Happy Holidays!

I was reluctant to put a pregnancy ticker on my blog, but in all this holiday cheer I decided to not be a grinch and worry about jinxes and dark clouds and caution, but instead put out some baby holiday cheer. We are 8 weeks and still going strong. A. is feeling very tired but powering ahead as always and I am beginning to envision life ahead with two kids. I still can't quite believe I will be one of those woman I've seen banging around the city with those God awful double strollers. I use to look at them struggling to get down the street or into a taxi and think, "Wow, I'm glad that's not me," and lo and behold, now that will indeed be me. But a friend of mine who has two daughters explained that if you can look at that life of baby frenzy as temporary, you will survive. I had more confidence in myself last year with my daughter that I could handle anything after infertility, but I am somehow doubting myself more when it comes to managing two so close in age. But in life there always needs to be a next challenge and I am taking a deep breath getting ready for 2011. Peace and good health to all of you dear readers.

How do I HEART thee? Let me count the ways.

The things I never got to do when I used my own body - 1) Feel pure, unadulterated, naive, confident joy finding out I was pregnant ; 2) Have the doctor say, just come back in 6 weeks ; 3) Feel my boobs and tummy swell with life ; 4) See a heartbeat on an ultrasound that was actually in my own uterus.

Today, for baby #2, we saw, via iphone, the round blob on the ultrasound with the heart beating strong. Up until now "the sibling project" has only been an abstract idea that seemed to "make sense" as the next step. It was almost something to be put on a spread sheet to layout all the steps as dryly and as rationally as possible. But seeing that it's for real and just may grow into a healthy baby is finally sinking in.

In many ways, going through this conjures up all the same old feelings of failure and loss my own body suffered over the years. It squelches any irrational hope that a mythical "oops" baby following adoption, donor egg, or surrogacy might arrive at my doorstep. I will never have a biological baby. This is how I have babies. These wonderful women are an extension of my own womb and eggs, and this is just how I make babies. I had one this way, I will have two this way, and I will have no other baby any other way. So does this leave me crushed? Not really. It makes me think about all these aspects of myself again, but I have managed to put that person so deeply hurt by that failure in a memory box that I don't feel is me.

A lot of people have commented that I have courage to go through surrogacy again, but I don't feel very courageous. I think I felt more courageous when trying with my own body knowing how much loss there could be, knowing I would have to live in constant limbo. For this second surrogacy journey, I feel like I know it worked well before and so it's not taking my entire soul to muster up enough courage to do it again. It's a different kind of launch pad. With surrogacy #1 it was still in testing mode with all the same potential disaster as using my own body. I know I am not free from tragedy and loss, but there is a feeling that my reproductive team at this point has become a well-oiled machine. Now I feel like the real courage I must find is to not let myself become the Tin man and not feel anything at all. I want to make sure that this seemingly disconnected way of having a baby still remains connected to my own heart.