Last weekend, the start of December, the start of summer, our team had a great weekend together. Actually, I should back track to the Tuesday before that as my IFs, Matt and Brendan, helped out with the kids. A post on acronyms, like IFs, is coming soon!
Tuesday
Glen was out to the Year 12 formal and I have a yoga class on a Tuesday night. M&B have been at our place a few times now when the kids go to bed and they’re familiar with the bedtime routines. As a team, we wanted to invest this time so that the kids were comfortable with other people putting them to bed. It’s paid off. It also means that once I’m pregnant, if Glen and I have a Date Night, we don’t always have to use up babysitting favours from grandparents or pay for a babysitter, as the boys can help out. Or if I’m tired and grumpy (inevitable with pregnancy!) and we need a hand one night during the week, one of them might be able to come up after work and help out with the kids.
So my IFs joined me for a hectic dinner and then they dived into bedtime routines with reading stories, pyjamas, teeth, toilet, nappy for Ewan, antics to get into bed “you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man” and oh yes, how could I forget Ewan missing the toilet and …..uuu hummm…. a little nugget on the floor! They both took it in their stride (after Ewan had dirtied his strides) and sorted it out. I didn’t step in and washed the dishes in peace before heading to yoga. They did a brilliant job! Any parent to a 2 and 4 year old knows that it takes a lot of trust and time for kids to be comfortable with other adults, especially at bedtime and feeling safe with just them in the house when both parents are out. I arrived home 1.5 hours later to a quiet house and had a great chat to the guys. We’re ticking boxes as a team that’s for sure.
Saturday
We all headed up to the Adelaide Hills and met in Hahndorf for Strawberry picking at Beerenberg Farm. It was hot and windy, but we still had a great time. Shouts from the kids of when uncovering yet more giant strawberries, “Brendan, I got a big one!”, were delightful. I’d like to think that one day we’ll do this same adventure when the guys are dads after I’ve birthed a surro bub for them. The photos from this day say it all.
We then swapped cars so that Glen and I could visit our surrogacy lawyer, Megan Sweetlove, to sign our part of the paperwork. M&B had used Kate Bishop and had already signed their names on each of the 17305868 pages of the document. OK, not quite, actually 27. Just that act, of switching cars so that the guys could have the car seats for the kids, takes trust. Trust on both sides to allow others to drive your car. For us as parents to let others drive our kids around. I think these are important milestones for all teams to reach.
Megan is just the bomb! She is confident yet so calm. I want to just be around her to emulate her calmness a little more. Add in crazy Anna, and getting hubby to take silly shots while I signed the agreement, and it was the opposite to Megan.
Megan asked me how I felt when it was signed and I got a little emotional. I’ve been in the surrogacy community for over 2 years now and on that day, I finally signed the legal work to become a fully fledged surrogate. Megan asked when do surrogates think that they become a surrogate? I wonder what everyone else thinks. For me, I think it will be when I’m actually pregnant. Having the counselling and legal work done though is certainly closer to becoming real. Does one start to become a surrogate when they make that mental step that they want to investigate surrogacy? If wanting to do it for strangers, is it that point where you start seeking out new friends? No right or wrong answer here.
After signing our agreement, and taking with us a certified copy for the boys to take to Repromed for an appointment with their egg donor friend Ms J during the week, we mat at Patch in Stirling for lunch. So the paperwork is complete! How long did that take us? I officially offered to be their surrogate on September 8th, after 5 months of dating. So essentially 3 months to do all of our counselling and legals. It has felt like the right amount of time.
For a more detailed overview of the legal requirements of surrogacy, have a read of Marian’s post titled Lawyery fun.
Sunday
Brendan is a keen decorator and had the first (of his many) Christmas tree put up on the weekend of the Pageant at the start of November. Having two munchkins, we’re much more behind the times. Brendan was horrified by this fact so we invited him to come up and help us out with that task! Our whole street also does Christmas lights so we needed to start lights outside the house too. We get 10,000 people in the street in Christmas Eve! Matt is a keen GoPro-er (now a word!) and recorded some of the day, check it out. He’s got such a great eye for capturing key elements and then splicing it all together. Matt and I worked as a team outside the house. Getting the boxes of lights down from inside the shed, unraveling the power boards, rope lights, solar versus LEDs, reindeers and so on. We worked as a great team – perhaps I’ll hire him each year to help out 😉 Brendan spent the afternoon inside with the kids decorating the tree. Definitely not in the same sophisticated style as the one in their house but one that fills me with joy as the kids loved helping. In the video, I get all warm and fuzzy seeing Brendan lifting each of my kids up as they help put the ornaments on the tree. I had a moment of imagining him lifting his own son or daughter up to help decorate a tree in years to come. It’s future memories like that that confirm for me why I want to be a surrogate. To help my friends to become dads.
Surrogacy Safari 