I just watched a show on TV about IVF and a surrogate pregnancy. It made me tear up for all the right reasons. It’s been quite a long time since the beginning of this journey and sometimes I forget – or at least gloss over in my head – all that we went through to get to this point. Watching the TV show talk about in vitro and how embryos are created in a petri dish… well, it’s pretty amazing. It was amazing when I was pregnant, and it’s even more amazing now that I have a child sleeping in my arms. How did we get from there to here? I am so thankful for technology, and so appreciative of my persistence in going through all of that so many times. But here we are, a tiny baby squeaking and smiling in her sleep.<\/p>\n
It’s been nearly 3 weeks now and we’re settling into our roles. It feels far more normal now, much less crazy and surreal. Kate has moved in and become part of our lives. I am just so incredibly happy being the mama. In so many ways I haven’t changed, I was always the mama at heart… but now I have someone who needs me to take care of them. She’s happiest asleep in my arms, and I’m totally okay with that. I’m happiest when she’s asleep in my arms. I feel warmer, more solid. She anchors me.<\/p>\n
I love that she is our<\/em> child. I love that she looks so very much like her brother. We look at her and think, wow, we did that. We have no idea how our genes managed to create such a beautiful child. I waste a lot of time every day just staring at her. Which is totally not a waste, since she’s either nursing or sleeping, and what better way to spend my time but soaking her in? She’s not going to be this little for long.<\/p>\n I still haven’t gone anywhere with Kate without Den to help, but Sunday I have a baby shower to go to and it will be just us. I think it’ll go fine. Den is home from work still but some days he spends outside doing yardwork, and some evenings he plays baseball. It’s good for me to get used to taking care of her by myself, since in a few weeks it will be just me all day. It’s a less scary prospect than it was a week ago. I think I’m figuring her out – whar she likes and doesn’t like, what her patterns are, what her cries mean. It’s very rewarding to say things like, “Oh, she’s crying because she’s tired, she’ll be asleep in 2 minutes,” and then she falls right to sleep.<\/p>\n I am glad that Den is able to stay home until we get her sleeping figured out… I’d hate to be the only caretaker all day after getting no sleep all night. At least right now I can hand her over after a feeding and take a nap (at least until she gets hungry). But we’re getting there. She still won’t sleep laying flat, but will sleep in the papasan chair – however it’s not a good, solid sleep, she rouses a lot and wakes up sooner than she should\/would. So after the first night feed she’s been spending most of the night cuddled up to me because I really don’t want to waste half my sleep time trying to coax her to fall back asleep in her chair. We all need the sleep and are much happier for it. Den’s been doing the night diaper changes, though… I’ll definitely miss that when he goes back to work!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just watched a show on TV about IVF and a surrogate pregnancy. It made me tear up for all the right reasons. It’s been quite a long time since the beginning of this journey and sometimes I forget – or at least gloss over in my head – all that we went through to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3008,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3007\/revisions\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}