“Ssshh, I have a secret,” says June. “I love you,” she whispers in to my ear.

Grant, June and I play this little game in the house where we sneak up in our ears and say “Ssshh, I have a secret.” It always gets us laughing because it tickles, and it’s the most adorable thing when June uses it as a way to say “I love you.”

On the day this photo was taken, June said “Ssshh, I have a secret…. two!”

We’ve been keeping a secret, a big, big secret.

We are expecting a baby boy soon via a surrogate! 

I have been bursting at the seams to share this news with you all, but for what I hope are obvious reasons, we chose to keep this on the DL until he was born. Outside of privacy concerns, I think one of the biggest reasons we were waiting to share this news is because I am very much still in the process of my endometriosis and adenomyosis journey. I still do not have all of the answers and while I want to share where we are with our pregnancy and surrogacy, I also felt weird not fully having a “button” on my own physical and health stuff.

Does that make sense?

I thought that maybe it would be helpful to share a bit of a timeline to catch you guys up to speed on all things surrogacy. I’m literally smiling as I type this I am so excited to finally share this news!!!

Okay, so here we go…

February 2020: IVF

As you may already know, Grant and I chose to do IVF to freeze embryos back in February 2020. Gosh we were so lucky looking back. We did this RIGHT BEFORE Covid hit.

It was during this process I was told by my doctor that I had adenomyosis. While she was not able to fully diagnose me, which requires surgery, she was most confident with her declaration. I saw multiple doctors after this to get confirmation. I also began to very quickly put the dots together about my symptoms and how they matched up with not only adenomyosis, but endometriosis too. A doctor shortly after this told me I had both endometriosis and adenomyosis.

During the transfer we got 4 embryos. We did not find out the sex. We had zero intention at the time of using a surrogate. We chose to freeze embryos because I was 38 at the time and was nervous that by the time we wrapped our minds around having another baby, I would be in my 40s. I wanted to do IVF as an insurance plan to getting pregnant in my 40s.

March 2020 – December 2020: A Whole Lotta Nothing

Covid-19. All talks of having a baby were on hold. Grant and I were getting our feet wet as parents. June was only 1 year old and we honestly never really talked much about another baby. We were just trying to survive like everyone. I was battling through awful endometriosis and adenomyosis symptoms and with very little doctors taking appointments during this time, it made it more challenging to find answers.

February 2021: Finding an Agency

Covid slowly but surely started to lift a little bit. And after finally having several doctors and specialists advice me that I needed to accept that I had secondary infertility. Secondary infertility can mean that you either cannot conceive and/OR you cannot carry a baby to term after previously giving birth. I cannot carry a baby to term. The reasons for this are both my endometriosis/adenomyosis AND postpartum depression issues.

Grant and I thought we were do a little bit of research on surrogacy. My brother and his husband used a surrogate for our nephew, Finn, so I knew a lot about the process. But we wanted to really do our own looking around and set up a few consultations. We ended up meeting with a boutique agency in California that a very dear friend of mine had used for her children. I fully trust her and she spoke highly of the company.

(For privacy reasons I will not be sharing what agency we used. I also will not be sharing how much it cost. If you are interested in surrogacy, please use outside resources to learn more about the specifics.)

On our consultation call we were told that it could take anywhere from 6 months to a year or even two to find a match. So, they suggested we put a deposit down and get on the list. It doesn’t hurt to just get on this list! You can always back out.

So, we did.

May 2020: Emotions

Even though we had logistically signed up to be on the roster for surrogacy, I had not emotionally accepted that this was going to be my reality for a second child. Night after night I stayed up with Grant, crying on the couch about “what if” scenarios. I had a very difficult time accepting the fact that my body would not be able to carry another baby. The messages of outside noise, trying to help by offering resources, articles, stories from their circles of friends, only made things feel worse for me. The battle with what I felt versus what I knew was a thunderstorm of internal emotions.

I would go to yoga class and silently cry during shavasana. “Why couldn’t my body do what it was made to do?” I threw pity party after pity party. I even got angry at my body and drank night after night. Screw it! I would eat pizza, stuff my face with donuts. It just felt like if nothing I could do made a difference, then who cared.

Once I was finally able to accept that I was truly grieving and that this wasn’t just something I could research or work my way out of, I was able to start to heal. And by “heal” I do not mean overcome. I mean I was able to accept that this was a part of who I was. My story, while it is definitely unique, is not uncommon. Knowing that there were other women in the world who had gone through exactly what I was experiencing made me feel a lot less alone. I started reaching out to them. I started asking around and trying to find people to talk to on the phone about their experience. This helped me tremendously.

After about a month of really battling through whether or not Grant and I wanted to go through this process to have another baby, we decided to move forward emotionally.

August 2021: A Match!

One day I was working in my office when I received a random e-mail from our agency. “Potential Surrogate.” I immediately froze. It was exactly 6 months later and felt very quick. I also had zero expectations for this e-mail on this exact day. A rush of butterflies rushed through my heart which gave me the answer I needed that we were on the right path.

I opened up the e-mail, smiling from ear to ear. I took a deep breath and called Grant.

The agency sent us a profile report about the surrogate, her family, her background, etc… We were incredibly thrilled to learn that she lived in the same city that we did which is very rare to find – a diamond in the rough!

September 2021: Meeting our Surrogate

We set up a Zoom call to meet with the surrogate and her husband. To be honest, we were kind of dragging our feet in the scheduling process because it all felt like it was happening so fast. Grant and I were so nervous but we told ourselves that we would just “feel it out.” No pressure!

The moment we hung up the phone we both looked at each other smiling and joking “Oh mannnn we are in it now!”

The surrogate and her husband were so amazing. They’re fun, funny, caught on to all of Grant’s dry humor, and most of all they really seemed to care about who they were being matched up with.

October 2021: Contracts Signed

Insert a whole lot of not fun stuff about lawyers, money, paperwork right here.

November 2021: Transfer Day

Again, we were really lucky with the timing on everything with this surrogacy. With menstral cycles, etc. etc. it just all worked out and happened so quickly!

Do you guys remember when I went to NYC and I ended up in urgent care? I’m kind of laughing about it now and I’m so damn happy I can finally share this story.  That was on our transfer day!

First of all, watching your embryo get transferred is such a COOL experience. We were so lucky to be able to attend the appointment {Covid restrictions were just lifting}. The entire room grew very quiet while the doctor carefully placed our embryo exactly where she wanted it. “Okkkkkk,” she said “There is it.”

Grant naturally made a joke in the heat of the moment, “Well, that was a lot less fun than the first time.” The entire room erupted in to laughter.

It was a pretty quick procedure and then we were left to wait (tick tock). It was so hard to wait!!!!!!

I had an early flight scheduled to head off to NYC for market for the new store we’re opening in the fall. I couldn’t miss this work trip and (of course) it just so happened to fall on the date of our transfer. I woke up the morning of the transfer and went to yoga at 6:30am. Then I went to the transfer and from there I went straight from the doctors office to the airport and flew to NY. I think I was completely overwhelmed and utterly exhausted. I definitely had some sort of hormonal imbalance happening that is a very common side effect for me with my endometriosis/adenomyosis. When I get overstressed, my hormones do not know how to balance themselves so it can lead to me getting very sick.

January 2022: The Sex

Because we didn’t know the sex of our embryos, we told the doctor to pick the “strongest.” We were in Aspen when we got the phone call and I put her on speaker. Grant and I were fully convinced that we were having another girl. Like, whole heartedly had already began thinking of names.

It’s a BOY!

I laughed, cried, hugged Grant. Excitement continued to build.

January – July 2022: Pregnancy

During the last 6 months there were many doctors visits and catching up with our surrogate. We absolutely adore her. She’s so easy going and nice. I text with her about once a week and we’ve tried to get together as much as we can between her children and our schedules. I was able to attend most of the doctors appointments, especially the “bigger” ones.

While the pregnancy experience was very successful and positive, I will admit there were moments of difficultly for me from time to time. If this had been my first pregnancy I really think it would have been much harder, not knowing what the process is like.

We are so blessed.

My anxiety levels are so much lower than what they were when I was pregnant with June. Thankfully, I was able to breathe through the sticky parts of my mind on harder days. Thoughts of paranoia would try to creep in, but I just had to have faith. When I focused on how much positive was coming out of this experience it was hard to let my mind go anywhere negative. I walked back through photos from my first pregnancy. Grant and I talked through how difficult that was for me. We also have June, the greatest gift of all, as a daily reminder on what is in store for us.

July 2022: Delivery Date 

As I sit here typing, it is July 10th and we are 5 days away from welcoming our son in to the world. I feel a bit superstitious typing this. I don’t have the flutters, kicks and daily reminders of a growing belly to tell me that is healthy and doing okay. Is he okay? I text my surrogate and she will tell me that she feels him kicking. All is okay, she reassures me.

Less than a year ago, I did not know this woman, and now I sit here texting her as if I am texting my son who I have never met to check in on how he’s feeling. Her voice is the voice that my baby has heard every day for the last 9 months. The food she’s eaten, he has ingested. The emotions that she has carried have been imprinted on my child. It is her womb that has become his home. How could I not feel sad. Yet how do I even begin to thank her for providing me with one of the most beautiful, life-changing experiences I will ever be privileged enough to be a part of?

Surrogacy is an option that I never thought I would consider. When I was a little girl, I never had dreams of “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes another woman carrying my baby.” This choice comes much, much later after every single option has been exhausted. It comes after every realization that you have no other choice has left you gutted and drained both emotionally and physically.

This journey, while it is very much about me, is not about me at all. It is about our son and how we brought him into this world with the help from one of the most incredible human beings I’ve ever known. When you become a mother, you are instantly given some sort of extra superpower that no matter how difficult something may be for you to do, you find the strength, the willpower, and the love to do it for your children. There is truly nothing that I would not do for my two children.