Emily Rose - One Year Old

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Happy Easter!

We just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter. It is hard to believe that a year ago today, we announced to our family that we were expecting a baby. Emily is everything we prayed for and more...

5 Months Old?

Tomorrow, Emily will be 5 months old! I find it funny that I just received an email update from www.babycenter.com that talked about our 15 week old baby because they base their updates off of her due date, not her birth date. No matter how you look at it she is doing great. Nothing brings more joy than to walk in the room and have her turn and smile at me. She isn't rolling over yet but she is getting more and more talkative every day. Yesterday in the middle of her baby babble for some reason only known to her, she decided to let out a loud hooting sound. Brian and I burst out laughing which seemed to please her.

Life for Brian and I has started to settle into a new normal. We have both been back to work for a couple of months and are blessed to have two sets of grandparents willing to take turns watching Emily during the day. Brian and I are trying to keep our work schedules to normal hours so that we can spend the evenings with her and are working hard to set up a bedtime routine which consists of a bath, warm bottle and then a story which normally consists of Brian reading the wall street journal from his android. I know that the voice intonation and inflection are all that matters at this stage of development but it is a little disconcerting to hear my husband reading to our baby daughter about the slaughter going on in Libya or bank mortgage failures.

Last weekend we went on our first road trip, an 8 hour drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Living in Alaska, road trips are not very easy during the winter so we decided to wait until the weather warmed up a bit. It was fantastic to see our close friends in Fairbanks and spend a couple of days with them. We know so many wonderful people up there and we would probably still be living there if it weren't for the six months of sub zero temperatures and constant unending darkness. It was fun to introduce Emily to our close family friends to the north and we will most likely go back up in a month or so.

It has been strange to transition from everything in our world being connected to surrogacy in India to just being everyday parents trying to get along. Today we FINALLY finished filling out the last (??? - the presents keep coming!!) of our baby thank you cards. Now I just need to get them into the mail. I still love reading all the blogs and catching up on how everyone is doing. So many people have gone to India to welcome their babies into the world and it is wonderful to see the children thriving. I know others are still working towards their goal and trying to find their way around the surrogacy obstacle course. Even now, I don't think surrogacy in India is an easy process. For some people it takes longer than others and it really has nothing to do with fairness or somebody being more deserving than somebody else. I hope and pray that the couples we know who are still working towards their goal will find the way to reach it one way or another.

I recently received an email asking about what we plan to tell Emily about her birth situation. We are still working it out. What we tell her will be open and honest. We want Emily to take pride in her heritage and know that she truly is a miracle.

4 Months Old

Emily is 4 months old! And she is doing great, despite our best efforts.

Can I say how amazing it is to be a parent? I don't even know where to begin. Now that we've been home for three months with her I can't imagine how she gets so much bigger every day. Literally from one moment to the next she's gained weight, grown and filled out a little more. Whole wardrobes are gone! We can't keep up!

Somehow our lives are not about infertility and surrogacy anymore. They are about parenthood. And we are as clueless about that as we were about infertility, India and surrogacy five years ago.

So I don't know what to say, except thank you. Thank you to all the clinic staff and doctors, to our surrogate and egg donor we never met, to the other intended parents who helped us all along the way, a myriad of others and to all our friends, family and co-workers who are now helping us with this amazing, new journey.

Thanks especially to our facilitators, Mrinhal and Mohammed Zubair. See Mohammed's website at http://www.hyderabadplanet.com/. We wish the best for you and your family, especially your new daughter!

Thanks to the intended parents who called us after our return and helped debrief us also, trying to find out what to expect on their journey. We are happy for your new arrivals and we're especially happy if Emily's story helped you in any way at all as you went to Hyderabad.

Because this is no longer "Our Journey to Indian Surrogacy", but it is Emily's baby story!!

The Best Christmas Ever .... With a Little Help From Our Friends!

Hello blog friends! Well its been almost a month now since we returned home and life is good.

Emily is doing excellent. Somehow she has avoided catching the colds her parents, grandparents and family friends have had. She is gaining weight and growing FAST. On 12/12 she weighed 5 lbs, 11 ounces. On 12/19 she weighed 6 lbs, 5 ounces. (Oh how I miss the METRIC system!) This means 10.9% of her body weight was gained in only seven days!! (Now if only I could LOOSE weight just as fast...) And she is more active, more awake, her cheeks are filling out, switching successfully to US baby formula, and she looks different every day too. She is doing great!

For Amber and I things were pretty touch and go there right after we got back from India. The time difference, the jet lag, the seasonal darkness, 2.5 hour feedings, lack of sleep, the uncertain routine and some colds/coughs were wearing us down. After Amber's craft show that first weekend back, Amber completely lost her voice. Brian's work deadline came fast and kept him from helping out like he was needed to. Fortunately we had a lot of help with the housework, the nursery, and even a dinner from Amber's mom and dad, her bro and some local friends. Even better, Brian's mom, Grandma Pat, came to stay with us and be here for Emily's first Christmas. She's helped us finish the nursery setup, given us much-needed advice, helped us get a foothold and make forward progress again on the housework, took over feedings so we could catch up on sleep, and babysat Emily so we could start back to work again.

The love and support we've received from our family, friends and workplaces since returning home has been overwhelming! Emily's Nana Tommie made a wonderful Under the Sea themed crib bedding set. The college Brian works for threw us an amazing baby shower right between Emily's birth and our departure for India and since going back to work this month, everyone is asking about her, suffering through pictures and giving great baby advice. Our friends in Fairbanks threw an amazing shower at the Pump House a couple of weeks before Emily was born and every time we try to finish thank you notes, yet another present shows up in the mail! The girl is growing so fast and has so many clothes to wear, her daddy is reminded of the villain in that old Superman movie who boasts that he's so rich, he never wears the same pair of socks twice!

For thirty-somethings like us who are still harboring lingering doubts about our ability to take care of ourselves and each other, having Emily to take care of is a real wake up call! Learning to be parents is a lot different than the last five years of researching ART, navigating the medical business in India and everything that came with that.

She is a Christmas miracle! Made possible by all the love and support from you, dear reader .... and we are eternally very grateful for "a little help from our friends" who we'd be lost without. Thank you!!

North in Alaska

We've been home a couple of days now. Re-entry is hard. 30 hours worth of jet lag and a 13.5 hour time difference is bad by itself. Add in only 2-3 hours of sleep between feedings plus the *always* dark Alaska winter and you forget which direction is up! Right now it is 4:45 am in Alaska, but in Hyderabad its 7:15 pm. So you tell me .... bad time to write a blog post?

So far we've done pretty well. Emily's feeding, diaper changing, and sleeping have been set up. Amber's struggling with a sore throat and me with a cough, but Emily seems pretty good except for the occasional gas fit. The luggage had a night outside below zero (F) to discourage any stowaways and we've run most of the laundry from it. Set the thermostat higher for Emily ... Wednesday at 85 F but as it was very cold out the best the house could do was 78. Today (Saturday) it is snowing and warmer so I turned it down as the boiler is meeting its goal (The gas bill is going to be epic!). A few trips to the big box stores have us stocked with more newborn-size diapers, wipes, bottles, humidifier, bottle sterilizer, and a new baby monitor. The first pediatrician appointment was moved up to this Monday. Got Emily added to the health insurance by taking the birth certificate into the HR office and still need to submit a claim for the $4K bill from Lotus Children's Hospital. Grandma Marie, Grandpa Bill and cousin Alice got to meet Emily and Grandma Pat will arrive on Pearl Harbor day from Minnesota to help out for a few weeks.

Real life is threatening to intervene. Amber has a craft show at UAA tomorrow to setup for and Brian has a work deadline to address. Already we've used 5 of the 7 paid time off weeks, so we'll have to figure out the back to work schedule and child care PDQ.

The plane trip home actually went pretty well. All the flights were on time and despite a screw-up we managed to get bulkhead seats with bassinettes/cots on both long-haul British Air flights. Emily did great and the air pressure didn't bother her too much. She developed a bad habit of peeing during diaper changes in the airplane restrooms and at one point Brian had to send a flight attendant forward to Amber for a new diaper. Fortunately that didn't happen the time we changed her on the airline seat itself!!

We're not the best packers but the luggage wasn't too overweight. The glass beads I bought for Amber in Delhi were 10 pounds by themselves! The worst problem we had was in London. I had all the hand luggage - a backpack and two shoulder bags, plus a roller bag - while Amber carried Emily. After a passport check, Amber passed the roller bag back to me before getting on the escalator. I followed, but the roller bag - which leans away from you when standing upright - was stopped between two escalator blades. So I tried to push it away with my foot, only the escalator was gaining altitude at that point and I lost my balance. The shoulder bags shifted and further destabilized me so that I crashed into the guy below me, who crashed into the guy below him! Amber watched in horror as this played out in slow motion. Fortunately there were only a few bruises.

Its hard to believe we were just in India! We were talking to another couple today who are planning to go soon to pick up their baby and all the details of our month there just came rushing back! As life moves on here in Alaska, I don't want to forget to say thank you! There are so many people to thank for making this miracle possible, both here at home and there in Hyderabad. And also the other parents we met there, whose help and support is so wonderful! But I will save more of that for another post.

PS - For those of you who want photos ... I sympathize! Been there. PLEASE be patient. Emily is as cute as ever. But her parents? Not so much right now.

Today is Four Weeks, and Eight Years

Today is our 8th wedding anniversary. I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to wake up at 3 am local time, take our beautiful, four-week old baby girl to the airport, and catch a 30 hour plane ride home to Alaska!