Happy First Birthday, Baby Girl!

Dearest Baby Girl,

Today you are 1 year old. This past year has gone by faster than we could have ever imagined and we want to tell you how much we love you and how honored we are every day that we get to be your parents. You are the best of both of us and we are so proud to call you our beloved daughter.

We know that you don't know any different, because you don't have anything to compare it to, but we're sorry that the first few months of your precious life on Earth were so stressful and chaotic. We rotated between being over the moon in love and filled with joy over you and in deep stages of grief. Mommy did especially and she is sorry the she was unable to care for you in the ways she had anticipated and expected to in those first few weeks. Thank you for being the amazing, flexible little person you are and just rolling with the punches. We are so grateful for your laid back attitude and especially appreciated how much you let mommy rest and heal. Thank you for just being you. Thank you for the smiles on days when skies were gray and thank you for the cries that kept us grounded.

In the past year, you have learned to roll over, sit up, crawl, pull up, stand up, and now walk and run. You are saying your first words and expressing more and more of your unique personality. You are so kindhearted and intelligent, and just the happiest and most precocious child. Your smiles are truly like sunshine. We adore watching you engage with the world around you, the inquisitiveness of every action you take, and love getting to see the world through your eyes for it becomes new again for us too. Life is so much fun with you and we can't imagine it now any other way.

We both cannot wait to continue to see you grow into the wonderful person you are becoming. We love you so much, sweetheart.

XOXO,
Mommy and Daddy

I Saw The Sign

At critical times in my life, my faith has led me to believe that I have been given signs of what path I was to take, particularly when it came to making fork in the road decisions. The most recent example of this was when I chose to leave my last desk job in 2013 to focus full time on my side business. After feeling like it was time for a career change for awhile, I asked friends to help me pray for discernment. Not 24 hours after this request, I had an offer of contract work on the table that allowed me to maintain the financial security that I had with my desk job, but work full time from my other office. Needless to say I put in my notice and have been gratefully and joyfully self-employed ever since. That one step led the way for us starting our family. I say this because lately I have been experiencing something that has given me some pause and occasionally goose bumps.  For the past month or so, my husband and I keep having instances where we see everywhere the boy's name (which per the Social Security Index is not a very common one) we had picked out if baby girl had been a boy and would love to use for a male sibling for baby girl. 

It started on the morning of our anniversary. More than once that day we ended up on "Boy's Name Street", even when the address of whatever we were looking for was not supposed to intersect that street based on our maps. Since then I have learned there is a boy in baby girl's upcoming day school class with the name, it is the new hometown of a dear friend who recently moved, and my father during a recent conversation mentioned an acquaintance that he hadn't thought about in years with the same name, randomly and out of the blue.

I know that a lot of things can be coincidence and I know not many people believe in these sorts of things or just consider them seeing what we want to see. Yet, for me, I can't shake that "twilight zone" theme feeling about this. I have heard friends for example talk about butterflies or a type of bird being a sign for them that a loved one that has died is there with them, or a specific time of day being of significance to them. I have never personally experienced something of this nature that I can remember. My belief in signs was more in the "answer to a question" form where I have felt spiritually guided to a decision. In fact, we have felt that way about pursuing surrogacy. So far, it has felt like that is the path we are to take as God's will for us. This experience with the boy's name has been different and has a made my heart skip a little.

Husband and I chose not to PGS/PGD test our embryos. This decision was made for multiple reasons but because of that, we do not know the genders of the 4 embryos the we have at the clinic. I like that if we succeed in this surrogacy journey, we will find out the gender just like we did with baby girl and that it will be a surprise. Further, we have no preference of gender either. We just want a healthy baby. This last month or so though, as this has continued to just keep randomly happening, I can't help but wonder...what if? God, you have my attention.