Extremes of Happiness and Sadness on a Special Day

Beau's 1st Birthday on the 17th July was of course a wonderful and very special day.  We updated our blog to wish our beautiful boy a very happy birthday and to update that our current pregnancy seemed to be going safe and well.  However, that evening we received a devastating email to say that the scan on the previous day (about a 13 week scan) failed to detect a heartbeat, and a second scan on the 17th confirmed this.

Like many people, we thought that the first 12 weeks were the 'risky' stage, and felt huge relief when we passed this.  But it just goes to show just how fragile life can be, but at the same time just amplifies how lucky and blessed we feel to have Beau!!!!!

Our thoughts have also very much been with our wonderful surrogate mother, S.  I am sure that the loss must be felt equally, and naturally for her there are unpleasant after effects to deal with.  We just hope that she also heals emotionally and physically as quickly as possible, to be able to continue to strive for her dreams too!

We have decided to put our dreams and plans of extending our family on hold for a while.  On a practical level, we need to recover financially before we can embark on what will be our 6th attempt at surrogacy.  On an emotional level, we feel that the anxiety and stress of surrogacy is something that we aren't ready for right now, we just want to focus all our love and energy on Beau.

We have just returned from a trip to Italy and the UK where Beau had a big 1st birthday party with family and friends.  Living so far from our family, it was touching and wonderful to see beau surrounded by so much love and affection.  In 10 days, we didn't use the stroller once, he just wants to walk everywhere all day, we have no idea where all this energy comes from!!!!!

Dr Shivani will be sending the results of test through soon to see if there was any detectable reason for the sudden loss of heartbeat.  But in the mean time, we try our very best to heal and move forward knowing just how lucky and blessed we are to have our fabulous, beautiful and beloved Beau in our lives.

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BEAU!!

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BEAU!!

Can you believe it?? A year old already?! When intended parents and parents tell you it will go in a blink of an eye, believe me it does! We cannot believe that this time last year we had just found out our little boy was born....sitting in the same room that so many other people have been made parents.......Having Beau truly has been a life changing experience, he fills our lives with happiness and joy that we did not think was possible, even after the projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea and sleepless nights!

This is Beau a year ago today weighing a whopping 2.85kg! :)


He is of course walking everywhere and has been since 10 months, babbling and pulling extremely funny faces which is great fun! He says, Hello, Bye-bye, Dadda and Dad..we don't know who's who yet :) he also asks "where?" quite a lot as think we're both not normally there or its just a word he picked up from Kindy! He hates Broccoli, even when we try and hide it he can find it! Loves spicy food including japanese curry....and all kinds of berries which of course get everywhere!

We love seeing what each new day brings and what Beau can do....We are extremely lucky that he will be joined by a sibling end of December 2012 or early Jan 2013! We are around 13 weeks and pleased to see its all going well...I'm thinking a pink one this time!


We have a huge family birthday for Beau on July 22nd in the UK, lots of extended family, aunties, uncles, grandparents and finally all his cousins in one room! We hired a hotel which has a lovely garden and hopefully if the weather keeps we can have most of it outside! So stay tuned of this party pics!


Apart from that we are really busy as Adam has a new job and constantly traveling but we are all very happy and content and hope it continues! 


A big congrats to all the new Parents out there....we still read all the blogs but its hard to write congrats sometimes, especially when China blocks the blogs! So congrats again!! To all those waiting, it WILL happen! Took us 4 attempts and look at us now, no stopping us! And we look forward to anyone else being in Delhi over the NY2012 as we of course will be in India for 3 months again but this time a little more relaxed and less apprehensive! We look forward to seeing you all there!!!

Happy Birthday our BEAUtiful Bo-bo.....Daddy and Pop love you very VERY much x

We have a heartbeat!

As the title suggests, we are thrilled that today's scan detected a heartbeat!  We are over the moon with this news, and hope that everything remains as boring and normal as possible until the next scan...  Adam is in Shanghai, and I was watching the Queen's Jubilee wave from Buckingham Palace on the news when the email came through.  I burst into tears when I opened the email and read the news, and the silly fool in me thought 'Keep waving Queenie, you've got another Brit on the way!'

We of course remain anxious of being in such 'early days', but excitement is winning out and we really hope our beautiful boy Beau has an equally beautiful brother or sister with us beginning of January 2013.

Will keep you posted whenever we get any more new or updates, and for those who had some spare positive energy, huge thanks, it clearly worked!

Here we go again.... 5 weeks and 2 days :)

We announce with an all too familiar mix of trepidation, anxiety, excitement, hope and fear that we today received some great news from Dr Shivani....

We are about 5 weeks and 2 days pregnant with a baby brother or sister for Beau!  Last week, we had our Beta blood test results of around 97.6 which we are of course excited and nervous about... we were clearly pregnant, but we didn't know how to feel about an 'okay' beta level.

Todays scan shows a clear single gestational sac and we hope and pray that our singleton baby is strong, comfortable and ready to develop a heartbeat in time for next week's scan!!!!!!

We didn't know whether to share this news or not, whether to wait a few weeks... to blog or not to blog, that is the questions!  But whether we are right or wrong to do so, we came to the conclusion that what will be will be, and as superstitious as we might be, our odd actions and obsessive compulsive bizarre thinking hopefully don't play much part in the outcome.  We just hope and pray that God and Mother Nature is on our side, and that our continued desire for another baby and a good helping of positive energy will help us get the results we so desperately wish to see next scan.

Beau brings so much warmth, love and light into our lives, it's impossibly exciting to think how amazing growing our family might be.

So if anyone has some spare positive energy lying around the house, please feel very welcome to throw it out way :)

Until next week.........

10 months and a week!

Well we haven't written a new post for a shamefully long time.  We have swapped the tranquility and canals of Venice for the bright lights and noise of Hong Kong and have been here 3 months setting up our new home and adjusting to our new life.  So far, so good!

Beau is adjusting extremely well.  He seems extremely happy and content here, so maybe he is a city boy at heart.  What we love about Hong Kong is that even living in the chaos of the city, you are only 10 minutes by taxi to the tranquility of the beach, or greenery and the great outdoors.  We are very fortunate that in a city where 99% of the population live in apartments, we are right next to lovely green Victoria Park which Beau absolutely loves, so it's pretty much become our back garden.

Beau is now 10 months and 1 week, and although he never paid that much attention to crawling has started to walk.  He just won't sit down any more, and spends all his day clinging upright to furniture, dragging chairs across the room by their legs, and being a very busy boy!!!!! He can manage a good 10-15 steps now, and is desperately trying to stand upright without having to hold onto things.

3 weeks ago, we enrolled him in a playgroup for 2 hours on a Friday, soon to be 2 hours on a Tuesday and 2 on a Friday.  He was so shy when he first went, but by week 3 he is getting into his stride and is getting much more interactive with the other children.  He's happy to wonder off a bit by himself for a few minutes giving only the occasional glance back just to make sure one of us is still in the room.

We cannot believe that our minds are now turning to planning his first birthday party, who stole this year?????? It's whizzed by in a flash!  Yet it seems so long ago that we had a tiny tiny baby with a floppy head on a not very string neck who could spend an hour trying to labour through a 2ounce bottle of formula....  To free up some space, we recently boxed away his first few months clothes, and inevitably spent a lot of time ooh-ing and ahh-ing over 'was he really THAT small?'

Because we both work, we have needed to employ a full time helper, Heidee, and she is wonderful with Beau.  But fortunately, we both now work for the same company in China, and spend a few days a week working from home, with a couple of days each a week working in Mainland China.  But fortunately our director is very supportive of us, and try their best to make sure that one of us can be at home when the other is away and vice versa, so this is working extremely well to date.... plus we have a work trip to Italy coming up and we've been allowed to 'tag on' a weeks vacation to this so we are really looking forward to some family time together somewhere more tranquil.

Although Beau has been brilliant on all the flights we've taken so far, we are a bit concerned how well he will now be on a 12 hour flight as he just doesn't want to sit down for any particular period of time.  Finger's crossed it will be ok!!!!!!

Huge HUGE congratulations to those who have celebrated the births of their beautiful children, Doug and Bill, Jason and Adrian to name a few, and a particular shout out to Avey and Hari who seem to be doing great in Delhi dealing with the 3 months in Delhi us Brits have to endure to get our babies home.

And finally, apologies for being terrible bloggers, we try our best to find the time to 'drop in' on everyone's blogs and send all our friends in the blogosphere a hug and a high five from Beau x

Long overdue update...

Well we haven't blogged for an outrageously long time, one week seems to so quickly turn into the next that the last few months have almost been a total blur! I'm going to drop in a random selection of photos as we blog....



Our biggest news is that we have decided to move back to Hong Kong, around the end of this month. Jobs and opportunity mean that as lovely as life might be in Venice, our plans of more children, buying a house, saving for college/rainy days/holidays etc are better facilitated by living and working in Asia and benefitting from the opportunity that this brings.



In the mean time, we have to deal with all the hassle of shipping, flights, finding an apartment, packing, visas, red tape, dogs etc etc, but we're both really excited by our decision so it shouldn't feel like too much of a chore!



We also have a lot more friends in Hong Kong so it will be great to visit people and have visitors, and also a few of our friends also have young children, so hopefully we can give Beau more interaction with other babies that in Venice is sadly lacking.




Just recently, we have seen lots of family, and for some it was their first time meeting Beau. We took him to the UK for Christmas, Amsterdam recently for a weekend away with some of Adam's family, and my parents have just returned home after spending 5 days with us in Venice. Everyone is totally in love with Beau, and as quiet and to some degree, private as our life in Italy is, Beau seems to absolutely love all the attention that meeting so many people brings!



It's scary to think just how quickly Beau grows and develops, he barely sleeps in the daytime, just the occasional 20 min power nap seems to get him through the day, but on the plus side he sleeps 7.30pm to 6.30am pretty much straight through, with just the occasional cry or whimper in the night. He is so curious with everything, and is absolutely loving his new-found independence provided by his baby walker. Nothing makes him happier than doing laps of the sofa or picking up some serious speed under the dining table! Quite the dare-devil!!!!!

Huge apologies to everyone for being away from Blogworld for quite some time, it's also now that we take our hats off to those with multiples, the impact of having one baby is huge, so the impacts of 2, 3, 4.... seriously, knighthoods and medals for services to parenthood are totally called for!

I wouldn't have believed when anyone told me that the 'bit where you have a tiny baby' is so short, gone in a flash, but it's totally true! But what we do have is an absolutely gorgeous 'little man' full of love, happiness, smiles, and a ray of sunshine in our lives far brighter than anyone can imagine.