10 days old!!

Can't believe Ela is now 10 days old!!

We have been back to the doctors for a check up and all is GREAT, back up to birth weight of 2.3kg's, umbilicle cord has come off and is healing well. Slight jaundice has settled.

Ela loves her baths!! And just seems to get on with just about everything, nothing phases her at all.

A HUGE celebration dinner was put on by the SI Doctors last night. Many couples with babies and IP's were there to celebrate there success of reaching a mile stone of 50 BABIES!!! It was a great night, and a chance to show off our beautiful girl!! She was the perfect angel and slept through the entire night :)

All our paper are now with immigration, so we now wait........
We hope to have Ela's citizenship by Monday, all being well.
Looking forward to getting back to OZ and celebrating some more, with our close family and friends!

                                                             PERFECT ELA!!!!!!!!!!!

Life as a Mum!!

Well so far so good.

We are out of hospital and doing GREAT.
Ela is feeding well, is sleepin like a trooper.....hope this carries on lol.
She is weeing and pooing, burping and oh yeah...breathing....so what more can i ask for. She is now feeding 40mls every 2.5hrs, so I am very happy.


I am so happy...words can not explain, she is just so cute....can I say PERFECT?? Because to me she is perfect and more.

We do her DNA test tonight.....still waiting for her birth certificate to put all our papers into immigration.....but we hear that once all our papers are in, it takes about twelve days to process before we get to come home.

Hotel is lovely, nice food and great service. Staff are very friendly....so we are lapping up the quality Ela time :)

I AM SO HAPPY, DOUG IS BESOTTED, WHAT MORE CAN I SAY!!!!! .

Welcome to the world - Ela Hope

We have a beautiful baby girl born at 2.50pm Mumbia time. She is perfectly healthy weighing 2.3kg's
She is with us now, in our room, cuddling up with Dad. She is now only 4 hours old!!

We are both so happy!!! Words can not explain!!!

We can not thank the SI team and our lovely surrogate enough for this wonderful new life.

We love you Ela!!!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Safe and sound in Mumbai

We are now trying to get over our flight and the difference in time zones.

Looking forward to meeting up with the SI Doctors today and seeing our surrogate again. I am very nervous and excited at the same time. Think I might be a little emotional.....

We are very happy with our hotel the Court Yard Marriot, we spent our first day in the hotel resting.

Time now to venture into the big smoke of Mumbia!!
Feels good to be back :)

Up, up and away

The time has arrived. We leave for Mumbai on Thursday arvo!

Everything is packed, all neccesary forms completed (blah blah blah).

Spudla (as he/she has become known as) will be born by C-Section on Monday 18th October.
Much love to our surrogate - our thoughts are with her (we will see you soon).

We will soon be awash with endless smelly nappies and a endless cycle of feed bottles and being vomited on - CAN"T WAIT - WOO HOO.

Not long now!

Our surrogate is now out of hospital and is being monitored at the clinic. Amniotic fluid levels are now back to normal. Reports say both surrogate and baby are both doing well!!

We have flights booked for the 14th October, and C-section booked for the 18th!!
That will take us to 36 weeks. Hold on little one :) Mummy and Daddy will be there soon!!

Baby room is pretty much ready. All the baby clothes washed!!
DNA test kit is on it's way for Doug to complete his sample before we head off.
Neither Doug and I are sleeping......I think this is excellent preparation for the sleepless nights ahead :)

Holey Moley..... I have a constant knot in my stomach......we have been waiting for this for so long.......just a little longer!!!

Our surrogate has been admitted to hospital

We received an email from the Doctors from SI on Saturday night.
Email stated that the amniotic flid is low and blood flow to the baby is restricted to due high pressure. They have now admitted our surrogate into hospital for close observation.

Our surrogate is now under the care of Dr Soni who is minitoring things very closely on a daily basis.

We have been sent into a flap with this news as you can imagine!!!

Doctors are hoping that baby will hang on until 36wks, but feel there is a high chance that the baby may need to be delivered sooner.

Planned C-section for around the 18th of October if all goes to well, but I have a strong sense that we will be meeting our little one sooner rather than later.

Time to get super organised and get the baby case packed!!

We had flights booked for November 6th, time to rearrange everything; good job we hadn't booked accomodation.

Amit is calling us tonight, our plan was to stay in apartment accomodation at the Marriot Lake Side. We will now just have to hold off on booking anything. Like Dr Yash said, if the baby comes sooner than 36weeks, it will stay in the hospital for some time, so staying in a hotel or at the hospital would be OK.....I think a hotel would be preferable from all accounts of the hospital accomodation. Hey But at the end of the day, just being there is what is important, not how fancy the accomodation is :)

I am remaining positive and calm. This situation is completely out of my control and I will just need to go with the flow and roll with the punches.

I will keep you all posted......sending positive vibes to our lovely surrogate. I will send her some flowers tomorrow, not much fun for her being cooped up in hospital.

It's been a while!

What can I say.....time is moving along VERY quickly now. Both Doug and I have been so busy with his business. Things are starting to settle a little now, BIG SIGH OF RELIEF I CAN TELL YOU.

I have now spoken to my lovely manager at the hospital regarding our up and coming birth, and she was VERY understanding. She has allowed me to drop my hours to help hubby with the business and I am now coping alot better.

We are now 28 weeks!!!! We had a small scare the other day with our surrogate being admitted to the SI clinic with low amtiotic fluid. The good doctors were onto it quick smart and they rehydrated her with extra IV fluids and......all is well.They did say it was nothing to worry about, but you just can't help but worry. I feel much better now to hear everything is back to normal.

We have now been offered a nice cot and change table from friends of friends that is in perfect nick. Need to go and pick it up this weekend if the weather stays nice enough to put it on the back of the ute. Need to start getting organised for the little ones arrival me thinks......IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have booked flights to India for Nov 6th, both my Mum and Dad are coming too, to help, and be a part of this very speacial time.

Here's hoping the next ten weeks or so are SMOOTH sailing.

A BIG CONGRATULATIONS Amani, Bob and Jo and Timmy - you have been my inspiration from the very start of this journey. I am just SOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy for you all.

19 Weeks......HALF WAY!!!!!

Well, we have finally made it to the half way mark.
Really couldn't help myself today and went out shopping and bought some baby stuff in the sales. Not alot, just a few little baby grows and things :)

I have only got two more weeks at work before a four week break, to help Hubby through "Silly Season". Tax season is about to hit hard, and he will need all the support he can get. We are both definitely psyching ourselves up for the onslaught......TAX, TAX and more TAX!!

Unfortunatley, we have both had a few very hard weeks, with some very sad events taking place in our close circle of friends. It has really hit us both hard, and we feel very gracious to have something to be looking forward to...our little baby. In some ways he/she has helped us through the last few weeks.

ON A BIG POSITIVE: We had excellent reports from SI last week.....all measurements of babs at correct lengths. All looking good :)

14 Weeks!!

We have now reached week forteen of our pregnancy with our SM.
This week we had a full range of scans sent to us of the baby. AMAZING :)

It feels so strange looking at these pictures.
Feeling so removed from the whole process, and so far away makes it feel unreal. Can these pictures really be of OUR baby!!!

Although we are still pregnant, I find it hard to allow myself to accept that we are.
We have both wanted this for so long....I don't think I will accept that this is real until the baby is in my arms....even then, it will feel like a dream.

I am really struggling with the idea of telling people about the pregnancy. When is the right time?? Women undergoing a normal pregnancy would have announced it by now...they would be showing a bump and would have to let people in on their excitement.

When is the right time to announce our pregnancy to our boss and announce it to work colleagues??

I feel like I am carrying the BIGGEST secret around. I actually feel that our pregnancy will become more real when everyone knows about it!!

I know I must be sounding like a complete basket case at the moment!! But really I am travelling along OK.

We are so very happy with how lucky we have been so far, we are feeling very blessed to have come this far. I have precious moments when I feel completely overwhelmed with joy at the prospect of becoming a MUM!!

We are still pregnant for now........

Our last report form the SI team shows that we are still pregnant.
We had good cardiac activity, and our "blob" was only 5.3mm, teeney weeney!
We wait in anticipation for our next update, which is an absolute killer...

I think our next update will be at around the 10wk mark, which really isn't far off, but, each week feels like an eternity at the moment.

If we hit the 12wk mark I will be able to relax a little.

I didn't realise how hard this was going to be.....even though things still appear to be positive.....I feel like I am on tender hooks. Think I need to destress a little. I have a certain level of tension in my life at the moment which I just can't explain. I am normally very calm and relaxed....
On the outside everyone thinks I am cool calm and collected....but on the inside I feel like I could just explode, why am i feeling like this? I think it may have to do with a lack of control, who knows?

I know I should be happy and over the moon, but just can't let myself at the moment. We all read that anything can happen at any time, and being so far away, just doesn't make it any easier. I am hoping things will get easier after the twelve week mark. If not I think I will go CRAZY!!!!!

Sorry for such a delay in posting this.....but our life has been a little upside down lately.

Will post our next update soon....

So Far So Good.....

Well, we spoke with the good Dr's .....and so far so good. We have a POSITIVE result!!!!!
Beta level of high 100's, 174 I think they said.
I still don't believe it......all feels very unreal.
They emailed us telling us congratulations, so I suppose at this stage we are pregnant......just really feels very strange.
We are both VERY happy, and really have no words to describe how we feel.
Just need to keep hanging on for more positive news....my mind is doing backflips!!!

My heart goes out to Mandy, my dear surro friend......it really doesn't feel nice posting our positive news, when you have just been kicked in the guts.....our love and thoughts go out to you hun, they really do.....it is so hard to stay positive, but hang on in there.

Back in OZ......2WW

Well...our time in Mumbai with the SI team was VERY positive.
We ended up retrieving 10 good eggs from our beautiful donor, nine of which fertilised.
4 Grade A's, 4 Grade B's and then a dodgy one.
So we now have x3 embies hanging on for dear life (I hope) in our lovely surrogate.

Our last week in India post transfer was VERY busy.
We took a trip up to North India to see theTaj Mahal, Jaipur, Delhi etc and had a fabulous time.
It was good to keep busy.
We had a driver for 7 days that was just brilliant, who went out of his way to make us comfortable.

We had a VERY bummpy landing on Monday coming back to Adelaide. I was terrified......we almost landed and then had to suddenly abort the landing due to strong winds. Second attempt worked a treat, but, was very scary. Wouldn't like to do that again.

We are now back in the land of OZ, and we're both glad to be home, even though our time in India was amazing.

This weekend we hope to be receiving a call from the SI team to let us know our results. We are both feeling VERY positive, good karma all around. But what will be will be, we can't do or change anything now, it is all in the laps of the gods.

We have got frozen embies, so we have a back up if necessary. And we have both said that we would not hesitate to do it all over again. We are in this for the long hall.

Hope to be posting positive news soon x

Had to post these pics. Our early morning visit to the Taj :)

Back in Mumbai to do the Business

We've arrived back from Goa - which was fantastic by the way - will return there one day soon.

We have spoken to Dr Yash today and EPU is now scheduled for Thurs 18th Feb. Egg transfer will be Sat 20th. Fingers crossed for success.

We are staying at Gordon House Suites, which is pure luxury, very close to airport and we have access to Waterstones Country Club which is next door - which means hobbknobbing with the who's who of Mumbai - lol.

Although it was our 2nd time in Mumbai, still can't get used to the beggars banging on the car windows at every traffic light! Don't mind giving them food or drink, but money is a no no.

Relaxing for the week, and then off to North India next week until we head home. Will try to avoid the staff directing us to so called bargain shops as we now know they are on a commission (however shopping is good and memories are memories).

Can't fault SI so far, or our travel guru, Amit who has arranged everything admirably.

Having a Blast in Goa

Well, so much has happened since our last post.

We had a great time in Mumbai. Meeting our surrogate was a very special moment. She came to the SI clinic with her husband and Son, (who was only seven years old and very cute). The whole family looked very happy and healthy. The Husband spoke a little English which was great, but even then, it was very hard to know what to say. I was pretty dumb founded by the whole situation......not really knowing what to say or ask. Our surrogate C made very little eye contact, but when she did, it was lovely. She had a beautiful smile, which i had not seen on her profile picture. We did give the family some small gifts, but C did not want to open them there, she appeared embarrased. The whole meeting took around half an hour or so. Silly me forgot to take our camera (can you believe it!!). So lovely Gopa from SI took some photos for us, and will hopefully eventually email them to us.
We had alot of time speaking to Gopa at the clinic which was great. She told us lots of useful information about her role in caring for the surrogates while they are pregnant. She had a very positive and calming nature and made me feel at ease immediatley. We were able to look around where the surrogates stayed for there 2ww. The surrogates were very welcoming and I recognised many faces from looking at profiles previously. I sat on one of the beds with two of the surrogates and some how had a small conversation with them, with help from Gopa. It was a very reassuring experience.
Before leaving for Goa, Doug did his deed at the Hospital, (seman sample for freezing), without any hiccups.
During our time at the hospital we met a lovely American couple who are also using the SI team.They were going through there ET process and all appeared to go very well. We were able to all meet up for a meal later in the evening which was very nice, also meeting up with Amit our travel guy. Amit has truley been great during our whole stay thus far.
While meeting with the Docs at the hospital, we were told that our dates had changed for EPU as our donor had commenced her period. I was exstatic!!! Everything was going to plan, it just meant that we would shorten our time in Goa...no big deal. So we now head back to Mumbia on the 15th for EPU & ET two days later, staying for five days (all going to plan).
We have then arranged to head up to northern India to take in some more sights.....why not!!May as well make the most of our time over here.
So Amit has sorted us out some great deals....we can't thank him enough for his knowledge of india and arranging everything for us.

We are having a lovely relaxing time in Goa......just what the Doctor ordered after the rush of Mumbai. You can not fail to relax over here....sunshine every day, great food, nice beaches, and loads of tourists.
It is almost like little Britain over here!! Alot on English where we are staying in Candolim.
We hired some scooters and had a GREAT time looking around...a bit scary BUT loads of FUN.
Also went to some massive markets at Anjuna yesterday and got some really cheap stuff.
Everything has been amazingly cheap...makes for a GREAT holiday.
So five more days in paradise, and then we head back to Mumbai. Really hoping that this amazing trip is going to be topped off with some amazing results with SI. Everything has been very positive so far. Lets hope it continues..........

We are finally here!! In Mumbai!!

Can't believe we are sitting in our hotel in Mumbai.

We had a great flight over, arriving at the airport at 2am in the morning.
 We then faced a sea of Indians, with signs waiting to collect passengers.....we both became very panic stricken when we couldn't find our names on any of the many signs being held up. Finally asked someone looking official, that we were looking for the Ramee Guestline Hotel and he kindly pointed us to our driver....(phew what a relief!).....we then ventured to some dimly lit car park where we were then greeted by someone over friendly, greeting us and welcoming us to india, who shook our hands and helped us with our luggage etc, then promptly asked "porter money!!". At this point in time we didn't have any rupee money, and stated so....he replied with "any money!!"....Doug then frantically started to look for some Australian change we had floating in our bag which he was having great difficulty finding....it was all becoming very suspicious, when the driver promptly told Doug to get in the car and sit down, "SIT, SIT!!" he said. It then became obvious that this guy was just after money, and the driver just wanted to remove us from the whole situation....we drove off with the driver saying, "where are the police", "he wants drinking money"......we then drove to our hotel passing through every red light, dodging stray dogs and any car in our path along the way.
 After arriving at our hotel the staff were very friendly.....but again still had no rupee money to tip....couldn't tip the driver, who hung around us at the reception with a friendly smile for quite a while, and then couldn't tip the porter who helped with our bags to our room,.....who also hovered in our room for around a minute or so waiting for a tip......felt awful not being able to tip.....SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE RUPEES BEFORE COMING TO INDIA IN FUTURE!
 We then hit the sack about 4am, and slept soundly in a very comfortable bed until around 9am. Made it down to breakfast before it closed, enjoying yummy freshly cooked eggs (Doug being curry mad, had to have spicy cajun potatoes which he infoms me were nicely chillified).
 At breaky had a call from Dr Sudir, asking if we would like to meet up, so were picked up by Vikas, one of the clinics drivers at 11.30. Arrived at the hospital, after a very hectic ride (can't work out if Mumbains are the worst drivers or the best drivers in the world), and finally met Dr Sudhir and Dr Yash. Had a good chat about procedures etc, had a couple of blood tests and then went for lunch with them. Very nice meal with two very nice people. Vikas then picked us up and took us back to the hotel. On the way back, we saw our first cow, which, oblivious to the busy traffic, was lying in the middle of the road.
Will be going to SI offices tomorrow to meet with surrogate in the afternoon.hope to go for a wander around Juhu beach in the morning, will be investigating the Juhu restuarants this evening.
All good so far, SI very good, hotel very good, Indian people warm & friendly.

2010 Here we come!!

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas, ours was lovey, catching up with family and friends.

New Years was great also, went to a great fancy dress party, I dressed as Xena The Warrior!! Actually feel that this dress up was quite appropriate for me this year.......as I feel I am going to need great strength, courage and fight for what we are about to take on.

Things continue to move forward.....we have recently spoken to Armit the travel expert connected to the SI team, he is letting us know about accomodation options, and will help us also arrange a get away in Goa after our time in Mumbai with the SI Team. He was very helpfull, we are awaiting his email with all the details, hope to get it soon.

We have both now completed our base line blood tests and Hubby has done his seman test, just need the results to come back fine and dandy. Hubby was told he had "super sperm" when we were doing all our IVF cycles, so lets hope it is still in good form......if not.......we will be up the creek without a paddle.....and I suppose we will just end up having a trip of a life time to india without surrogacy treatment. I really do believe that this will not be the case though. Hubby is contacting the Doctors tomorrow for his results, so keep your fingers crossed for us......one of us being infertile, is enough, thanks very much!!

Need to find out about vaccinations and malaria tablets ASAP. I think I will email the SI doctors to find out if Doug especially needs to have any vaccinations, as we don't want to harm his sperm in any way. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute.

Most people who know me, know how layed back I can be......but I think I may need to step into action....quick smart now....get some lists happening and all that stuff!!

Went into Adelaide between Christmas and New year to organise our Indian Visas. Just waiting for them to come in the post now, normally takes about five days apparently.

Decided to organise a bit of a get together with close family and friends Janurary 29th just before we head off to India. We have been very open with all our friends and family about our surrogacy journey and everyone is battling along with us offering great support.

I, at times, have been hesitant to tell some people, not knowing how thay will react. Whereas Hubby has told just about every man and his dog.....he is very excited and positive about the whole process, and doesn't give two hoots about what other people think!!

I have had a very scary dream just recently where we arrive at the SI clinic to find that they are completely unaware of who we are.......it is a horrible feeling.....after all these months of organising things over the internet, you just hope that when you do arrive in India you will get greeted with open arms and expectation....but like I say in my dream they look at us as if we are from a different plant and have no idea who we are!! It is horrible what tricks our mind can play on us!!

Any way better get moving. Best of luck in 2010 to everyone on this surrogacy journey, no matter what stage you may be at.....we are all in it together!!