On Saturday, we went up to Naperville to enjoy the day with Pixie's mom, dad, and sister. The plans were to swim and hang out by the pool, but mother nature wanted us inside. We had a great lunch and the kids played for hours on end. C (Pixie's big sister) is eight years old and was a fabulous cruise director. Most of our friends have children around our kids ages, so this was something fun for us. She played games with them, dress, up and so much more and we were able to just sit back and relax!
We did sneak in some pool time in between storms and of course some Portillo's chocolate cake for dessert!
The kids had a great time and were asleep in the car before we even left the neighborhood!
Last night was the night we decided to talk to Tucker about what is going on with mommy's tummy. He has seen lot of the past few months. Mommy taking a lot of medicine, shots in my rear, sleeping a lot. He always thinks I have a tummy ache so I wanted to set the record straight. Plus, I am showing now so before someone else tells him, we wanted to have a talk with him.
We started by reading The Kangaroo Pouch. It is a story about a mommy kangaroo who knows someone who can't carry a joey, so she carried the joey until she is big and strong for the other kangaroos. (We also have Sophia's Broken Crayons and The Very Kind Koala that we will be using in the coming weeks) After the story I asked him to retell it to me, he had the major concept of it down so that's when I told him that E has a tummy that can't hold a baby anymore, but mommy's tummy could. We went to the doctor and the doctor put the tiny baby in mommy's tummy so she can get big and strong. Once she is big enough, she will come out and then will go live with E and P and sister C. I reiterated that the baby girl would not be ours, that she is just growing here and will have to go home when she comes into the world. And that she would be C's little sister! He thought that was cool that she was going to have a little sister like he does. He asked if we could have a baby at our house and I told him that we already had two babies, him and Lainey. He then informed me they were big kids not babies!
I asked if he had any questions and he didn't at the time. We put him to bed and about 5 minutes later he called me into his room, he had a question. Okay, here we go I thought!
Me: "What is your question?"
Tucker: "How do babies sleep?"
Me: "Like now? She sleeps in my belly, but after she is big and strong she will sleep just like you, by closing her eyes, laying down, and going to sleep." (no hint there that it is bed time ha!)
Tucker: "No, babies sleep in cribs!"
Me: "Well okay then!"
So apparently he doesn't have any major questions yet! :)
On to today, I had a check up at the doctors office. E and P made the drive down today so that they could meet my doctor. The first thing Tucker said to them was "Mommy has a belly in her belly it its yours!" Clearly her understood so thats a good starting point. I figured we would have to reiterate it a few times! Someone at the agency gave me the idea of the kids meeting the parents first, and I am so glad we did. I think it made it more concrete to Tucker 9Lainey is clueless)
On our way to the appointment we went past the hospital so that they could see where we would be welcoming their little girl into the world! At the office, we got to hear Pixie's heartbeat (a steady 160 today!) Since E has already had a baby, she knows a lot that first time moms might not know, so we didn't have a lot of questions. But, our doctor is completely on board with everything we are picturing for a "perfect labor and delivery." Goal is to have E and P present and for baby to go straight to mom for some skin to skin. Our hospital is very surrogacy friendly as well. We will be doing a hospital tour with them around 20 weeks so that they are familiar with our situation and can have rooms prearranged.
I went into labor with Tucker, but with Lainey I was induced at 40+6, so the doctor said that if things are favorable, we could look at an induction after 39 weeks if we wanted a more scheduled timeline. We will play that by ear. I am somewhat nervous for how quick this labor could go and I want to do everything (safely) possible to have E and P there. We will see as the time goes what is right for us and baby girl.
Overall, things are looking great! I will be 15 weeks tomorrow! Thanks for staying with this long post! Love to you all :)
