Making Lemonade

"When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade"

This post is long overdue but back in July, Carmelo, Eliza and I went out to Stephanie and Eric's home to support the boys' Lemonade Stand. This was the second year that Stephanie and the boys had a lemonade stand where the proceeds went to a charity. This year Stephanie and the boys picked "Bikers Against Animal Cruelty" and they raised $772!

It was truly inspiring to see how the community came out to support them and continued to reinforce how amazing Stephanie is and the impact she has on other's lives.

Carmelo's Family Meets Stephanie

This weekend we had family over to meet Stephanie and her family. Since the family was all going to be there we also decided to buy some balloons and a cake and make it's Eliza's Birthday Party.

The evening went perfectly. Everyone absolutely loved Stephanie. Eliza and her boys continue to amaze me how much they just naturally get along.

Eliza is also starting to make the connection of Stephanie's belly and her sibling. She couldn't get enough of Stephanie's belly. Touching it, hugging it and giving it kisses. It made my heart so happy to see how natural it was for Eliza to interact with the baby.  I continue to feel so thankful and blessed to have found someone to help us grow our family. There are moments of wishing that things could be different. Wishing Eliza would be able to interact with the baby belly everyday. Wishing it was my belly growing. But I know that is not our path and this is what was meant to be. And I continue to focus on that moment of holding our baby for the first time. A moment that would not be possible without my amazing doctors and Stephanie.

So Happy (early) Birthday Eliza! I hope you had the most amazing day! Love you Bunny Boos.

Eight Weeks

We had our 8 week ultrasound today and you know what's amazing?! The baby looks great! Heartbeat is strong and everything is perfect. You know what sucks?! The trauma of our miscarriage takes all the excitement out of the ultrasounds. I walk into every ultrasound expecting to not see a heartbeat. I live in fear of the ultrasound. They make me anxious.

I really want to bring Eliza to an ultrasound appointment. But I am so afraid. What if there is no heartbeat? How would I explain that to Eliza? I don't think I would be strong enough to hold it together for Eliza not to see how sad I am.

I remember so clearly our 12 week ultrasound. Carmelo and I walked into the room so excited. For my pregnancy with Eliza this was our favorite ultrasound. She was a little jumping bean at 12 weeks and it was so much fun to see her moving so much. For the second baby, the technician put the ultrasound wand on my belly and up on the screen the baby popped. Not moving. Carmelo said "The baby must be sleeping." I remember looking away from the screen because I knew what I was seeing. Then the technician said "I'm sorry. I can't find a heartbeat." I have never been so sad. I have never seen my husband more sad. The whole thought just breaks my heart and I would never want to expose Eliza to that.

We have our  next ultrasound scheduled for June 21. We will be 9.5 weeks pregnant. Our second baby stopped growing at 9 weeks. I'm hoping after the next ultrasound my fear will be lessened and I will be in a place to bring Eliza to the big 12 week appointment. But until then I am going to watch this video of my baby's heartbeat for the 1,000th time, celebrate the life that is growing because I am so in love already.

Race for the Cure

This Saturday was Hartford's Race for the Cure. For the second year in a row my team was recognized as a top fundraising team and I was a top individual fundraiser. In two years my team has raised $14,300 to help fund local Breast Cancer programs. I'm really proud of the fundraising work I have done because even though I received my treatment in Boston, it was the diagnosis here in Connecticut that saved my life. And any chance where I can give back, I want to.

This year I also made the commitment to run the 5k. As a survivor you are constantly struggling with who you were before and who you are after treatment and finding a balance. Running was a part of who I was before my diagnosis and I thought Race for the Cure was as good a time as any to try and get myself back. I am happy to report I finished and my time wasn't that terrible either.

A couple weeks ago I had asked Stephanie if she would join us. I was so happy when she said she would go. The day just felt complete having my whole little family there. It was also a nice opportunity for her to meet my parents and since her mom and sister decided to join Stephanie I got to meet them too! I don't think that the introductions could have gone any better. It really was a perfect day.

Our Little Family Before The Race Started

With My Parents

I swear she was excited to be there.

This weekend also marked our 6th Wedding Anniversary. We take the same photo in our backyard every year.

There is a Heartbeat

It's amazing how much the baby has grown in just a week. A week ago we were at the doctor's searching for anything to confirm the baby was still there, today, one week later, there was so much to see. And we were able to see the most important thing of all...the heartbeat.

Going into today's ultrasound, I'd be lying to say I wasn't a nervous wreck. After last week I just wouldn't allow myself to get to a place where I was 100% confident the baby was okay, but today, seeing that little flutter on the screen allowed me to take the deepest sigh of relief. Our baby is okay and at 138 beats per minute, the baby is actually very okay.

A video of the heartbeat and our ultrasound photo

And now we are going into the weekend with the exciting news of a heartbeat. This weekend is the Hartford's Komen Race for a Cure. My parents will be there with some of our close friends and family and I am so excited that Stephanie and the baby will also be joining us, along with her mom and sister!. There will be so much to celebrate and I am forever thankful that our little family of four will all be there participating in something very special to me

Added bonus Sunday is our 6th Wedding Anniversary. Like I said so much to celebrate!

Last Year's Komen Walk

This Mother's Day

This Mother's Day felt different. Last year turned into my Cancer coming out party. Carmelo took one of my favorite photos of Eliza and I at Elizabeth Park and when I shared it on Facebook, there was no turning back, it was out there. Eliza's mom has cancer.

Mother's Day 2016

Fast forward a year and so much has changed. I beat cancer. It's gone. But I also found out I couldn't carry another baby. So it isn't just the cancer that is gone, but also the hope of getting pregnant.
It's a strange feeling being told your first child is your last. There was no planning or preparation for it. I didn't go thru my pregnancy with Eliza thinking "I need to remember how everything feels because this is my last time." I'm thankful that Eliza was such an easy pregnancy and I enjoyed every second of it. I never complained. Never felt sick. Never felt more beautiful than when I was pregnant. If I could have been pregnant 100 times, I would have. I loved it. But although I enjoyed it, I don't think I took the time to really appreciate it and mentally capture every moment. I would have taken more pictures, which I have thousands, but it doesn't feel like enough. I would have taken more videos of the way my belly moved when she would kick or roll over. Being told you will never be pregnant again, when you haven't had a chance to prepare, really makes you not take all those small things for granted. I just wish I knew that 4 years ago.

6 Months Pregnant (in August) with Eliza

Now we have the most amazing gift in that we froze embryos and we found the most perfect surrogate. So although my dream of being pregnant is gone, the chance of expanding our family isn't. And what that has taught me is, you don't need to carry a baby or birth a baby to be a mother. Friday was our big day. I went with Stephanie first thing in the morning to get her bloodwork. This bloodwork would measure her hCG levels and tell us if the embryo we had transferred had implanted and if in fact she was pregnant. Waiting for that phone call felt like it took forever. It was the longest four hours of my life. But the nurse called and we got the news we wanted to hear. WE WERE HAVING A BABY!
When I heard those words, my whole body collapsed and I cried. I cried because every prayer we had said was answered. And I was going to get to be a mother again.
So this pregnancy will be different. I'll never feel this baby kick from the inside, I won't be able to talk to this baby every night or sit in the rocker singing "you are my sunshine" like I did for Eliza. But I hold onto to the thought of when we meet our baby for the first time and I am so thankful for that moment. My motherhood story with Eliza will be so much different than my story with our next child. I may not carry this baby in my belly, but I have carried this baby in my heart for so, so, SO long. And that is the Mother's love this baby will know and feel.
So this Mother's Day was different because there was so much to be celebrating.

Embryo Transfer Day

The transfer is complete!

I do not have the words to describe how happy we are today. After everything we have been through, it's finally all happening.

The day started off as normal as possible. We got Eliza fed, dressed and off to school, telling her that after today, her baby brother or sister is going to be in Stephanie's belly. She is so beyond excited to become a big sister.

Eliza can't wait for her Baby Brother or Sister, but she still has to go to school

I worked for a couple hours and then Carmelo and I took a walk. On our walk we talked about how blessed we are and that we feel so lucky that this day was finally here. Around 10:20, we got in the car and headed over to the fertility clinic. Upon our arrival and before we exited the car, we said a quick prayer asking for Stephanie and the baby to be protected thru this process. We took a deep breath and headed it.

Stephanie and her husband were already there and just like every other time we have got together with them, we embraced and smiled and were both so excited for what's ahead.  The clinic was running a little behind, so it gave us more time to talk. I love how much Carmelo and Stephanie's husband get along.

Eventually the nurse came and got Stephanie and I. She changed and the nurses went over a couple things and then brought in the husbands. The doctor came in and gave us "Baby's First Photo", a close up of our embryo. After going thru the procedure and any questions, Stephanie was escorted back to the transfer room and 15 minutes later was wheeled back in. Embryo transferred!

Our Team

Our embryo

Stephanie had to lay down for about 20 minutes, but after that the nurse said we were free to go. That was it...the day we had been waiting so long for was over...and now we wait...

Next up we are scheduled for the pregnancy test to confirm the pregnancy on May 12. Pray for us.

"I've seen miracles just happen, silent prayers get answered, broken hearts become brand new, that's what faith can do."

See that little speck? Right there? That's our baby! Transfer completed!

Introducing The Kids

So much has been going into preparing my family for what's to come. We have bought books that we have read to Eliza to help her understand that a new baby is coming, but the baby won't be in Mommy's tummy. She knows our surrogate by name, Stephanie, and we talk about her and her family openingly. We show her pictures of Stephanie and  her family so she can recognize them.

Going into this we didn't have any expectations about the relationship we were going to have with the surrogate and her family. We wanted any sort of relationship to happen naturally and if one didn't happen that was okay too. I could tell immediately upon meeting Stephanie that we would develop a relationship beyond the next year. But for us, Carmelo and I, it took us a while to let our guard down. We have both been thru so much in the last two years. Between losing a pregnancy and my cancer diagnosis, it's been hard for us to truly believe that good things are happening.

Between doctor's appointments and our mandated psych evaluations, we have seen Stephanie and her husband quite a bit, but we hadn't introduced Eliza to them or her kids. We talked about wanting everyone to get together, but Carmelo and I needed to be in a good, secure place before we could let the introduction happen. I want Eliza to know her and I want her kids to know us. It's important for Eliza to see who will be helping us grow our family and it's important for her kids to see who their mommy is helping. This is going to have a big impact on them as well. So the weekend before the embryo transfer we arranged for our families to get together and it couldn't have gone better.

We met at a local farm and the kids immediately hit it off. Ice was broken over the kids (and adults) shared love of Munchkins and from there, they were running around, feeding the animals, riding the horses, snacking some more and talking about their favorite topic, poop. I'm pretty sure Eliza and Stephanie's middle are spirit animals and didn't stop giggling about poop and pee the entire day.

It was the perfect day and just makes us so much more excited for tomorrow, Embryo Transfer Day! and what this year is going to bring for us.

Looking At The Pigs

Waiting for Their Horse Ride And Probably Talking About Poop

Most Likely Talking About Poop

How Lucky Are We?

For all the unlucky events that had to take place, we still feel so lucky. 

October 2014 we had experienced a miscarriage. We went in for the 12 week ultra-sound and there was no heartbeat. It was devastating. It was recommended I have a D&C. What should have been a pretty routine procedure took hours and needed two doctors. Apparently my cervix is angled awkwardly. Awesome. To further complicate things, my body retained some of the tissue. Even more awesome. Because of how complicated the D&C was, the potential risk of hurting my cervix was too great, so it was recommended to just wait and pass it naturally.

It's really hard to mentally heal when your body hasn't physically healed. For 3 months I had to go for weekly blood work and every two weeks for ultra-sounds. There is nothing worse than having to go to the maternity ward for ultra-sounds, surrounded by excited pregnant woman, after a miscarriage. I had to go to 5 of them. Why this is so important is because when my body had finally healed physically in January, it took a couple months to mentally be ready to start trying again. But we got there and we tried and tried, with no success.  After months of trying, I started to wonder if maybe the complicated D&C had something to do with our failure to get pregnant. So we started to work with a fertility clinic. After more blood work, more ultrasounds and a HSG test, the clinic said everything looks normal, just keep trying and if you want some help give us a call. That good news came on a Friday...exactly one week before my breast cancer diagnosis.

My favorite picture of us as a family of four. I was 11 weeks pregnant.

When I received my cancer diagnosis, one of my first questions was "What does this mean for me and pregnancy?" Doctors had a hard time answering that. Sometimes chemo puts you into early menopause, my cancer just happened to be Estrogen and Progesterone positive, so being pregnant would feed the cancer (so thank God I wasn't pregnant at the time).  My oncologist at St. Francis Hospital did not support my request to freeze embryos. Because I was Stage 3 they wanted me to start chemo immediately. Thankfully I was able to get a second opinion at Mass General Hospital, with one of the top surgeons in the country. She along with my medical oncologist said, "We see this all the time, go do what you need to do and call us when you're done." I cried. I was so happy. There was a glimmer of hope that we could still have another baby...one day.

So again why was the unlucky miscarriage so lucky? Because we had already been working with a fertility clinic, I had a fertility doctor, I had a file. My cycle was timed perfectly with my diagnosis. I called the clinic, told them plans have changed...I have cancer and we need to freeze embryos. I was able to start injections that day. It was amazing. After two weeks of injections, lots more blood work and an egg retrieval, we successfully froze three embryos. Three chances to grow our family. How lucky are we?

When we were going through the pain of the miscarriage one of the hardest things to hear was "these things happen for a reason." When you are a mourning mother it is the last thing you want to hear. At the time I didn't want there to be a reason for my loss, I just wanted my baby back. But now I can see the loss of our baby brought us to where we are now. And this is supposed to be our story. This new baby that we are about to celebrate is meant to be here and change the world.

Our First Meeting

Still asking myself if yesterday really happened.

We braved the first major snow storm of the year to meet the surrogate and her husband for the first time. What would normally take 30-40 minutes took us an hour and a half. Highways were shutdown, there were spin outs and accidents everywhere, but that didn't stop us. We drove white knuckle at 24 mph and eventually got there.

Picture posted by the State Police of the highway situation

We had already read her profile that was provided by the surrogacy agency, she read ours. We had talked on the phone about a week and a half ago and meeting her and her husband in person just solidified what  we already knew, she was the one. We are still pinching ourselves that we found someone so perfect, so quickly. There is no doubt in my mind that she will love and take care of our baby for the next nine months, the same way I would have, if I could. And no doubt that through it all, she will have the love and support of her husband, which was just as important to us as finding the right carrier.

At a time when there is so much negativity in the world that you are constantly having to censor what you read and listen to because quite frankly it's all too much, it's reassuring to know that there are still good...still really good people in this world.

So this is it. It's really happening. We are having a baby! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! 

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.