For the past few days I have racked my brain for different ways to start this blog and I still don't feel like I have a solid place to start, so I figured I would start at the very beginning and work my way through the past year where my journey begins.
February 2011
I had just come home from a very long trip to Colorado, about a month long. I was there helping my mom recover from a fall she had taken in December. She was suffering from memory loss. When I returned home and tried to pick up the pieces to my everyday life I was having some trouble adjusting. I found myself missing little things about having a newborn around especially since my then, 19 month old was far from a newborn and on the brink of becoming a toddler. As my husband started to ask about having another baby I soon realized that having another baby was not what I wanted. Yes, I missed the newborn baby smell and all of the really cute newborn baby stuff but I didn't miss the waking up in the middle of the night, changing countless diapers, having a nursing baby on me the majority of the day and the lack of personal time and space that comes with having a newborn around.
As I started to think about what was "missing" and what I felt I wanted, I came across my pregnancy photos that were taken when I was pregnant with my son. As I flipped through all of these pictures I realized that was what I missed and wanted. I wanted to be PREGNANT!!! When most moms realize that they miss and want to be pregnant again, they want the baby at the end, lol. NOT ME!!! As I started to think more and more about wanting to be pregnant I remembered the Friends episode where Phoebe carries her brothers triplets for him and his wife. How cool would that be?!!? Right? You get to experience being pregnant again as well as giving another family the opportunity to start their own family, such an amazing gift to be able to give some one! And at the end of the pregnancy you get to go home and sleep, rest and go back to your everyday life. Sounded pretty great to me!!!
As I kept on going back and forth on whether or not to bring up this semi-crazy idea to my husband I decided to talk to my dad first. My dad has always given me great advise on everything I have ever come to him with, so his advice and guidance was and will always be very important to me. After breaking down, in detail, what I wanted to do he was honestly not very excited about. Not only for the possible health risks that could arise, but I think he was a little jealous that I wanted to have another baby, for someone else, and not another grand baby :) lol. After the conversation with him, I wasn't feeling very guided but knew my dad was, well being a dad and didn't want his baby girl to be harmed in any way, whether it be physical from the pregnancy or the feelings of loss after giving the baby to the IP's.
About a month later my husband came home with a newspaper from his work. On the very last page there was an ad for surrogates. He asked me if I would ever want to do this, and the really funny part is that I hadn't mentioned my thoughts about becoming a surrogate to him yet. I think that's a pretty good "meant to be" sign!!! We talked for a good 2 weeks about the pro's and con's and decided to look at some agencies in the Los Angeles area. I researched agencies for months and felt like I was getting no where with deciding who to apply to...
Applying
Starting the applying process was not as easy I thought it was going to be. I went back and forth between 7 different agencies. Making my pro and con list, talking to my husband about it, talking to friends about it and reading countless reviews on each agency. I finally decided to apply to all 7 agencies and see if the application process would make the decision on which agency to go through for me. Like most of us have experienced in our life, REJECTION SUCKS! With in 48 hours I was turned down by 5 out of the 7 agencies (due to what we thought was a miscarriage on my medical record, but it turned out to be an allergic reaction to the birth control pills I was on. Luckily I was eventually able to get the diagnoses terminology changed!). I was so upset that I didn't even know if I wanted to continue. Boy oh boy am I glad i pushed through! A week later I got a confirmation email from Fertility Miracles and another agency! Getting through the application process with both agencies was very different. Fertility Miracles had a few phone interviews as well as an online profile for me to fill out whereas the other agency had the phone interviews, online profile to fill out and an in home interview. By the time we finished getting through our application process with the other agency (done after Fertility Miracles), we had already been sent a profile on a possible IP match from Fertility Miracles. Honestly I did not like going through the application process with two different agencies, especially at the same time, but I think a part of me was always anticipating one or both of them to eventually find something "wrong" with me (there isn't anything wrong with me, but after so much rejection from the other agencies what do you expect!). After looking through the profile that Fertility Miracles sent to me I decided I wanted to meet them! At that point I put the other agency on the back burner until I knew what I wanted to do.
Beginning this journey has been such an up and down process. Luckily it has gotten better and I can't wait for everything to get going :)
~Rachelle
