Nerves and nervy

I've started to get quite nervous. Not about the baby yet (I'm sure that will kick in soon too) but more about getting ourselves ready to leave the house, having everything we'll need in India prepared, and getting there before the baby does (but not too much before -- every day I'm in India before the baby arrives is one day less that I can spend at home with the baby.....)

This week I learned from two different sources that the previous straightforward process to obtain the baby's birth certificate, which was taking about a week, has now become more complicated and is now taking 3-4 weeks. At issue seems to be a crackdown by Mumbai officials on the officials in the birth certificate office who were "helping" get the intended mother's name is on the birth certificate even if she wasn't the genetic mother. This could end up costing us a few thousand dollars more in legal fees if an official adoption will be required in the US. I just hope it doesn't also extend our stay in Mumbai.

Thinking about being nervous, though, reminded me how bold, adventurous, and downright nervy it was of us to pursue this path. Back when I was a little girl whose idea of adventure was to settle down in Daddy's big leather chair to read the Phantom Tollbooth, the idea that someone might use any of those words to describe me or my life would have been just ridiculous. I'm proud that I've grown into those descriptions (although, to borrow from the Phantom Tollbooth, I'm probably either the most timid adventurer you've ever met or the most adventurous timid person).

This weekend will be a busy one for me of getting things packed, making some final purchases for baby, and doing some creative scrapbooking to try to get the baby's pre-birth scrapbook done before we leave.

Gratitude

I realized today that I've posted extensively about the "stuff" we've received for the baby, but not the important stuff. There have been so many great, intangible gifts we've received though this process:

• The gift of complete acceptance from our friends and family of this non-traditional way we've chosen to have a family. At many points, they could have asked challenging questions that might have burst our bubble, but they chose to trust that we've made good decisions, to boost our morale when we had doubts, and to be happy for our success.
• The gift of having communities of friends and families where a biracial baby will be happily accepted, and where his or her ethnicies will be celebrated.
• The gift of so much great parenting advice from friends, and the knowledge that we aren't going to be only "oldest parents on the block"
• The gift of so much enthusiasm for our little one's arrival, and support in getting us ready, physically and emotionally.

So to all of you who have helped us get through this uneventful but still stressful 8 months, thank you! And to all of you who will read future whiny or ungrateful-sounding posts during our travels in India, please remember that in a sense, our family is being birthed in the this three or four week monsoon odessey, and it is bound to be a bit painful and messy, but ultimately the result will be worth it.

(End of) Independence Day

It is really hard to wrap my mind around the fact that, after 25 years of being completely independent, in another three weeks there will be someone who totally depends on me for the next 18 or so. Getting adjusted to the fact is quite a bit harder without having any visable evidence of a baby. I can imagine it is going to be quite a shock to us when a nurse or doctor puts the baby in our arms for the first time -- but perhaps in that way we aren't much different from any new parent.

Despite the lack of evidence, we spend the weekend doing mostly nesting-type things -- rearranging our shed full of outdoor gear, doing a big shopping trip to BabiesRUs, and hanging out with three couples who have 6-12 month olds. The baby's suitcase for India is nearly all packed, and weighs more than the baby will weigh for another 7 or 8 years, and doesn't even include the bouncer seat that we've just deemed necessary for the trip.

Our suitcases aren't packed, but I have started assembling a gigantic medicine kit, and Adam will be getting our electronics organized this week. This task includes learning how to operate our fab new camcorder that my family purchased for us -- hopefully we'll learn to use it before the airplane trip, because the 100 page, 6 point manual isn't as good airplane reading as the "What to Expect in the First Year" book that I'll be lugging along. Also on my reading list, though perhaps when we get back, is the Baby Signs book that faithful garage-saler Aunt Jackie purchased for us. Watching adorable Ruth sign the word for "more" over and over today at brunch showed me how wonderful it is for a baby to be able to communicate before they can talk.

FAQ

After the "do you know whether its a boy or a girl?" question, the most commonly asked question we get asked is "how long will you have to be in India?" That, my friends, is the 6,000,000 rupee question.

Our official due date is August 19. However, given that most surrogacy babies whose progress I've been following seem to come at around 37 weeks, we made our reservation to fly to India on July 25, which will be 36.5 weeks.

Once the baby makes his or her arrival, here's what we need to do:

• Obtain a birth certificate from the local authorities. Getting this done quickly apparently requires some financial lubrication.


• Call the US embassy and schedule someone to come witness a DNA test for the baby and Adam to prove that the baby is related to Adam and thereby a US citizen. This is very serious -- the DNA test we ordered came in a fedex envelope marked "evidence" and can't be opened by anyone except the government official.


• The DNA test (a cotton swab of cells from the inside of cheeks) has to be sent to a lab in the US for analysis.


• Once the results are back (probably 2 weeks?), we have to make an appointment to bring the baby to the embassy for an appointment, bringing lots of different forms and documents proving that Adam is a US citizen.


• It takes the US embassy a few days to a week to create a passport for the baby. Once we have that, we go to an Indian government office to obtain an exit visa for the baby to prove that we can legally leave the country with baby. Another rupee-making opportunity for someone.


• Somewhere along the way, when we figure out when all these formalities will be done, we call our airline to buy a seat for the baby (international flights have a bassinett available for bulkhead seats, cost is 10% above the individual ticket price) and $250 each to re-book our return ticket (we'll try to get a doctor's note to prove that we needed to get home with the baby to get this fee refunded.)

So total time from baby's birth to return to the US is anyone's guess. If the baby needs additional medical care, it may delay things a bit. We're figuring 4 weeks and will be delighted if it is less. If we can make it through 4 weeks in a hotel suite, endles government bureaucracy, and a 26 hour flight with a newborn baby, everything else should be a piece of cake, right?

Nesting; tired and grateful

Spent the whole evening re-arranging the house so I could bring some order to the baby's room. And still, there's a huge pile of clothing to be sorted and put away. Looking around at all the stuff we've acquired in the last week, I was amazed: we went from being totally unprepared to an outfitted nursery, thanks to the generocity of our friends and relatives. We are so grateful to everyone who has helped supply us with so much fun stuff. Cousins on the Kaminsky side have outfitted us with a crib, high chair, and fun toys; Cousin Kerri & family arrived at our house with a minivan full of toys, playyard, and more. I'll try to post a picture of the nursery in a few days when we can see the floor again.

Today also marked a major step in our preparation: we bought a "travel system" of infant carrier, stroller, and two car bases -- the same model we were going to buy new for $300 -- from Craigslist for only $100. All we need to do is to install those babies into our cars and we're officially good to go.

And the clothes! Our baby had better stay 3 months old for at least 6 months to make sure he or she gets to wear all the clothing we have! that is, unless he or she wants to wear a color other than yellow or green. I'm sure there will be gender-identifiable clothing we'll have to pick up as soon as we know what we've got in the gender department.

Speaking of, although its beginning to look like we're having a boy -- the playyard, travel system, feeding seat, etc are all blues and tans -- we really haven't a clue. Our surro thinks it is a boy, so I've been thinking that way too, and I realized today that I'm really OK with having a boy, even though I've been hoping all along for a girl (maybe hearing the stories of niece Natasha's strong moods helped nudge me along that path!)

Anyway, the baby's suitcase is now started, just need to go stock up on some bottles and formula, and I think we'll officially be ready to leave the country! 3 weeks and a day to go!

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!