Appreciation

I’m feeling a bucket load of appreciation for Matt and Brendan today as I write this blog entry.

It’s Easter Monday and this morning I needed one last blood test for our tracking cycle. Despite being a Public Holiday, Repromed were open, so both boys and I met there about 8am. They used that opportunity to complete their final blood tests too which was checking for infectious diseases. We all had this done in January before Jen did her egg collection, now all members of our team get tested again after the 3 months of quarantine to make sure we don’t have any nasties that went undetected.

Matt doesn’t like having blood tests (despite having many tattoos so external needles aren’t the issues!) but he was a brave boy 😘 so the nurse gave him TWO lollies 🍭🍬. The three of us then went out for a quick breakfast and then back to my place.

The reason for this post is for what happened next. Matt and Brendan took our kids out for about 4 hours.

That might not seem significant to some people but I needed to let that sink in for a bit.

These two wonderful human beings shared most of their public holiday with me and my family. They took the kids out to play Mini Golf and then out for lunch. They did this so that Glen and I could have some child free time to catch up on house work, or school work, or SASS work for me, or even to just catch our breath without the rug rats. This is such a rare thing in our lives that anyone other than grandparents helps out in this way. They created kid free time in our day and that is the most precious gift in my life right now.

Anyone reading this who has (or remembers having) young children would probably appreciate how significant those 4 hours of child free time are in your own home. To get to the point of the kids being comfortable with others, you have to spend a lot of time together to allow that relationship to build, hence the previous post! Emily and Ewan adore the guys and were so excited about their day with them. They went in our car as they have the kids’ car seats in them. Would everyone else feel comfortable with other people driving your car and driving it with both your kids inside? There’s a lot of trust going on here. Another example of how surrogacy in Australia is all about trust. My IFs (Intended Fathers) are going to be trusting me with their child for 9 months, and trusting that I’ll do the right thing during the pregnancy. It seems only right that we should get to that place of trust the other way before we launch into pregnancy.

I was so grateful to them both for spending quality time with my children and for keeping them fed and watered. Ewan is 3 and has pretty much mastered toileting, however they still had to help him with that every half an hour apparently. Mini Golf is thirsty work after all!

Today I got a sense of what it must feel like when people say ‘thank you just isn’t enough’. The gift of Time that I received today was priceless. It can’t be bought in a shop. Maybe this, I guess on a bigger scale, is what it feels like for Intended Parents when a surrogate brings their child into the world.

A gift that can’t be bought in a shop and when thank you isn’t enough.