theres an app for that

I am totally in love with my iPhone and that love just grows when I find a fab app that even helps plan for surrogacy .



Period tracker lite is a free app that does exactly what it says - trackers your menstrual cycle but for me More than knowing when my next period will be it gives me a good indication of when i am likely to be ovulating even several months in advance .

The front page tells you how many day left until your period , the date it is due and the branch grows pretty flowers when you could conceive.

but The calendar part of the app is the best bit for me

Not only does it forecast your most likely fertile days for that month but you can scroll forwards and see when those key days will fall in future months . perfect to enable your IP's to make plans . of course this depends on you having a regular cycle , to start you set the length of your cycle in settings but very soon the app works out the average length of your cycle for itself . I would suggest to back it up with ovulation predictor tests as I am going to , Fingers crossed that this extra bit of tech will make achieving a pregnancy a little bit easier this time around .... watch this space to see if it does .

Here we go again

Despite deciding to retire from this surrogacy thing 2 years ago I found myself offering to carry a sibling for my very dear friends .

That was 6 months ago as I wanted to donate some eggs first but here we are getting ready to get started .

I will be sorting out life insurance while S&E pay their fees to surrogacy UK and update their wills and we will all together get an agreement done to make sure we have discussed everything we need to .

The original plan was to get started this month but alas S is away on business the week am due to ovulate so short of flying me to the USA the only option is to delay .

Back soon xx


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Introducing Max

hello everyone I'm back !!

wow , what a day yesterday was , long , exhausting but wonderful and probably one of the greatest days of my life.

Stef and Evelin are now the proud parents of a wonderful , beautiful baby boy currently called Max ( it could change but I don't think it will) he arrived at 2.25 after 3 and half hours of active labour . he arrived face first into the world , Steve said it was amazing.


The whole labour was fantastic , I had the best midwife in the world , I'll never forget her.

do you know its possible to give birth without being give one internal exam or instruction ? well it is because I did it( and it probably saved me having a c-section because that's what usually happens with a face presentation), I felt so in control throughout the whole thing , I knew exactly what was happening to my body and just went with it, It was the most amazing experience of my life .

The hospital was fantastic , they gave us one of their biggest rooms, and worked so hard to give us our early discharge .Max couldn't be checked until 6 hours after his birth, which was 8.30pm sounded fine , but then we found out that 8.30 was Dr handover time it would be more like 9 - 9.30 , still not to bad at 10.30 we were informed that they had been called to a very sick baby on scbu and would be at least another hour . was this OK ?

we could have gone home and came back today to sit in the hospital for who knows how long to get the check done but that seemed silly so we waited. Dr eventually arrived about 11.30 and did his check and then we were free to go.

At any point it would have been so easy for them to say we'll just admit you for the night but they didn't , they treated us fantastically and went out of their way to make us comfortable. I cant fault them or thank them enough and I will be writing to let them know.

Steve was as always amazing , he is my rock and the silent one in all this without whom it wouldn't have been possible, and that little boy wouldn't have been in the world without him .

Stef and Eve were great , they let me do my thing , didn't fuss , panic , apologise and eventually found little roles to play to help me . Stef as a good hand to squeeze ( because Steve could only be one side lol) and Eve supplying sips of water between gas and air at the end . Hopefully they feel as though they played a part and I gave them a birth experience to remember for all the best reasons

It was really odd to be driving away from the hospital without a baby but oddly ok. I had just hugged my best friends , congratulated them on the birth of their son and told them to enjoy him . and I had made it all possible.

I have such a huge sense of pride about what I have done and will never regret it for one instant . I'll probably have a few hard days over the coming weeks but I will deal with them as they come knowing I have changed their lives forever and given them the greatest gift it is possible to give .

I'm going to leave it there because hormonal little old me is now crying like a baby onto the keyboard . I have so many thank you letters and cards to write to everyone who has been a part of this whole journey .

and this won't be the end of this blog I'll still let you know how things are progressing and maybe even share the next journey with you too

I'll leave you for now with a picture of what I have created - a brand new family !

the time has come.... 40 weeks +4

well I am pleased to say that after a few days of thinking this baby will never arrive that i was wrong . shortly after 1 am this morning my waters broke !!! yay and I think I have just had my first very mild contraction, even if contractions don't start i have to be at the hospital by 8am so I guess this is it .

How am I feeling at this point .... apart from totally unable to take the midwife's advice and go back to sleep , a little nervous about what the net few hours will bring , hopeful for a nice normal delivery and a healthy baby but so much more than that excited . you have all be with me on this journey for a while now so i guess you'll be a bit excited too when you read this . I know I do when I see exciting things happening in other blogs.

Right now in Bristol there are two people who thought they would never become parents , bouncing off walls waiting for a call from me to say the contractions that will bring their on into the world have started how amazing is that .

Today get to make someones dreams come true - how many people can say that right now ?

39 week - counting the days .... or not

well it really is getting near the end of this pregnancy now and its a really odd feeling , One part of me can't wait for it to be over , to have my body back and start living my life again. It feels like everything is on hold until the baby is born and its begining to bug the heck out of me.

But there is this other part of me that doesn't want it to end , I do love being pregnant and despite the difficulty in of parts of thi pregancy I have enjoyed this one too. I love the bump, he feeing of another life moving inside of me , knowing i have created that its an empowering feeling and I am going to miss it .

now don't get me wrong , nothing on this earth would stop me giving this baby to its parents , its not my baby but I will miss the bump.

and on top of that I'm not sure I want to do this again ,

I don't like the fact that we are going to have to fight with the hospital to get what we want . if its busy I will have to take care of the baby if we get transfered to a ward. Like that is realy going to help me !

I am sure eveything will be fine , it will be a straight forward birth , baby and I will be fit and healthy and we'll get the 6 hour dischage that we want .

But then the prospect of not doing it again leads right back to why I started looking into this in the firt place , he thought of never being pregnant again is horrible and I'm not sure I am ready to accept that either.

and then theres the other part of me that doesn;t even feel pregnant , this hasn't felt like a real pregnancy at all, I haven't had the exitement of shoping or choosing names and its amazing how those simple things bring he pregnancy to life and make it real. I'm not really contemplating the birth becasue I haven't had to get ready for it , there are no last minute preperations , no nursery to get ready so to me some day it feels like this birth could still be months away , it doesn't feel like its time for this pregnancy to end.


then there are the unexpected thoughts that maybe , just maybe, one day when the eldest 3 have all grown and left home ( 12 , 13 and 17 now) it may be nice to have another baby of my own , to do it all again properly, but I have 4 children , I have been a mum for 17 years and have the prospect of at least another 14 hands on years ahead of me , do I really want to extend that at all , is it all just hormones ?? am I really crazy ??? maybe if I just don't say never and get on with living , I will be that happy with life by the time we get to that stage It won't even enter my head.


so those are the thougths and feeling I am dealing with every day , oh yes and the pregnancy hormones as well , its no wonder I am feeling a bit emotional at times right now .

35 weeks , the end draws nearer

obviuly at this point I am starting to think about life after surrogacy and its made me reflect on how much surrogacy has affected my life over the last two years. It has enhanced it in someways , I have more people I would call freinds now than ever before , I have this huge sense of acheivement that i get t carry with me every day , and I have more confidence now than 2 years ago .

On the down side though i seem to have lost a little of me along the way , I used to scrapbook but haven' done any for some months now , I used to go to a crop but now all Steve's weekends off are taken up with surrogacy stuff without even checking to see if there is a crop running .

I used to bake homemade goodies for my kids , I haven't done that in months either . Today I made a Victoria sponge and it felt good to be doing something I enjoy and for my family.

Its Finns 4th birthday Tuesday and I wasn't going to throw him a birthday party because its a lot of work wile this far pregnant , I felt so bad about it that I am now throwing him a Small birthday tea party for him and 5 Friends. It will probably kill me but i have to do it. I would never forgive myself if i didn't .

My sex life has suffered too , I must be a really odd thing for my hubby to deal with , me being pregnant with another mans baby , its hard enough for me carrying someone Else's baby , not to mention the spd and the fact its uncomfortable to part my knees.

all in all I guess there is a big part of me that can't wait for this to end and get get myself, the whole me , back to normal.

34 weeks wow its been a long time

Firstly let me appologise for my absence , luckily my spd cleared up after some acupuncture so i have been busy jusy living ife and enjoying being able to move again.





whats been happening surrogacy wise , well we had a 3d scan whch was fantastic , we suprise E she didn't have a clue until we turned up on her doorstep one sunday lunch time. It was amazing and their baby is a cutie , It looks a little like finn when he was born but with subtle differences.

E's parents have been visitng so we haven't done much socialising , it has been great to meet the grandparents and see their excitement too.

we had a lovelly family christmas despite me feeling very pregnant , the bump is expanding at an alarmng rate and even some maternity clothes are starting to get a bit small btu I'm not buying any new ones at this late stage.

I am starting to think about the birth I'm not worried about it as such just have a few little things on my mind , I hope stef and eve make it in time ( i am sure they will) I hope the hospital give us our wishes, I am worried that if we ave to stay in for any length of time that because I am the legal mother they might not let Eve stay to take care of the baby . we have our meeting with the midwife on the 25Th to discuss our birth plan so hopefully i can talk all this through with her. I might even mention it to my consultant at our appointment tomorrow .

as for me and my health I was doing really well but just in this last week I have been feeling anemic , and my spd has reared its ugly head again . not terribly but enough to restrict my movement and make life difficult . I am starting t get to that point where I wish it was over already . this week has dragged more than the last 10 I think. I have started thinking and planning for my sisters wedding in May to try and make the time move faster whilst at the same time wondering what on earth i am going to do when this is over ..... 2 years of devoting my life to surrogacy and in a short ( i hope) 6 weeks it will be over. that feels very strange !!