Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (34 page)

Look at you now, mouth covered with corn & sweet potato after that first ever solid meal. You seemed to like it enough, because that first jar was empty after two days… You've grown from 3.3 kg to roughly 7kg and from 49 cm to somewhere over 62 cm. We'll get exact measurements on Wednesday, during your four month check up.

This week marks another very important milestone in your life (and ours). Conception Day. Your first 'real' birthday as you were conceived on July 27th, 2012. On that day, you will be one year old, although no one really celebrates that day as most don't know when their kids were conceived. Well, we do, and we'll celebrate a bit, and send a silent prayer to the politicians in India to allow us to use the 16 embryos in cold storage to create a sibling for you, so that you don't have to grow up and old all by yourself.

Happy 4th month, Sascha!

I'm back in my Arizonan hometown of Springerville, four hours out of Phoenix or Tucson, tucked into Round Valley, way up in the White Mountains of Arizona.

Cactus flower from the Sonoran desert.

My son has just met his second granddad and a cousin after having spent a week in Tucson with my sister. Being able to come here, and to allow my 86-year-old bonus father to meet his youngest and latest grandson means a lot to me.

When Alex and I came here last summer to see them, we had already learned of the passing of my bonus mom, mere months before we came. She was so much looking forward to seeing us again, but alas, life had other plans.

We told Grandpa Sam about our plans for a surrogate (we were in AZ a couple of weeks before I flew out to India), and he's been following the pregnancy ever since. And now we're here, and he's met Sascha. Once again, we marvel at this wonder that a child is, particularly given our circumstances.

Meanwhile, we note with thanks that.

Who says you have to be happy when you leave Tucson?

I can't blame Sascha. He loved his aunt, uncle and cousin!

Alex's adoption of Sascha is progressing at pace. The family court clerks have written their evaluation and have sent it to the review board for a formal approval. After that, in the first days of September, the district court will finalize the adoption in early September and Sascha will finally have two “legal” fathers.

But for now, we don't worry much about paperwork and legalists. We just bask in the love of our families, and the pride they feel for Sascha.

Five month old Sascha is an avid traveler. He would have easily earned his frequent flyer card, had that been possible. At one month, he flew from India to Europe. He's been on eight European flights and we've recently been to the US.

He's also traveled as long as 10 hours straight in a car seat, crossing the breadth of Arizona and California.

Meet Sascha and his dad, two very frequent flyers

Needless to say, any one of those trips could've been a nightmare. However, they were not, and here is why (at least we believe it to be the reasons…):

Sascha's dad and I are frequent travelers ourselves, and we love to travel

Research, research, research

“ohm”… (and plenty of it)

Allow me to explain. I believe that our kids emulate their parents. If we're stressed out, if we're nervous, anxious or maybe even afraid, our kids will pick up on those emotions.

Yesterday, my husband called me from work with news that had me accelerating from calm to an emotional hurricane in 0.1 seconds. I was upset, angry, hurt and Sascha, sitting next to me, started crying. I had to calm myself down before attending to him.

If you're not a frequent flyer/traveler, you might even be afraid of flying itself. Your kid is going to pick up on those feelings and s/he will mirror them in the means available to hir, be it in tears, wailing or even screaming. Hence, the best way to travel with kids is to calm, to the best of your ability (or take acting classes).

However, no matter how often you fly as an adult, flying with a baby is quite a different experience altogether. Heads turn in disgust, lounge guests frown and sigh loudly as they see us approach with a stroller. I can't really blame them. I used to do the same, truth be told.

Not that I worry much, because Sascha is the perfect travel companion.

What we did was to do a lot of research, we talked to our travel agency who has inside contacts with all the airlines, making sure the bassinet is booked on our long leg (just because you buy a ticket doesn't mean you get a bulk head seat with a bassinet, oh no!), and making sure our airline would actually let us board with a baby as more and more airlines frown upon children in business or first class. It can be hard to find that information on the airline's website, so talking to a travel agency is a great idea. They actually have people to talk to who know.

We also researched parenting sites and googled hundreds of pages to find out if there was anything we could do to fly more calmly with our little boy. Seems plenty of parents drug their kids with antihistamines or even sleeping pills. While that might be an option if you fly with an overactive toddler, with a five-month-old baby, it isn't. Besides, I'm not sure it really is a good idea. But I don't judge others.

However, our research did show that we would be allowed to bring kids foods and medicines on board, even liquids, despite the international ban against liquids on board.

Our travel kit thus contained plenty of diapers, wet tissues, towels, toys, pacifiers (yes, plural), and lots of liquid baby formula as us dudes can't breastfeed. The liquid formula makes it possible to have the food ready in an instant when the baby wants it, rather than having to wait for a stewardess to answer your beep and get the hot water ready (which could, realistically, depending on what class you fly, take up to twenty or more agonizing minutes with a screaming baby in your arm).

Besides, not all moms feel comfortable whipping out that boob in front of fellow passengers (and complete strangers).

The other interesting point is changing diapers. Small airplanes commonly used for short distance flights may not be equipped with a changing table, and even if they are, it might be at the back of the plane, and thus hard to get to while food trolleys are ferried up and down the aisles. On our latest flight, I changed Sascha on the galley floor by the front door. It was a quick and dirty solution, and no, not dirty at all, and the purser smiled at my ingenuity.

Making friends with the cabin crew is always a good idea. They are your best assistants on board and will help you to the best of their ability, provided you're nice to them. So check any attitude with your luggage!

In Europe, you'll be issued a little red belt for your baby and you'll have to hold hir tight, which may not be easy. When Sascha was one month old and couldn't hold his head up, I was forced to have him resting between my arm and torso. Some airline crews might tell you to sit him up, but don't worry too much about that. Thing is, if you're going to crash, you're dead anyway, it won't make much difference if your baby is lying in your arms or wobbling helplessly on your lap. No offense, but I guess that's why we weren't even issued a belt on our US internal flight…

Toys, pillows, blankets & pacifier: your best friends

when traveling with a baby! And since Sascha tends to

lose his, we strap them onto his clothes...

Flying with a baby that has no seat of hir own can be really tiresome, even if it's only for a couple of hours. We normally fly business class and have the middle seat free for the baby to lie down. If you don't, try to get cushions and blankets and have the baby lie down on your laps. Not perfect, but it beats having the baby sit in your arm all the time. It's tiring on you and the child (leading to irritation which then leads to tears).

Make sure the child has a pacifier in hir mouth at all times during ascent and descent of the flight. Babies with ear pain scream louder than a pig being slaughtered and the pain lasts for quite some time. If s/he's not interested in the pacifier, maybe the bottle will do, or a blanket to chew on. Sadly, it takes quite a while for kids to learn how to equalize the pressure in their ears, so this is a tough one for all flying families. The sooner they start on the pacifier, or chewing gum later on, the better.

But flying with babies isn't just about flying. It's security checks, waiting, passport controls, waiting, shipping, lounges, waiting, check-in, luggage retrieval, waiting, customs control, waiting, bussing to/from airplane, etc. But above all, waiting, plenty of it. 

We bought an extra stroller, one of those umbrella strollers to help us. It also doubles as a coat rack and carries some of our carry-on bags. You can keep the stroller until you board the flight, and you can get it back at the arrivals gate (although you may need patience before it gets there). We sometimes just check the stroller all the way, particularly when flying through Frankfurt, a place notoriously slow in bringing you the stroller back. I'd rather carry my son for 30 minutes than wait for the stroller and miss my connection. Sweden is a great country for kids, and your stroller comes really quickly here. Then again, you fly where you fly to, not based on how quickly a stroller shows up, right?

Back to waiting. We have had to learn to be patient and to include extra time for the baby. We're still faster than most people, but I doubt we'd stand a chance against ourselves with no child. Picking up after him, all the toys, blankets, and stuff, making sure he's with us mentally and emotionally. I can only stress again how bad stress is for the well being of a traveling baby!