My kiddo is 3. She’s scared of spiders, the drain in the tub, and worms. I get that. Nightmares of squirmy creepy creatures and a hole that leads to nowhere (she truly hates that drain). But, what’s the scariest thing of all? Not a zombie or the boogie man. It’s this guy:

Name: The Key Toon aka The Key (as my daughter calls him)

Height: 6 ft. 5 in. of terror

Weight: 2 pounds of foam

Age: 6

Hobbies: Walking really awkward and slow. Smiling. Waving. Scaring the crap out of the childrens.

Ok, maybe just my child (and Mandy’s child). Here we are… hanging out all excited for March of Dimes when The Key sees us. He slowly wobbles our way and I feel a scratching on my leg, followed by a frantic screech/babbling of, “Let’s get outta here! Let’s get outta here!” I look down and my child is trying to claw her way inside of me to hide from Mr. Key. It took me a minute to put it all together, but we had to tell him to head the other way or my kid (and Harper) were going to have little mini heart attacks.

He leaves and I thought that would be the end of it. He’s gone. Out of sight (mostly). Nope. My kiddo is hanging onto me so tight I didn’t even need to hold her. I tried to sit down to talk to her and she pretty much climbed on top of my head, while still mumbling, “Let’s get outta here…”

She got better as we went on our walk, but when we were back to the main event space… the fear all came flooding back to her. She did not want to be anywhere near that place. She was having a little meltdown. We left and Harper and Ruari kept chatting about The Key. We promised them that the key was just a guy in a costume. They still thought he was scary as hell.

As the evening went on… still with The Key! She showed me how he walked (this included a weird wobble and the creepy smile) and kept telling me he was “distracting” her. 4 days later… still. talking. about. the. key. Ha! The story has evolved a bit to, “Well, The Key was distracting me. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, but he’s still creepy. I don’t like him.  He scared all the poopy out of my body. I bet he went home and took his costume off and said, ‘I’m done being creepy, phew’ and he was actually Kim. Kim was the key.” So…. sorry to my friend Kim. She is now the wearer of the key costume (no convincing the kiddo otherwise). Ha!

It broke my heart how scared she was of this key, but now the story sort of makes me smile. I showed her The Key photo today and she just laughed…. then said, “K, turn off The Key photo.” Ooooooh, 3. Gotta love these moments.

- Chelsey

Key image via Costume Specialists

Almost daily I think about having another kiddo. I’d love to just say, “Yeah, let’s do this and create another life.” But, I can’t. I wish there was no risk for me carrying a baby. I wish the only decision we have to make is when to start trying. Unfortunately, that’s not the situation we’re in.

Every time I start doing the research and getting all the information for gestational surrogacy, I get overwhelmed by the cost/time/emotional stuff of it all. My husband and I have been wanting to start our journey to surrogacy for a while, but we recently learned our insurance will not cover this. We will have to cover 100% of the costs. It’s just another bump in the ‘ol road.

I know for a fact we will have another child. Whether it’s by surrogacy, or adoption, we will have a brother or sister for our kiddo. Both are a ton of money. Goodness. Sooooooo, that brings me to my Go Fund Me. It’s a site dedicated to raising money for people/situations/whatever. I set up a page to begin raising money for surrogacy. In addition to the fundraising page, I hope to set up a silent auction and maybe a raffle? All in the near future.

In case you don’t know why I can’t carry another kiddo, here’s a quick catch up…

The backstory:

In December 2009 I was 36 weeks pregnant and ended up in the ER with contractions coming every minute with a lot of pain. After many tests the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. The baby was fine, and I obviously was not. It was decided that my appendix may have burst. When I was put under and the surgeon started to work, blood poured out of my abdomen. My simple appendectomy turned into cesarean/life saving surgery. I flatlined four times and lost most of my blood. Somehow my daughter was perfectly fine and only needed a resuscitation from me being put under.

It turns out my uterus had ruptured. I have a bicornuate uterus (this means it’s heart shaped) and it tore at the seam. Just a tear the size of a dime, yet my little baby was still getting blood.

A uterine rupture can occur if the pregnant woman had previous surgery on her uterus. Before pregnancy I had NEVER had surgery of any kind, especially not on my uterus. I’ve been told there may have been a weak spot and the combo of my growing baby and movement caused the tear. According to my doctors, they could not find any record of a uterine rupture without past surgery happening, so it’s pretty much a mystery.

I have no guarantee that another pregnancy won’t cause another tear. The doctors just don’t know. What I DO know is I have my daughter, family and myself to live for. The risk is not worth it.

The entire surrogate process is so expensive, and that’s why I set this up. Side note: I definitely don’t expect this Go Fund Me to cover everything, I just hope it helps. We’re also saving money, applying for grants, and doing what we can (without going into extreme debt).

- Chelsey and Mike

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

If you have a Wednesday post, please feel free to link it up below. And, feel free to link up to these blogs too… Parenting by Dummies, Project Alicia, Jenni from the Blog, In The Moment With, and Live and Love Outloud.

April 27th was our 4th Pacific Northwest Blogger party. I LOVE these meet ups. Just a room full of wonderful people that love blogging. We had 50 amazing bloggers join us at Von Trapp’s in Seattle for fun, food, and good conversation. The wonderful photographer Linnea Paulina was so lovely and captured a ton of photos for me to share of our event, so I’ll let her photos tell the story.

Psst… if you want to be in the loop for upcoming events, sign up for our newsletter!

A HUGE thank you to the sponsors of our Spring Event:

We did it! This past weekend I went to Tacoma to walk for the babies. Our team was an awesome bunch of PNW bloggers and we raised $6,870. Plus also: Ergo Baby was pretty darn neat and sent all the mama’s carrying small babies carriers, plus little carriers for each kiddo. On top of that, the kiddo and I had a great time staying with our friend’s Harper and Mandy.

Thank you to EVERYone that donated to our group. This charity means a lot to me (since my kiddo was early) and many other families that have early babies or lost little ones for coming too soon.

Have a wonderful Monday!

- Chelsey