If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve reached the point in this story where #sciencebaby is now a living breathing creature, completely separate from me. In fact, she was sleeping in the corner of the room while her Tati and I attempted to snooze following a very busy day. I will admit that since I still had tasty drugs on board, I was feeling alright. I wouldn’t be running around any time soon, but I wasn’t too uncomfortable … yet.

I’m thankful that Cipri was able to stay that night. The hospital will allow a parent to stay with a baby and since I was technically her parent, I wasn’t planning to stay that way so they found a lounge chair to drag into my room for Cipri to try to sleep in.

I think Jim was waking up about every 2 hours at that point for short feeds. I woke up to her grizzling, hit the button for a nurse who would bring us formula and check on me, and then I could go back to sleep. Cipri changed nappies and did feeds and hopefully got a few hours in there somewhere. I was still a little loopy and it all seemed quite surreal.

The next day, when my IV drip was done, I was given some yummy tramadol and later in the day, the catheter was removed and I was able to get up and have a shower. That was the absolute best shower I have ever had. It hurt to move around, it was uncomfortable to stand up straight, but I was CLEAN! Heh. While I was in the shower, the team sprung into action and changed my bed again. Clean body and clean sheets – full of win!

The dads alternated nights and we had some visitors during the day. Lovely flowers from friends and colleagues brightened the room. I had #sciencebaby cuddles on tap. It was excellent – well as excellent as a hospital stay can be anyway. The food was dismal but the company was A++.

Friday morning arrived and hopefully we’d all be able to go home. I’d been in contact with the social workers to let them know that I was still happy to go ahead with the plan for Cipri and Nick to take Jim home with them when I was released from the hospital. I was sitting on the side of the bed talking to Cipri who was feeding the baby when my obstetrician came in to check on me.

She was amazed. I had continued my unicorn pregnancy ways with a speedy recovery. She checked my ankles (still no swelling), checked my wound (looked good for a 2.5 day old incision) and she was happy to discharge me to home. Nick arrived to collect us, we packed up everything, and headed home.

As we were leaving, I started to feel a little teary. There were the hormones. I had been warned about the day four blues and here we were! I managed to mostly hold on to myself until we pulled up at the house, and then it all fell out. Luckily Megan was there to hang on to while all the hormones spilled out of my eyes. Lots of hugs and the boys were on their way home and I was inside in the nest Megan had made for me on the sofa.

Every so often the tears welled up and would spill over – triggered by nothing. Breathing, watching tv, reading tweets, didn’t matter. Suddenly the hormones would overwhelm and there’d be more tears.

That night I snoozed on the sofa. Our house is a two story with the bathroom on the main level and the bedrooms upstairs. With my mobility still hampered from fresh surgery, I didn’t want to hurt myself that first night by contending with stairs if I needed to go down. The next morning, though, I braved them to go get clean clothes. That first shower at home was excellent and it felt good to get back to some normality.

Over the next several weeks, I had midwife visits to check on my progress both physically and emotionally. Everything was great and before long, I was back to being relatively mobile and out and about.

Slowly, my life was returning to the old normal. A week after The Birthening, I cracked open my first beer to have with dinner (Beer Baroness Madam Brown for those that might care). It was delicious. In many ways it was almost surreal to think that most of 2017 had been spent worrying about the growing life inside me and now it was all done. My physical involvement was at an end.

Two weeks after Iris was born, I went to my lawyer’s office to sign the consent to adopt. This consent, when filed with the courts, officially handed guardianship of Iris over to her dads. It outlined how Iris came into existence, the details of the surrogacy, and that it had always been our intention for Nick and Cipri to adopt and raise Iris. That was a slightly emotional day. It marked the next milestone in our journey. I absolutely felt good about it but it was another ending all the same.

I took 8 weeks off work to recover. I am glad I gave myself the time to heal – it came in handy. My recovery was smooth – no complications from the c-section and I was able to be gentle with myself since I didn’t also have a baby depending on me. In the last week of my leave, I planned a trip to the South Island with Megan before it was back to work.

The trip was amazing. We did hot pools in Hanmer, beers and friends in Christchurch (and some of Megan’s family too), then a couple of nights off the grid on the West Coast. Exactly what we both needed.

My final weekend was Labour Weekend (how appropriate) featuring my favourite beer festival (Pacific Beer Expo). It was the perfect ending to that part of the journey. I felt like I was back to me.