Meet the family - March 2015

We were also eager to share our exciting news with close family and friends, and I was quick to tell my parents and brother over dinner. I probably could have chosen a slightly better situation to do it in, as we got some very strange looks in the Chinese restaurant when we all started crying and hugging each other over our dumplings!

Charmaine and I organised a family BBQ where we could all get to know each other, and we picked a beautiful early-autumn day at a local park. It was our first opportunity to meet Charmaine and Darren’s children and Charmaine’s mum - I was nervous again, as it felt a little bit like we were getting an unofficial blessing!

Hubby's and my parents were there to say hello and my wonderful brother-in-law played the unofficial photographer! 

Charmaine and Darren’s children are wonderful and all so well behaved (Charmaine will laugh when she reads that, I’m sure, but it’s true!). If I can raise our little one to be as funny and sweet as any of those kids, I will consider myself to have done a fantastic job! 

Our mothers went off to complain about their daughters, and the blokes stood around the BBQ and critiqued hubby’s sausage cooking abilities. The kids were running around and chatting with Charmaine and I about their week, and our puppies got lots of pats - it was a wonderful day, just hanging out with people who already felt like old friends!

Where to from here? February 2015

On a high for weeks afterwards, Charmaine and I chatted constantly, tossing around ideas and plans at the drop of a hat, sending links and little videos of things we could do to prepare for the pregnancy and birth. In fact, that still happens when one of us sees something interesting!

Keen to progress things, we had our first appointment with our Fertility Specialist (FS) a few weeks after agreeing to proceed together. The doctor who had helped hubby and I create our embryos last year had since left the clinic we planned to use, so we were referred to our new FS. As this was a first appointment with this doctor for all of us, I think we were all fairly nervous about what she would make of us!

Interestingly, we did not think that we were moving fast, even though it had been less than a month since we were first introduced - we had all discussed undertaking the preliminary work now to get it out of the way, and to set us up for a possible transfer later in the year, probably in July. As it was only February, this seemed like a very sensible course of action. 

The FS was professional and kind. She met with Charmaine and Darren first, and hubby and I afterwards. She asked us a number of tricky questions, to get us thinking about what we were really undertaking - such as, will you be able to run around after a small child with your medical condition? Our FS seemed to think that both couples were good candidates to proceed with surrogacy, provided the additional testing all came back fine (bloods for everyone, and an Obstetrician appointment and scans for Charmaine). 

Overall, I think we all left that first appointment feeling very positive about our FS’s report to the clinic’s surrogacy committee and hoping to hear some good news soon.

The Answer! January 2015

A few days later, I was going about my usual weekday routine - slowly surfacing from bed, walk the dogs, strong cup of tea and getting ready for work - when I checked my messages just before walking out the door to catch the train.

Sitting there was a little message from Charmaine, offering us what I had hoped for since our earliest chats!

So, of course, I burst into tears! 

I rushed into my husband’s office to show him the message and, not trusting myself to speak without blubbering, composed a message back accepting and insisting that Charmaine and Darren give each other a huge thank you hug from us, as I wasn’t there to deliver one myself.

I was honestly a little stunned for days afterwards - I could not believe that Charmaine and Darren would choose to help ordinary ‘us’ in this incredible way. Of all the deserving IPs out there (believe me, I know many!), it seemed like such a long shot for us to find a perfect match, and even more unlikely for them to think of us in the same way! I still find myself wondering about it - what have I done to deserve this chance, to have the support and faith of this wonderful couple? I don’t know ... but am so thankful!

All I can say is I hope it will be as much of an amazing and joyful experience for them as it will hopefully be for us.

First Meetings - January 2015

Even though I have only just started to write, I am already behind in my chronicling!

Although my husband and I have been searching for a way to complete our family since 2011 and we first put our feet firmly on the path to surrogacy in 2014, it wasn’t until very recently that I first realised my need to keep a record of our story.

Perhaps it is because it finally feels real - we have tentative dates and real plans, we have appointments and follow-up tests and scripts to fill! And we are talking about our baby-to-be as though it is only a matter of time before we get to meet him or her. After years of silently prefacing every sentence I uttered about having a child with a big fat ‘If’, I feel as though I could now start to say ‘When’. Superstitiousness still stops me most of the time, though!

But back to the story, starting at our first meeting with C …

As many of these matchings start, I first met C online. I had been haunting a surrogacy forum for a few months, agonising over posts that hopefully blended the perfect amount of positivity and humour with the unspeakable nerves and anxiety that I imagine most Intended Parent’s (IP’s) feel when searching for ‘the one’!

Putting my story online was always going to be hard for me, as I generally prefer to listen and hang back, letting others do the talking. However, in searching for that perfect someone to undertake a journey as personal as surrogacy with, I figured the only way was to bite the bullet and get myself out there!

In Queensland, where altruistic surrogacy is the only legal option and there are many restrictions around advertising, telling my story online was really the only way I could think of to begin our search. I have no female relatives that would be in a position to help us undertake surrogacy and many of my friends have no children themselves or are only in the early stages of starting families themselves.

C and I were first introduced through another wonderful Queenslander who is undertaking her own surrogacy journey with IPs from Sydney. I think we are both agreed that we can never thank her enough for that fantastic tip-off! Especially when you consider that C and I were not even on the same forums, and if the timing had been just a little different and our amazing friend had not intervened, we may never have known of the other’s existence! Talk about fate, or very good luck, or maybe a little of both!

We chatted online for weeks, and then agreed to the first nerve-wracking face-to-face meeting in January 2015. We came together for the first time for burgers and chips (and Guinness for the blokes) at C’s Local, a place that I am already starting to think of as a second home!

I can’t speak on C and her husband’s part, but I was nervous! My hubby has the perverse nature that when I am stressed, he gets calmer and calmer, so I think he was feeling pretty good that afternoon! But I changed my outfit multiple times, resulting in us running late. I then realised halfway there that I had forgot the flowers I’d bought for C, so made hubby stop so we could get more. And as a result, we were running even later!

C and her husband (D) were wonderful, and without a hint of nerves! They were lovely and funny and easy to talk to, but as we sat with them and learnt more of their story, I also realised that they were both incredibly brave and generous people, and so supportive of each other and all of their friends and loved ones. 

C and D have had their own very difficult path to walk at times, and while I don’t think it would be right for me to share the details of their story here, I can only say that their willingness to assist a couple to achieve their dream despite, or possibly because of their own challenges in life, says everything of their character. 

We stayed late talking, then hugged and said goodbye, promising another catch-up soon. Hubby and I left with big smiles and raved about C and D all the way home. I could hardly sleep that night, my head full of possibilities, wondering if we could ever be lucky enough to have such a great couple choose to help us.

Off to a wonderful start! January 2015

Well, I have decided to start a blog. Not the most inspirational of beginnings, I know!

But I have been lucky enough to be blessed with a pretty inspirational story (at least, that is how I hope this 12-18 month journey will turn out!)

My husband and I are trying to have a baby - not so unusual, I hear you say …

Hubby and I!

I suppose what makes our story something worth writing about is that I was told 4 years ago that carrying a child would probably be the end of me. And yet, here we find ourselves, hoping that sometime next year, we will have a little one of our own!

The missing piece for us was an amazing lady who was prepared to put her own life largely on hold for at least a year, see countless doctors and medical professionals who will poke and prod her and risk her own and her family’s sanity - all this for the sole purpose of helping us achieve our dream to complete our little family. 

This incredible woman tells us that she has agreed to do this because it has long been her own dream to help someone who was unable to carry their own child, and her reward is seeing our happiness and excitement and the joy of creating a new little life. Personally, I can only put her incredible generosity and loving heart down to the fact that she is an angel in disguise!

Next instalment, the truly inspirational part of the story - our wonderful Surrogate, C!