Surrogacy 'legal' in South Aust

IVF clinics can now offer surrogacy in South Australia (where we live) to heterosexual couples where no payment takes place. It's never been illegal for us to undergo surrogacy, just a case of we couldn't do it here - so this is great. Would be better again if we could undergo commercial surrogacy as more women would offer themselves for the services, but that's a little bit too political just now. From memory, the new law will also recognise who the intended parents are on the birth certificate and not who the birth mother and her partner are. We're getting there!

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26372518-2682,00.html

Week 12

The last week has been pretty normal, or at least as normal as normal is in this house now! We're getting back into a semblance of routine with Nik doing the first part of the night shift and I take over around 3am. We do the days together with the assistance of anyone who wants to visit. My "taking over" at night involves falling out of our bed and stumbling down the hall into what will be one of the boy's bedrooms next to their nursery as I can hear when either of them stirs. They're both still in the same cot (but not for much longer) so it really is a case of jump up quick when one of them goes off. Cat napping in a bed instead of on the lounge is definitely making me feel more alert - but with that said I'm still known to fall asleep just about anywhere.

The heatwave here is over for two days (does that even count?!), so we finally got the boys to the doctors for their first vaccinations today. Alex was not impressed and turned as red as the shorts Taj was wearing. Taj has had way too many IV lines inserted as he took it like a pro and we barely got a whimper out of him with either shot. The excessive heat has also resulted in the boys being fed nearly exclusively in their bouncy rocker chair thingies for the last week as they're simply too hot to hold. I haven't spent so much time on the floor in the last 20 years and am even known to fall asleep between them when they've finished their latest feed (which we try for one of us to do simultaneously where possible). We've tried to get out of the house each evening for a quick walk, which is a great opportunity to catch up with "honorary auntie" (our neighbour) Kerry.

Alex has continued to develop his neck support and pushing himself up to standing every opportunity he gets. This week he's found his voice and loves having conversations with anyone who'll listen. He now weights 5.35kg and put on 2cm in one week. Taj loves chatting to himself and giggling and basically just chilling, often with his hands interlinked together on his chest. His weight is up to 4.43kg - finally doubling his birth weight. Wendy (our respite worker) commented that Taj is just like her youngest son who she reckons is an old soul, where as Alex is like her eldest and is just itching to try everything (perhaps as it's his first time here?).

We've had a few more visitors recently and have really enjoyed catching up with Christine and Helen as well as Rosa, Jo and Corinna from my work. Great idea to get pizzas delivered last night girls so you could hang out with the boys for longer!

Taj not too sure about being in the big bath, even with dad

Kym and Daniel checking out Alex at the family picnic the other week

Debra and Taj having a great cuddle

Baby aerobics - beginners

Baby aerobics - advanced

Taj "where's the toga party dude?"

Alex absolutely raring to go...

(the way he's going we think he's going to walk before he crawls)

...and the compulsory recovery sessions

Is surrogacy in India for you?

A positive spin off from inviting the media to follow our pregnancy was educating other couples that having a family via a surrogate in India may be a valid option for them too. This advice will provide information on how the surrogacy process in India operates, and how to get those all important babies back to Australia.

We get asked often why we headed to India to undergo surrogacy, and it's simple. In Australia, commercial surrogacy is not permitted and, if you can find someone willing to carry your baby for you for love, she's listed on the birth certificate as the mother (and her partner as the father). If she wants to keep the baby, you have no legal comeback. Surrogacy laws in Australia are in the process of being harmonised, but changes are still a long way off. Even then, commercial surrogacy will still not be allowed so demand for surrogates here will always outweigh supply. In India, we ARE the parents on the birth certificate (so no adoption is required as we're already legally recognised as the parents) and the surrogacy contract SEEMS to be enforceable. The validity of surrogacy contracts has not yet been tested by Indian courts (so who knows how many years or decades it will take to get through the system), so this is a bit of a grey area. But fundamentally the surrogate will not want to keep the baby as it is probably has a different colour skin - and the primary reason she has offered herself for this service is the payment, of which she receives the bulk of after birth. All up the cost will be a minimum of AU$30,000 (be prepared to spend a LOT more as you will probably not fall pregnant on your first attempt) and of that the surrogate receives around $5,000 (could be higher or lower depending on the agency you choose to work with). This is enough for many of these women to buy property, establish a business for their husband or to educate their children. Life changing stuff. Others use the money to pay off debt incurred while trying to better their position - such as payment of a bribe in exchange for a government job.

There are a few options when it comes to genetics of your future off spring. You could elect to undergo IVF here in Australia or in India (we've done it twice in both countries) or you may require donor egg or sperm. Of the five main surrogacy agencies/clinics in India that seem to cater for western clients, two that we know of are currently affiliated with a caucasian egg donor program - generally from South Africa. The other clinics rely solely on Indian women to become egg donors. If you undergo IVF outside of India, you can ship your frozen embryos via a medical shipping company or you can take them to India yourself as hand luggage. There's a LOT of paperwork involved with carrying them yourself, so please only consider this if attention to detail is one of your strengths. The cost of shipping from Australia is around AU$3000. If you do require an egg donor, make sure that she has successfully produced via IVF and is not "proven" because she can fall pregnant naturally. It's definitely not the same.

Please note - at least one of you must be biologically related to the baby/ies in order for citizenship by descent to be granted to them. If you require both an egg and sperm donor, it is considered a private adoption and will not be recognised by the Australian authorities. DNA testing is a compulsory step before citizenship is granted and passport/s issued for the baby/ies to travel home.

As you are the parent/s on the birth certificate in India, you are responsible for that child - regardless of the outcome.

You will have to do your own research into the clinics who offer surrogacy services in India, including what other clients have thought of them. It would be so much simpler if we could just get a referral from our GP to the 'specialist' we should see, but it just doesn't work like that. Think of it as arranging a holiday in another country without the help of a travel agent to guide you! There is a lot of information available on the internet which didn't exist when we commenced in April 2008 - including a stack of blogs and at least three discussion forums (that are primarily for clients of that particular clinic). With anything you read online, take it all with a grain of salt.

Some excellent resources as a starting point are:

Surrogacy India Guide - this is updated (just about daily!!) by Peter Z from the US who became a proud father in August. Not only has Peter produced this amazing, impartial site he also has journalled their own pregnancy also on the Global Doctor Options site. You can also access Peter's blog from our blog list. Start reading about surrogacy in India here and start to take note of the valid questions you should ask that Peter has captured.

CharlieCat has also shared her well thought out questions on her blog - Chai Baby. As with all blogs, start reading from the end and work backwards. Of particular note are Questions to ask - part 1. and Questions to ask- Part 2 as well as "Aged Mummy" and the need for an ED - really??.

While you're making lists, please also consider what you need to implement to survive your pregnancy from over 10,000kms away. How often do you need updates? How do you want to receive these updates - via phone or email? Do you want to pick your own surrogate and/or meet her? Even though I love the fact that we met our surrogate and we saw her (our) pregnant belly first hand, this ended up causing us a lot of problems. There is a very high probability that there won't be any ongoing relationship after the pregnancy due to language barriers and probable lack of internet availability so seriously consider this before you commence. Is it worth engaging a private lawyer to act on your behalf as an impartial person? When things don't go as planned, how does your agency/clinic deal with both the issue and you? Do they learn from the experience so others don't also experience the same problems in future? Do they support you or leave you to fend for yourself? Have you developed a relationship with the treating doctors (do you even know who they are?) so you can contact them directly if need be?

Always remember that you are dealing with another country which is culturally different so things will not always go as you expected.

A brilliant article on why women offer themselves for surrogacy in India (and are we exploiting these women...) was published in the Marie Claire magazine a few years ago. You can access it at http://www.marieclaire.com/print-this/world/articles/surrogate-mothers-india.

Another option is to leave a comment to this blog post including your email address and I'll get back to you. Time is really of the essence in this house now, so if you're not willing to do at least some of your own research I'm sorry but I'm not the person to help you.

If nothing else I love that surrogacy gives us OPTIONS where we may not have had any. Don't forget to check your emotions at the door if you decide to take this route as it's a difficult enough journey as it is. Hard? Incredibly. Expensive? Yep, we'll be paying for it the rest of our working lives. Worth it? Absolutely.

Week 11

Any routine we had over the past two weeks has pretty well disappeared as first Alex and now Taj seem to be undergoing a growth spurt – which means feeding is back on demand and can be as often as hourly during the day as we've had to increase the frequency of the feeds as upping the quantity results in abdominal pain for Alex and/or projectile vomiting from Taj. The good news is the boys are so stuffed from the physical changes that they’re starting to sleep a bit longer at night. This has also allowed Nik and I to get back onto shifts (Nik until the 2am ish feed, me after that) so we’re both getting some more sleep. Moving the boys to their own room instead of sleeping in our bedroom has also helped. They'll both be in their own cots shortly as they won't be able to fit laying next to each other across the mattress for much longer without their feet sticking out through the bars, and we think they're too long to lay length wise (heads in the middle) without donging into each other.

Our ‘home visit’ help started on Friday and we are so in love with our carer. She didn’t stop for the three hours she was here and not only took over both of the boys needs, she washed and prepared their bottles and folded up the baby washing and sorted out the clothes Taj has been wearing and just didn’t stop. For us, the ultimate luxury is not having to respond when a baby cries so we were both in heaven. We’ve been tossing up what type of ongoing help we need (cleaner vs nanny) and if Wendy is available for a few hours a week we think we now know which way we’re leaning. On Friday the mothers and babies nurse dropped in for her first of many visits (it’s a two year program), which is great as we don’t need to take the boys out for their weekly weight checks as they now come to us. With that said, I think we’ll need to take them once more as according to the scales we used here Alex has put on over 500g in a week – so has he really porked up that much or are the scales out of whack? Regardless, he’s now 3cm longer and is definitely outgrowing little bro. Taj was catching up there for a tad, but Alex is now just under a kilo heavier.

We haven’t managed the vaccinations yet as the fridge at the doctors was out of action, so we’ll aim for that next week. This week is going to be a right off as we’re experiencing the first heat wave of the summer – which is shaping up to be the longest heatwave in November in history here. Nik’s not going to be too fussed about not leaving the house much as we splurged and purchased a flat panel tv on Saturday. We’ve been looking for a while but couldn’t justify it (even with the government’s “plasma” (baby) bonus) but couldn’t resist when we realised you can record and play from a USB memory stick with this model. We’ve been pricing up digital DVD recorders and they’re over $900, where this tv cost $800 and we can record with it. Bargain! As it’s a whopping 42 inches we’ve had to swap who sits where in the lounge room. I'll hopefully finish the boys birth photo albums this week (I'm making one for each for them; nothing fancy but at least they'll have their own when they move out - thinking ahead here!!) and will attempt to respond to a few very overdue emails and text messages while we're staying home in the cool. I promise that I read everything, it's just responding that's my problem. It's a great thing we created this blog or none of you would know what we're up to, lol.

I had a reunion with some of my cousins yesterday, so the boys enjoyed being passed around and generally being out doors for a few hours. We had a picnic in a national park and not only was there a great display of native birds, there were also a few snakes and one very tired (but noisy) koala crashed out high in a gum tree. I have no idea where Nik has put the camera so I’ll upload photos in next weeks update.

Week 10

We've spent a lot of the last week dealing with the feedback from our segment on tv, and I'm happy to report that the vast majority has been positive. Of the few negative comments that have been posted elsewhere, it's been refreshing to see someone else jump back in and respond after reading this blog. We've only had a handful of negative comments posted here, and again the main issue has been not understanding something we've been through and or the motivation behind something that we said. All in all, there is no need to respond to anything more. For those of you that have realised surrogacy in India may be a viable option for you to create a family, I promise to write an entire post this week.

We made it out of the house for the regular weight checks (Taj is now around 3.9kg and Alex 4.6kg) and both made it to the hairdresser - except Nik reckons his didn’t count as he was only out of the house for 45mins. I'm not as blonde as I usually am, which may be good as who knows how many months I'll be overdue before I can get that regrowth touched up again. Other outings this week have been focused on attempting to find a larger bath tub for the boys as they both love to stretch fully while submerged, so they either dong their feet or their head in their current tub. Thought I found one yesterday but it was pretty well the same length (just a slightly different shape) so we've given up and will now just use the big bath. Which reminds me, I must dig out a cushion for Nik to kneel on. We've had numerous toxic nappies this week so bathing/swimming has been a daily occurrence - which both boys are loving. Taj also gladly rewards anyone who's willing to clean up his backside with a beautiful grin.

We met up with the children's hospital multiple birth co-ordinator this week and discovered a few more things that are available to us, including a 'respite' type break by a carer who specialises in multiples. How much are we going to enjoy that three hours off each week for the next six weeks? It's great how much support is available once you find that right source. And yes Tina, we've turned the tv off during the night feed. Alex went five hours between feeds last night but I think that was a fluke more than good planning and/or scheduling. Or it was because Nik took him to bed with him when he went so he was super toasty (body heat, grobag and bedding)? We're getting around the three hours between feeds again but have slowed them down for both boys (by using a one hole teet) in an attempt to keep their meal actually in their body with minimal pain. For some reason we've each ended up with a boy each all day, so blocks of sleep overnight have gone awol. Must correct this asap!

My mum totally mixed up the boys this week, even though she's seen them about every second day since we've been home. The more weight Taj puts on, the more similar they look at first glance. They definitely have different shape heads and different colour hair, but that's not always enough - as you'll see from this photo:

Think Taj got really confused here - he looked in the mirror on the mat and saw himself, and then looked to the left and saw himself again. What the? I'm a TRIPLET!!

I am super cute Taj, and even more so when I smile

Alex in GI Joe mode today (complete with dad's army dog tags)

Nappies in this house could be used as an alternate form
of biological war fare

Mandy - stealing your idea and trying out some different blog backgrounds. I had no idea how many different formats were available! And yep, like your new black and white version.

Finally, a huge welcome to the world Alexa.

Negative comments

As expected, we've received a few negative comments already - and I expect that we will continue to. To start with, can you please remember this was a 10min clip covering a six months (or is it perhaps 10 years?) journey. Obviously a lot more was discussed which wasn't aired due to the time available - including the poverty angle (please don't single out how much surrogates receive as compensation in India without looking at how much all workers there are paid, and the conditions they work in), using footage of our surrogate and her husband (which was granted by them; and how do you know Farah is her real name?), higher reimbursement for a multiple pregnancy (which was covered in the payment contract our agency has with all surrogates; our surrogate, her husband or her agent (we still don't know who) simply wanted more) and who the real winner is in all of this (both us and Farah and her husband as we all achieved our goals). We agree fully that we had an extreme situation and there are many, many surrogate pregnancies in India that are super smooth. But not all! We had no idea that we were going to have problems when we commenced working with the media in our quest to educate earlier this year and it was the Indian translator we had with us during the first filming that alerted us to the problem. We're very happy for the surrogacy debate to continue if it also covers why surrogates offer their services in the first place as well as why some couples end up going overseas in a quest to create their family, including to the US and Canada. If commercial surrogacy was available in Australia would we still be saying we exploit the women that offer themselves for the service? Personally, we could never compensate any surrogate enough for the what she is offering to undertake for us. Our primary concern was the consequences for other couples as the surrogates in Mumbai (and I'm sure other cities) chat to each other - so would they too then get requested to pay additional amounts that they may feel they have no option but to pay as what could the consequences be if they didn't? Would this then drive up the cost of surrogacy in India and therefore become unreachable for more? We want people to realise that surrogacy is (hopefully!) a valid affordable option to create a family, not less.

If anyone is interested in Indian surrogacy please take note of what we've experienced and what you need to do to minimise your expose to similar issues. That's it. And then enjoy your journey as it is truly amazing.

Negative comments will not be published as the reason for continuing this blog now is to document Alex and Taj's story for THEM.

Um, hello Australia!

We're super happy with the story that aired tonight and there were only two tiny errors in it. I started to cry when they showed the preview at the beginning of the show as the boys were so divine and had full on shakes by the time we were half way through - which quickly disappeared when the segment finished and Chris, the host, advised that we have a blog which people can follow our journey through and it's available from the Sunday Night home page. What the?!? Obviously we know we have a blog but I can't remember discussing it being shared. We welcome people who are interested in surrogacy in India or are genuinely interested in continuing to follow Alex and Taj's story, but have zero time for anyone who doesn't agree with alternate ways of creating families or want to share that infertility is "god's way"of telling us we shouldn't have children. "God's way" is to create amazing medical advancements, including the ability to put a foreign embryo into another woman which she nurtures into a beautiful baby (or two) for parents who can't deliver children themselves for whatever reason.