Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (17 page)

I like this pic… our guardian angels.

We're in the second trimester, when most mothers apparently feel their best. For us, it's primarily a time of waiting. Too soon to buy stuff, too soon to get ready, yet our minds are constantly lingering around them.

On the upside of things, we got our guardian angels sorted out, which is a great relief for us. My brother, my sister-in-law and one of our best friends have agreed to act as guardians of our little angel once s/he comes. We're treading a bit of new land here, as atheists, we don't want to baptize our children nor raise them into a system, which, by definition, excludes others, yet there are many aspects of the “godparent” concept, which make sense. Not necessarily the actual legal guardianship (now that the government has clear-cut rules for that) in case something happens to us, but to have someone apart from the parents for the child to confide in, to learn from, see life from different perspectives, to Alex and I, that makes a lot of sense.

I also believe that it simplifies the process for the kids to have someone 'designated' to talk to, to build a close relationship with early on.

We are very proud of our three guardians and I'm sure they'll do an exceptional job!

Have you ever had a long distance relationship?

I have!

And it didn't last very long. Maybe it's because it was so intense, we saw each other every weekend for the two months it lasted, either him or me driving the two hundred miles, crossing the border between Germany and Switzerland.

I came to think of Jürgen and our wild two months just yesterday, as Alex and I were talking about getting ready for our child. We're now 16 weeks pregnant, or in our “fourth month”, rapidly approaching half-time…

With me in a new job, Alex transitioning into his new position, yet already being considered for something else (it's a bit chaotic at his place of work right now), we somehow don't “feel” pregnant.

Thing is, when our child is growing inside a womb 10,000 kilometers away, it's hard for our minds to wrap around the concept. Or maybe it's not a problem of the mind, but rather the heart? Or hormones?

I'm not sure. But I think for a mother to carry the child for so many weeks, feeling the baby's movements start (as they say it does right about now), having the not-so-cool morning sickness, growing in size, all of that are incessant reminders that indeed your life is about to change forever, helping you to get used to that.

Even the fathers (provided they live with the mother) get their fair share of 'getting used to', by touching the mother's belly, feeling the baby, walking side-by-side with their mate as the pregnancy progresses. We don't have any of that.

Don't get me wrong, we get lots of updates from Mumbai about the health of our dear surrogate, but it's mostly clinical. We don't get to feel our baby kick until the day it's born. So for us, life continues as always, we live our DINK (double income no kids, for those of you who weren't around in the eighties) lives, sometimes feeling as if our pregnancy is just theoretical.

It just doesn't have that tangible, life-altering feel to it. Maybe that's going to change soon, I don't know. I also wonder if the absence of this “presence” in some way affects our hormonal balance, something that is often spoken about in terms of being able to cope with the loss of sleep after the birth. Will we be able to adjust quickly or do we have a handicap given that we weren't “physically” pregnant?

How do you prepare for being responsible for this little life when just days before, you went out for dinner, enjoyed opera premieres, traveled the world or just enjoyed kicking your feet up while watching TV? I'm just feeling this odd “mental” preparedness, but are we emotionally ready? Are we hormonally ready?

I know this may sound odd to those of you who have given birth, who felt the pain and the discomfort that often goes alongside a pregnancy. But I would love to feel our baby kick and move…

This week at least, we'll send the care package to Mumbai with our voices for the baby and some gifts for our surrogate's kids. I hope they make it there safe and sound and that our baby will enjoy listening to hir dads and our quirky music…

Have a great week you all!

PS: This has been a roller-coaster month for my blog, thrashing through the 500K reader limit. This month alone, I've had over 175K readers! I feel humbled and proud. Thank you all!!!

Our pregnancy progresses, slowly but steadily. The world is changing around us and every now and then, I question how wise it actually is to bring kids into the world…

Last week, as the American election results came through, many conservatives (
Glen Beck
, Rush Limbaugh, etc.) were so disappointed that they called for a
break-up of the country
, to retreat into the countryside with likeminded people, and to buy guns (no one buys guns unless s/he's prepared to use them…)

We live in very uncertain times. I just read an article about China and India (along with Indonesia, Brazil and others) being the superpowers of the 21st century. And all of a sudden, the headquarters of Star fleet is moving from San Francisco to Shanghai and the capital of earth isn't in Paris any more, but in Chennai! That's just how rapidly this planet is changing. Are we, up here in the far north of Europe, ready for this? Are our children going to be able to compete with the upper and middle class kids from China and India?

Here's where I am conflicted. Naturally, I want ALL children in the world to be successful, but I'll fight like crazy for my kids to be successful, because I won't always be there for them. The fact that I'm already 'ancient' (depending on whom you ask) means that my kids will have to fend for themselves earlier than those with really young parents. Who knows, I may only have another 50 years in me… (I hope for more than that of course!)

That's the kind of nonsense that goes through my mind constantly as we've traversed into the fifth month and 18th week of our pregnancy, 18w3d to be exact.

We bought a new car this week. So we're all ready for the baby, at least in terms of transportation. Volvo is doing miserably right now so they knocked off the price on a new car by 90K SEK and threw in winter tires including wheels and free insurance for three years. Who were we to argue?

Today is father's day. My last one actually NOT being a father… I'll need to call my dads and congratulate them. Oddly, when I was a child, this wasn't anything we celebrated as it was always father's day, except on mother's day! Will Alex and I buy ugly ties for each other a year from now? Probably not, as neither of us is particularly fond of ties.

This is a strange image as it so clearly shows the spine of the child, making it look more like a monster from Aliens than the progeny of two humans… But alas, the idea of this scan wasn't really to take great family images but to take measurements of the baby. This particular scan is done for all women who are pregnant in the western world.

We got a new set of
ultrasound images
last week. We still have the problem of a low lying placenta, located only 2.5 cm from the os (exit) of the womb, but our child is doing well and growing faster than expected (it was at 16w0d 11 days ago, which puts it at 20w0d today), if I understand the term “gestational” age correctly.

It might as well be 17w4d, because of the confusion of the 2w that are being added to account for the mother's menstruation cycle. In a “normal” pregnancy, the exact day of conception isn't known the way it is with ours (July 27) so the pregnancy is calculated at 40 weeks after the last menstruation of the mother, as women normally cannot ignore that particular event…

Sometimes, in literature, gestational age is used both for the 38 and the 40 week cycle. But if you ask me, given the fact that they now expect our baby to be born four days earlier, I'd say that the first number is the correct one. But then again, maybe the fetus is having a growth spurt and may rest again and the numbers might easily change.

I was talking to some of my female friends about this (some are pregnant, some have been) and they are amazed at the knowledge that I have about all this. Well, what do you do when your doctors throw all that intel at you? Here are a few of the numbers from last week that you may want to know about:

BDP (bi-parietal diameter. This is the measurement of a line drawn from ear to ear, through the brain) at 3.36, putting our baby well ahead of the curve. HC (head circumference), ours was at 12 cm last week. No wonder moms are in so much pain as they are only at 10 cm when fully dilated!

FL (femur length) at 1.87 cm, which is shorter than “expected.” This measures the thigh bone from hip to knee, not the entire baby's length, which at this stage is impossible to measure. Some clinics take a HRM (head-rump measurement, which excludes the legs as the baby normally isn't stretched out)

A (a bit of a mystery, but probably a typo and supposed to be AC, abdominal circumference) which was 9,73 cm (head still bigger than the body!)

EST fetal weight (duh) was at 131 grams +/- 15%

EDD (estimated delivery date) which for us is now April 18, 2013, three days earlier than the 21st we had 'calculated' based on the insemination date.

Needless to say that all these measurements can drive one nuts, but all other measurements being normal. Eleven days ago, our child was between 15w4d and 16w3d, with the average value being the one I mentioned above.

At 18 weeks, the baby is now fully capable of hearing and our care package safely arrived in Mumbai last week, with toys for our surrogate's kids, a gift for her and the CDs with the belly-phones for the baby to listen to. I really hope she'll play them regularly so that the child will get accustomed to our voices. Needless to say that I don't mind if our child also hears Hindi. Who knows, given the mysterious ways the brain works, maybe it'll remember that as well and learn it more easily later in life, because, going back to the very beginning, if we want our children to be successful in life, understanding English will not be enough. We'll raise our kids trilingual! Hence, one of the guardians we've chosen is Indian to help our baby learn and familiarize itself with one of the great cultures that undoubtedly will rule this planet in the decades to come. Our child is a typical product of the 21st century, born into a rainbow-immigrant family, Caucasian-gypsy atheist fathers, Southeast Asian Hindu mother & Indian Muslim surrogate. If that isn't the recipe for a global citizen, I don't know what will be!

Raised with heaps of love, traveling the world, understanding tolerance and our need for each other, we hope that we can provide our children with the necessary tools to be successful in life, whether we're around or not. Kind of what's keeping me up at night and where my thoughts linger these days…

Finally, a thought on the “gender” thingy… Everyone we talk to seems obsessed about the sex of our child. Officially, it's illegal to do gender determination scans in India, although most Indian parents do those scans anyway to be able to abort unwanted girls
.
Culturally, many countries are obsessed with knowing the sex of a baby before birth (e.g. USA), whereas Swedish parents often don't care and here, some hospitals will tell you, others won't. It's up to the doctor because you can abort until week 22. Alex and I don't want to know. It's one of the biggest surprises of life to hear from the doctors “it's a…”

All we hope for is that our child will be born healthy, with ten fingers, ten toes and all the limbs and organs in all the right places, functioning normally. Whether our child is a girl or boy is inconsequential and will in no way affect our love for it. This is also what we'd normally tell people if they ask. We could just say we don't know, but being the political animals we are, we find it important to get people to think about why they are so obsessed with pink and blue, to second guess our extreme focus on the sex of our kids…

One American friend said, “But how do you buy clothes?” Well, that's exactly our point. It doesn't matter. A boy looks as cute in pink as a girl and there are millions of colors out there, not just the two! One thing's for sure. Alex and I would never dress a boy in light blue or a girl in pink until they can choose for themselves…