360......

It’s Saturday evening, only hours left before we leave for the next and final step in our journey. The thought of this being the last time in our house without a new baby is overwhelming. Daniel and I have both had waves of nausea from nerves and anxiousness and to try and explain the feelings we are having I wouldn’t know where to start…

360 days ago our journey started, and it will be one year since we first made out trek down to Panama for the first time and now here we sit, almost full circle. Layton will be born this coming Thursday August 16^th, and still we need to pinch ourselves to realize this isn’t a dream anymore…. our story will finally have a happy ending.

The support we have been given throughout this year has been nothing short than amazing, our families, friends, and even strangers all jumped on our band wagon and everyone seemed to get just as caught up in our adventure as we did. We are truly thankful and understand how lucky we are.

Our suitcases are packed, one for us, and one for baby Layton. Layton’s suitcase stuffed to the brim with everything we could think of that a baby might need. Clothes, diapers, creams and lotions, funny how much space it takes once you start packing all these things.

Tomorrow we fly to Toronto and will spend the night there, where on Monday we will catch a flight to Panama on Copa airlines which will get us into Panama City at around 2:15 pm. Our friend Alana has graciously offered to pick us up at the airport and take us to her place, where we will be staying until we are able to return back to Canada hopefully a few weeks after Layton’s birth.

The story of our adventure (pre-Layton) is almost complete, now we are excited to write a new chapter in this blog, one that includes a cheerful, happy and well wanted, little boy….

Delivery Date Set!

Well we had one of our last ultra sounds this week and baby Layton is doing just fine, and now weighing in at 4.1 pounds! The doctors are saying that everything is completely normal and have given us the date of the C-Section to be the 20^th of August.

The doctors will do another ultra sound in two weeks’ time, on July 25^th just to make sure nothing has changed and they will be able to see if the weight gain remains the same and will adjust the delivery date if need be.

We are finally at the time where all the final planning can be started; airline and travel arrangements can all be booked and completed. We are going to fly down almost a week before the delivery just to make sure we can get settled and situated with the area that we will be staying, and with deliveries you never know if the date will be bumped up or not, so better safe than sorry.

The amazing thing about the delivery date is that our first appointment with the hospital, which seems such a long time ago, was booked for August 16^th last year^, almost the exact date of when Layton will be born. Who knew at that time one year ago that we would actually be repeating our travel’s down to Panama to pick up our little guy….a lot can happen in just one year!

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!

25 Weeks....

I’m sitting at the airport in Calgary waiting to catch a flight, of course way too early and thought this would be a good time to write a blog update. It’s been about two weeks since the last update and we have hit some milestones, personally and with the baby.

Our baby shower was thrown a couple weeks ago and about 60 people gathered for the occasion ready to celebrate, eat, and of course talk all things baby. It was the most amazing day with family and friends and both Daniel and I realized how grateful we both are for the love our friends and family have for us and that our dear friends Leah and Bryce for throwing such an amazing party. The baby shower went throughout the day, and then turned into a party that moved over to our house and went until the early hours of the morning the next day. Good times had by all, and we are still organizing boxes, baby clothes, toys and baby “stuff” that now seem to be throughout our house.

Another big accomplishment that we pretty much completed is the baby nursery. Final touches are being made and now what seemed to be a disorganized mess in one of our spare rooms has now turned out to be one of the most beautiful baby nursery’s I have ever seen. Daniel’s painting is amazing and the time we spent on this one room alone is unbelievable, but well worth it. We find ourselves now just sitting in the room, thinking of our baby. Wondering what he is going to be like, how he will like the room, and can now picture him running around his room pulling all the stuffed toys out of the bins and making a mess, a mess we wont mind at all. 5 months ago we were in Panama, going through a procedure to hopefully get pregnant, and now we are sitting in our babies room preparing for his arrival. Such a big change in a small amount of time, and we believe with perseverance all things are possible…

Yesterday we received ultra sound reports from Panama, everything is perfect. We are 25 weeks pregnant and out little guy is about 798 grams, which is well within all normal ranges for a baby his age. We also saw some picture of our surrogate’s baby bump, which is now a full on pregnancy stomach and not such a “bump” anymore. Everything is great, healthy baby and healthy surrogate; this is all we can ask for. The ultra sound pictures still don’t look like anything recognizable when you look at them, but with imagination we both see our little baby boy and all his characteristics we picture his hair, eyes, and can actually start imagining what his personality will be.  We are on the last stages of pregnancy soon, and will moving towards the third and final trimester, where does the time go?

One final thing I wanted to share with everyone is that we have named our little guy, the process with picking a name for him was quite easy for us, once we found out we were having a boy it was almost an instant decision between Daniel and I what we would name him, a name that means something personally to us and our family and with pride I can now tell everyone our baby’s name is Layton…




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22 Weeks.....

We are at the 22 week mark with our pregnancy, I can’t believe that time is flying by as fast as it is. We thought the weeks would drag along at a snail’s pace, but it is the total opposite for us, as the days are going by so fast we can’t seem to figure out where these last few months have gone….

Although the time is going by fast we are getting stuff done in preparation for our little one’s arrival. Daniel has finished painting the nursery (re-painting), and the crib we ordered was delivered last night. It will be exciting to finally start setting up the nursery and this is part of the process we have been looking forward to for some time and it feels everything is coming together finally.

Our friends have been gracious enough to throw us a baby shower next weekend, we are excited for the opportunity to see all of our friends and families and actually have a day set aside to celebrate the journey we have been on so far.  This has touched not Daniel and I but everyone close to us have had a part to play in the emotional roller-coaster of this surrogacy so far and getting together and celebrating is exactly what we all need right now!

What a difference a day makes.......

It’s been a few weeks since my last update and because things have been going along quite smoothly we really haven’t had any updates to share.  We have been getting the baby room in order and with over 70 hours worth of painting we are almost done! Or so we thought…

This week was our planned 20-week ultra sound, and these days are always mixed with excitement and anticipation. We know we are at the mercy of a hospital many thousands of miles away and the waiting is usually unbearable for us on these days.

We waited on Monday and to our disappointment they were not able to do the ultra sound since the doctor was called into an emergency and didn’t get out of the operating room until quite late. This was all right since we understand that there are emergencies that come up and they promised they would have our ultra sound completed first thing the next morning. The next morning came and went, and towards the end of the day we finally received word from the hospital. The email stated that all is well, and the baby was healthy along with the surrogate and perfectly normal for the 20-week mark. This was great news but the one final piece of information they shared with us is that they have confirmed through the ultra sound that we are now having a healthy baby BOY! The last ultra sounds was so early they had problems making out the baby parts and thought is looked like a girl…

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yes we are both happy and thrilled that we are finally pregnant and so grateful everyday that this is happening to us, but the last ultrasound we were told we were having a girl and this is what we started planning for and it has thrown us for a bit of a loop.

Our lovely girls room that was so meticulously painted and planned out now has to be changed and updated for a little prince not the little princess we had originally thought. I know we will laugh at this one-day and although we have heard story after story about ultra sounds being wrong and don’t make too many plans until later in the pregnancy we couldn’t help ourselves.

The only thing we have during this pregnancy is out monthly email updates and our thoughts, feeling, and dreams, we have started imagining memories of our child and what they will be like and this is the hard thing to try and forget about or alter. We know in a couple days we will get excited again and start planning and dreaming of our little boy and the shock in our system will become a distance memory of a little bump in the road.

Mistakes happen, nothing is guaranteed, and until we have that little bundle in our arms we wont feel safe and relieved. This process, although is going relatively smoothly, has been nothing but stressful on the both of us. I don’t think anyone would really understand unless they have gone through it and I know it will make our family stronger and more appreciative everyday for the process we went through to have children.

We are over 20 weeks pregnant! That is the idea we are focusing on, half way mark and we are now on the last half of the pregnancy. We know it is not going to get any easier, more than likely it will get even more stressful with each week we are closer to the birth, but nothing comes easy in life and if you really want something the way we want this baby we will be able to handle anything that is thrown our way!!!!!!