The most wonderful nine months ever...
A few weeks back i had a friend tell me she had been discussing baby number two with her husband. Instantly my heart sank. I could have cried right in front of her...
Truth is i still get a sad feeling when i see pregnancy announcements or as above if i have friends planning to expand their family. NOT a feeling i expected i would still feel after finally having Francesca! Jake and I would honestly give anything to have another baby. In fact we would give anything to have 10...
BUT that's just not how things are going to work out for us! Most days we are totally at piece with this but there are days where i think to myself 'What if"...
Francesca is our real life angel and we thank the heavens above we were this lucky to get JUST HER.
Anyway once again I'm late with my blog AGAIN! Legit excuse this time i swear! The time has come for us to apply to the courts to have Francesca's birth certificate transferred into our names. YAY!! But oh my god it is unreal the amount of paper work and counselling required for the hour we will actually spend in the court room! You could say this is the hardest part of our journey. But 100% worth it.
Now i have a little time to sit and tell you about what really happened in our surrogacy journey =)
We had 3 little fighting embryos left to use. That's it 3. No more chances after this. My body had physically given up on us. I was getting to the point where the miscarriages were making me so ill id spend weeks in a hospital bed in a maternity ward because i was being cared for by a OBGYN. Yep one time i had miscarried at 9 weeks and the only bed they had left for me was right next to the nursery. When Shayna made one of the most biggest decisions of her life I dont actually think we knew that the next 9 months was going to be so amazing! In all honesty i expected myself to feel jealous, sad, anxious etc...
Well i am pleased to say not once did i feel any single one of those emotions! I also don't think Shayna expected to have such a smooth running and healthy pregnancy. Shayn had gestational diabetes and extreme back pain with her second bub Fletcher. But the heavens opened up for her and made sure this pregnancy would be made as easy going as possible because lets face it, imagine having an extremely bad pregnancy knowing you weren't getting the baby at the end...brutal.
Okay so not sure if i have mentioned previously but Frankie is our second attempt out of those last 3 embryos. We successfully fell pregnant with the first round but unfortunately Shayns body didn't respond well to the Ivf medications. No shock to me, i was used to the bad news. However when the embryologist says to your face we used the best looking embryo first time made us pretty much lose hope for the other two.
One month later we were booked into have a second go and this time to our surprise it was a success! Shayna recieved a phone call on day 14 with the HCG levels, normally any number around 100 is a very good sign. OUR NUMBER WAS OVER 1000. Initial thoughts TWINS its twins lol. Exciting for us, not so much for poor Shayn haha. Our 5w3d day scan showed just one fast heartbeat lol. Shayn was pretty happy about that lol. Also the day Shayna had to see Jake and I both standing there listening to our babies heartbeat for the very first time. Was a very special day. From that day on it was smooth sailing. Shayna found out the sex at 9 weeks by a special American blood test and surprised us on week 14 at our gender reveal party. Another great day!
Then the planning for us began. Clothes, nursery, pram and THE BABY SHOWER I ALWAYS DREAMED OF...We had finally felt safe to start buying stuff. The weeks flew by and turned into months. We had a family bet on for the day of birth lol, Aaron won! Of course lol.
Another thing i don't think any of us expected was how strong our relationships would grow. You would not think being sisters already that your relationship with each other could really get much better. Well it did. I even look at my baby sister a different way now. Every time i look at her i cant help but see this big bright ora around her. We feel we owe our life to Shayna and Aaron and we will forever be grateful. I recon we honestly spoke at least 10 times a day for the entire pregnancy lol. Guess what, nothing has changed! And Aaron! What an amazing person he is. Just because Shayn did all of the physical work does not mean Aaron was less apart of this. He to spent alot of his time with us. He had to deal with the pregnancy hormones haha. But he played such a huge part in this journey, Jake and I are very glad Francesca has the most amazing aunt and uncle =)
But that day OH MY GOD THAT DAY....
I couldn't even take Francesca when she was born, i simply froze. I could not actually believe that i had just became a mother, and to be quite honest with you, every single memory and emotion came rushing back like you see on the movies! Every miscarriage, surgery and the heartbreaking words "you'll never carry a baby and survive the birth"...
HOWEVER
I was totally unaware of how beautiful giving birth is. Maybe because it was my daughter though? I don't know. How lucky am i to have been able to watch my daughter enter this world! Without the contractions or back pain. Better yet how lucky am i to have watched my sister give birth to someone elses baby. I can honestly sit here and tell you the reason i will never have another baby is because the only way that would happen is if Shayna was to carry again. But that wont be happening. One baby i feel lucky, two babies to me that's just selfish! So there is my reason for deciding to not have anymore children. Because I do not trust anybody else. In my mind nobody would do it better. Not even me.