A goodbye

Not sure how we got here. 

The last month has been such a rollercoaster. 

I really thought we’d get through this. That he’d get through this.

I’d always thought that the stroke was the most difficult thing we would ever have to endure.

I was wrong. 

In the last month my father began getting tests and procedures done and in that short period of time was diagnosed with liver cancer. Due to complications related to it, on December 9th he left us. 

In those final moments we spoke to him, we held his hand, laid our head on his chest, and kissed him. People prayed for him, we played his favorite music, family from far away Zoomed and sang to him, and they never left his side. They held him in the softness of their voices and soothed his transition from this life. It was powerful to witness and I’m overcome by the love they demonstrated to him and to all of us. It was gut-wrenching and beautiful at the same time.

December 9, 2020

The speed at which this all progressed has left the family with some major whiplash and I’m not sure how long it will take to recover. I suspect never. At least not completely. But I do know that somehow our family will heal. We’ll heal together, move forward together, and eventually celebrate together. 

This weekend we had a beautiful Zoom service for him. 

We had family and friends joining us virtually from all over the world, from Belgium to Mexico and everywhere in between, and yet it felt like there was no distance between us.

December 20th, the day after the service, was 

their 40th wedding anniversary. 

It is all still a shock and feels impossible to accept. We’ve all processed in our own way. But we have tried filling this void with bits of laughter and sweetness by recalling the mountains of memories he left us. Some good, some bad, but all moments that have helped shape who we are.

Me in 1981.

Mateo in 2016.

When I really think back to our last encounters, I am so grateful I was able to let him know about baby number two. I am also so grateful that I got to see the smiles the news brought to his face and that he was able to talk to Florencia. 

I know to everyone it sounded like “Yayas” but I know exactly what he told her that night. He told her how grateful he was for the selfless gift she was giving to our family. He thanked her for taking care of the baby all this time and that she was filling our family with new life, even as his was coming to an end.

 He and my mom were the first to know Mateo is going to have a little sister and I am so grateful he knew that in those last weeks. My mom says she believes that their souls are together right now and he’s preparing her for our family.

She is a little light that we are being blessed with in this dark time. Though she may never get to be held by my dad, she will know his love and feel connected to him through our memories of his life and his legacy continued on in us. 

“Baby girl,

I never got to meet my grandpa (my dad’s dad). I knew very little about him and still don’t know too much. I’d always longed to hear stories and know something more about who he was.

Trust me when I say that you will know your Papa. 

You will know of his life and adventures.

You will know about his humble beginnings and how much he appreciated everything he had. You will know about his love for bullfighting. You will know how handsome and stylish he was. You will also know how stubborn and bullheaded he was.

You will know of the joy that dance and music brought to his soul.

You will know his sense of humor and we will keep his little jokes and sarcasm alive. You will know how passionate and protective he was over his family. (I promise I will try to tone it down.) You will know his obsession with sweets, chocolate, and pizza. You will know how much he loved to laugh and avoided crying. You will know that he was a fighter and did not give up when life was hard. Most of all, you will know that he loved you and longed to hold you in his arms.”

- - - an excerpt from a letter to our baby

All at once

 Erika:

Well, November came and went. It was just over a year ago that I posted my out loud wonderings about what the future might hold for our family in “It’s Time to Talk.” At the time I knew nothing, but we had hope and faith that something would come together. 

Fast forward one year and 8 posts later, here we are.

November was a month filled with moments of joy, grief, anxiety, and gratitude. And I don't know how it is that our bodies have the capacity to feel all of these things at once, but we do. Or at least I do. It's hard to compartmentalize all of these emotions because so many things have seemed to be happening simultaneously. And while I want to be fully focused on Lil Perales, reality doesn't allow for that.

However, it does allow me to utilize the moments of joy and gratitude that I've been able to experience this month to combat those feelings of grief and anxiousness, truly helping to sustain us during this unrelenting year. 

The parallels between 2020 and 2016 are both beautiful and tragic, and the post "In the Mess and the Miracles" reflects just that.” 

“As angry, resentful, and helpless as I know we all felt at times throughout this incredibly difficult and unpredictable year, I can't help but look back and see all of the joy, hope, and healing that this year brought us."  

So, I'm feeling it all, acknowledging pain and worry, but forcing myself to reframe my thoughts to focus on any bits of good news and hints of hope.

I’ve seen miracles in the mess.

So I'm holding onto that.

This is the tiny bear booty I bought for my dad when he was in the hospital in Mexico in 2016, five months before Mateo was born. 

I gave it back to him this November, five months before baby number two.

"Baby, you are a true miracle and such a reminder of hope and possibility. You have already brought such joy into our lives and you aren't even here yet! Seriously, the smiles I have seen on the faces of your Papa, Nana, and your big brother are more than I can handle and I know those smiles will be magnified in just a few short months, once they get to hold you in their arms."

---excerpt from a letter to our new baby

Baby news made them both SO happy. 

Story time with Mateo

Erika: 

So in my mind, my formal announcement about the pregnancy happened on our Anniversary, on our August 25th post Maybe Baby, but apparently, it was not.

 The other day I posted to my social media an updated picture of Lil Perales and a link to the last post, and that (unintentionally) ended up being the actual official announcement. Surprise! 

Regardless of when people have found out about our news, the enthusiasm, love, and support has been much more than I had anticipated, SO unexpected and SO appreciated.  

Another announcement we made this past week was to the big brother.

About two years ago, maybe longer, Mateo and I started reading Grown in Another Garden by Crystal Falk, who also wrote Sophia's Broken Crayons (the book I gave to Tina's children several years ago.) The first time I read it, he was a little over two. 

The book is great and compares pregnancy to gardening and having room for things to grow. However, it also jumps from gardening to pregnancy pretty abruptly and during that first read, Mateo's little face was stunned. I realized though, it wasn't at the fact that he didn't grow in my belly, but the fact that babies grow in bellies. Period. Lol. I had never explained that part to him and so it took some time for him to wrap his head around that idea, let alone the idea of surrogacy.  But over the last couple of years, we've continually read that book and more recently began looking at his baby album which shows photos leading up to his birth and then through his the first year of life. 

We also recently purchased Wanted by Carolina Robbiano, which explains the process of surrogacy in a bit more length and detail. Although I do think it's a bit long for Mateo, the illustrations are cute and the fact that it's bilingual is a huge plus. 

 

     So he has really started to grasp the idea of surrogacy and fully understands now who Tina is and the love that she was able to give him during that time and continues to give him now.

Since about the age of two, Mateo has continually found interest in playing with the baby doll that we used in our baby classes before he arrived. He has always played with this doll, who he typically calls his baby sister (but on occasion is his baby brother), feeding it, burping it, singing to it... all the things. 

This is Mateo with his doll at two. 

Last Fall, Mateo really started asking about a sibling. He would talk to his preschool teacher, his Nana, his Abuelita, and us about having a sibling. He's told us his plans about what he would like to teach his baby sibling: how to walk, talk, sing, and all about Star Wars. 

His other plan is to have at least two siblings.  He wants them to be twins. A boy and a girl. (You can guess what he wants to name them.) He will not back down, but I've told him repeatedly how lucky he would be to just have one.

And though the sibling dream has been on-going for the last couple of years, over the last few months, Mateo has started asking more about babies and bodies. He's asked:

How do babies get in the belly?

Why can't your body grow a baby?

How does a baby get out of the belly?

Can I make a baby?

What are testicles? (This has its own very special story that I will gladly tell you if you ask.)

So here comes the best baby book I have ever read, ever. I had actually found it years ago when I had only just started to think about what it would take to have a baby. I'd seen a little preview about 7 or 8 years ago and knew that one day I would buy that book for our kid. 

It's called What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg and it explains it all, without saying too much, and has been the perfect book to answer Mateo's most pressing questions in a way that he understands. It's totally age-appropriate and the illustrations by Fiona Smyth are my absolute FAVORITE.

We've been reading this book for the last couple of weeks and Mateo LOVES it. This past weekend I decided to add a surprise ending. Wait for it... It is so worth it. It's not the entire book, but I clipped together bits and pieces.

Click this link to watch the video.

"Baby,

I feel excited about being a big brother because it’s very very nice because I get to treat you nicely. I will show you how to do grown up stuff. I will teach you to talk and to walk. I will hold you when you cry and I will make funny jokes to make you laugh.

Baby, I love you so. Baby, have a good time in Florencia’s belly. Baby, I’m gonna hold you when you’re out. Come soon. Be a good baby."

Your Big Brother, Mateo

We graduated, again!

Erika:

So we recently graduated from our fertility clinic and have moved onto an official OB. It’s so exciting to finally be at this point!

This was at the last appointment at 9wks.

Not a ton of movement on this one. The assistant in the room made us miss the one tiny lil hiccup the baby had at the very beginning. It’s fine. I’m fine. But if you look closely and obsessively, right at the beginning you can spot a little head nod, like, “Sup.” Cuteness!

You can also catch the tiny lil heartbeat flicker.

There are some definite differences between Mateo’s journey and this new one. And though we’ve mentioned before that we are really trying not to compare, it happens. 

One big difference this time around has been Covid precautions. Though we were limited at some of the appointments with the RE, for the most part we could all be at every appointment. However, the OB is different and so we weren’t able to be at this first one. We were totally fine with that. Luis and I had already assumed that would be a precaution put into place. We also figured that most of the upcoming appointments would be simple labs, blood pressure and measuring, no ultrasounds. 

Well, during Florencia’s first appointment we found out they’d be doing an ultrasound! And so thankfully she was able to FaceTime us for a bit and we were able to see baby! And even though we were at home that day, the equipment they had made everything SO clear! Baby was moving and you could see the little toes and fingers. So freaking adorable.

10 weeks here.

The equipment was SO clear, in fact, that the ultrasound tech SWORE that she could tell the gender. Don’t worry guys. It’s too soon to tell. Baby was only 10weeks at that appointment. Too soon. Trust me, we tried.

Watch the video though. Florencia’s reaction is the best. 

One other celebration is Florencia is done with her med protocol! No more shots! You are brave and amazing!!! 

Thank you for enduring all this for Lil Perales!

That’s all we have for today. 

Next up... telling Mateo!

Wish us luck!

“Hey there, Lil P. You are growing healthy and strong and every time we get to see you, we get more and more excited to meet you! I have a feeling this is going to start going by quickly.”

-excerpt from a letter to our new baby

Deep breaths and lil beats

My sister in law had sent this to me during the wait to get to the heartbeat appointment.
She knew that's what I'd been waiting for.
Seriously she's been so thoughtful and in each moment as much as we have. It's meant so much. 

Erika:
It's ironic that our blog is called “One Breath Closer” because I have been holding my breath quite a lot this time around. I’m not sure why. I’ve been trying to celebrate each step along the way, but each time there’s good news I seem to gulp in more air. Holding it in. Big cheeks, like if I hold the air in, then that moment will last until we get to the next milestone. 

In my mind, that next big milestone would be the heartbeat. But the doctor had scheduled an ultrasound for just a week after the pregnancy test. I thought that was early and wondered what it was for. 

Now I know we’ve been through this before, but it’d been a while and my brain is mush. Florencia was the first to discover our mistaken calculations. We all totally thought that we would only be at 3weeks out based on when we did the transfer. But we forgot to add the additional two and half weeks and realized we’d actually be at 5 weeks

 and 5 days at that next appointment! Over a month! 

It definitely took a bit for that to sink in, the fact that we were much farther along than we’d thought. And this was pretty much exactly what our faces looked like when we figured it out. I checked through my posts from Mateo and found the FET calculator I’d used last time. Glad we cleared that up.

So for the next appointment we were out on the road at 6am and caught a beautiful sunrise. 

The sunrise must have been a sign of good things to come. The ultrasound  was fairly quick (click here to see our almost pomegranate seed-sized baby) and though still super early, the doctor saw what he was looking for and sounded confident. 

Though what was funny was that once he found the one sack, he kept looking around for more. Lol. Florencia then said, “I appreciate you looking for a second, but please don’t find one.”

 He didn’t. It’s just the one.

And even through this smile, I had doubts. I had some anxiousness. I felt like maybe my smile was too presumptuous. I so wanted to be fully happy and I think for a moment I was, but still with the mindset of, “So far so good.” I think it was after this appointment that Luis told me, “Dude. We’re having another baby. It IS happening.”

 I was definitely still in the maybe baby stage. It all felt more like a dream and too good to be true. So I just wouldn’t let myself fully feel anything. But in just one week we’d be back for heartbeat. So I filled my lungs with some more air and held it for the next seven days. 

Luis:

I actually try to put my ear on Mateo's chest and take a listen every now and then, but he often complains that I am crushing him so I only hear a few beats. Coming from the uncertainty of the last few weeks, it felt good to finally get to listen to our growing baby's heartbeat. 

Roughly 7wks.
About the size of a blueberry.
Remember when Mateo was just a blueberry?

There it is.
That beautiful lil beat.
To hear the heartbeat, click here. 

After the ultrasound, relieved, Florencia pulled out this tiny heart she had tucked away for luck. 

We had not seen my parents in a long time and had planned to meet at Irvine Park on Labor Day to ride our bikes and have an evening picnic, but the heat and ash sent us indoors where we had dinner. My parents are not on Gram or Facebook so they only get updates of baby when we seen them. 

After dinner Erika handed over her phone for my mom to hear baby's heartbeat, to which she immediately said, "es un baron," just like she did when she heard Mateo's for the first time. Why would she think that? To sum it up she said it had a strong hard beat, "Asì...POOM...POOM... POOM.... si es niña, serà mas como, "ping... ping... ping...." It made us all laugh. Either way. Strong beat. Strong baby.

When we got back from our heartbeat appointment, this had arrived in the mail. I'd ordered it a few weeks back from Morgan Harper Nichols (the same artist I mentioned in my Hope post) to serve as a reminder for me. I’m telling you guys... her work is everything. It arrived at just the right time. I’m not holding my breath anymore.

The heartbeat appointment was the day before our 13th wedding anniversary and we were given a very special card. So instead of an excerpt from a letter to our baby, here is a letter from our baby to us.

Maybe Baby

Luis:

All days are normal until they are not. The Covid Quarantine has blurred the days of the week to a repetitive Groundhog Day.  However, with all of the baby business going on, it’s definitely brought us some excitement to the routine. 

This day, towards the end of our summer, was just like any other over the last several months and began with a child begging us to get up. We were looking forward to the official blood test scheduled for the following week, but we also knew Florencia had a couple of pregnancy tests that we gave her, in case she wanted to test it out beforehand. Although we never specifically asked her to pee or not to pee, we knew she might be antsy. 

Erika and Florencia texting earlier that day.

So Florencia and the family came to our house later that night. We gathered in the kitchen and let the kids play. Florencia handed Erika a card. Inside there was a drawing of a pregnancy stick (see below). We have no experience with these so the indicator lines meant very little to us. I think initially I thought, “Yeah, that's what we want, we want the line to appear.” Erika even said, “Yup. Positive or negative. Either way! Let’s see what happens.” Our faces of confusion must have been enough for Florencia to take and she immediately handed over the prego box that we'd purchased.

via Friends on GIPHY

This was us trying to figure out what Florencia was trying to tell us.

Again we thought, “Umm, Erika’s pee is not going to tell us anything, so...” Our confused faces were clear and Florencia said, “Open it.” The confusion continued as we looked at the seemingly unopened pregnancy box. But in true Florencia fashion, she had meticulously opened, peed, and repackaged the box. She had known the results for two days. I think after the congratulations from Alan, he mentioned that this was the longest secret Florencia had kept in her life. 

I hate to compare, but I will anyway. When we were going through this process with Baby #1, my every other thought was about Baby. The possibilities, the unknowns, the next steps if the transfer worked. The outcomes were endless to think about so it was constantly something on my mind. This time has been more straightforward. No retrieval process, no agency back and forth, and I wasn’t there for the transfer either (missed out on the giggles), and so I’ve felt more distant from the process and maybe less emotional. 

Nonetheless, I think most of these distant feelings started to fade once I saw the pregnancy test. The news of a pregnancy is usually a private and personal experience. We, however, got that news in a unique way. No less special. We found out our family was growing surrounded and delivered by our friends. Have my distant feelings changed? Yes. Have the uncertainties of restarting parenthood started to hit me? Yes. But this time we have Mateo to look at for inspiration. We don’t know much about Baby #2 yet, but I hope it knows it will be loved by us as much and as if it was our only.

Erika:

So even with the amazing news of the pregnancy test, there was still another hurdle to jump. The blood test. They look for HCG levels above 100. She went in to take the test later the following week and we didn't hear from her all day. I tried not to worry or over-think and really tried to keep myself distracted. 

Mateo and I were watching Star Wars in the evening and through our partially cracked blinds, I saw someone come up to our door. I didn't really think about it and assumed it was someone dropping off a package or a flyer. So I didn't get up. 

About ten minutes later, I see someone pass by the window again. Why would someone still be out there?

So I get up to find Florencia hopping back into her truck after creating some sneaky street art on our doorstep. She got caught! Amazing numbers!

Two days later the numbers needed to have doubled.
HCG for the second test was 595!

Luis, throughout this whole process and even last time, has had the same mantra. 

“So far so good.” So I’m going to stick with that for now, 

and just be in awe of each moment we get, 

each time just one breath closer, 

and with each exhale say, “So far, so good.”

"There is so much love coming together to bring you into the world right now, and your little life is a miracle we've prayed for. Keep growing baby. You’re in good hands." 

---excerpt from a letter to our new baby