Part 1: The Marsolis went down to Georgia

Saturday, October 4, 8:35pm

The minute my phone rang Saturday night, I knew.

"Don't hop on a plane just yet," our surrogate tells us. "Let's see what the hospital says and I'll call you back."

I hang up the phone and look at Rob.

"Let's pretend we're getting on a plane in a few hours," I tell him. "Because we probably are."

I just know it in my gut. Mother's instinct? Maybe.

So we do all of the things we were going to do over the next two weeks: 

• Finish packing suitcases (packing = throwing anything we could get our hands on into the suitcases. "I don't even know if I have enough pants!" from Rob and "Are white jeans are still weather-appropriate in Georgia?" from me)
• Get Vito's stuff together for the kennel
• Do my time sheets for work
• Freeze and save all of the groceries we had purchased that morning

Then the moment of truth: we check out the flights for first thing Sunday morning.

"Slim pickins'," Rob sighs, scrolling through the flights.

Awesome.

"Maybe we should leave now and drive?" I suggest.

Rob shoots me the 'are you crazy, woman??' look. 

Guess that's a no.

Saturday, October 4, 10:30pm
phone call from surrogate

"I'm progressing a bit. They said they can keep me here overnight to monitor me. If I continue moving in this direction, then we'll know."

"Stay put! And keep us posted!"

After a few hours of the 'What centimeter do you think she is now?' game, we give up and head to bed.

Sometime around 1:30am, we miraculously fall asleep.

Sunday, October 5, 3:38am

"Hello?" 
It's amazing how you can be in a deep sleep but the minute your phone rings you can answer in a voice that's totally normal. 

"Good morning," our surrogate replies. "How would you feel about your baby having an October 5 birthday?"

And that, my friends, is when shit got real.

3:39am-4:30am

Scramble out of bed.

Book a 7:30am flight out of Bradley, via Atlanta, landing in Augusta at 12:11pm.

Change our rental car reservations.

Call the grandparents-to-be.

4:47am

Holy shit, we're having a baby today.

5:00am

My dad arrives to pick us up. 

First stop: drop Vito at my in laws so they can bring him to the kennel. 
Second stop: airport!

5:15am

Last family photo of just the three of us.

Rob's face says, "I can't believe this is happening."

KK's face says, "Let's get this show on the road!"

Vito's face says, "Why the hell are we up this early?"

7:30am

Take off!

12:11pm

DING! "Welcome to Augusta. It is now safe to use your cell phones."

Text to surrogate: 'Landed! On our way! Hang in there!'

a blue ribbon on our suitcase for our baby boy!

****

to be continued...

Ultrasound FAIL

This past week, the stars aligned and my work travel coincided with an ultrasound appointment for my surrogate! Hooray!

I hadn't seen our little munchkin in 17 weeks, so it was wonderful to see how big he was getting.

The ultrasound appointment was at the high-risk OB's office, someone our surrogate has been seeing monthly since our 20-week ultrasound when they noticed a little something with one of the baby's kidneys. The doctor is one of two high-risk OB's in the area and supposedly very smart.

I don't like her.

There's just something about her that rubs me the wrong way. She's very earthy crunchy, always reading medical journals and suggesting new things for our surrogate to try. More fish! More vitamin D! Less fish! Baby Mozart! More Fish! More vitamin D!

Between the doctor and ultrasound tech, I started to wonder just what has happened to bedside manners in the medical world.

The fun went something like this:

as soon as we walked into the room:

TECH (to me): "You're the mother."
KK:  "Yes!"
TECH (to both of us):  "I have an adopted son, so I'm all for these 'group things'."


TECH (to me):  "Where do you live?"
KK:  "Connecticut."
TECH:  "Where in Connecticut?"
KK:  "New Haven area."
TECH:  "I have family in Groton."
KK:  "Oh, that's nice. Groton is a nice area."
TECH:  "My uncle worked in New Haven at Pfizer. He's dead."

reviewing the ultrasound photos:

TECH: "Left kidney is really small. Right kidney is a beauty. Don't worry, you can live with one kidney. You just can't play football."

What the???

KK:  "Um, is there a chance the baby is only going to have one kidney???"
TECH:  "Well, he has two now."

And then Dr. Kookpot came in the room:

DR:  "The left kidney now looks like…" BEEP BEEP. "Oh, excuse me, that's my daughter texting me."

She then stops talking to us to text her daughter.

DR:  "My daughter is moving to Charlotte for two months and wants to know if she can take my bread maker."
KK:  "Really? How much bread can one person make in two months?"

DR:  "Do you have a pediatrician up north?"

KK:  "Yes."

DR (to surrogate): "When you get to the hospital, don't elect the POW – the Pediatrician of the Week. Instead, ask for Neonatal Services and you'll get one of those doctors."

DR:  "Pediatricians don't go to the hospitals anymore. You know why? They don't get paid. Why should they work for free? These insurance companies are awful. I was on the phone with one the other day and I was in tears talking to them. Why should I go to the hospital and work for free? I work to get paid."

Hey, lady, I work for free all the time. I'm salaried for 40 hours a week, and I work well over that…for nothing. And how did we get on the subject of insurance companies???

DR:  "So the kidney. It used to be larger but now it's smaller. I'm not sure why, we'll have to check it out after birth. I've never seen anything like this in my medical journals. It must be rare. Maybe we'll write up your baby in the National Enquirer."

OMG. Please.Stop.Talking.

DR:  "You know, if I didn't know your history of the enlarged kidney, and I was just looking at this ultrasound, I would say the left kidney is a normal size, not too small."

((exasperated sigh))

KK:  "So the baby's kidneys might be fine?"
DR:  "Well, I'm not an expert. You'll have to have neonatal services do an ultrasound after he's born. This isn't my specialty so you can't go by what I say."

The Sunday Dinner Tradition

If you're Italian, you probably grew up going to "Sunday dinner" with your family. 

There was macaroni, wine poured into juice glasses, crusty bread for mopping up sauce. You'd eat a big meal early in the afternoon and then, there was probably napping of some sort.

For me, Sunday dinners were spent at my grandparents' house. I would run up the stairs and burst into my grandmother's kitchen, shoes scraping on her linoleum floor. The entire house smelled amazing, a mixture of garlic and tomatoes. She'd be at the stove, wooden spoon in hand, wearing her apron. I'd rush to her, throwing my arms around her legs and just breathe everything in. And when no one was looking, she'd sneak me a fried meatball and send me on my way to play.

Sundays meant time with family.

They still do, but it's so hard to find the time to dedicate an afternoon to cooking and relaxing, and just enjoying each other's company. 

There's always an errand to run, a load of laundry to be done or a chore to be finished.

But I want Baby M to grow up surrounded by family and traditions. I don't want him to ever feel we're too busy to do something, or that weekends – the time we'll really get to spend with him – is for rushing around and mindless tasks. I want him to feel like that time is all about him. Spending time with his family. I want him to know family traditions, so we have to start now.

This past Sunday, I hosted a Sunday dinner. 

I was up early at the grocery store, buying the cans of crushed tomatoes and the meat for the sauce.

My father-in-law made two big batches of homemade pasta.

I fried 50 meatballs and made the most delicious meat sauce with pork, sausage and braciola.

We had two servings each and bottomless red wine.

We played bocce.

And it was a perfect afternoon to bring back tradition.

Life at home. A laugh a minute.

There’s a subject that’s taboo in our house: the butcher block counter top.

When we renovated our kitchen three years ago, Mr. KK wanted to build a butcher block counter top in our island. I’ve seen the inspirational photos…it will be gorgeous! Key thing to note is the future tense here: WILL BE gorgeous. Because it hasn’t been built yet. 

But we don't talk about it.

So in the interim we have a lovely piece of plywood serving as our counter top (sexy!).

But we don't talk about it.

And because this construction isn’t perfect, there’s a small opening in the counter top area that goes into the abyss between the cabinets.

But we don't talk about it.

Because we clutter this counter top with everything from dishtowels to snack mix to fresh-picked vegetables, it’s no wonder one of our tomatoes went rogue and rolled right off that fancy plywood into the dark abyss.

Crap.

So I did what any self-respecting woman would do.

I left my husband a note.

And the next morning, he took the plywood counter top apart and rescued the tomato.

But, hey, we don't talk about it.

At least strangers aren't touching me.

One thing I don't think I'll ever understand is the strong desire for strangers to go up to pregnant women and touch their stomachs.

What the hell?

When we saw our surrogate at 20 weeks, it was amazing to see her belly. Our baby was inside of that belly! So surreal!

And even though it was MY little one inside of her stomach, I asked for permission to touch her belly. I mean, if someone was going to touch me, I'd like a little warning.

In what universe does it feel normal to walk up to someone YOU'VE NEVER MET BEFORE and rub your grubby hands on their baby bumps? I’m not sure how or when it became acceptable to just walk up to a stranger and touch them; in fact, I’m pretty sure if someone came up to me and touched me – ANYWHERE – I would not be cool.

Obviously not being pregnant, I haven’t had to deal with stranger touching.

What I have encountered is just plain curiosity…in the form of comments and questions regarding our “situation”.

Some are worth sharing...

MOST INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION:

"Did your husband and your surrogate…you know.." (insert creepy wink-wink)

Um, no.

Just…NO.

WORST COMMENT BY A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL:

Doctor: "You know, I just don't know how a woman can carry a child all that time and just give it up like that."

Said to our surrogate by her doctor RIGHT IN FRONT OF US.

Hey kook pot, I can hear you!

Can they take medical licenses away for asinine comments?

(I swear, our surrogate is not keeping our baby. We're kind of holding her to that :)

QUESTION I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND:

“So…do you know what you’re having? Did you get to pick the gender?”

It wasn’t like selecting a piece of candy out of the bin ("Let's get the blue one!"). 

It was science and random, just like everyone else who had babies.

SWEETEST YET MOST UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATION:

This conversation was had with my lovable 93-year old Grandmother who – God love her – is just trying to understand how this whole situation works. Because back in her day, well, you might not have known you were pregnant until a baby just popped right out of you. You could have been in the grocery store when it happened.

Gram: "So I have a question. Did they take Rob's…um…his…"

Oh man, tell me this conversation isn't happening. Duckies and rainbows! Duckies and rainbows!

Gram: "…did they take his…um, his genes…" (PHEW!) "…and then mix it with yours?"

Yep. Just like making a cake.

STRANGEST QUESTION ASKED:

The setting for this one was the IVF clinic as I filled out paperwork before a procedure that was filled with a zillion questions.

KK: “They want to know if I’ve had sex with monkeys.”

MR. KK: “There’s no way they're asking you that.”

KK: “Well, not in those exact words, no. But more or less."

KK: (a minute later) "Do you think people who DID have sex with monkeys admit it on this form? I mean, that seems like information you might want to keep to yourself, no?”

(And the answer is no, I've never had sex with monkeys.)

But I LOVE getting asked all of the questions, because it allows me to talk about something that is so exciting! 

We’ve had our lips zipped about this whole process for almost 6 years – SIX YEARS PEOPLE – not talking to anyone about anything. We are two awesome secret-keepers.

So my advice would be to ask away. I’m a pretty straight-forward person; so if you ask me a question that’s a little too wacky, I’ll tell you. 

But for the most part, we want to share our journey with you. It’s been long and painful and happy and sad and filled with uncertainty and wonderfulness…all at the same time.