Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Girls, Girls, Girls. Questions, Questions, Questions.

On Sunday we met Olivia & Clara!  They are the beautiful twins featured on one of the blogs we follow, Stalking the Stork .  Oh yea, and we met their dads Jason & Adrian.

Jason & Adrian were gracious enough to take time to meet total strangers (us) and talk about their journey to fatherhood.  Over the course of 2 hours and plates of eggs and pancakes (mmm...carbs) Allen and I bombarded them with just about every question you could imagine.  From how they selected SCI, to the costs, Delhi overall, their experience, other IP's, flying with newborns, the exiting process, being new dad's, you name it we probably asked it.

Our latest question to ourselves, and mind you we haven't even signed with an agency yet, is "If we have twins do we get a side-by-side or a front-to-back stroller?".  We obviously had to ask this question to Jason and Adrian and we were shocked to hear their response:  "Both!  We have 5 strollers!".  Jason went on to explain friends will buy gifts or donate items they no longer use so they ended up with a few of them.  Our place barely has room for 1 stroller, I think its time we move!

Brunch was great and we hope to see the guys and their two gorgeous girls again soon.  They definitely helped ease our fears of surrogacy overseas.  I totally forgot to take pictures so this will have to do:

Not sure I like how my hair came out in this photo.

Yesterday for lunch I met another girl, our prospective egg donor.  Well, I didn't just "meet" her, she is a friend.  We met for lunch at Tavern in Brentwood (only the best for my prospective future eggs/embryos/children) and talked about everything.


I prepped a week before the lunch by emailing with Allie of Welcome to the Road.  She just finished her second round of IVF with SCI and was a wealth of information.  My prospective donor really appreciated all the investigative work I did too.


Like the meal with Jason & Adrian, this one was filled with many questions (and carbs!).  Someone might be your friend but you've probably never sat down and drilled them with so many personal questions like:

  • What was your GPA?
  • Are your grandparents alive?  How did they die?  
  • How many siblings do your parents have?  Do they have any medical conditions?
  • How are your parent's health?  
  • Do you have health insurance?  
  • What are you thoughts on abortion?  Selective reduction?  Excess embryos?  
  • What do you see as your role, if any, with the child(ren)?  Can we rely on you for financial support and babysitting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays?  


Okay maybe I didn't ask that last one.

I also never thought I'd find myself talking to a woman about her period, cycle, and the timing of a flight to India based on when she is menstruating.  I think I handled it quite well.


All in all the lunch went great.  I think our biggest hurdle is her fear of flying and traveling to India to donate.  She offered to donate before we announced we are strongly considering going overseas. Fingers crossed she is happy to travel as the savings will be substantial.

Our donor is beautiful but I'm not sure I should be posting her photo just yet.  So instead, I'll post one of the dessert we shared.  S'mores with dark chocolate and vanilla ice cream, marshmallow fluff (it's toasted on top, you just can't see it), fancy graham crackers, and caramel corn.

Not sure I'm going to like how my thighs will look after eating this.  Not sure I care.

7 comments:

  1. Seriously jealous. I am really missing breakfast with Jason and Adrian! So glad you guys are moving forward with everything-- very exciting times!!!

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  2. How awesome to meet others!
    Lovely blog. Keep up the good work. Let me know if you are ever in the ATL area. :-)

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  3. Blogging really provides such a cool network. Keep asking questions until you are comfortable!

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  4. Good luck with the choosing and your donor, guys! I'm not sure if I mentioned in my email replies that we used my niece as our egg donor and she did all the meds and monitoring in the US and then retrieval in India. We retrieved over 35 eggs and around 26 fertilized so that part of it worked out very well. She was also very hesitant about traveling to India, so I think that's natural.

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    1. I didn't realize she went to India for retrieval. Would she be willing to email/talk to our friend? Maybe it would help her curb any anxiety. Was it with SCI?

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  5. Front/back stroller. That's my vote if you have twins! :-) We had a front/back one first and my partner decided to get a side by side now that the twins are bigger. Ugh. I don't like it.

    Wait...what if you have triplets?!?!?

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