'Paralyzed Bride' Welcomes a Baby
Rachelle Friedman Chapman tells Yahoo Parenting how “amazing” it has been to welcome her daughter via surrogate four years after she was paralyzed. (Photo: Helen Joy Photography)
Rachelle Friedman Chapman prides herself on being tough. Dubbed the “Paralyzed bride” — after a friend’s playful push into a pool at her own bachelorette party broke her neck and rendered her immobile below the chest in 2010 — the 28-year-old tells Yahoo Parenting, “Maybe just a handful of people have seen me cry as an adult. I’m not an emotional person at all.”
But the first sight of her newborn daughter Kaylee Rae — born to her and husband Chris Chapman, 31, Sunday via surrogate — was enough to make the fighter break down, she admits. “That got me.” When a nurse handed her Kaylee “it was amazing,” says Chapman. “I was very emotional.”
(Photo: Helen Joy Photography)
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The 7-pound, 11-ounce bundle of joy is, after all, as miraculous as the Raleigh, North Carolinian’s transformation, from injury victim to motivational speaker, wheelchair rugby player, and now doting mom. When she broke her neck that fateful day Chapman blogged, “The very first question I asked was, ‘Will I be able to have children?’ The answer was yes. And though I lay there motionless I was comforted knowing my dream of having kids was still a possibility.”
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The trick was finding a surrogate “who realizes that I won’t need my legs to be a good mom,” she wrote, adding. “I won’t allow this injury to take something so important away from me.”
Enter a college acquaintance, Asheville, North Carolina stay-at-home mom Laurel Humes, who read about the couple’s surrogate search on Chapman’s blog and volunteered for the honor.
(Photo: Helen Joy Photography)
“I was just talking with my mom about how there is no way to say, Thank you,” Chapman tells Yahoo Parenting of Humes’ help, thanks in part to the organization Surrogacy Together. “I don’t know how to ever be able to do something as great for her as she’s done for us. My goal is to think of something really special.”
Before that though, she’ll have her hands busy taking care of her newborn, already sleeping in four-hour stretches. “Like any other parent I’m anxious because I don’t know what it’ll be like when we get home,” says the mom who is wheelchair bound but has full function of her arms and shoulders. “I know with my injury I can do more than others but it does still take me time to do things. I’ll need to practice dressing her and changing her…I’m a little nervous about that. But I’m also excited to show people all that I can do.”
(Photo: Helen Joy Photography)
The new parents will be showing every moment of their family learning curve, in fact, on an upcoming TLC reality series that they’ve signed on to do with four other couples about the challenges of their first year of parenthood. “I’m looking forward to showing both the infertility community and the spinal-cord injury/disability community what I’m capable of, to encourage others to see what they may be able to do too.”
(Photo: Helen Joy Photography)
At the moment, though, she’s just relishing in the success of her first parenting victory. “I’m apparently a good cuddler,” Chapman brags, though admitting that her difficulty navigating the maternity room in a wheelchair has foiled some attempts to help with the baby. “I’m very good at calming her down. The first night she slept from midnight until 4 a.m. and we had to wake her to feed her.”
As for her husband, Chapman says, “Kaylee definitely has him wrapped around her finger already. But we’re having a great time.” Just as she’d dreamed. “I can’t wait to see what she’s going to be like,” says the mom, “I’m just so excited.”
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