Thank you for all of your good wishes

Just wanted to say a quick thanks for all of your kind wishes and support towards our recent situation. In case there was any doubt, we've decided to pursue gestational surrogacy with my best friend come this fall. I can explain our reasoning for the decision in the days to come, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who said such nice things about our decision. You didn't ask the why or how...but just that you supported us. And that means the world to us. As I said, I'm excited, terrified and so thrilled I can't even put it into words. It's a bit surreal. We've taken our first big steps today by scheduling an appointment with our RE on June 15th to move forward with things, as well as finding a lawyer in our area that deals with surrogacy. Here in Michigan paid surrogacy is illegal. Although it really isn't a big deal to us since we are going through a friend...I know that there are still legal aspects to be dealt with. I feel like we have so much to learn and with my engineer husband and CRNA myself being the OCD people that we are....we are control freaks as well and of course want to have all the details at our disposal so we can process all the facts. One of my main questions for our RE is whether we should use our 3 frozen embryos that we have for a transfer or whether we should do a fresh IVF cycle. Either way, we need to do something with our 3 frozen embryos. To me, they are our children or potential children...I would have to either transfer them or donate them eventually. I couldn't just let them go to waste. That has always been one of the biggest things to me with being okay with doing IVF is the embryos left over...I feel that they are ours...and something responsible must be done with them.

Hopefully the face that Brynn made after me after her bath this weekend doesn't reflect her opinion on the matter. Don't worry little girl...you and Neela will always be our first bambinos...our first true loves and will always hold a special place in our hearts of course! I was talking with my husband this weekend as to how far we've come. Growing up I was the quiet traditional girl....the product of 12 years of Catholic school. Heck most of our extended family doesn't even know Brynn was conceived via IVF. My aunt is a nun and my uncle a brother (in the religious sense of course!), and another a Catholic deacon. We pushed the buttons by doing IVF, and now we're doing surrogacy....it's a far cry from my traditional upbringing. But I have to say that I fully believe in my heart that when two people want to bring a life into this world to share together and it's done with love. It can't be wrong. It just can't. No matter who the people or how it's done. If it's done with love and with the best intentions...I think we must have tolerance. There is no cut and dry or black and white. There is a lot of grey I'm discovering.

On a much lighter note, I have to smile because I've had so many dreams lately about us having twins with my friend M. My friend keeps saying...it'd be great for me to have twins for you guys because then it's like 2 for 1, LOL! Despite how amazing that would be, I hope we just have one. I would feel terrible if my friend was laid up on bedrest or something with twins. But it's funny to think about things....especially since my husband and I have been having so many dreams about having twins with my friend.

I have had a few people ask whether I would feel badly about my friend having strong feelings towards our child if she were to carry him or her. This is my feeling. If my best friend has strong feelings towards our little one that she so genorously carries for nine months and so do we, then our child is blessed. If our child has two people that care for her with the love that a mother has....then our child is one of the luckiest babies alive. No, I don't think our friend will do something crazy like want to keep our child. If anything, our friend will have strong feelings towards him or her. If that is the worst of it, we are blessed. A child would be lucky to have my friend in their life. Our child that will be carried by my friend will always know that my friend is more than just an aunt or a god mother to him or her. My friend will be their second mother...and for that they are blessed. My friend is a a beautiful person and so is her husband. We are lucky to have them in our life. I believe that they have been sent to us for a reason...they are part of our family and always will be. To some this may sound crazy....but to those of you okay with our journey I appreciate your continued comments of approval. Because to be honest I'm scared as heck and just going day by day with this all. I can use any words of wisdom or support because there's only a handful of people in real life who know what we're doing and that's hard. Hard because I feel like I'm hiding things, and hard because I'm scared deep down inside if I open enough to say it.

My only concern is how to say thank you to her for giving us a a chance at life...a chance for Brynn to have a sibling. I'm left speechless....I just wish I knew how.