This is the article that started our surrogacy journey

This is a very short blog post (well the actual post from me!)

As I am just posting the article that Larry read in the International Herald Tribune that started our surrogacy journey in India... (and the story of that journey is coming I promise!). This is purely being posted in my blog so that one day I can show this to the girls and say this is where it all started. This is why we went through India rather than the US or Canada.

Foreign couples turn to India for surrogate mothers

By Amelia Gentleman

Published: Tuesday, March 4, 2008

MUMBAI — Yonatan Gher and his male partner plan eventually to tell their child that it was made in India, in the womb of a woman they never met, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked out from an Internet line-up of candidates.

The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, from Gher's home in Tel Aviv, nurtured by a team of doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world.

As they waited to see if the fertilization process had been successful, Gher, 29, and his partner sped around the streets of Mumbai in the back of an autorickshaw, drinking in scenes of a country they had never previously visited, staring at the unfamiliar faces of Indian women and children and "trying to imagine our child," he said.

"The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way," said Gher, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace. "But as it grows up and asks questions about the birds and the bees, then we will need to go into more detail."

Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India's combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost of the medical procedures, air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States.

"People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show," said Dr. Kausal Kadam in her office at the Rotunda clinic, an hour after creating an embryo for Gher and his partner, with sperm from one of the men (they would not disclose which one) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.

No contacts between egg donor, surrogate mother or future parents were permitted.

There are no firm statistics on how many surrogacies are being arranged here for foreigners, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase.

Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a U.S. medical tourism agency, said he expects to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.

"Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow," he said.

In Anand, a city in the eastern state of Gujarat where the practice was pioneered in India, more than 50 surrogate mothers are currently pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Fifteen of them are living together in a hostel attached to the clinic there, waiting to give birth.

Dr. Naina Patel, who runs the Anand clinic, said that even Americans who could afford the cost of surrogacy at home were coming to her, because Indian women "were free of vices, like alcohol, smoking and drugs." She said she receives around 10 e-mailed inquiries a day from childless couples abroad.

Under guidelines issued by the Indian Medical Council, surrogate mothers sign away all their rights to the child. In cases where the surrogate provides a womb for an embryo formed from the sperm and egg of the prospective parents, it is only the names of these genetic parents that appear on the birth certificate. If an egg donor is involved, her name does not appear on the document, either; only that of the father.

This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, a 40-year-old medical technician from Texas whose twin babies are being carried by a surrogate mother from the clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price.

"Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us - the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries - we can't. Unless we go to India," she said.

Surrogacy is an area fraught with ethical uncertainties. Critics argue that the ease with which relatively rich foreigners are able to rent the wombs of poor Indians creates the potential for exploitation. Although the government is actively promoting India as a medical tourism destination, something about the exchange of money for babies has made many here uncomfortable.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development said in February that it was considering introducing legislation governing surrogacy, but this is not imminent. An article highlighting some of the concerns about the practice, published in The Times of India, questioned how such a law would be enforced: "In a country crippled by abject poverty, how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?"

Gher and his partner (who asked not to be named) have worked through their doubts and are certain they are doing a good thing.

"People can believe me when I say that if I could bear the baby myself I would," he said. "But this is a mutually beneficial answer. The surrogate gets a fair amount of money for being part of the process."

They are paying around $30,000, which includes flights, hotels and medical care. The surrogate is paid about 300,000 rupees, or $7,500.

"Surrogates do it to give their children better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop," said Kadam. "This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don't think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other."

Gher agreed. "You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth," he said. "We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India."

In the clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some of the contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the signature of the clients.

Although some Indian clinics allow surrogates and clients to meet, Gher said he prefers anonymity. When the woman gives birth later this year, he and his partner will be in the hospital, but not in the labor ward, and will be handed the baby by a nurse.

The surrogate mother does not know that she is working for foreigners and has not been told that the future parents are both men. Although the clinic advertises its gay-friendly credentials on its Web site, offering wombs to people who do not have them, homosexuality remains illegal in India.

Israel legalized adoption by same-sex couples in February, but surrogacy for same-sex couples is still not permitted. A fertility doctor recommended Rotunda, which made news last November when doctors there delivered twins for another gay Israeli couple.

Rotunda did not allow interviews with its surrogate mothers, but a 32-year-old woman at a fertility clinic in Delhi explained why she is embarking on her second surrogacy in two years.

Separated from her husband, she found that her monthly wages of 2,800 rupees as a midwife did not cover the expenses involved in raising her 9-year-old son. With the 550,000 rupees she earned from the first surrogacy, she bought a house. With the 350,000 rupees she expects from the second, for which she is negotiating with an American couple, she will be able to pay for her son's education. "I will save the money for my child's future," she said.

The process requires a degree of subterfuge in this socially conservative country. She has told her mother, who lives with her, but not her son or her neighbors.

So far, the experience of having a baby has been strangely virtual for the Israeli couple. Profiles of egg donors were sent by e-mail ("We picked the one with the highest level of education," Gher said), followed by additional information (a factory worker was rejected in favor of a housewife, who is presumed to have a less stressful lifestyle). Gher is posting updates about the process on Facebook. Soon ultrasounds of their developing child will start appearing in his inbox. Highly pixilated, blown-up passport photos of the egg donor and surrogate mother are pinned up on the wall of their apartment in Israel.

"We've been trying to half close our eyes and look at it in a more holistic way to imagine what she would actually look like," he said of the donor's blurred image. "These are women we don't know, will never know, who will become in a way part of our lives."

Out & about experience #2 – I love David Jones

Out & about experience #2 – I love David Jones

For my American readers David Jones is an upscale department store. Probably kind of like Nordstrom or Bloomingdales.

So I’m having sleeping baby issues. Or more likely babies that don’t sleep. The girls have decided that the day naps – particularly the morning naps are optional. I can’t say I agree or approve of this notion as it pretty much makes the rest of the day hell. Hell does have a fury like a woman scorned, it’s grizzly twins… so anyway I was trying to find ways to combat said grizzlyness and I thought taking the girls into the city would be a good way to go (we seriously live about 20-30 minute walk from the CBD). So while I was walking in I thought it would be fun to surprise Larry at work – he always gets a kick out of seeing the girls during the day so we did a detour via his office.

This is always fun. The women at Larry’s office are fantastic. They always offer to watch the girls for a little bit while I go run a few errands, which is a very nice offer – when you’re not a massively over-protective parent like moi! So I said no – but I also expected that a double-wide pram would help deal with the lunchtime department store crowds (I’m not completely insane you know!).

So first stop is the Keihl’s counter to get some shaving cream for Larry. And then to find a cash register to pay for it. Is it just me or have Myer & David Jones on Bourke Street been getting renovated like forever? It seems they have for the 7 years I’ve been living in Melbourne. So I hand over the shaving cream and the pregnant cashier is lost in space staring at the girls for the next minute or so. It was very cute to watch. Then I turn around and there’s a semi-circle of about 5 clucky women all goo-ing and ga-ing over the girls. Which I also get a kick out of! It’s funny department stores seem to be filled with clucky women…

So next stop is homewares to get a wedding present for some friends. More women goo-ing and ga-ing over the girls. I also did something vaguely ambiguous. There were references made to my “wife” – now I didn’t say anything specific about whether I was married to a woman. I just indicated that I was married (I do wear a wedding band after all!). This always leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I know I should be out & proud and not hiding anything from the girls so the girls don’t grow up feeling like that we’re hiding anything or that our family is anything to be ashamed of. But at the same point in time I don’t want to have engage random strangers and explain the whole situation to them… it’s hard really.

Out and about experience #1

These will be a short sharp blog posts about our experiences out and about. Probably more my over-reactions to stuff…

So take yesterday. I decided to take you guys to Westfield Southland. Well more so I decided to go to Southland to do something. And we needed to get some more suitable winter clothes for you guys. So I thought rather than deal with the dramas of trying to find a parking spot in the city – I’d go to Southland. I should have gone to the city – getting a parking spot would have been so much easier.

Allow me a brief diversion please readers. You really don’t appreciate how ridiculous parking spots are when your have to get babies out of either side of the car. I was knocking back perfectly good parking spots because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get one of the girls out.

So eventually we find a parking spot. The girls are in the stroller and we enter mall hell. Talk about confusing and how easy it is to get lost. But that’s not the point of this entry – it’s the comedy.

Now I understand the people who come and talk to us – they don’t know that after about an hour they are most likely the 10^th or so person who’s told me the exact same thing and asked me the exact same question. By the 10^th time I’m pretty much over it. Especially when it continues to happen for the next two hours. I may even get a little short and snappy about it all.

And to finish it all off. I lost the car. I couldn’t find where we had entered the bloody shopping centre. So I spent the next 20 minutes wandering up and down trying to find something that looked familiar so we could finally exit and get home.

And then of course someone had parked next to the car so getting one of you was next to impossible. Except Daddy backed the car out to get Olivia in to then only be told off by some woman in a cheap car which was of Korean origin that I was blocking her way. You know what – I didn’t really care. She was driving a Korean car, I felt sorry for her.

I'd like my mid-life crisis Porsche now please...

I think I need a cheery, zany post to lift the mood of the past couple of posts. It’s gotten a touch serious really hasn’t it?

Let’s divert back to the now…

I’m struggling to find a spot where to pick up the thread of my story again. I guess even after all the revelations it’s a bit hard really.

So we’re back living in South Melbourne (the real estate shenanigans is another blog post or three) and I think your Dad is having a few problems adjusting to having a normal life again where he can’t vanish into a garden for 6 to 8 hours a day. So he’s gone slightly (not in a bad way) mental looking for a car. The Mini Cooper he did have was sold – we don’t need two cars, we really don’t, we can justify having two cars.

With the baby seats in my car, it’s basically become a two seater as the middle seat between the baby seats is basically inaccessible. Trust me – I’ve had to clamber back there a few times to feed you both! It’s not easy squeezing back there and then trying to squeeze back out.

We’ve traipsed around parts of Melbourne looking at cars, from Japanese import 300ZXs in overly flamboyant paint schemes (the bright oranage one was a looker) to older BMWs and Volvos.

Let me just ask the question here – which interior car designer feels that it’s a good idea to put a black wheel centre in a beige interior? Swedes are supposed to be known for stylish design. I’m guessing in the late 1990s-early 2000s someone at Volvo missed that memo. Although Peter Horbury was designing at Volvo then and he is British so that may explain it.

Anyway, so there’s a car dealer in the back of Port Melbourne that your father wanted to have a look at some cars at… one of which was the aforementioned Volvo & a BMW. We had also arranged to meet your Uncle Mike for lunch. As per usual your father and I were running late (you will just learn that running late is a fact of life for this family – I’ll resent it and your father will just tell me to relax and go with the flow), so he asked us to go meet your Uncle Mike at the Café we were supposed to meet him at and he’d meet us there.

Your father showed up in a Porsche Boxster. I had never driven a Porsche before. I actually managed to get through lunch before I asked your father for the keys. I took Louise out with me to have a look at it – she was on my lap at the time. I then waited until after your father had finished eating before I took the Porsche for a drive. I was very much smitten with it (this is pretty much an understatement), I did ask your father if we could buy it and we did seriously consider it for about 5 minutes before reality sank in.

I told your Uncle Mike on Sunday when we were trying to take photos of his car for sale that I would like my mid-life crisis Porsche now please…

So no Porsche :(

Although it was an entertaining afternoon looking at cars and you both did seem to enjoy it.

a very honest blog post...

I debated about actually posting this so very publicly!

My early adult years were filled with me losing weight (I was obese when I finished High School) and questioning my own sexual identity. It’s funny I’ve always wondered if straight people have to question their own sexual identity. I suspect not. But they also tend not to grow up in an environment where they are the minority or viewed as ‘wrong’ on some level.

So my body issues. It seems like the longest battle of my life. I’m still fighting them to this day. I do honestly hope that we can instil in you both an understanding and an appreciation that you are just fine the way you are. It has taken me a very long time to come to terms with that.

I was a pretty sporty kid. Mostly because you’re Oma made me. I had swimming during summer (6 days a week), Judo two nights a week. In winter, I had judo 2 nights, tennis 1 night a week (I still hate tennis!), and rugby league twice a week. Once your Oma left, I basically dropped all sport and became a fat kid. And I mean fat… it was almost embarrassing but I really didn’t care. I was surprised when I went over 100kgs and it was like oh so this is what being 100kgs is being like. It didn’t really phase me.

I think to be honest my battle was more with self-esteem than body image. I think my mother leaving at such an early age didn’t really do much for my self-esteem and it did leave some lasting scars that I am still trying to work through.

Eventually in my later teen years and once I moved out of home I started losing weight – I went from 128kgs to about 78kgs. So from one extreme to the other - too fat too far too skinny. In my late 20s I discovered a couple of things – a gym. I went nuts – I was working out about 7 days a week and I got the results to show for it. I also discovered drugs. That’s not such a high point in my life and introduced an entirely now battle.

I hope I am never hypocritical enough to tell you to not do drugs – I can’t tell you not to. I have a history with them. I had a huge problem with them (it was one of the reasons why I decided to move to Melbourne). So chances are I will never tell you not to do drugs – I will just tell you to be careful! Know what you are doing, know the effects, the drawbacks and please be honest enough to talk to me about it. I do hope I will never be some scary “parent” that you feel you can never talk to.

Back to where I was… I was training for a corporate triathlon, it was probably one of the most challenging, rewarding things I have ever done. The actual triathlon was a bit of a letdown to be honest. We did kind of badly. But it’s probably the fittest and healthiest I had ever been in my life. I was vegetarian, working out 7 days a week (weights), running 5 days a week, swimming 5 days a week (badly!), I wasn’t drinking. I was so puritanical that in hindsight I almost disgust myself ;)

Anyway I did the triathlon, felt the massive sense of achievement that came from it and decided to start celebrating and having a bit of a life again. I started drinking again. And I was introduced to speed. At the time speed was so cheap it was crazy. And thereby started my drug frenzy. I would go on 3 day benders strung out on speed, MDMA and base. I wasn’t a huge fan of pills (ecstasy) – not sure why but I wasn’t. It became an addiction to the point where I was starting to do drugs during the week – just for kicks. And I wasn’t snorting anymore – I was injecting – which to me was always the one line I would never, ever cross. I crossed it and I found myself wanting more and more and more and more… Fortunately, I was completely and absolutely flat broke so my habit had to stop. It became such a low point in my life – I did some seriously fucked stuff, I cost myself some very good friends, I still regret that to this day.

I still remember when my contract ended with a company, I decided to go on a 3 day bender with an 8-ball. A friend was having her engagement party on the Sunday afternoon. I was a complete and absolute incoherent wreck to the point where she basically asked me to not show up at the wedding on anything!

That should have been a wake-up call. Unfortunately it wasn’t! I showed up for the wedding clean – sober I wasn’t – the drunkest I have ever been in my life! 3 day hangover… my friend married a scot so we all wore kilts, I had sequined hotpants on underneath my kilt – which I had worn to Mardi Gras – as I was asked to wear them. There are photos I’ve seen from the wedding of me flashing the whole wedding. I’m a classy kind of guy.

I forgot the keys to my apartment so fell asleep at the front gate. By the time my flatmate got home, I was lying in the gutter with the back of the kilt ridden up and my bum facing the busiest street in Brisbane. I had already taken the jacket, vest & shirt off due the heat.

I realised my addiction had spiralled out of control when I was having sex for drugs – I had developed a reputation that if you gave me drugs, I would have sex with you. Charming in hindsight, but that was the person I had become. So I decided (aided by looming unemployment induced poverty) to give the drugs up. It’s not an easy thing to do. The hardest thing I’ve had to give up has actually been cigarettes. And I will tell you not to smoke. That one I am prepared to be hypocritical about! So I gave up the drugs and the partying – I would say for a while but when I decided to stop the drugs, I also stopped partying in Brisbane. Fin – no more.

I was clean for about 18 months. I moved to Melbourne and started dabbling in a few things again. This time however, it didn’t get completely out of control. It wasn’t every weekend like it had been previously. It was once in a while. If I had everything to do over again - would I do the drugs? I really don't know. I can try be all sage and wise and say that this experience has made me part of who and what I am (which it has) but it has also made me realise that realistically I'm just a hedonist at my core.

The drinking though! My god. There’s another life long battle. Both my parents are alcoholics so I was pretty much genetically destined to have a drinking problem. I’ve been dealing with that for large chunks of my life too. That one probably is a different story as well!

So even after all the partying I did maintain a gym habit. I finally dropped all that a couple of years after I met your Dad. I decided that spending time with him was more important that spending time at the gym. I always swear that I will go back one day… but that day hasn’t come yet! And right now I am getting a fair bit of exercise from pushing you two around :) It’s funny since we moved back to the city a couple of months ago I’ve lost roughly 10kgs. It’s a combination of exercising more and not eating. I need to fix the not eating thing as I am falling back into some very dangerous old habits.

Parenting #101 – a diversion into the “now”

Being a parent surprises me - constantly. Mostly for the depth of love that I feel for Louise and Olivia. I wanted to share this because I think for my development as a parent – it felt pretty significant.

The girls had their 6 months vaccinations today (2 months late – but that was my fault but as they’re prem it’s not that bad!). Now this is normally a bit of an ordeal anyway as the girls really don’t know the concept of “pain”. And here I am willingly leading them into an arena where they are going to be hurt. Which as a parent sucks! You are meant to protect them and I can understand the rationale that you need to cause them some pain to protect them.

So anyway. The girls are getting their shots done. I cried! With both of them – there was just so much I wanted to do to help, to take their pain away and I just couldn’t do it. All I could do was hold them and tell them it was going to be ok.

My poor little angels :(

And I am basically just a big softy! I realised that today too.

more about me!

I hated high school. It wasn’t so much the being picked on or the fights (I got into a few fights – I’ve had anger issues a few times in my life). I was bored. A lot. High school really didn’t interest me that much. In part, maybe because my subject choices were wrong. Anyway, I bombed out in my senior year. I did really badly even to the point where I surprised myself (you would think I saw it coming, you would think so…). But I was disappointed. I couldn’t even get into the University of New England in Armadale (which used to have a reputation of being the easiest university to get into). So I decided to repeat Grade 12… at the same high school. Not one of my better ideas – really it wasn’t. So I had to deal with all the issues I dealt with all through high school. I got really, really, really bored this time round and I lasted a term before I dropped out and started looking for work.

I’m not really sure how history is going to record the recession “we had to have” – but being an uneducated, young school leaver trying to find work during a recession was hard - ridiculously hard. I got a piece of advice from an interview I went for; I can’t even remember what the job was. But the interviewer told me to go get an education. Get myself into university anyway I could. So I went and sat a matriculation exam to see if I could get myself into University, I was really nervous after I sat the exam that I changed my preferences from University to TAFE (to only find out later that I could have gotten into a University course with my results).

As I had about a 6 month wait till my TAFE course started I decided to pick up a couple of subjects to just give myself something to do. This basically started my career as a student… 4 years of full-time studying, 2 years at TAFE studying marketing and then 2 years at the Queensland University of Technology to get my Bachelor’s Degree. I decided at the end of my degree (with some urging from your Oma) to relocate to Western Australia (there’s another blog post in that!). We’ll chalk up another disaster. So I moved back to Brisbane after a couple of months and did some temping work while trying to start my career. I decided to go back to University to get my Honours in Marketing – for 2 reasons, 1 to prove to myself that I could do it (this became the more important reason) and 2 to give myself a point of differentiation in the workforce. There weren’t many marketing graduates running around with a Honours Degree. I can look back at it now and I think I understand why! I really enjoyed my Honours Degree – I enjoyed the discipline and the research (so much that one of my favourite jobs was being a corporate researcher – although my job title was Marketing Information Assistant, a bit of a generic title really).

In my entire working life I have never successfully gotten a job through an external interview. It’s always been a question of luck and the right temp assignment at the right place. Every job I have really enjoyed, I never interviewed for! The ones I hated were the ones I had an internal interview for and got. Weird hey? I’m sure this may change when I look at going back to work in a few years.

Eventually I ended up working for the directory people. I was there for nearly 8 years. Again started in what was a temp role - which was meant to be for 6 weeks. I had some reward roles and some really shocking roles. The first was probably the funniest – I was a Personal Assistant to a State Sales Manager. It was a love/hate relationship, she fired me three times and I quit three times (never mind at that point I really needed the money from that job). I needed a permanent job as temping was getting a little too uncertain and they had kind of made my job permanent – I just wouldn’t be answering to the State Manager anymore. This move to permanency also gave my move to Melbourne. I took the permanent job even though it meant less money and about 9 months in – my then boss offered me a transfer to Melbourne. I thought about it, I asked around for people’s opinions and I decided to do it! I loved Melbourne, absolutely loved it! I’d been down for training with work a couple of times and just found it amazing. It funnily enough felt like home – it just took me a couple of more years to truly find my home. I think part of the reason why I liked Melbourne so much is that as an outsider, you don’t feel like an outsider… Melbourne’s full of them!