First of all, fears. There are so many things that scare me or make me nervous about the whole process. I've talked about some of them before, but now I have a few to add. My friend Sam just completed her surrogacy journey, you can check out her blog here! She was successful in her journey in the sense that she baked two amazing babies and helped to create a family that may not have ever been. However, she also hit a lot of potholes along the way.
She spent the first ten weeks or so on bed rest secondary to bleeding. She suffered from hyper-emesis gravidarum, resulting in many trips to the hospital for IV fluids, secondary to dehydration from all the time she spent praying to the porcelain gods. The final few weeks of her pregnancy were spent in and out of the hospital suffering from severe headaches, swelling, high blood pressure and preeclampsia. She was finally induced at 35 weeks and delivered two very healthy babies. One week later, she found herself in the hospital again, after waking up, unable to breath. She was then diagnosed with PeriPartum Cardiomyopathy. She is out of the hospital now and doing very well, but her life has been permanently altered from the surrogacy. She will not be able to get pregnant ever again because of the cardiomyopathy. She will spend at least the next few years (possibly the rest of her life) on heart medications and will have to watch her diet for the rest of her life. That is a lot to ask of a previously healthy twenty-four-year-old woman. What if any of that happens to me?
What happened to Sam is very rare. Few pregnancies result in any of those complications and probably fewer result in all of them. I keep reminding myself that if everyone went through what Sam went through, no one would be a surrogate. Yet, I know many people that have done multiple surrogacies and would do it again in an instant. In fact, I know someone who may be transfering right before us, for her second time. First time around, she didn't spend any time on bed rest and had a great, healthy pregnancy.
If something happened, making me unable to bear more children, that would be ok. I don't want anymore children of my own anyway. My two are plenty enough! But, what if I have to spend that much time on bed rest and in and out of the hospital. Can we survive without my income? How will my children handle me not being able to do the things with them that we have always done? Will they be okay with spending a ton of time with a babysitter, if necessary? Will possible complications take a toll on my marriage? While I'm nervous about all of these things, and the injections, procedures, labor, delivery and everything else, I still want to do this. I feel it on my heart just as much now as I ever have before. I'm ready.
Now to the fundraising, which raises another fear. What if I've mentally and physically prepared myself for this, prepared my family and friends, and it doesn't happen? I keep forgetting that if the financial aspects don't fall into place, there will be no surrogacy. I want to help Ali and Brian have a baby so bad and I would absolutely hate for it to not happen because of money. That isn't fair. I didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to make my babies, why should they? I wish their insurance covered it. I wish there was some magical way to just make the money appear. Unfortunately, there isn't. The fact of the matter is, there is still a ton of money to raise and Ali and Brian are going to need help.
Ali has applied for a few grants, but sadly got notification this week that they were not the recipients of any of them. Hundreds of people apply, and only a few grants are distributed. They are also in the process of applying for more loans, but a military income isn't always high enough when looking to borrow money. I pray every night that they will be approved and I hope that is enough. The next step is an online auction. Ali is hoping to get it up and running on August 15th. We are still collecting donations at this point, and need all the donations we can get. We are looking for anything...if you have a home-based business and can donate a gift certificate or some of your products, that would be fabulous. If you don't have a home-based business and still want to help, you can always donate things from your home. Have anything laying around, still in the package even though you bought it weeks ago? Do you have any gently used decor, jewelry, books, movies, anything really that people would want to bid on and wouldn't cost a fortune to ship? If you do, please contact us and let us know. You can reach me via email at mypodtheirpea at gmail dot com. Right now, we simply need a picture and the estimated value of the item. If you don't have anything to donate, you can always participate in the auction. We already have hand made blankets, hoop art, Thirty-One bags, Scentsy gift packs, diaper covers, hair clips, photography sessions and much more!
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| Hoop Art by my sister! |
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| Blanket made by Ali's Grandma! |
Thank you all so much for your continued support. It warms my heart to see how much everyone is willing to help this miracle happen.
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