Planing a FANTASTIC Holiday

Flights - BOOKED
Visa - COMPLETE
Accomodation - BOOKED
Mother in Law - PACKED

Yes "mother in law" is packed and ready to go... She is a fantastic person and was the first person we shared our hopes and dreams of starting our family via surrogacy with. From that day she has been so happy and i know that she will be so very thrilled to share this with us. She has never been overseas before and she works very hard. It will be great to share this with her and also to give her the holiday of a lifetime.

My Mum and Dad are FANTASTIC also. My dad is very happy and cant wait for his 4th grandchild (My sister has 3 kids). I would love nothing more than all my family to come to India with us to share this with us but unfortunately my dads health wouldn't really allow for him to travel that far. And we run a family business that relies on my Mum and I for day to day operations, without the both of us the business would struggle. That's ok Mum said as she informed me that instead of coming to India she will take a holiday to the USA the month after we return. (she deserves a good holiday)

We are planning on arriving at around week 37 in Delhi. SCI did say that 38 weeks would be fine, but I felt it would be great to make the most of the trip. Last time we were in Delhi it was only for 9 days ans we had a fairly continuous schedule of appointments to make so that really took up e majority if the time. We are planning on being in Delhi for 30 days although the return flights are flexible, I can imagine we will shorten the trip posibly only extend it. Last time we only made it to the Taj Mahal, and even then we were rushed around in record time to make the journey back to Delhi. We are hoping that this time we can travel there ans spend the night and really enjoy it ans the other great parts of Agra. This will be a very eventful exciting holiday of a lifetime.

30 weeks and shopping

Well as week 30 is here let the shopping begin. I am NOT A FAN OF SHOPPING for myself, but shopping for the baby is fantastic. I have never been as excited to "max out the credit cards" as i have this time.

The once spare bedroom has now been converted into a baby furniture showroom. I almost did not wait for the packaging boxes to be cleared out before taking the photos, now we just need to decorate and add colour....

 Well what can i say about the shopping process.......... HILARIOUSLY CONFUSING FOR THE SHOP ASSISTANTS to start. As a man in a store dedicated to baby furniture and accessories, the shop assistants to begin with did not seem interested in helping me which is fair enough i suppose as they are probably used to mothers making most of the decisions while the husband stand by with a dis-interested look. So what did i do? i called upon my closest female friend to come along, well this certainly acheived the desired effect as the shop assistants become a lot more interested in helping her. The confusing part for the shop assistant was every time a decision had to be made my friend would turn to me and ask "will you both like this colour etc".

Well on our first trip shopping with my female friend we didn't actually purchase anything we were just getting an idea of things. On the second trip shopping it was just Tim and I and in the shop we got a very "SHORT" and "UNHELPFUL" response when we requested prices on some furniture. Basically the sales person assumed that we were there gathering prices for our "female partner / wifes" and simply and bluntly wrote clearly visible ticket prices on a catalogue and then walked off without even asking if we wanted to purchase anything, so we left. We had decided what we wanted to buy the only decision was which of the 2 shops that stocked the item should we purchase from!!! The first shop they were helpful with our female friends presence however were very expensive and the second shop that was a lot more competitively priced but had the rude and somewhat unhelpful shop assistant. When it comes to making purchases it is Tim that is the one with the negotiation skills where as i will just buy things instantly. So we decided to go to the more expensive and slightly more helpful shop and ask if they would match the prices of the cheaper/less helpful shop, after almost 30 minutes the manager and shop assistant were still missing in action (apparently trying to match the other shops prices) we walked out. We chose to ignore our previous experience at the other shop and return to see if we would get a better response. It was a Sunday and the shop was very busy when we arrived, we walked in and Tim went to find a shop assistant (we where there to make a purchase). To our surprise there was a Part Time lady that only works Sunday and was more than happy to help. Of course she assumed Tim was there purchasing the furniture for his "wife" and made the comment that it was so fantastic that a Dad was out doing the shopping. She never asked who i was (i think she thought i was just along for the ride) anyhow i left Tim to the negotiating and selecting of the furniture that we had decided on and met him at the shop counter when they were processing the sale. As the shop assistant read back the order for the furniture i had to "CHIME IN" and tell her that he had got it all wrong. Wrong chest of draws, wrong baby change table, NO we don't want the matching bassinet and YES we do want the book shelf. Well this is where the shop assistants confusion commenced. Who was I?? how did i know what Tim's "wife" wanted?? HAHAHAHAHA. Her only comment was "thank god i was there or he would have got it all wrong". To confuse this absolutely fantastic lady a little more i started to ask lots of questions about other items i had researched and wanted to purchase. All in all this person who works only 5 hours each Sunday in this store really made us feel welcome even though she didn't ask and we didn't tell her the real story of how we are creating our family.

Thanks for following our journey.

XXX Chris and Tim

Passing 27 Weeks - And the news is public!!!

OK! so 27 weeks is the milestone for us. i don't really know at what point we were going to start making our exciting family news more public.

Then came the scan at 27 weeks.

To explain a little more, for some reason we missed out on a 3d scan at the 18 week point. i emailed SCI and they discovered that it wasn't done so they provided me with one at 27 weeks. See below.

And in particular this one.

Well let me say this, After seeing this scan image my excitement could not be contained anymore and nor did i want to keep this AMAZING JOURNEY to my close friends and family. So what do most people do, Facebook it... well not really. I deactivated my Facebook just before starting this journey as i felt i was addicted to it and i didn't want the temptation of sharing this exciting news too early. So on Sunday night i reactivated my Facebook after 10 months and immediately deleted everyone i have had no contact with during my absence. from 200 "friends and family" down to 60 odd. (i never can understand the people that have 800-1000 friends on Facebook  for me this would be information overload) So i cleaned out the friends list and decided to send everyone remaining a "hello" post to let them know i was back to the land of Facebook  Well what i didn't know was how "technologically incompetent" i was. i ended up tagging every single friend and then posting to all their walls 5 times. hahahahahahahah at the end of my "hello" message i stated that i have some very exciting life changing news and that i would look forward to catching up with everyone. What an instant stir this created, phone call after phone call, SMS after SMS, Facebook chat requests, and private messages didn't stop for hours. One by One i spoke with friends and family and when they requested to know my news i would SMS to their phone the scan image above. It has been such a great experience and is now getting better and better sharing this with all my friends and family. Naturally the first question everyone has is "How" so i am now a professional at explaining the entire process of surrogacy.

Thanks for sharing this journey with us

xxxxxxxx Chris and Tim

Passing 25 Weeks

We are around the 25 week point and wow what an exciting feeling this really is. I really have to pinch myself regularly to remind me that this is real and that i am not dreaming. I can honestly say that this has been the most exciting and happy 25 weeks of my life, and to think that this happiness will continue forever really makes everything worthwhile.

We received an email last week from SCI

Dear Chris,

Greetings from SCI Healthcare..!!!

We hope you are doing well.

We would like to inform you that we have done USG scan for R as per our obstetrician's advise.

Please find attched herewith files of the same.

We would like to inform you that Dr. Shivani has reviewed the reports and noted that "liquor is adequate AFI-11".

In view of the same, our obstetrician team will review her and plan further course of treatment accordingly.

We are keeping very close eyes on her pregnancy.

She is under our close observation & monitoring.

We will keep you updated with her further progress & new status.

With Regards,

Yogita

SCI Healthcare

The SCI team keeping us very well informed of our surrogates process.

Now we start the planning stage for our second holiday to India. This will be the most exciting holiday of all. Lots of planning planning planning.

Take care and thank you for following our journey

xxxxxxx Chris and Tim

This is such a relief

New Delhi, March 19 -- Gay and single foreigners will be able to take their born-in-India babies home.

The home ministry has decided to let babies - commissioned by gay and single foreigners after a July 2012 ban - to leave the country when they are born this year. Only heterosexual married couples are eligible for a medical visa to travel to India to commission surrogacy under the new visa rule.

But realizing the urgency of the situation after a gay Australian couple came out with their story about hiring surrogate mother in India for their child, the home ministry has decided to revisit the issue.

"This is a special case.... Else we will be left with hundreds of parentless, stateless children. We can't open an orphanage for them," a senior home ministry official told HT.

The official said exit clearances would be given on a case-to-case basis after making sure that foreigners or clinics weren't abusing the relaxation.

Home ministry officials, however, insist they had already held extensive discussions for a year before imposing the bar.

They got working on the new rule after a couple of instances where countries such as Germany and Japan refused to give citizenship to infants born to surrogate mothers in India.

Commercial surrogacy is governed under a set of guidelines issued by the Indian Council for Medical Research but the guideline isn't enforced.

The government doesn't even have a clue about the number of Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinics that handle surrogacy cases.

Such a weight has been lifted from our shoulders after reading this. This is such a releif to us. We have worried and worried about this issue for the past couple months. Although it is just a news statement it is at least a promising step in the right direction.

Thanks for following our journey

xxxxxx Chris and Tim

Hello March

Hello March. Apparently summer finished for us a while back yet we have just had a record breaking 9 days of over 30. It is really funny to think that us Melbournians piss and moan about Melbournes constantly changing weather, yet when we get consistent sun shine we continue to piss and moan it's too hot. Hahahahahahahaha.

Well as it stands we should be about the 20-21 weeks into the pregnancy. Still very much a surreal feeling but still very exciting. We have made a tentative booking for our accomodation for when we return to Delhi. We are really looking forward to enjoying a great break of a month or so and meeting new and old friends.

As they say "no news is good news" and we are lacking in news to share. I imagine we are going to have to start planning for our holiday in Delhi amongst other things.

Well just a short update for now. More to follow very soon

Xxxx C and T

Almost 18 weeks

To think about how long 18 weeks (126 days) actually is, it sounds like such a long time, but it feels like just yesterday we were in Delhi in search of our dream, yet we are 18 weeks pregnant. YAY

Its funny really because to begin with we would write blog posts weekly or at least several times per month. now that we are pregnant we say to each other "when we get the next scan" we will write a blog post, so this time i thought i better.

We received our first of the monthly scans yesterday.

 All seems to be well and nothing to be concerned about which is great. We both cant wait to head back to Delhi again, we really enjoyed our time there and are looking forward to experiencing more of the culture. We met so many people in Delhi, it really made the trip so worthwhile.

What makes this even more exciting for us, is the new friends we met in Delhi that are from Sydney, are pregnant just 1 day behind us. We are very happy for them and even happier that we will share this experience with them.

In other news we have finally set up our new home for our business. The plan was that by the end of 2013 we would have the 2 companies operating independently of one another, however the opportunity presented itself to align our business with a close associate and lease a fantastic Office/Showroom facility to accommodate us both.

Our Office

Reception Area

My Office

First Floor Landing and Workspace

Considering our family plans we are very happy that this has happened now rather than later. We did all the interior construction, painting, data and communication cabling ourselves. We have been working non stop for 3 weeks now. This coming Sunday we have agreed that we will not go to work (either business) on Sunday and make it our first true day off in weeks.

For those that have followed our blog you will notice that i am learning and getting so much better at making it interesting. Im very happy with myself. Funny part is that Tim and I own a technology company and i am technology "dummy". So stay tuned and i will do my best to keep things bright, colorful and interesting.

Thanks for following our journey

xxxxxxxxxxxx Chris and Tim