This is me

Hi! I'm Meghan and this is my first blog post. I plan to use this space to document my family's journey to become a family of four through surrogacy. I'm hoping my daughter and our future child will be able to look back on how hard we fought for this family. I'm hoping that maybe through sharing our story I can help others that are thinking about surrogacy.

I am 36 (God that sounds old) I am a wife. I am lucky that my husband does the cooking, washes dishes, starts my car on cold mornings and loves on me and our daughter.

I am a mom. Our daughter just turned 3 in November. She is spunky, funny and brilliant.

We live in New England, in a typical suburban neighborhood. Both my husband and I work in insurance and lead relatively normal lives. I love spending time with family and friends. I love playing and watching sports and being active. I hate running, but find it to be what I turn to when I need to unwind.  I have run 5ks, 10ks, and a half marathon. I love maxi dresses and Kendra Scott jewelry. I'm more of a Spring and Fall girl, but love the beach and hope to call the Shoreline my home one day.

Taken February 28. Just weeks after my diagnosis and in the middle of IVF.

If you had asked me a year ago if this was ever going to be the path my life would take I would have said you're crazy. But as life does we got thrown a curve ball in February 2016.

It was Tuesday February 9, I had finally scheduled an appointment with my OB/GYN to have the lump on my breast looked at. It was something I found and had been monitoring,  but truthfully thought nothing of it. I'm 36, healthy and no family history. It couldn't possibly be cancer. But after my doctor gave it a feel, she sent me immediately for a mammogram and ultra-sound. Thinking I wouldn't get results that day, I told my husband to stay home and that I would just drive over to the Radiology building by myself. I didn't have to be a doctor to see the enlarged lymph nodes on the screen and know I was about to get some pretty bad news. The tech told me to sit still and that she would see if she could get a doctor to look at my images. The phone rang in the room and I knew it was the doctor and as expected the news wasn't good. He said a bunch of technical stuff, rambled off some building at St. Francis Hospital that I needed to go to and a name of a doctor I needed to see. I didn't remember any of it. After the phone hung up I just sat there in my johnny not moving. Before I left I stopped at the receptionist's desk to get all the information again and this time asked if they could write it down, got in the car and called my husband. "We need to go to St. Francis Hospital immediately."

Once we were there, we scheduled a biopsy for Thursday for both the breast and lymph nodes and by Friday evening my phone was ringing confirming it was cancer. In less than 72 hours my life had completely changed. At the time we had been trying to expand our family.  As much as I should have been focusing on my cancer diagnosis all I could think about was "what does this mean for our family?" This can't be happening. We are meant to have another child. Our daughter is meant to have a sibling. Then I remembered Giuliana Rancic's story and knew what I needed to do. I needed to freeze embryos.

Dramatic. I know.