Summer 2020 Transitions

I’m squatting against the wall in our carport as Ellie sleeps in her stroller, trying to give her the longest nap possible! Still loving these walks in our beautifully landscaped neighborhood.

It’s been a while since I have posted...the days slip by quickly, and free time is a hot commodity. Ellie goes to bed around 8:30, so that gives us an hour and a half or so to talk and/or watch our TV show and just chill. I have two clients now (yay!), so I’ve also had some work to do prepping for career sessions or typing follow up emails, including resources we’ve discussed. It feels great, though, to be using that part of my brain again.

Ellie is doing amazing! I can’t believe how big she’s gotten! And she is super active right now, never sitting still; backwards crawling, rolling, and scooting all over the floor. No leaving her unattended now. We’ve started the baby proofing of edges and outlets, but there are still precarious positions and places she can maneuver in to. Crawling seems just around the corner - yikes! She’s not saying lots of words yet, but babbling lots of sounds and vocalizations and screeches. 🙂 She has said Dada, however, and gah and gi, nee nee, a few times bah, but we’re still waiting on Mama. Trying not to take that personally. lol

We’re still exclusively breast feeding but are, just now, running out of the donor milk we’ve used to supplant our end of day feedings. I’d love to make it exclusively to 9 months before introducing formula, and I intend to keep breast feeding until one year. 🤞🏼 We feed her fruit, and sometimes cereal, in the morning, and veggies in the late afternoon or early evening. I’d like to introduce meat and some real food at nine months - we’ve let her try baguette type bread, but that’s about it. When did you all introduce more complex foods, if you’ve raised a little one through this time period? She does love taking drinks of our fizzy water, which is so cute. She pretty much wants to do anything we’re doing, and she’s very much a little techie, going for our phones, iPads, or remote controls whenever possible.

The biggest and most challenging transition I am going through right now (and to a lesser extent, RC) is completing the process of transferring our donor embryos to the local recipient couple we’ve with whom we’ve connected. She’s going down to the clinic we used for the transfer, and this whole thing came up about us allowing the clinic to release the donor information. I want to give the recipients the information, but I wanted to be one to do it. The feelings that came up led to some helpful continued processing with the therapist RC and I are seeing to work through decisions around how we handle our remaining embryos. She validated my feelings, and reflected how loooong I’ve been on a journey to have a child and all the hoops I and we have gone through to get here. If or when I definitively close the door on having any more children, it’s a huge step in my life. Regarding the clinic situation, they ended up sending all the information to me (some of it I had but two pictures I didn’t 😠) and, after sitting with it for a few days, I plan to share it all with the recipients later today. That feels okay to me. I do want the best for them and absolutely wish them success.

Little one is waking up, so I’ll post this now. Sending love to everyone in this strange time.