Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (31 page)

I'm dead tired, and I fear I make less and less sense, so let me cut this short, right here and now.

Peace and love, and all the best of luck to all of you who are still in the process, waiting for your child(ren) to be born, or your visas to be issued. You will prevail, and it is fucking totally worth it!!!

PS: If you need contact details for your own James Bond adventure or anything else I can do to help you, please let me know…

Behind me, in the living room, Sascha is crying. He's tired and exhausted after a morning on the town which included a hearing test for him (passed with flying colors) and attending a pro bono lecture with his dad.

No, he doesn't sleep a lot, but he easily falls asleep

during or after a feed, only to wake

up the second you move him! :)

Now he's tired, but as with so many kids, sleeping isn't a voluntary option, so he's out there complaining a bit before eventually dozing off.

It's amazing how well we've come to know him after only six weeks, hearing the different afflictions in his cries, from distressed to just talking or - as right now - tired. We've decided to follow the five minute approach, to see him every five minutes while he's crying to reassure him that we're there, but still being firm, if it's sleep time. It's sleep time, whether he wants to or not. In the evenings, this is sometimes an exhaustive affair, even for his dads.

Oddly, he seems to like being wrapped, Indian style, in a blanket or towel, that'll hold him still and tight. He's usually out like a light in less than five minutes, but as long as he can move his arms and legs freely, worst case, he can go on for 90 minutes. Trust me, in the middle of the night, it's not making daddy happy… LOL

But most of the time he's a great kid, talking a lot (various forms of whining and moaning), smiling at us, eating heaps and loving his daily baths. He's grown about 10 cm since birth and gained almost 2 kg, which is stunning given how long it took him to gain the first three.

So parenthood is more or less what we expected it to be, except that Sascha sleeps a lot less than the 18 hours advertised in literature. He sleeps in the car or on the boat or any other place with vibrations or plenty of white noise, but as soon as we stop the stroller outside the house to give him some more sleep outside in the fresh air, he wakes up. But taking a walk in the stroller is a great way to get him to sleep and for daddies to talk about stuff that needs to be discussed. Having a baby is great exercise for your arms and shoulders and the walking, hey, I may not be losing weight, but I do feel better…

In India and other Asian countries, infants are tightly wrapped for the first 2-3 months to “ensure a straight spine, arms and legs.” We found it keeps Sascha relaxed and makes it easier for him to fall asleep (although our wrap is more simple than the one on the photo which was done at the hospital.

On the legal side, we've taken two of the four hurdles (the easy ones) so far. Sascha has received his social security number (not because we asked for it, no sir, that was denied because I'm not his legal guardian), but because it can “be assumed that he moved here.” So the government accepts the fact that he's moved here. Not because I asked them to but because they decided so… LOL Idiots!

Last week, my parenthood was confirmed by the city of Gothenburg (for that to happen he had to be a resident of the city, hence the previous step), which is great, given that the government on a national level already decided as much when Sascha was granted his citizenship and passport based on the fact that his dad is a Swede. But alas, who ever said that the left hand in government knows what the right hand does (if anything at all)?

Given that our snail mail system isn't the fastest, I have to call our tax authority (they keep our population registry; Greece, here's a hint for ya!) on Wednesday to find out if my name is now entered as Sascha's dad alongside his “legal” mother, our dear surrogate in India (who is not his biological mother, but since Sweden's legislation in the area is from WWII, they don't really know what a surrogate or IVF is all about).

The next step is to apply for legal guardianship over Sascha. Right now, his legal guardian is the surrogate in Mumbai, which is great, given that she's 5000 miles away and doesn't care. So with all the papers we signed in India, we'll go to the district court as soon as my parenthood is registered and apply for sole guardianship. The surrogate has already relinquished custody about one hundred times in various documents, e.g. the surrogacy agreement, but since racist Sweden doesn't recognize Indian legal documents, we had to sign yet another Swedish document which says exactly the same thing, all over again. I hate ethnocentricity. It's the worst form of structural racism in the world! But alas, hopefully, the district court won't take much time as this really is only another formality since Sascha has been in our care since the day he was born.

Once I have custody, the last step will then be for Alex to adopt Sascha, thus attaining shared custody, our final goal. Phew!

People keep saying that I look like my son, but I disagree. My ears were a lot bigger and my face slimmer. As for a round face and a tiny nose, don’t all babies look alike in this regard?

In other matters, things in India are starting to look
bizarre
. It seems the government is now willing to reconsider for single parents to do surrogacy, but not gay couples. If you're a married gay couple, you're definitively screwed… Alex and I are even considering a “pro forma” divorce if it will allow us a second child. We'd then marry again as soon as the second child is born! The Indian government is also considering to allow the export of embryos already in frozen storage. But the question is whereto. Russia and the Ukraine are of course valid candidates, but given their human rights record and Putin's recent
behavior and threats
against the USA and France they are less than ideal countries for surrogacy.

Oh well, Alex and I will wait a little longer and see what the next months bring in terms of news from India. Thailand seems to become an alternative, but we really would like to go back to India, because no matter what, if you take the politics out of the equation, India has been a great place for us in every aspect. So we keep hoping for the best…

Two months old. Time flies when one's sleep depraved…

Actually, it's not so bad. The development of kids that age goes at warp speed. While we had to get up three to four times per night those first couple of weeks, Sascha now sleeps from 9 pm (approx.) to 8 or nine in the morning with only one meal break at 3 or 4 am. Quite manageable for us. He eats more and more, but we've been able to reduce the number of feeds from every three hours (like a clock) to about five per day.

He's strong like a horse and has already overcome his first cold, coughing and leaving us diapers from hell. But he never lost his voice, which I did for almost three days.

Last week, he surprised us not only with a smile but with laughter and that was really something.

Bureaucracy wise, we've submitted the final papers to the district court of Gothenburg, both for me to get custody and for Alex to adopt Sascha. To do that simultaneously is supposed to save us some time, according to the court clerk. We'll see, but she seemed eager to help.

The contract we had signed with the surrogate mother in Mumbai needed to be replaced by another paper. Apparently, the contract that the family court (not really a court but rather a part of social services of the city that has certain rights to determine custody cases and investigate adoptions) provided for us was a contract where the “parents” are not in agreement (not that I could see that since we both signed and agreed that I should have sole custody, but who am I to argue with a young lawyer at the district court?). So our lawyer had to draft a new contract, but since she'd received power of attorney from the surrogate, our lawyer could countersign that paper and we submitted within 24 hours.

Apparently (which was news to us), the family court also has to be given the opportunity to have a say on my custody, but I've asked them to speed things up as much as they can. The thing is, without custody, I can't insure Sascha, can't get him a passport. It really bugs me in case something were to happen to mom, or dad for that matter. But hopefully, we'll have an answer in three weeks, which, in all honesty, is faster than I thought it would be. It's been one week already, and it's been quiet. You know what they say: no news is good news!

I'm not sure how the court is working on Alex's adoption. Summer is approaching rapidly and Sweden more or less shuts down from the middle of June until early August, which means that no government agency does anything but the most urgent stuff and an adoption isn't considered urgent. I doubt we'll get Alex's adoption done before that. It'll likely be October since a political board needs to approve it and since the family court must come by and “investigate” us. *sigh* But, oh well, it's a formality and if I've learned anything during the entire last year, it's to put your thumb to your middle fingers on both hands, stretch out your arms and say “Ohm” quite loudly, and relax!

Happy Birthday on your first two months, son! 

Your dad and I love you, 
very, very much!

Accept that which you can't change!

Trust me, it makes life easier to bear…

My days are fairly routine. We get up, I feed Sascha, have breakfast while he's making odd noises of - sometimes - discontent or just speaking to himself or me, I shower, we take a walk, if he takes a nap, I write a little (currently sitting next to him on the floor), I talk to him, play with him, etc. Not to mention his feedings and diaper changes.