The beginning of the dance!

I would love to introduce to you our wonderful gestational carrier, Katie Statler! She is from North Carolina and when we began talking in a surrogacy facebook group we noticed we had mutual friends. It turns out that my previous music minister in Tennessee was also her previous music minister in North Carolina! Not only that but my mother was his secretary at my church for several years and his wife was in my Sunday School class and was an educational assistant at my school. She kept in touch with both of them after they left her church and actually flew them in for her wedding. The minister married them and his wife sang at their wedding. When we realized this connection we knew this match was ordained by God himself! My First Baptist Crossville friends will absolutely love this.

Katie has two brothers and three children. She married her high school sweetheart and works from home with her large LulaRoe business.  She has wanted to become a surrogate since her first child was born. After she knew her family was complete, she started pursuing surrogacy with an agency. Luckily I found her before she committed to the agency! She is dedicated to doing whatever it takes to get us to our rainbow baby(ies). I am so thankful to her and her entire family for putting their lives on hold for two people they have never even met.

Katie and her husband Brian

I can already feel my feet starting to move!!!!! Not only do we have our surrogate but we have our appointments made, flights scheduled and hotel accommodations in Nashville. Go ahead and mark June 5 and 6 on your calendars for the days to pray extra hard for all of us. June 5 Katie will be taking the 600 question psychological test. On June 6 she and her husband Brian will be sitting down together for the psychological counseling and then Brad and I will join them at the end of the session. After lunch Katie will have the medical screening. It will take some time to get all of the results back so I don't really have a timeline in mind for when the transfer would be. After we get the results then we will contact a lawyer in her state, which we have already found, to draw up the contract for us, which we have already written! We will purchase life insurance for her and that should be it!

Brian and Katie's three adorable children

Thank you to all of you who have been there for us throughout these 10 years. The Lord has taught us so much throughout this process and although we'd certainly never choose to go through any of this, it has brought us to our child(ren) hopefully. I have more hope than ever before that my dance is coming and I want you all to dance with me!

Matched!

I can't believe I'm even writing this but we have committed to a surrogate! I'm not going to share any personal information about her yet until she gets the chance to tell everyone she needs to first. I met her through a Facebook matching group back in February and we have been talking ever since. She has three children and lives in a surrogacy friendly state with insurance coverage for carriers. She had three perfect pregnancies and deliveries and is willing to transfer two embryos at a time to give this the best chance of working.

This was such a God thing and I know that's why it feels so right. She didn't think that we would be a match because she still had some weight to lose to become eligible. I told her that if she was the one God had for us then we would wait as long as needed for the right person. It turned out that my clinic doesn't require the lower BMI like an agency so she will be ready in a few months! We are looking at July to get started with the psychological and medical testing. We are opening another store in the next month so that will give us time to get it going so we can focus on this process. Hopefully there will be two little sweet embryos growing inside her by Christmas! What a present to receive from God and her family. In the meantime please pray for everything to go smoothly so that she will pass all her "tests" at the fertility clinic in July. I am so thankful God gave her to us. We found out shortly after meeting that we have mutual friends even though we live in different states. If that isn't God then what is? Praising His name today and always.