guess who's back, back again

Shady's back, tell a friend. Anybody?

Hey-o little neglected blog. Blogging isn't really a thing anymore, huh? But I've got some things I'd like to document so here we are! Since the last time I blogged in 2016 (haaaa), I had a baby girl and then another baby boy. Exciting times. But really, they are the bomb.com (do people still say that? I do.) and I am just busy all the frickin time now. Let's see...other mentionables: we lost Juneau to a sad and quickly progressing disease, we fostered 7 (?) dogs, adopted a new dog, and I started a new job. (And I've been working there for almost two years, so it's not really new anymore.) I'm sure there's more, but I kept three children, two dogs, and myself alive today, so that's all I've got at the moment.

And now we are like "we're done having kids" to everyone except I'm totally not done because I'm going to be a surrogate. You can call it a gestational carrier if you want. Either way, I'm trying to have a baby for someone else. And that's what I came back to this sweet little blog to document. If someone on the internet isn't curious, I at least want to be able to come back in 5 years and remember all of this.

Let's start at the beginning. After our second baby, we weren't sure if we were done or not. We had a boy and a girl and we were kinda like...this could be it? But I hadn't really thought that would be my last pregnancy, so I didn't really have that closure in my mind. That was when I first thought that maybe I would want to carry a baby for someone else. But then we ended up having a sweet little caboose of a dude and good thing, because he's awesome.

In January of this year, when caboose baby was 7 months old, I thought about surrogacy again. This time, I researched some agencies and requested some info from one that I thought looked particularly nice. A few days later, I got to chat with one of the owners of the agency on the phone, and the next day I submitted my application and paperwork. If there's one thing that I've learned about myself, it's that once I get an idea in mind, I either need to squash it completely or see it through immediately.

I'll pause here to mention how bananas this whole process is. In a good way. I filled out a giant profile about who I would be willing to carry for- I could specify anything. Things I had never even thought of before. In case you were wondering, I said I'm willing to carry for pretty much anyone, as long as they're not assholes (more or less). I also had to submit all of my medical records and hospital records, an application with my information, Kameron's information, and basic information about our family. I wrote a letter to my someday Intended Parents (I'm going to call them IPs from here on out) and included photos of myself and our family. I'm not complaining- I'm glad that it's such a thorough process because if you have any doubts in your mind, you'll either face them or decide not to go through with your app.

After all of my info was submitted to the agency and they combed through it to make sure I am medically able to carry another baby to the best of their knowledge, we scheduled a trip to Madison to go meet the women who own the agency and chat with them, as well as complete a psychological evaluation to make sure we are both mentally stable enough to do this. All of the IPs go through a similar process, which I think is really cool. The meeting and psych eval are the last steps before entering the matching process.

Last week we finally got to go to Madison and it was amazing! We spent a few hours with the agency talking about our hopes for our IPs and boundaries/views on different things. The next day we spent about 5 hours with the agency's chosen psychologist (who is super cool, by the way) and talked about our childhoods, our current life, what we would/would not be willing to do for our IPs (give up caffeine if requested, abort a fetus with medical necessity, etc.). We also each took a 344 question personality test, whew. One of the women from the agency was kind enough to text me later that night to let me know that we both passed the test and the psychologist had no reservations about us moving forward, so we were officially cleared to enter matching!

And now, the hard part! Or the hard part for now, depending on how we're looking at this. I hate waiting and I'm dying to meet our IPs, so this seems like the hard part. But I'm sure months from now when I'm injecting myself with fertility meds, the wait won't seem so awful anymore. The agency will review the information I submitted and see if they have a good match for us with any of their IPs who are waiting to be matched with a surrogate. If they think there's a good match, they'll send me the profile that the IPs filled out, and if I agree on the match, they'll send my profile to the IPs. If the IPs agree, we will schedule a match meeting to meet in person and go over everything and (hopefully) declare it an official match!

I'll leave it at that for now and come back when there's more to share.

Post agency meeting, pre Madison breweries.