the trip home and sundry India...

India is a weird place. Not in a bad way. I found it very warm, friendly and spiritual but we were also very much in a middle-class enclave which does come with a fair degree of security and comfort. There was a couple of funny moments. There's a couple of gift shops in the lobby of the Ramada Powaii (like most hotels worldwide) and because we have to vacate the room once a day for the cleaners to come through and do their thing we'd hang out in the lobby or the games room (they had a Wii... lesson learnt I'm crap at games!). So one of the things I found a bit weird. Babies in India are generally not taken out in public until they are 40 days old (from my understanding) and here we are with twins that are 2-3 weeks old. So we're talking to the folks in the gift shops - and they asked how old the girls were and we told them - the looks on their faces were a bit shocked! But I think being foreigners you're forgiven slight irregularities to custom...

So... the shenanigans of the trip home!
I would like to say this was easy. I would like to say something for once in India was easy. It wasn't. Far from it. So it's the 22nd of October - we get notification that the girls emergency passports and citizenship certificates are ready (you're now little Aussies - very little Aussies!). So we start the process of getting the Indian exit visas. Now of course the office to get your exit visas is located somewhere in Mumbai that if we didn't have a good driver (a few other couples had used him previously) who knew where he was going - we would have had no hope! It was in the back of Mumbai somewhere with no street signs. So anyway we find it - get our ticket/appointment etc... start the process, pay for the visas and asked to return a couple of hours later for the exit visas.

I'll backtrack for a second as this is where the real fun is. So we received your passports and citizenship certificates via courier to the hotel that morning. Something was missing though. Namely your fathers passport... as far as we could tell his passport had been sent somewhere else in Mumbai. Cue the appropriate panic from me as all of a sudden I could imagine me flying home solo with the two of you while your father was stranded in Mumbai trying to find his passport that was somewhere between Mumbai and Delhi... as per usual I needed have worried as it was delivered to our hotel later that day.

So we had a couple of hours to kill while we waited for your exit visas to be processed. So we went off the Taj Hotel in Mumbai for lunch. It was a very nice lunch - including the appropriate me ducking into the men's room to do nappy changes. It was a bit sad to see there were still parts of the Taj Hotel that had been boarded up from the terrorist bombings (that made me a bit nervous about actually being in Mumbai).

So we got your exit visas and were pretty much all set to go - barring any other disasters... delayed flights etc. But again not something we needed to have worried about. Our flight from Mumbai to Singapore left on time. No major hassles or glitches. The stewardesses on Kingfisher were all wonderful and very curious about the two of you! They were more than happy to help us - which is always a nice touch. As per usual you were both an absolute joy on the plane - but hey you were three weeks old... you didn't do much beyond sleep, eat and do what babies do!

So we change planes at Singapore. Went from Kingfisher to Singapore Airlines. We requested the bassinets but missed out on them and then we ended up with Aisle seats and you guys would have to flown home in our laps... I'm not sure if that would have worked for anyone. But the customer service manager was lovely. She had 5 babies on the flight and asked people to move so she could free up some seats so that your Dad and I could sit together and have a seat between us for the two of you. As we had your little carry cots - we used that on the seat between us for the two of you and it worked perfectly. Again you were both absolutely brilliant on the way to Melbourne.

A funny aside. We were going through security in Singapore to get on the plane. And the security guard saw that I was carrying one of you. "Oh a baby..." - she grabbed the cocoon and off she went. She sees your Dad come up with the other cocoon "and another baby..." and grabbed the cocoon and off she went again. I thought it was a rather cute moment. Then all the female security guards were clustered around the cocoons ohhing and ahhing (you had that effect on people).

So we get back to Melbourne International after the 9 hour flight from Singapore. Get through customs (took longer than we would have liked). Then we had the joy of trying to work out how to get you guys into your baby seats in the car. We'd never done it before. So um... yeah... we got there in the end.

And now one of my first parenting mistakes. We were living in Trentham so probably just over an hour from the airport. And I thought I had enough time to get you guys home before you were due your next feed. I was wrong... So we had to pull over at a service station and get some water to make up your formula. You were both howling by this point. All they had was cold water... ice cold water. It was a struggle for everyone. You guys were hungry and you were trying to feed but you ended up in pain because the water was that cold! It was a mistake and a lesson.

So we got home and you guys had your first night in your cots. Your father and I were exhausted... it had been a very long three weeks.

I want to get married in NYC

Ok so during this week I discovered that I can not get married in NYC. This particularly offends me for a number of reasons. I know I'm not a US Citizen, or even a US resident (that's a different issue and fight all together and I'm hoping that DOMA does get repealed so that I can live in the US with my family).

Now Australian same-sex couples have de-facto rights. So Larry and I have the same rights as a heterosexual couple that's aren't married but living together (property, inheritance etc). Now this is where it gets funky. If I was to apply for a marriage licence in the state of New York - I can't get married - the Australian Government would deny me a Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage. Because the Australian Government views marriage as being between a man and a woman. Now the problem here becomes, if we were to move to NY and we were denied the ability to get married - I'd not be able to access the state rights that NY has extended to same-sex couples. It's a mess.

So rather than do nothing as I would normally do. I've emailed my Federal Member in the House of Representatives. I expect nothing to come of this (apart from a polite form letter which will say nothing) - but for once in my life I feel like I have to do something...

My email:

Dear Mr Danby,

I reside in South Melbourne with my partner Larry and our twin daughters Olivia & Louise. Larry and the girls are both dual American-Australian citizens and we as a family are looking at relocating to the United States in the near future.

Now as you may know the State of New York has allowed same sex couples to marry. We were looking at getting married and residing in New York, mostly as we would be granted state benefits by the State of New York and it would be easier for Larry and myself to locate work in New York City.

I have since found out that we can not in fact get married in the State of New York as the Australian Federal Government will not grant us a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry. Now the Prime Minister has come out saying that she's proud of her government's track record on same-sex rights but the real problem as I see it for any Australian citizen who wishes to marry in New York - we are then denied the state rights that New York has for same-sex couples. So effectively we'd be back to square one in terms of our rights, as I would not have any rights in New York as I would not be officially recognised as Larry's partner or the girls' parent.

I'm requesting your help on my own behalf to have this matter investigated and if possible to have a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry issued.

Thank you for your time - I honestly appreciate it.

Regards,

Michael Verhoef

I had my parenting orders granted

The folks who follow me and Larry on facebook already know about this... but this is here now for the girls (and it's a much more detailed explanation).

I didn't even realise that yesterday was Black Friday. As they say lucky for some - unlucky for others. I guess for me it was a lucky day!

I had my parenting orders granted by the Family Court (a Federal Court in Australia). In March this year Larry and I engaged a law firm to seek parenting orders that would in effect recognise me in the eyes of the law as the girls other parent. In very basic terms - it's like I've adopted the girls as my own children, except that we can't adopt here and also I think it's highly unusual for the children of one partner to be adopted by the other partner, even in heterosexual relationships. I could be wrong on this but of course I've never looked into it this side of it.

So a parenting order basically means that I have the ability to sign forms, authorise medical treatment and do everything that I need to do for the girls as a parent. That most parents tend to take for granted. All because I don't appear on the birth certificate. I think we're the second couple that has children through surrogacy in India to go through this. Yay, we're groundbreaking again...

For me this was probably more important than Larry as it gives me piece of mind that my authority as a parent cant be questioned and I have legitimacy as the girls father. It was an interesting process. About two months of working with the lawyers to get the paperwork together. The court appearance yesterday which was fun. It was interesting to hear the judge talk about sperm... but anyway! It was a reasonably short hearing - about 15 minutes in total and the judge was pretty cool. I was slightly nervous that there was going to be something that prevented the orders being granted which I know was foolish as it's a pretty straight-forward matter but there was just the concern that something... something... could go wrong. So the first thing she said was that she was going to put everyone out of their misery and that the orders were granted. I officially become the girls Daddy and I honestly can't tell you how that makes me feel - I teared up, so I'm basically this emotional wreck sitting behind the lawyer trying to not make it sound like I'm crying (my lawyer even admitted that she got a bit emotional about it all).

Larry had insisted that we include a family photo with the affidavit to make it all a bit more personal. And the last thing the judge said to was to go home and enjoy those beautiful daughters of ours! It was an amazing moment.

Peace,

Michael xo

and the next 3 weeks...

So while Olivia was still in NICU - your Dad and I took turns in visiting Olivia, while one of us stayed at the Hotel to look after Louise.

We met some really nice people while we were dealing with the hospital. There were some heartbreaking stories though - mostly of people who couldn't get their visas sorted out in time so their babies had been in NICU or the hospital for weeks on end. That was a bit sad :(

To the readers of my blog if you are ever in Mumbai - the Ramada Powaii is a very good hotel, a lot of gay dads have ended up staying there, the staff is fantastic, the rooms are clean and modern.

We had some comedies getting too and from the Hospital to the Hotel though. I usually let Larry speak when when we are overseas in Asia as people generally understand an American accent better than they do an Australian accent.

• Anyway, there's a part of Mumbai called Lamada (or it sounds a lot like Ramada) so we'd end up in a completely different part of Mumbai to where the hotel was. And then of course you are trying to explain where you should be to someone who speaks Hindi and not English. It took us a while to smarten up to the idea of getting the hotel to write the name and address of the hotel in Hindi on the back of one of their cards.
• Then there's what I describe as our Bollywood moment. We were coming back to the hotel in an air-conditioned car and there's a traffic jam about a block away from the hotel. The driver asks us if he minds if he gets out as he's seen a Bollywood actor on the corner (the reason for the traffic jam) - he comes back thanks so much and he's beaming like a little boy on Christmas morning. He got to shake the actors hand.
• Then there's just the general trying to ferry two babies in an autorickshaw or a cab without baby seats. You just go with the flow.

So we basically spent the 3 weeks in the hotel watching 5 english language channels, basically a lot of really bad movies... and dealing with the fact that all of a sudden we were responsible for these two very, very tiny people. Incredibly, beautiful but incredibly tiny... I think we were both staggered by how small you were. We would go down for breakfast in turns (I miss the breakfasts... I love Asia for the fact that most breakfasts tend to be savoury!) and we all go down for lunch (we had to vacate the room to allow the cleaners to come in). We got bored - a lot... we would also try to sleep when we could. You guys were getting fed every 2 hours.

So we'd be doing nappy changes, boiling water, cleaning bottles in a bucket, hanging out with you two on the bed, attempted bathing you (that was not a lot a fun! you two hated baths! this has been a recurring issue but we're having fun with it now!!! to the point where Olivia keeps trying to flood the bathroom and I have to strip down to my undies or get absolutely soaked).

It took roughly a week to get your birth certificate and then another week to finalise all the paperwork with the Australian Consulate to get your emergency passports so we could come home.

Before I get onto the trip home - I thought we went through an amazing experience. We were in Mumbai for Diwali (the festival of lights) and it was amazing. The hotel invited all the guests onto the rooftop of the conference centre for their Diwali celebrations and it was a hoot! I loved it - apart from when one of the fireworks didn't light properly and pretty much exploded. We thought it was then best to leave - IN A HURRY! ;)

I was trying to upload a photo to go with the Diwali portion of this but blogger is hating me at the moment... so here's the photo -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/nettsu/4020639217/ - it's my favourite from the night :)

i had a nice moment today...

it's weird but funny.

The background:

One of the dogs is blind (poor thing!). Miniature poodles have a genetic predisposition to going blind apparently and Penny unfortunately has gone blind. So anyway we see an eye specialist for Penny about every 6 months.

One of the doctors rang me today. She knows that we have the girls and that we had the girls through a surrogate. Her sister-in-law has friends who are quite keen to become Dads (through surrogacy) and they wanted to speak someone who has gone through the process so Chloe (the eye specialist) rang me to ask if that was ok - as in would I be happy to speak to them. Mostly and did this give me a bit of a giggle (but I can relate) they want to know what it's like raising girls as they are a little bit clueless, which to be honest we were too :)

But this made me feel a little warm & fuzzy!

and here we were...

We moved from the house in Port Melbourne to the house in Trentham. That was planned. The intent was that we thought it would be nicer for you guys to grow up in the country (I'll revisit in this in a later post) and it seemed like we were going to have more support in the country than what we were going to have in Melbourne. It was a beautiful house and it is such a beautiful part of Australia. Your father still misses it.

We were both unemployed. This was the strange/funny/weird thing. I had planned to take a year or two off work to raise you guys before you went into childcare. The week after your father and I moved to the country I was made redundant. Your dad has some short-term contracting gigs but nothing permanent (this was both a good thing and a bad thing).

So on a Friday evening your father and I were just sitting around at home watching TV and we get a phonecall congratulating us on the birth of our twin daughters. You guys had arrived, early! 5 weeks early!

Twins generally arrive early - we knew that and we were originally planning on getting to India two weeks before we thought you would be born. And so started the frantic phonecalls to see if we could get on the next available Qantas flight to get to Mumbai. No... the next available flight was the 3rd of October which would have gotten us to Mumbai on the 5th. That to me wasn't acceptable. We felt bad enough that we had missed your birth. So a couple of more phonecalls and we were on a 12am flight to Singapore to then catch a Kingfisher flight to Mumbai. We arrived in India on the 3rd of October and went straight to the hospital.

Now the general process for surrogate births is that you are meant to check into the hospital and stay there until the babies are discharged. So your father was on the bed and I was on a fold-out couch... so, so very uncomfortable. You were both in NICU because you were such small, fragile things. You were tiny!

Ok let me backtrack for a second...

We spent the flight over finalising names (as we knew had two girls now). So that was easily done and as soon as we saw you both we knew your names fit. We were happy with that.

So back to the hospital...

Louise is the elder out of the two of you by a whole minute! She was 1.96kgs at birth. Olivia you were so very small - you were only 1.36kgs. We were constantly worried we were going to break you both!

You were both in the NICU and we weren't getting a clear answer as to how long you were likely to be there for - could have been up to 2 weeks and we weren't quite prepared to stay there for 2 weeks. So we went and checked into the Ramada in Powai... and then made the trip twice a day to the hospital until Louise was released from NICU - 3 days later. Olivia was in NICU for another couple of days....

it's funny i was selecting the two photos for this post and i was in tears remembering just how small the girls were... almost 16 months later and it seems so very hard to believe they were in fact this small!

so the next couple of months...

it all passed in a bit of a blur...

We were excited that we were pregnant (well technically our surrogate was!). We knew it was twins. Which was funny in a way. We didn't know what to expect we were excited that it was twins as we thought it would be good that you would both have someone to play with as you grew up (more on that later!).

We were getting the updates from the clinic which were all good. You were both growing very well, our surrogate was gaining weight as she should have been etc...

I was a little bit worried deep down as we had lost the original set of twins. But we got past week 15. And then past week 20. We got the week 20 scans, which included the 4D scans which showed us you both for the first time. It was an amazing thing to see. Your little faces in utero. Your father then went on a frenzy to find out your genders. Indian law doesn't allow for the disclosure of genders when a woman is pregnant (namely as female embryos were being aborted). We found out that one of you was a girl and the other was indeterminable. I had the feeling you were both girls. I don't know why but I did...

Also your father was funny. He decided that he had to know what gender you both were so he made video of the DVD that we were sent from the Clinic to see if some of his friends and some of the people he went to school with could shed any light on "what" you were... It was funny to watch at any rate ;)

http://www.youtube.com/user/lroadcap#p/u/4/SJEZUr7vZBs

So all was proceeding along nicely. Your surrogate was gaining weight and was healthy. We were starting to plan for your arrival. We were talking about moving from Melbourne to move to a small town called Trentham (which we ended up doing). And your father and I would start commuting in for work (about a 90 minute round trip - not a lot of fun! Your Dad was ok with it but I hated it).

Anyway... we had one rather amusing hiccough. We were at 29 weeks and we got a phonecall from the clinic telling us that our surrogate had gone into labour. I get a phonecall from your father while I am on the tram home - cue 10 minutes of absolutely frenzy while I try to get a hold of the person who was going to be housesitting for us to see if he could start that day or the next. Your father was on the phone to Qantas to see if we could get a much earlier flight. Thankfully, your father had a 1 year visa and I had already renewed my tourist visa. I then get a phonecall about 10 minutes later telling me that they got surrogates confused. There was another surrogate with the same name who had gone into labour and the clinic thought it was ours.

This taught us a bit of a lesson. Not to take anything for granted and that you guys could realistically come any day...

The next blog post will be about when you were born!