Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (9 page)

You know it's kind of funny that the term “X” not only symbolizes a particular “target” day, but also stands for the X-chromosomes which you will be handed by your biological mother. While culturally, many women are made to blame for only giving birth to girls, rather than the “desired” boy, biologically, women can only give rise to women. It is the father who decides the sex of the child as his sperm has the X and Y chromosome. It is during fertilization that the process decides if the new child will be XX (a girl), XY (a boy), or in rare cases a form of intersexuality or other genetic irregularity. Today, we don't know if you become a boy or a girl, and I can assure you that neither your father nor I care. We just hope that you will have ten toes, ten fingers and that everything else will be in its right place when you are born so that you get to start your life healthy.

There is no guarantee that today's process will succeed, although the dear doctors have assured me that given the near perfect preconditions (healthy donors with no fertility issues), the success rate is almost 97%.

I won't be calm until we've heard the results from the first pregnancy test, which we should have around the middle of August. Then there's another every few weeks, and we really cannot 'know' with any certainty that you are okay until the first trimester is over, which is approximately at the end of October.

Needless to say, that after today, it all depends on you! I may seem odd to place this kind of responsibility on you, but it is your will to live, your will to grow from a single cellular organism to become a full grown human being, that will determine your success. Splitting your cells regularly, growing, multiplying and performing that wonder which we call life. Nobody can do that but you. The doctors can provide you with all the necessary assistance to make it as easy as possible for you, your dads can pay for the invoices, but in the end, it really is up to you. We hope that you have that will to live and we can't wait to welcome you to the world!

Today, if all goes well, you will look something like this:

Don't worry, you won't look like this for very long,

certainly not by the time you're able to read this! :)

It is actually quite astounding to realize just how quickly life develops and how soon in a pregnancy, we look like humans.

Funny, isn't it? After just 48 days, you can see eyes, ears and fingers (though still looking a bit alien), but just one week later, it is certainly fully human, albeit very tiny at 5 mm! 56 days, that is 8 weeks! Kind of puts the entire abortion discussion into a very interesting light… But that is something I've discussed earlier and doesn't really belong here.

Well, here we are. It's past 3 pm in Mumbai and I haven't heard anything yet. I might not until the
blastocysts
(normally three of them) are transferred into the surrogate on Friday, one of them hopefully is the future you! :)

Keep your future fingers crossed that it all goes well and that your dad and I can take you into our arms sometimes mid-April next year…

Love, Dad

If you thought day X was nerve-racking, today is worse…

Today it all comes together.

A little while ago, I actually did e-mail the clinic to ask them for an update on the progress, because I'm just such a nervous wreck. I mean, there are no guarantees that our first attempt will be successful. 

All you have to do is google “unsuccessful IVF” or talk to friends who've undergone IVF treatment to understand how risky this is and how lucky you are if you're successful the first time.

Now don't get me wrong, I am optimistic, and we have reason to be. Healthy egg donor, good sperm (LOL), and a healthy surrogate mother, combined with an excellent team of IVF doctors! Knocking on wood…

Today is one of those big days in the history of your development, because today, at the age of three days, consisting of a full 8 cells, you look something along the lines of this:

Today, you and two other embryos are going to be implanted into the womb of our surrogate. And that is where you'll be spending the next 40 weeks, provided you grab onto something and hold really tight.

Because not all embryos that are implanted into a womb actually stay there. That is where the process usually goes haywire, because many embryos don't find a place nice and cozy to stick to and are being washed out again.

This is what our surrogate is enduring for us today, and both your dad and I are thinking of her today. We are extremely grateful for the favor she is doing us. In fact, I have no words to describe what I feel for what she is doing for us, and no matter what so many out there think of this process,
vilifying
us for what we do, your father and I will be forever in her debt, and I sincerely hope, you will one day feel the same way.

You may wonder, of course, how the embryos are selected for implantation.  What made the doctors choose YOU over your potential siblings in that petri dish? After all, it could mentally drive me nuts thinking that I'd have to choose between up to 20 potential kids. I found a couple of interesting articles online that might answer the question, although I am uncertain as to how the clinic in Mumbai does it:

-
Choosing the best embryos for transfer

-
How do we choose embryos for transfer

I've read some of the posts on various blogs and forums and there really seems to be no scientific “best practice” (not even the articles above suggest one), so I'll just hope for the best, because in the end, I believe in the force of life. Not necessarily Star Wars midichlorians, but mother nature's powerful plan to keep this planet alive. I believe that if you want to become a part of our crazy little family with fish, cats and two loving dads, and all the people that are supporting us in this, then you'll hang on to the walls of that womb tightly, you'll continue to split your cells, and develop into a healthy child, and with a bit of luck, we'll be able to hold you in our arms sometimes in mid-April next year.

Just hang in there for now!

Love,

Bappi

Hepp!

Nope!

Wasn't meant to be, quite yet…

I just got a call from the agency in Mumbai. The egg retrieval was today. Eight eggs, but only five of them were viable. So they suggested we use some eggs from another donor who also 'delivered' (not sure this is the appropriate term?) today…

Heart-broken and emotionally distressed, we have five minutes to make a decision.

So here it is: we use the five eggs, hope for the best and use the others as back-up…

So instead of having implantation today, we have a bad harvest. Not the way this was supposed to go.

But at least you can go back to
THIS post
to see what happens next and then continue to
THIS one
in a couple of days.

IVF treatments really are nerve-racking. Particularly compared to your Friday night binge drinking fuck leaving girls pregnant… Some people really are lucky! 

Oh well…it is what it is. We knew going into this process that it wouldn't be easy.

First the good news. This morning, we received an e-mail from the clinic with regards to the development of our embryos, three of which are to be transferred into our surrogate today. I expect to hear the results later today. After that, the wait begins.

I'm still learning about the development of the embryos, but it is interesting to see that from two women and my sperm, some embryos are already at the eight cell stage, whereas others are only at six or four cells. Although they had the same amount of time to develop (more or less).

So here I am, “father” of 19 embryos, three of which will be transferred into the surrogate today, the rest will subsequently be frozen.

What does that mean? When does life begin? Alex and I were talking about this the other day, and his reply was (being rather tired at the time): this is a question for philosophers, not us…

Well, what is a philosopher? What qualifies anyone to have thoughts about life and death? Aren't we all uniquely qualified to think and ponder about that which makes us human? Makes us alive?

To me, ever since last week, five days ago, when I thought (wrongly) that the insemination would take place, the bio-bug has been gnawing at me. I've been gripped by this sensation that I might actually become father to my very own biological offspring. As a gay man, born in the 1960s, becoming a father has been impossible, physically, for the longest time. When I was a boy or teenager, IVF was not yet a science to reckon with.
Louise Brown
, the world's first in vitro baby, was born in 1978. I was already nine. At the time, and for many years to come, treatments were so expensive, and knowledge of its existence so limited that it just never seemed possible.

It is only in these past 10 to 15 years that IVF treatments have become mainstream, and even more recently, available to gay men & women. I won't discuss the ongoing controversy about our “ability” to love and nurture children or whether we are suitable to become parents. I just accept that we are where we are now with a certain degree of gratitude. After all, it's not just me. I've been 'ready' for 20 years. You also need a partner, someone to share this with, someone to help you share parenting with. Alex, being 12 years younger, needed time to catch up. That is MY life, but now we're here!

The feeling of possibly being a father biologically is strange. It's new. Previously, it had never been even on the radar screen for me. It was inconsequential. And it still is, to a degree. I mean, if child protective services called today, offering us a foster child to care for, I would consider it just as seriously as we did four months ago when last they called (screwing with our hearts and mind). I might be more relaxed, as not 'everything' hinges on that call any more. We have options we didn't have back then.

If you look at the question of parenting from a societal point of view, it's grim. Many more women get pregnant than needed. Many children face a life in orphanages all over the world. Children in many families suffer from abuse, many even face death by the hands of their parents. On the other hand, you have all these families that aren't able to become parents, couples and singles who would give their lives for the chance of becoming parents, who would lovingly raise children and give them the best possible chance in life, but for some odd reason they cannot. 

Our society does a miserable job at bringing the two together, bridging the gap. Some countries, like the US, do a much better job at things like adoption. Others, like Sweden, where we live, are notorious in their obsession with biological parents being some sort of supreme beings, no matter how miserably they treat their kids.

I'm starting to understand the “emotion” behind the Swedish thinking and legislation. The sparks of emotion at having this life started from my own semen is strong, but luckily for me, I've been living this 'hell' long enough not to succumb to the emotion. I won't let it suck me in. I won't allow it to take hold of my consciousness. It is a dangerous emotion. Because with it comes the feeling of possessiveness, of ownership (a whole different set of questions follow in its footsteps), and of control.