First counselling appointment - 25 April 2015

We had our first counselling session on Anzac Day (after doing the Dawn Service, hubby and I may not have been at our best, but a strong coffee helped us recover!)

Charmaine and Darren had their session first, with our lovely counsellor who was happy to do the counselling at their house. We were delighted to find her, as I figure anything which makes these processes as easy as possibly for them to attend is well worth it.

We arrived about an hour later and were confronted with a 344 question personality test! Charmaine tried to warn us about some of the weirder questions, but it wasn’t until we saw them for ourselves that we understood! Apparently the test is almost unbeatable, and it knows when you are trying to trick it. That scared me a little, but what really psyched me out was when the counsellor came in after 45 minutes and asked why we weren’t done yet. She seemed to think that this was a concern in itself!

Counselling with hubby and I then took place. It was fairly straight forward, with questions and plenty of discussion to ensure that we were thinking about potential issues and we were all on the same page. 

Some of the questions revolved around issues like:

• What did we think we would do if screening revealed the child may be disabled, mentally or physically?
• What were our plans should any party be injured, die or have a relationship breakdown?
• How did we think we would handle things if we have no successful pregnancies? 
• How did we see the relationship between both couples continuing after the birth?

Luckily for us, Charmaine and Darren and hubby and I had already discussed most of these tough questions over the last few weeks, so we were pretty comfortable with where we all stood on them.

The next step is the group counselling session, which I think we are all really looking forward to, as the counselling report feels a bit like one of the final blessings we need to get the surrogacy committee’s approval. We still need to get the legals and a few other things completed, but this also feels under control and just a matter of time.