Our Pregnancy

Our pregnancy has been remarkably easy overall, although I'm not sure our surrogate Rajeshree would agree. For a few weeks in the second trimester, Rajeshree's amniotic fluid was a bit low, which was addressed through nutrition and extra rest. Although it has been hard to wait patiently for the monthly and now bi-weekly updates, we've been trying to follow the "no news is good news" philosophy, and trust that our doctors would tell us if something was wrong.

Given how tiny Rajeshree is (probably 4' 9" and 98 lbs), we were fairly shocked to see this photo of her at 6 months pregnant, and to wonder whether we might be having twins and no one told us! But no, it is just a single baby, but he or she is lying sideways. Because of that, he or she will be born by C-section. We'll be flying to India on July 25 and will hope to find out what day the C-section will be before we leave. Once we arrive, we'll also have to find a long-term apartment and aquire some things that we'll need when the baby arrives. If we have time, Adam wants to do some sight-seeing -- perhaps the Taj Mahal and the Himalyas.

Our Trip to India

Our first trip to India, in November 2008, was a crazy one, and the most stressful 6 days of my life. Despite all the planning and researching we had done beforehand, stepping foot in a foreign country and foreign culture to make a baby with the help and trust of strangers was overwhelming. We had a zillion questions whe had to ask again, and we had to review all of the decisions we had made up until that point to make sure that we had come to the right decisions with regard to choosing the egg donor, surrogate, and clinical staff, and that we were really ready for an end to our quiet, care-free life.

There were many, many tense "do you still want to do this? do you?" conversations over the 6 days we were there -- up until the moment of no return, and maybe even for a few hours afterwards. In the end, we really had to pick up our feet and jump off the cliff! A difficult challenge for anyone, not just two cautious, conservative Virgos.

And did I mention that there was a major international terrorist event while we were in Mumbai? We had been in the Taj hotel, scene of one of the hostage stand-offs, just the day before it happened, but left to go to a beach-side yoga resort early the next morning. With no TV or newspapers, and most of the other yogis there speaking to each other in German, we didn't hear about the terrorist event for more than 24 hours. Our families, however, had heard all about it, and didn't have the faintest idea where we were. They sent e-mails to every yoga center in the entire state that we were in (a state where you thow a ruppee and hit a yoga center) and were busily figuring out how they were going to identify our bodies. We were finally able to contact them early Friday morning to let them know we were OK.

So our whirlwind trip to India came to an end with a bang, not a whimper, and we had some medical distractions of our own when we returned to the US. Before we even had gotten completely over our jet-lag, we had a call from our doctors telling us that we were pregnant!