Easy Bake Oven

We sell baby stuff. 

Furniture, bedding, gifts, towels, bath soap, you name it.

People always ask me "doesn't it make you want to have another baby?"

Umm, no? Not exactly.

Sure, the THOUGHT of being pregnant again makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

But the THOUGHT of being responsible for raising another child does not.

I did decide to have another baby - a business. 

It has taken all the sleepless nights, exhaustion, commitment and love that a baby does.

I'm good with that.

All that being said, a life changing event has occurred in my family. 

This is a picture of my little sister, 24 years ago, in the NICU. 

She was born with an intestinal disease for which there was no cure and all babies born before her died. 

The surgeons decided to take a chance. 

She had extensive surgery, all exploratory and experimental, as a newborn baby.

They saved her life. 

She has worn deep abdominal scars her entire life. 

But they saved her life. 

Recently, she went in for a routine ovarian cyst removal that seemed to be preventing pregnancy. 

The surgery did not go routinely.

When she woke up the news was grim. 

Due to the extensive adhesions, her abdomen is a twisted, nearly solid, wall of intestine and other organs. 

Carrying a full term pregnancy is out of the question. 

She will risk her own life and certainly the baby's life. 

Sobbing was the only appropriate response.

Can you imagine? 

Newly married, full of anticipation of becoming a mother and building a family. 

Shattered in an instant.

Anger welling over the cards life has dealt.

But without the cards she would have no life. 

In my heart and in my mind, there was no question how this would turn out. 

So, very, very soon, the genetic child of my sister and her husband will begin it's life inside my body.

I will never forget what it felt like to become a mother for the first time.

I am unbelievably honored and humbled to have the opportunity to help my only sister to have a child of her own. 

This will be a crazy journey for us both - full of laughter and tears and anxiety and hope. 

And life.

She didn't have any say in the way her surgeries went as a baby. 

And she doesn't have any say in whether or not it is safe to have a baby now.

I think she deserves the opportunity to have something go right. Just this once.

Deep breath. 

Take another. 

Holy Moly. 

Just call me Easy Bake.

I'm not the mother.

Just the oven.