That is amazing.
And the girls, they love it. I think it gives them odd attention. People say "oh you're going to have a little sister", and both of my daughters are like "no we're not". People kind of give them this look. My husband has a sick humor about it too, people are like "oh your having a baby" and he's like "it's not my kid" and people look at him like "what?". All three of them, my husband and my two girls, love how funny it is. And then they have to sit down and explain to people, "no my mom is carrying my cousin again". And then people give them a weird look again too like "your cousin? Ugh, weird family". They get some gratification out of it and some attention from it. One of our funny stories, Julie, my oldest daughter, at the time she was just 4, and we had told them when we are done with the surrogacy we will all go on a big trip to Disneyland. She was so excited. We were almost there, we were just a couple of weeks away from the due date, and someone stopped her in a store and said "are you so excited? Your baby is coming". And here she is, just 4, and says "I am so excited to get rid of this baby and go to Disneyland". The woman was "what?" and we said just ignore her, you know you don't want to explain to strangers and go into all your crazy business. But people were looking at us like you're going to get rid of your baby and go to Disneyland? We were like, just leave, everyone leave the store. So, they love it too. When we were questioning should we do this again, that was one of the first things, we asked the girls what do you think and both of them were like "yes, let's do this one more time." So, alright, if everyone is on board, then I guess we will try for one last journey.

So is there anything like that that you would say for women who are considering becoming a surrogate, like this is the one kernel of wisdom or these are things that you need to keep in mind?
The first thing is I would make sure that they were with a good agency, one that they feel comfortable with and love. Obviously I love GS Moms, I came to work for them and I did all of my journeys through them. I like the idea that we can set our own fees here. We always set really low fees because to us we wanted to help people, but you can do whatever is important to you. My other big thing is I think people should do the research first. Get online before you commit to doing and understand what you are doing. I will be honest, when I was a first-time surrogate, it was all new to me. I had no clue what certain things in the contract meant. I remember filling out my fee schedule and was like I don't know what a mock cycle is and a D&C, I had no idea. Doing that research and understanding what you are doing so you could make the proper decisions. GSMoms really helped me understand these things as well. Make it fun. I think that is really important to me. Like when we went down for transfer. Our parents knew, we went down a day early, we went to Disneyland so we made it like a happy fun thing for my husband and then we went to the doctor's the next day and did our transfer and followed all the doctor's rules but we made it fun and made it a happy memory for us. That was really important. Cause yes we are doing it for other people, but to make it a fun experience. For us in our family, we always have an end goal for the family because the family suffers through it too. You know, I am having morning sickness so we can't go out and do fun things or during the summer when I am pregnant I don't want to go outside so that means we are not going to the pool as often. You know, the kids suffer a little bit and my husband has to cook more and different things so we always make a big end goal. For us, with the last two surrogacies we did, our big goal was Disneyland, our kids love Disneyland. And it ended up being fun. We had told our parents that the kids are so excited and we are going to Disneyland and with both surrogacies they ended up buying a trip for my kids. That is another great memory of them being like "hey get the kids, get the video camera and then open this email and read it to them". And so I'm opening the email and it's "we are sending you to Disneyland for a week!", and it's the crazy excitement for my kids. Granted, that's not normal, but for us, just having an end goal so that everyone has something to look forward to. Like yes, we are looking forward to the baby, but then as a family we are going to do this fun thing together because we did this crazy experience. And then the tummy support, this last time, I think having had three kids, I needed the tummy support. So my coordinator and my IPs got together and they bought me like a belly support band thing and it made my life so much better. It lifted my belly up, it took away all the pressure from my back, so you know looking into those different things that you can just to make your life easier. Whether it's a supportive bra or a belly band, you know, the different things that, you know sometimes you don't think about it because you are just going through the pregnancy. But doing what you can. I see some people get the pregnancy massages or acupuncture, whatever it is to make it feel better, I think that surrogates should do that for themselves so that they are not miserable through the whole experience, you know make yourself feel good while you are doing it.