“After getting married in October 2012, we knew we didn’t want to wait to start a family. However, that wait turned out to be much longer than we ever anticipated. After 9 IVF transfers with 15 embryos, 5 egg retrievals, and suffering 6 miscarriages, my best friend offered to be our surrogate. It was the kindest offer we had ever received.
We transferred 2 embryos into Rachel in January and found out we were expecting our rainbow baby girl to be due September 2018. I never could have guessed she’d be born on my late father Scott’s birthday — whom she is named after.
I lost my dad suddenly 3 years ago. I knew then I would name my baby after him. After all our struggles, our sweet Scottie finally arrived — of all the days — on my dad’s birthday. There was not a dry eye in the room.
After Labor Day Weekend, I made the decision to spend my weekends in Wisconsin to be closer to Rachel — in case she went into labor and to be close if she needed help with anything. My husband or I would take long walks with Rachel and her youngest daughter, in hopes of helping the labor progress.
On the morning of Sunday, September 9th, Rachel started having contractions and was timing them. They started at about 10 minutes apart, then 8 minutes apart and they progressively got closer and closer together. Rachel called the hospital, and the midwife asked her to get in the tub to see if contractions would slow down — they didn’t. Around noon that day, I drove Rachel to the hospital with my mom and sister to get checked out at the hospital. At this point, Rachel was 37 weeks pregnant. The midwife checked Rachel and she was 2cm dilated and about 50% effaced. We decided to walk the halls of the hospital for 2 hours to see if she progressed at all. Four hours would go by, with little to no change, so we all headed home. My husband Matt and I decided to stay in town that night at my mom’s on the off chance she would go into labor. And the next morning, we headed home.
