Thirty-One

It’s now past our thirty one week period and the last stage of pregnancy is on its way. The once nervousness about the pregnancy has turned into anxiousness on preparing for our trip to Panama to be there for the delivery.

Last week we received a CD by Fed-Ex with our 3d ultra sound pictures, this was our first glance of what little Layton will look like. The previous ultra sound pictures were hard to make out and didn’t really look like anything to the untrained eye, but these new ones we received you could clearly see how far our baby has developed and what he is going to be looking like.

We are amazed now looking back on this past year how fast time has gone by, it was just about a year ago when we were booking our first flights for our first trip down to Panama to start this adventure and now one year later we are about to book our flights to Panama again to pick up our baby. What changes a year can make!

We have our last ultra sound on July 10^th, and at this time we will find out the date of our C-section and when we have to be down in Panama. We could have to be down there at the beginning of August depending on how far along the surrogate is, and anywhere between the 37^th to 39^th week of the pregnancy they could schedule it for. We believe it will be more towards the 37^th week so in a very short time frame we will be heading down south! As little as 6-7 weeks away!

Twenty Seven.....

It’s now the 27^th week that we are pregnant, so hard to imagine that almost a year ago we were starting to plan our first trip to Panama, where we didn’t know what to expect, or what journey this was going to be and when and if we were going to have a baby. This year has gone by within a blink of an eye and we still have a hard time imagining that our baby will be born in just two short months.

We are officially in the third and last trimester, and pleased to announce that everything is still going perfectly relating to the pregnancy. Both surrogate and baby are healthy and doing as well as we could ever have hoped. 

This has been quite a year, both Daniel and I have aged about 10 years a piece and if we didn’t have a full head of grey hair, well we do now! (At least I do).  The stress of this process, the unknown, the distance and language barriers, just to name a few have only strengthened our determination to get through this process and to start living a normal life again back home with a family. We soon will start the process of booking travel for our trip down, our thoughts are to book our flights just before the 37^th week of pregnancy, and then if we need to change our flights at least they will be booked. The delivery could be anytime between the 37-39^th week of pregnancy and the hospital will not know our expected delivery date until our July ultra sound. For us it will be better to be down in Panama earlier to get any extra supplies or diapers we might need instead of rushing around after the fact once Layton is born.  Also this will give us an opportunity to re-connect with our friend Alana who has graciously allowed us to stay with her in Panama while we are there picking up the baby. Two months isn’t a long time left in our journey, I know there will be more stressful moments to come, but the relief that we feel right now to be coming to the end is almost unbearable!