Surrogate pregnancy update and new blog

I'm officially in the second trimester with the surrogate pregnancy now. Last week baby's parents flew down so they could attend the 13wk scan with me. We got some really lovely images of baby as he wriggled around.

I've decided to do a separate blog for the surrogacy journey - rather than bombarding you guys here. He's a lovely work-in-progress, that's for sure - but I'm sure my pregnancy experiences will be best kept in their own place :)

We had our second scan today. This time the mum got to come too (which for her meant getting up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight here, seeing the baby for all of maybe 5min on the ultrasound, then having to fly back home this afternoon!).

It was a magical 5mins though. This wriggly little miracle danced and jigged about in my belly. The fertility specialist showed us where all the bits were - but it's pretty self explanatory at this stage. In this snapshot you can see the amniotic fluid/sack as the black circle, baby is the baby-shaped white form in the middle of it! Head in the middle, body leaning up on the left and a leg jutting out to the top. The other white splotches towards the top of the black circle are bits of umbilical cord coming into view.

It was truly amazing to see the detail we could see - the spirals of the umbilical cord, the feet, with tiny tiny toes, fingers, the jaw line, the brain! Just incredibly when baby wasn't even quite 4cm long yet.

Needless to say both myself and baby's mum are over the moon. We didn't expect things to happen first go with the embryo transfer. We didn't expect that the baby would necessarily stick around after we got the positive pregnancy test. But things are looking good. It's still too early to get too settled in the security of the pregnancy progressing to full term safely - but we're both hopefully optimistic. :)

Black, White and Gold

These three little cherubs were under construction earlier this week. Then I got sick.

I don't usually get sick. This was new for me. Everyone else in this house can have temps and coughs, or be vomiting and up all night complaining - but I just don't *usually* seem to succumb.

Until tuesday. I went to bed tuesday night with a slightly sore throat and a bit of a headache, slept really badly and woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. I spent the next few days mostly in my bed dealing with what I'm assuming was just one of the many winter viruses going around brisbane this season, combined with the worst morning sickness I've had in any of my pregnancies. But we all survived (I did ask Mark to put me out of my misery at one stage...  Thankfully he declined! lol).

 He actually stepped up and took on a lot of the things the kids were used to me doing - on top of all the bear fabric order packing and business emails... and we got through! I honestly have never had such an appreciation for my usual good health. I had definitely taken it for granted.

I'm still not better, but I'm bloody well better enough to get back to work. I have some wonderful nausea wafers to help with the morning sickness, and I think the excessive amounts of sleep have just been what my body needed to get on top of the virus.

I managed to get these three cute little cherubs actually finished this afternoon too - just in time to snap some photos before we ran out of light. I've called them 'Sovann' (means 'gold' in Cambodian), 'Sareh' (which means 'pure' in Persian) and 'Sable' which means 'black' in English.


'Sovann': 

All three girls are currently available in our etsy store. If you'd like to adopt all three, this is certainly possible (until one or two get adopted anyway), and postage will be combined.

They've been made in three colours of our kid mohair fabric range. We've sold out of the white, but have a reasonable amount of the gold and black left if you're inspired to make something like these guys yourself. The pink kid mohair would work nicely too.

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'Sable': 

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'Sareh': 

And in the midst of all the illness and craziness of the last week, we had our first ultrasound scan booked to make sure the little surrogate bub was growing like he should, and had implanted in a good spot (and that there was only ONE baby!) - and everything is looking good, nice heartbeat and the perfect size for where he should be. One tiny (1.01cm long) baby at 7wks gestation.