A VERY IMPORTANT DATE!!

We have an official due date! I still cant believe it! Yes with surrogacy you know your EXACT due date because you know the age of the embryos and when you became pregnant but your OB still gives you your due date. My OB finally gave us a due date yesterday! J&J's baby will be due July 16, 2014!! I am so excited for them! Like over the moon excited for them! I am still in shock some days that I am actually pregnant and that everything worked on the very first try. Not everyone is as lucky and go through 3 transfers with no luck but we were extremely lucky and one embryo stuck on the very first transfer! I am also very thankful because even though I LOVED Cali personally I do not want to do that flight again. If I do another surrogacy journey I may request to use a clinic on the east coast just to make it easier on me because that flight is miserable! But anyways lets get on to yesterdays appointment.

Yesterday was a busy busy day. Due to "extremely" cold temps Fort Bragg and all of Fayetteville decided they wanted to delay school by 2 hours. So instead of going in at 8am they would go in at 10am. Even though I loved the extra hour of sleep it made things a bit more difficult. Brynna had a dermatologist appointment at 10am. Thankfully though I was able to drop Brett off with Kelly at 9:30am and then be on my way. I actually found out whenever I got there that the appointment was at 10:15 and even though we were there about 20 minutes early we still weren't seen until about 10:30.. OH JOY! Once we were seen we were in and out. After that we came home and I started dinner. Normally I don't tell y'all about dinner but OH MY GOSH I made this AMAZING crockpot taco chili and it was SO GOOD! Did I mention AMAZING?? At the end I will tell y'all the recipe and to those that need a new crock pot idea your welcome :) after that I headed to my OB appointment at 2pm. It was going to be a long appointment so I knew ahead of time it would not be a good idea to take Brynna or Aliana with me. Again, Kelly came to save the day, like she always does. BTW those of y'all that don't know I don't always use and abuse Kelly, she uses me too haha. She knows that I will always return the favor like for the next few weeks I will be her in home caregiver/nanny/best friend/daily roommate. Kelly is having surgery and I will be the awesome best friend and come keep her company while Doctor Brynna keeps and eye on her leg. So lets get back on task. I swear I must be really ADHD today because I keep going off subject.

So I get to my doctors appointment and still have no paperwork with my insurance information so the insurance lady(I cannot remember her name but she was so helpful) called who I THOUGHT was my insurance for my surrogacy. Turns out that was not who I had insurance through and they had no record of me in their system. Well that's funny I have emails stating that would be who I would have my insurance with! So instead of wasting my time and making all these phone calls I decided to call one of the IP's and thankfully he was able to help me out. I gave the info to the insurance lady and we got the ball rolling! I was weighed and sadly I have already gained 10lbs!!! WHO DOES THAT? Who GAINS 10 POUNDS BY 12 WEEKS?? But to my defense it was the holidays! And yes I used pregnancy as an excuse to eat WHATEVER I WANTED!!!! But I have also started back working out again. Nothing too crazy I know I have to be careful I am making a baby! But I cannot be lazy this whole pregnancy. Personally I really do enjoy light workouts while pregnant it makes me feel much better. After that I went and talked with an RN about what to expect through out everything. She thought it was amazing what I was doing and was so helpful and nice. We talked about who all would be in the room for delivery. I told her that I assume it'd just be J&J and then my husband. I know the only person I want in there for me is my husband. I know this is not his baby but I want him in there for me and for emotional support. Pushing out a baby is not all butterflies and flowers! It's hard work. And I want J&J in there because DUH! It is their baby and I want them to be able to experience the birth of their child. She said she thinks they allow up to 3 people but it may only be 2. But she told me since this is a surrogacy the doctor will more than likely make an exception. Since I am due in July I also don't know if Adam will be here whenever I deliver so it may just be J&J or if J&J don't make it here in time for delivery it MAY just be myself!! But hey I'm a military wife I will be fine!! I hope haha. So on to the rest of the appointment.

I finished up with the RN and then it was time for my appointment with the OB. This time around I have to get fully undressed and have to have a full body exam to check for lumps in my breast, have an pap smear, and etc. Oh what fun.. Not really. But I'm glad to know everything was fine. After that I had another u/s and man in almost 3 weeks the baby has grown a lot! It was so crazy seeing how big he/she was. And the baby was so active! The 2 pictures we got were so blurry because he/she wouldn't stay still it was really neat to see it wiggling around in there. But everything looked great! I am now 13 weeks pregnant!! I'm so upset because my darn phone died whenever I tried to get a video of the u/s with the baby moving around.

After the u/s I was supposed to go get blood work but because of the insurance I have I have to go to this place called quest which is about 10 minutes away from my OB's office. So I went to quest. Well quest wouldn't see me because I didn't have a copy of my insurance card(it was on my phone because I literally got it 5 minutes before) so now I have to go back tomorrow to get all that done. Hopefully I don't cry. In 3 weeks I will be going back to the OB and honestly I'm not sure if I will have another u/s. I'm hoping I do because I'd love to get a video of the baby but if not they will at least finally listen to the heartbeat! Well that's it for now. Here is a picture of my 12 week "bump". I thought it looked a lot bigger but whenever I took a picture it really didn't show like I expected.. I will take a better one by the time I post another blog post :)

 

 

So like I promised here is the recipe for the taco chili :)

- 1lb ground beef cooked and drained(I ended up using about 1.30lbs)

- 1 package of dry ranch dressing mix

- 1 package of taco seasoning

- 1 can crushed tomatoes

- 1 can diced tomatoes

- 1 can of corn

- 1 can of kidney beans

- 1 can of black beans

Put everything in the crockpot and mix it up(I also sprinkled some chili powder in with it but not too much I didn't want to make it too "spicy" for the kids. Depending on when you put it on you can do low, medium, or high I put mine in at 1 and cooked it on high and then around 4 I dropped it down to low. If I was going to put it on in the morning I'd do it on low. I also cooked corn bread with it. It was seriously AMAZING and I will be eating it for lunch today.