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

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

What hope looks like

So, I'd planned on writing my next post in June.

But now it's July.

It's midnight on July 2nd and I can't sleep... once again.

My last post, in November, was a declaration that Mateo wanted a sibling, and we'd decided to take a leap of faith and figure out next steps in growing our family. We just put it out there, with zero direction and zero answers, but we were ready to think about it, talk about it, and simply allow ourselves to imagine it.

Less than a month later, things started to actually take shape. 

To be more specific...

Someone had offered to carry our baby.



Whaaaaaaaa?!?!

I'll give you a minute.
Trust me. I know. It took me days to actually acknowledge and fully grasp what had been offered to us.

(It's a fun story.
I’ll tell it in the next post.)

But I'm writing here now because so much has happened since December.
2020 happened.

Initially everything actually moved really fast. December wasn't even over and we had already contacted doctors, lawyers, and made appointments with all the proper channels. Time flew, and by February we were all cleared and ready to go. Yeah. That quick. We just needed to decide on a date.

But then March happened.

It's funny, right? Just because God seemed to have flung the door of opportunity wide open, didn't mean we were going to actually walk through it, at least not right away. We have always understood that none of this, ultimately, is about our timing and so we've just been kind of standing there, patiently, holding the door open.

Collectively, the four of us decided we should wait.
There was just so much uncertainty and we wanted to make sure that when it happened we'd all feel a peace about it. In March, there was very little peace, at least not for me. There were a lot of unanswerable questions and we all agreed to just take some time, focus on our new work-from-home world and re-visit later. I am so grateful that we've all been on the same page and we know that this will happen when it's supposed to.

Which leads me to my next thought.


The world is freaking crazy.

And though that is a truth as old as time, I can't help but feel overwhelmed when I think about the future. What is the future we are ushering forward for our children? How are we going to navigate these waters in a world that seems so volatile? How will we raise these children to live, thrive, and find joy in a world filled with so much injustice, ignorance, and fear.

All I could come up with is,
We will Love them.

And we will not hide from them, these ugly truths of the world.
We will show them that they exist and give them the tools to stand up against them.

We will show them what compassion looks like.
We will show them what forgiveness looks like.
We will show them what empathy looks like.
We will show them what grace looks like.
We will show them what healing looks like.


And they, in turn, based merely on their existence in the world, will show us what hope looks like.

To find out more to our ongoing journey (and who our surrogate is...) click here: Let's go back...

This is a piece by one of my favorite creators,
Morgan Harper Nichols.
I recently purchased her book, All Along You Were Blooming 
and she just really has a way of connecting to people through her words and images. Her work has been a blessing.

Time to talk

It’s 1am.

I have a lot on my mind.

The top thing, the thing that is always there, is my awe of Mateo and the little man he is becoming. Though I could always imagine having a child, I could never have imagined in a million years that it would be this guy. He is so many things. He is silly, he is tender, he is imaginative, he's also a little wild, and maybe a tad ocd. And I adore being his mother. I'm in a constant state of surprise, shock, adoration, and exhaustion, and at this point in life I don't think I experience time the way I used to.  I've taken the last couple of years away from the blog (it got hard to do because, you know, life) and I’ve just been documenting as many small moments as possible on my Instagram account, trying to hang onto every little bit.

At the end of the hallway in our new home.
The wooden panels were gifts at Mateo's baby shower.

Seeing what a great little human Mateo is leads me to the next thing that’s been weighing on my mind, for at least the last year, maybe two.  Should we have more little humans? It’s not even really a question of should we, as it is how and when should we? And are we mentally and emotionally prepared to do it all again? 

           

Here’s the thing, first time around, there was so much uncertainty about the unknown. Anxiety over what the surrogacy process would actually be like and how we would cope with it all. Fast forward through the actual experience, it could not have gone more smoothly.  It was the most beautiful, humbling, awe-inspiring thing we’ve ever been through and we are forever grateful (actually, what’s a word beyond grateful?) for the blessings that the whole journey brought us. (We love you Tina.)

Today, we’re faced with a new set of questions and a different kind of anxiety, which I think is coming from a set of “expectations” that we didn't have before. It sometimes feels so overwhelming that I'd rather just avoid the whole thing... the questions, the conversations, even the answers. But I know I just have to let go, which is the easiest thing to say, and usually (for me) the hardest thing to do. 

We know, through our experience, that God’s plan is bigger than our own understanding and that stepping forward in faith is the only way forward, but oooh, it ain’t easy. Because even with that understanding, we still have to make actual appointments and crucial decisions and the anxiety leading up to that, no matter how prayer-filled the process, is real. Because just like becoming parents for the first time, the immense pressure over making all the “right” decisions is completely nerve wracking. All we can really do is try our best and focus on our breath in the moment. And so here I go, taking my first deep breath, letting go of all anxiety and expectation, trusting God and the process that will unfold as we go.

We don’t know who will carry our little one. 

We don’t know when we will start.

We don’t know if we’ll use an agency.

We don’t know what new surprises or hardships may come up along the way.

But,
We do know that we’re ready to start talking about it. 

We’re ready to start planning for it. 

We’re ready to start moving in a direction that will lead us to our new little human. 

And Mateo is definitely ready to be the best big brother there ever was. 

Three and a half. But if you ask him, he's "almost four."

I wrote this at 1am, back in October. Feels good to get it out.

Feel free to reach out and ask questions. Or even share your own journey.

Thank you for all of your love and continued prayers and support for our growing family.

To see the update to this post, go to "What Hope Looks Like."

Fast forward almost a year later... so much happened.

Daddy Hood

Luis:

In my younger 20s I always said I could see myself as a stay at home dad. I’ve always loved to cook, I like to clean, and I tend to have the energy and outlook that I might need to keep up with a baby. I know it is not very “manly” or expected in the latino culture. As a matter of fact, most of my friends and family members gave me odd looks when I told them I was taking so much time off. But we'd waited and prayed for so long that I could not see any other option but to hang out with my little dude for as much time as I could.

                   

For 34 working days, I got to stay at home and bond with my baby boy. By now Mateo was 5 months old, could recognize me, was laughing at my weird faces, could sit, roll, and had a solid bottom baby tooth which was ready to start munching on whatever he could get his hands on.

I knew that I did NOT want to be a home body. Mateo was a pretty well-seasoned traveler by this point, having already hit the road up through Northern California and into Oregon. So I made a list of things we could do:
parks, hikes, swimming, museums, farmers markets, learn a new language etc. I'd say that we would get out of the house every other day for sure. In the mornings I would get a laugh when I went to the store to buy things and see all of the OC mama’s in their yoga pants and Starbucks cups and here I was with my basketball shorts and little man in a carrier in front of me strolling down the aisle buying tri-colored quinoa.

I was also able to introduce Mateo to solids.
By 7mo he was having: sweet potato, avocado,
carrots, squash, banana, apples, cinnamon, & nutmeg

Some other things we did….

With Erika back to work I was lucky enough to take Mateo to basketball practice, where I coach high schoolers. This  was always an adventure. I would have to divide my time between trying to coach and making sure Mateo was happy. By mid practice he was most likely in the carrier, faced out, looking around at the team running around, with us (the coaches) yelling at them to stay in a defensive stance, run a play, rebound... all those darn things high schoolers never do consistently. The JV players who were on the sidelines were the most curious guys. They would often walk over to the stroller when Mateo was in there. I would scream across the gym “don’t touch my baby!!!” After all,  who knows where those unwashed hands had been all day.

Our typical Tuesday would be a 9 am walk around Irvine Park with a visit to the farmers market right afterward. The loop around the park was a solid 3 miles which took about an hour. We did the walk in the heat, cold, wind, and rain. Mateo has always liked looking up at the trees. I tried several times to point out the peacocks that would be roaming the area, but he could not care less.

Our farthest trip we had together was to L.A. Exposition Park where we spent a few hours at the Natural History Museum and saw the space shuttle Endeavor. He liked the dino skeletons and the elephants the most at the Museum. I tried my best to talk about the different animals on display. The time we spent at the Endeavor was more for me than for him. Growing up I always wanted to fly airplanes a-la "Top Gun." My bad eyes ruined my chances of being a pilot, so now I dream through my son. I can envision that one day he might be one of the fortunate few who get to be on the space shuttle headed beyond the Moon to Mars. I told him my dreams for this as he drank his lunch next to Endeavour.

 

In between these trips were the seemingly mundane parts of parenting, that actually made my bonding time more special. Even just holding him high above me, then bringing him down so I could give him a kiss, while he giggled the whole time. Changing his diaper early in the morning (with no rush) while he’d babble, telling me about his dreams and grabbing his feet.


Perhaps my favorite, was having him fall asleep on me. I could have a massive list of things to do, but when he’d fall asleep on my chest or shoulder there was nothing I could do but stay on that couch until he lifted his head up with a smile and rosy cheeks, glad to know I was still there.

Initially, going back to work was not something I dreaded. I enjoy my job. I like what I do. But about a month into it, I even told Erika, "I don't know how you did it." I seriously started to question my options.

Classic 'Washing Machine"

Now at seven months, he has 2 teeth, can sit, scoot backwards (moonwalk), and spin like a turn table. As the time came to go back to the classroom it was good to know, we had two eager grandparents who were waiting patiently for my days to end so they could spend all their days with Mateo. The first time I dropped him off at my mom's house I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice that she had been waiting for that day for a long time. She was quick to hand me some food, coffee, and shoo me off to work.

Just some of the pictures taken during time with Las Abuelas. 

"I don’t know what my relationship with my you would have been like without this time off. I doubt that any of these last 10 weeks will stick to your long term memory or that I’ll even remember all of the small milestones you went though. But even just the simple connection we have built, has made this time well worth it. When I look at you, without hesitation, you instantly shoot a big smile back at me. And for that I would do it all over again."

---expert from a letter to our baby