the gender reveal.

Our sweet, little Baby B. There are no words that will ever begin to express the amount of love your dad and I have for you. The years of infertility, struggle, heartbreak, and defeat sometimes just seem a distant memory since you’ve been growing in our surrogate’s belly.

On Feb 28, we had our final appointment with our fertility clinic.  Baby B was 9w3d at this appointment. Measuring right on track and heartbeat was 176. Another milestone for us. After four years with our fertility clinic, we walked out the doors, with our dream on the way. A bittersweet moment for sure. We will forever be grateful for the nurses, especially Ashley, and our RE at Advanced Fertility Centers of Chicago. The care, compassion, and kindness they have shown us over the years has always helped us stay positive & continue on our journey.

With Baby B thriving and growing, we couldn’t wait to find out the gender. So, we enlisted the help of Sneak Peek Test. If you aren’t familiar, Sneak Peek is the only 99% accurate at-home gender test – starting as early as 9 weeks! We had an incredible experience with SneakPeek. Their customer service and product both surpassed our expectations. I would HIGHLY recommend them – click here to check them out!

SneakPeek sent a phlebotomist to our surrogate’s house on a Monday and we had the results the next day!!!! Isn’t that crazy!!! Here is a picture of the phlebotomist taking Rachel’s blood.

We had the results sent to Matt’s friend and we planned a reveal for two days later on a Thursday.

For the past almost six years, I’ve spent so much time praying for, hoping for, and wishing for a gender reveal. The number of days I’ve spent searching for and “pinning” the perfect reveal for our babies is too many to count. Each pregnancy, I dreamed of how we would share with the world, the gender of our baby, but we’d never make it that far.

This doesn’t seem real. I can hardly believe that this was us, finding out the gender a couple weeks ago. But, we are here. We made it. Thanks to our perseverance, our surrogate, and SneakPeek test. Although this gender reveal / pregnancy is a whole lot different from what I ever envisioned would happen for us, it’s just how it was supposed to be. Rachel came into my life for this exact reason ten years ago. We struggled with infertility to have our strength built up – no matter how many times we fell, we always dusted ourselves off, stood back up, and kept going.

On March 15th, we got to find out if sweet, little Baby B was a boy or a girl. And we couldn’t have been more excited. Thanks to everyone that has kept us afloat on our journey these past 5+ years. It’s because of you that we are here today.

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The anticipation was KILLING me — what do YOU think baby B is? Watch our reveal video below to find out!!!!!!!!! (Don’t mind my mom on FaceTime in the background, hahahahaha!)

Yes, that’s right —

 

And we couldn’t be more excited!!! 2018 has been such an unimaginable journey for us. It truly all feels so surreal. Here are some pictures that our photographer, Jess, took for us – and click here to check out her incredible work!

 

 

You know who else is so excited to meet their baby sister? Our fur babies, Kimber & Duncan!!!!

 

Rachel is currently 13w1d and starting to feel better as the days go on. She has her final PIO injection on Thursday! We saw her midwife this past week, at 12w3d, and baby girl’s heartbeat was beating away at 160. We will continue to have monthly appointments until closer to the end of the pregnancy.

Thank you ALL again, for continuing to follow our journey and provide love, support, and prayers. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think we would be here today. I am so happy, it’s unreal. I’m not sure there’s even a word for how my husband & I feel. We are just so incredibly blessed.

XO,

Erin