Sunday, February 28, 2010

Finally ... some time to chat ...

After we returned home from John Waters last night, we had some time to have a glass of bubbles, and a chat on the bed.

That's when it finally hit me ... we were over 8-weeks pregnant with "Baby R" ... almost at the end of our first trimester! Our second scan arrived last week, and it showed a very healthy pregnancy.

We had decided to use a small hospital for this pregnancy, instead of a clinic. It's nice to know that all the medical procedures are done under one roof, and supervised by the same doctor. Dr Shivani and Phoenix Hospital have been wonderful.

Our first surrogate had not "taken" (so no happy news for Christmas), but transferring less embryos carries this risk; but we were lucky enough to be able to have a second attempt, and we received the news early Feb that our second surrogate had returned a beta test in the high 180's ... a very positive sign!

Our collective fingers are crossed that everything proceeds along nicely ... and Evelyn and Gaia will have a little brother or sister later in the year!




A big week of achievements ...

Wow! What a week it's been!

We had 60 Minutes contact us last Thursday wanting to film a quick "catch up" segment for their first show of the year ... and they wanted to do it that Saturday! That took all afternoon ...

And then the girls decided to come into their own -- Evelyn cut her second tooth, and Gaia discovered the difference between commando- and regular-crawling (She's off and racing now ... time to really baby-proof the house!) Evelyn has also taken her first crawling steps. It's quite interesting to watch; Evelyn sits back and watches Gaia work out how to do things, and then she just goes ahead and does them! Smart cookie ... ;-) Gaia can also pull herself up into a standing position ... big week for all of us!



Evelyn showing off her new teeth ...



Gaia on the move ...

The 60 Minutes segment is going to air tonight, and the nerves are starting to kick in a little. Should be good though ...

Trevor's mum Ellen is flying back to the UK this afternoon after a 3-month visit. She's loved watching the girls grow before her eyes, and has been a great help with feeding, ironing etc etc. She'll be missed!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Our "Passage to India" ...

After several discussions with the clinic in Mumbai, we felt it best that we needed to travel to India to view the facilities first hand. A friend of ous had agreed to be the egg donor, and her half-Pakistani parentage would have fit right in with our desire for a Hispanic/Mediterranen donor.

We were arranging a trip overseas anway, as we had planned to celebrate Trevor's 40th birthday with a group of friends in Bali, so we added a trip to Mumbai before we went to England and onto Bali.

Okay ... first lesson learnt ... make sure you have a visa!!!!! We were two-thirds of our way to India, when we realised that our travel agent had not organised a visa, and Qantas in Sydney had let us on the plane without one!

So ... after a 13-hour flight from Sydney to Mumbai, the immigration desk wanted us to get straight back on the plane back to Sydney! Luckily, the pilot said the plane was full and he was about to take off ... so the lovely Qantas staff in Mumbai argued that we should be allowed to continue onto our next stop ... London!

Fate steps in when she has to. It was fortuitous that we missed our step in India, and had to move onto London, as Trevor got to spend two more weeks with his grandmother, who unfortunately passed away not long afterwards.

Luckily we were able to rearrange our flights so that we could go back to Mumbai, before we travelled onto Bali to celebrate Trevor's 40th birthday.

We arranged an appointment at the clinic, and got to meet the senior staff and check out the facilities. We made our bookings, paid our deposits ... and arrange for me to return approx. six weeks later to meet our egg donor. As I would be leaving fresh samples when I returned to Mumbai, Trevor also had to leave a "small desposit" of his own!

It was while shopping at a local market not long after our first appointment, that we got the news that Trevor's grandmother had passed away ... talk about a day of mixed emotions! The fact that she passed while we were starting our own "circle of life" certainly did not go unnoticed!

As we did not have as much time in India as we originally intended, we had to leave a couple of days later to continue onto Bali.

Where to start ...

I guess the easiest way to start is to start at the very beginning! (No references to Maria please ... LOL)

Trevor and I met almost five years ago, and it was very early on in our relationship that the topic of children was raised. I have got four older sisters, and have been brought up among young children and babies for most of my life. Trevor always wanted children, and had been asked to donate sperm in the past, but the option of actually raising children had not crossed his mind. It wasn't until I said that I wanted to HAVE a family, that his little light went "Bing!", and he started looking into how we could have children of our own.

Adoption was not an option much to our disappointment, as we cannot get married in Australia (yet!), and "single men" are not allowed to adopt! We did not want to "part-time" parent with another couple, nor be foster parents ... this did not leave us with many options!

We made some enquiries with a couple of the American surrogacy agencies; the price was daunting, but we could have run to it ... just ...

We arranged to have a discussions with one American agency EARLY one Saturday morning (it was still Friday afternoon there!). After three hours of talks, the agency dropped into the conversation that "you will also need to pay for the egg donor's medications and travels, plus the medical expenses of the surrogate mother ... probably another US$70,000"!!! These additional costs put us out of the ballpark ...

After some more internet research, Trevor stumbled across a clinc in Mumbai that would work with same-sex male parents. The idea of using an Indian egg donor was okay with us, as we had been looking at Latino/Mediterranean egg donors anyway ... a little bit of skin colour would be good for the Australian sun!

We contacted the clinic ... and the process started from there ...