 😊
Months of paperwork, dr appts conference calls…covid hits and our transfer was delayed.
After a 3 month delay we successfully transferred our only embryo into our surrogate.
We decided to keep this a secret… After going through a loss of a stillborn there is a fear inside you that you cant even imagine. …I also had to protect my oldest daughter – she took the loss of her sister hard and wanted to shield her as much as I can.
About 5 months into the pregnancy, we found out our surrogate’s amniotic fluid was low, she had to be closely monitored. The next few weeks were beyond stressful we were worried about the baby, about the surrogate- Our team of doctors decided to plan a c section for 4 weeks before the due date (Feb 26th) just to be on the safe side.
But just how life goes… on Feb 3rd during routine monitoring the doctors said there is no way we can let you go home! So on Feb 4th at 4 am we got the call…”your baby is here” after we cried I asked is it a boy or girl?
A sweet little girl weighing 2lbs 13oz….Little Lulu came 7 weeks early…so little but so strong. We drove 7 hours to Pittsburgh where I would spend the next 31 days with her in the Nicu.
The Nicu is an entire world on its own…these nurses are beyond incredible…our days and nights consisted of if and how many episodes did she have? how many Brady’s (this is when the heart rate drops), Did she gain weight? How much? Your heart raced at each beep of that machine.
I’m forever grateful for the entire team at the Nicu and the community of families that we met in the hospital.