Surrogate helps Knightdale paraplegic become a mom

A documentary crew is following her this year.

She receives visitors on a regular basis —10 stayed with her last night.

The week-old baby may be oblivious to all the attention, but her parents are not.

While they’re happy of their 7 pound, 11 ounce baby girl, their maternity experience has been different than most.

“It was difficult to be a little disconnected and not be there to feel her kick and go through the whole thing,” said her mother, Rachelle Chapman. “To go through the pain, the nausea. Those are all things that sound bad but I wanted to feel them.”

She and her husband, Chris, were a month away from their 2010 wedding when her best friend shoved her into a pool during a bachelorette party.

Rachelle Chapman hit her head on the bottom of the pool, crushing the sixth vertebra in her neck. The freak accident left her paralyzed from the chest down.

While she is able to have children, the medication she's on would make it risky.

“I posted on my Facebook page, and out of the blue a friend from college who we probably hadn’t seen her in like 10 years saw that we wanted a surrogate,” she said, referring to Laurel Humes, who lives in Asheville.

“That is certainly a gift that has changed our lives forever and there’s no way to say thank you,” Chris Chapman said.

There are some things about motherhood that Rachelle Chapman is disappointed about not experiencing.

"I’m not happy about not being able to spring out of bed in the middle of the night for her, it takes me a while to get up,” she said. “So of course, Chris will have to do a lot of that.”

But the Knightdale couple is happy to have their baby healthy and home with them.

"I just want her to be happy and healthy and follow her dreams and do what she wants to do," Rachelle Chapman said. "Not let anyone get in her way."