Mumbai Memories

I really didn't like Mumbai.

It's hot, dusty, smelly, dirty, filthy, dirty, filthy. I know there's a reason for some of this namely poverty and being India's largest city people will migrate to it in the hope of making money or breaking free of the cycle of poverty - I admire them for that. But there was stuff that just made me shake my head. There'd be people squatting on the street and there'd be a toilet maybe 20-30 metres away from them (now I have never been in a public toilet in India and I feel that was probably a wise move!).

It really was a culture shock for me. I was confronted on an almost daily basis on the contrasts between the haves and the have-nots and just how people survive. I was miserable and I think I made your father miserable too! You also have the insanity of the Mumbai commuter trains. It's fun to watch (in hindsight) how intimidated tourists are to try to get on one of these trains. They are packed to the absolute brim with people still hanging out the edges and there seems to be some form of coordination to the chaos that took your father and myself a couple of trains to work out - we basically just took the plunge and jumped on the train. We were trying to get tickets to Delhi as that was the next place your father and I wanted to go to. This is where we met the next part of what I found to be really frustrating about Mumbai - everyone is out to scam you or alternatively there are just so many layers of bureaucracy it's crazy. So we were told that we had to go to a certain station to get tickets for the Rajdhani Express. So we go to that station - stand in a line to get a token, to then stand in another line to get to a ticket window to be informed we have to a different station (foreign national ticket office) to repeat the process... rinse, lather, repeat.

So we buy the tickets to Delhi. Your father wanted to go first class as the Rajdhani Express is meant to be quite an experience in first class. We ended up in Second Class as tickets are booked out months and months ahead for first class and there's only so many allocated to foreign nationals.

I will be honest and admit at this point that I love Indian Food, I especially love Indian Food in India (although I know it's not referred to as Indian Food). But it's so good, the thalis, the masalas, the sambar, the poha, the wedu... etc ;) I would get fat living in India! There was also a rather interesting restaurant that was attached to our hotel called Out of the Blue that did fusion foods. So a blend of western & Indian cooking - that was so good! I can still remember it a penne served with a creamy green chilli masala. Blew me away!

We did some of the typical touristy stuff before we left for Delhi - checked out Mumbai, the Elphanata Caves. India has such a sense of history that most places in the world can't come near and there's something very spiritual and humbling about it all.

We were in Mumbai for 3 days before heading off to Delhi. There was something else I was going to say I have completely forgotten now!

Travelling... (Virginia Part 1)

It's a nightmare...
24 hours roughly of travelling.
The girls all things considered actually did really well. There was no major meltdowns. Louise didn't sleep much as she had to know everything that was going on. So she'd be asleep and someone would come talk to us about the girls and up would pop her cute little head - get a cheeky smile. It really is very, very cute.

I got the chance to watch 2 movies!
Which for a 15 hour flight is a scream - got to watch both Clash of the Titans & Alice in Wonderland, broken and interupted quite a bit but did eventually get to watch them. Enjoyed both of them.

Qantas I love you! The staff were awesome. The passengers were pretty good (better than our connecting flight). We were waiting for everyone else to get off the plane when we landed at LAX and we were getting congratulated on being able to deal with the girls as well as we did (which was a bit weird). Got patted on the back by a drunk bogan and got a resounding "well done mate". American Airlines - you suck. Larry and I get split up (nothing new for them) and we get put in seats that are nowhere near an aisle... yeah smart move with babies. I could have done with the smartass behind me though who quite loudly said great and rolled his eyes when he saw me with Olivia. I know travelling with babies is an imposition on a lot of people - but my girls are good ;)

We had a really nice moment at LAX when we were going through customs. My surname is different to everyone else in my family and the customs officer was a bit taken aback by that! That struck me as really quite sweet.

Oh and hire car shennigans! I wanted a Ford Fusion - you know a nice mid-size sedan. We got a bonus upgrade to a Saturn Vue. Which is a Holden Captiva in Australia which we looked at getting at one stage. Larry's impression of it - it's a boat! *giggles*

Oh and the internet is so fast here!

India Part 1 - Part 2 - the first baby video

I should have included this with the last blog post but technical issues in trying to find a .dat to .mov convertor that wasn't windoze based (apoligies too for the watermark but hey I'm only converting one video so I'm not paying for it).

Two of these blastocysts are Louise and Olivia. Pretty amazing isn't it? I just had to share this as it was and still is something so completely and absolutely amazing.

the other link to it is here -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/larryandmichael/4822821828/

India Part 1 (Part 1 of many)

There are so many things in life that just end up comedic. Or unintentionally comedic...

So anyway we were still trying to get pregnant. Now obviously there is only so much "stuff" that can be used before it runs out. We had our egg donor cycled and ready to go... and we get an email from the clinic. We had to be the next day to deliver more "stuff" or as we've rather delicately decided to describe it genetic material. Cue the fits of hysterics... the stress... the frenzied phonecalls/emails etc... basically explaining that we can not physically get to Mumbai by the next day.

So there's a frenzy of activity including me begging work for 10 days off so we can go to India. I seriously did work with an awesome bunch of people! I really did :) I still miss them at times. So anyway, we manage to get into Mumbai on the Friday (we were supposed to be there on the Wednesday) and had an appointment at the Clinic on the Saturday (that being Valentine's day - nawwwww!). Our babies we're created on Valentine's Day (nawwwwww!).

I'll digress for a second. There's something really quite surreal about being in Business Class on a Qantas flight and landing in the middle of one of the worlds largest slums. It probably was a pretty good introduction into the culture shock I was in for the next two weeks... I'm not a particularly well-travelled person, I will also admit that. At this point I've been to Hong Kong (enjoyed it!), Vietnam with your Dad (that was interesting), the States with your Dad (LOVED IT!), Singapore (I actually really had fun in Singapore) and the two trips to India.

We were very lucky in that we got to meet your surrogate and kind of in a roundabout way we got to meet your egg donor. Well we didn't get to meet her as such... but I was sitting in the waiting room trying to work out if the pretty woman on the other side of the room was your egg donor or not. Your father told me off for staring as I was most likely going to freak her out... which I probably did. I can have that effect on people. Just so you know - your egg donor is very pretty, she's very short (which is probably why you're both short-arses) and she just had such a beautiful face. Your surrogate was very quiet and very shy but she seemed to have a good soul - your father gave her some flowers to say thank you and she was left speechless (in a good way!).

So this was to be our sixth and final attempt. Although to be honest, I think your father and I would have kept trying until we got the desired outcome. As in we would have found the money for further attempts from somewhere. We wouldn't have given up but as we found out before we left India we didn't need to try again! We had found out that our surrogate was pregnant with twins.

The two of you were created on the 14th of February and you were transferred into the surrogate on the 16th of February. Your father and I were in India for about another week. We decided to have a bit of a tour around while we had the chance to do so. The next couple of blog posts will be about my experiences in India... should hopefully be entertaining!

I'm taking a brief hiatus :)

well not that most of you will notice considering how irregularly I blog... but we're off to Virginia for Larry's 20th High School Reunion and so the girls can meet their grandmother.

xo

michael

back to the surrogacy story

So where we…

That was a bit of diversion really!

We will be back to me trust me. It generally works like that…

So anyways… we’re in early 2008. You’re father has just gotten back from the trip to London and he’s pointed out this article in the International Herald Tribune. So we start investigating whether or not we can do it. Financially, it’s much more viable for us (as surrogacy in India is considerably cheaper than the US). So we we start to investigate the possibilities. Now at this point your Dad is working in Singapore for 3 months (I did say he travelled a lot).

So while we were talking about and investigating the possibilities for us to create a family your father had the ability to fly from Singapore to Mumbai. It’s a 9 hour flight – which doesn’t seem like much really.

So your father was investigating two options.

One was with Dr Patel in Anand. She normally doesn’t deal with single men but she made an exception for your father. This is where your father and I had a bit of a heated discussion. I was also moderately offended that he was approaching her as a single man – to me it felt like he was creating our family based on a lie and I wasn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things from his perspective.

The other was with Rotunda in Mumbai. This clinic also had it’s own challenges. When your father went to sign up with them – they sent him home with his file cover sheet, which was what meant to identify him… so they lost “us” for about 9 months.

So as Rotunda didn’t seem particularly keen to begin with. We decided to progress with Dr Patel – we were very lucky and our surrogate got pregnant after the first transfer. We found out a couple of weeks in that it was twins! We were excited – your father and I wanted twins – I’ll explain that in a later blog post. We then found out it was in fact triplets. The third foetus was hiding behind one of the other ones. We were informed that at 12 weeks our surrogate would be undergoing a foetal reduction. A rather barbaric practice in India where one of the foetal hearts is injected with a solution that forces the heart to stop. The surrogate’s body then eventually rejects the foetus – this also potentially increases the risk of a miscarriage of all foetuses. When our surrogate was pregnant at 15 weeks, I get a phonecall from your father who was in London at the time – our surrogate had miscarried and lost the remaining two foetuses.

I had never in my entire life felt so devastated or crushed or alone. And your father was half a world away. I really didn’t know what to do. I have never before in my entire life just crumpled. After I got off the phone to your father I did just that – I crumpled. I cried for about 2 hours and then on and off for the next 5 days… The following day I also made one of the biggest mistakes of my life – I rang my mother. I’ll explain that in my next blog post.

So when your father came home from London we discussed options. Where did we go to from this point. We finally got Rotunda to realise that we were supposed to be doing something with them and they started the process of for us.

Your father heard my concerns about going through Dr Patel as a single man. Mostly how we would explain that we were both there at the birth to eventually pick up baby or babies. That I really didn’t feel comfortable starting our family based on a lie. I still will occasionally have my gay activist hat on.

So we had another 3 attempts – 1 with Dr Patel and two with Rotunda… I’ll be honest. Your Dad and I were running out of money. We didn’t know if we could afford any more attempts. We decided to give it one more try (which actually became our most expensive attempt to date! But I’ll explain in the post following the one about my mother – it’s the trip to India!!!).