It’s been a while since I’ve written and I think it’s time I give a proper update here on the blog. We’re parents!
It’s been a whirlwind, and while I won’t dive into everything in one post I will be sharing quite a bit – including the raw, real answer to the question on everyone’s mind when it comes to surrogacy.
In early July we welcomed our daughter, Scottie Joel Colt, into the world. I’ve sat down a few times to write a detailed labour and delivery story for this blog, but ultimately abandoned each attempt. The story is amazing and I’m sure I’ll tell it in due time, but for now it feels like a sacred part of our experience that I’d rather keep between us, Ashley, and her husband. What I do want to share right now is the ‘fourth trimester’ (first 3 months with baby) and what that looked like as parents via surrogacy.
After one night in the hospital, we brought Scottie home with us for the first time. From day one she was calm, sweet, and easy. In many ways it felt like a reward for the many hurdles we’ve cleared to finally bring her into our lives. I spent the first few weeks waiting for her to suddenly become more challenging, but that never happened.
Acknowledging the ‘pros’ of surrogacy
Don’t get me wrong – the first little while was exhausting. Waking up throughout the night, learning her cues, and trying to look like we knew what we were doing in front of other people was a challenge. Babies don’t come with a set of instructions. As a mom by surrogacy though, I had benefit of being in peak physical shape while handling a newborn. The majority of my mom friends gave birth to their children, and so I have watched them balance postpartum recovery with caring for an infant. It doesn’t look easy.
I think it’s important that we acknowledge that with surrogacy, there are both ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ throughout the journey. It goes without saying that I would have loved to carry my daughter, and that there was an abundance of emotional labour I endured in giving up that experience. These are some of the most obvious ‘cons’. That said, I will be the first to say that handling sleep deprivation with a baby is immeasurably easier when your body doesn’t hurt from delivery.
Feeding Baby Scottie
From the very beginning we fed Scottie a mixture of pumped breastmilk and Similac formula. Formula was a great supplement for us because we simply didn’t have enough breastmilk to meet our daughter’s needs. To any nay-sayers about formula, I personally think it’s great. It offered our family a healthy option to keep our baby fed, and it certainly helped when we were on the go (bringing ready-to-feed formula as opposed to chilled breastmilk was a life saver!).
Breastmilk was also an amazing option for our family. We got really lucky and sourced it in two ways. First, from one of my best friends who lives nearby. She had a son a few months older than Scottie and created an oversupply in order to give to us. This act of kindness is more than I could ever repay. She put aside frozen bags of breastmilk over the course of over six months, stocking our freezer and giving us something that we couldn’t offer ourselves. When people say ‘it takes a village’, this is what they mean.
Ashley also offered to pump for the first few months to provide some extra immunity to Scottie, which we so appreciated. We met up every few weeks to hang out and do a milk hand-off. It was a great excuse to get together and for her family to watch how quickly Scottie is growing. Even now that she isn’t pumping (we’re on formula exclusively, but moving to solids soon) we try to get together regularly. I try to envision her kids as Scottie’s quasi-‘big cousins’, so I want to do my part to foster that relationship. It’s sweet watching them hold her, feed her a bottle, and do things like help pick up her outfits when they’re together.
The big question: did I need time to feel the bond?
One of the questions thrown around in the surrogacy world a lot is whether or not the bond is immediate for new moms. After all, pregnant women carrying their own children often talk about feeling the love for their baby from first kicks or speak fondly of the affection that grew for their child as they carried them. I won’t lie, this is something that keeps a lot of potential parents-by-surrogacy up at night. So – what’s the verdict?
The bond was immediate for me. From the moment I saw her, held her, and kissed her head, I knew my daughter was the love of my life. There wasn’t a fraction of a second that I felt like I needed to learn how to love her or that I was missing some part of our relationship by not carrying her. Just like any other parent, that relationship grows day by day, but nobody could ever take away the intense, instant love I felt for my child.
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