The waiting game  -  October 26, 2013                                                                                       

As much as I like India…. And I do really. I have to be honest though. This trip is not like a vacation. I feel quite isolated in our apartment. Mosquitoes and dengue fever are running rampant through Delhi right now, and I am reluctant to take baby outside much. A couple of fellow parents have fallen ill to same. We will go and see them for dinner tonight and I am excited to go out.

We are waiting. Each day we accomplish a different task. We have obtained a birth certificate with the help of Poonam, have submitted DNA results and citizenship forms to our consulate (we are Canadian) To be honest, the consulate has not been overly helpful. We have submitted all our paperwork in before the Dwalli holiday. Poonam prepared this for us; my advice to you would be to double check everything.

Oh yes and the other thing I forgot to mention, and pack… my birth certificates. LOL , so make sure you review what documents you need before you leave and save yourself a major headache and friend’s having to dig though your documents in a big panic. This ended up costing us an additional couple of days.

Ok back to baby update… she is cute, she doesn’t cry much. My husband is working with his clients via computer and internet so he is up at night (and doing the night shift) and I am up in the daytime with her) besides the bad TV all is well.

I have not mastered cooking on the 2 burner gas stove though. The McDonalds does do delivery. We ordered some take-away and I have been sick already so be careful and remember to bring some antibiotics with you just in case.

Our fellow SCI friends, it's nice to go out while you are there, if you know some other parents  :) 

and of course my beauty .... Sleeping peacefully through all the honking horns and noise. Now the vacuum doesn't bother her one bit  

Please clear customs ....

Where has all the time gone, it feels like i just got here....

Well my daughter is one week old today Sachi Kaur. We arrived in India at 0345 in the morning, with a lot of luggage and got to our empty apartment. 

My plan of course, was to stock the apartment, get formula for bb, whatever else she needed including diapers, formula, a bassinet etc. stock our apartment with what else it needed and patiently wait for my child to be born. Ha!

Its hard to get around in India when you don't speak the language, and don't have a car. 

Not impossible mind you. Just difficult. So we managed to grab a few things and headed over to see Sachi 

Beautiful... I was holding her and couldn't actually believe she was mine. I am a nurse you see, and I have held plenty of babies. So I was sitting there, and this little tiny thing is snuggling against me and I am thinking ... this is mine, we really did this. We are sitting half way around the world holding our child. After so long. How many people were involved to make this possible? Something that's so easy for some? Isn't science a miracle? 

I was filling out the FRRO paperwork this morning, and I was writing the SCI address down, as ISIS hospital IVF and Multispeciality Centre. We watched Sachi from her first heartbeat ultrasound thanks to this clinic and this wonderful woman Dr. Shivani, who gave us a child when no one else could. There are just no words. 

Why is my phone ringing at 3 AM?

She's here! 

I have been joking that I haven't slept in 2 months because I have been sleeping with my Ipad under my pillow waiting for email updates from India. You see with the time difference, you can often get them at 3 am my time. 
So 0245 the telephone rings last night, we are up packing. Why would I be asleep and ready to leave in the morning ... I think OMG the baby is there, and sure enough it's Dr. Shavani telling me our daughter is born. I run and get my husband, so she can repeat the news to him. 

She's here, she's here! I can't believe its true. 

She's here, she's here, I worried nearly every day that something would go wrong, but it didn't and now she's here. 

She's here, she's here, and I'm sitting on a plane and my eyes are so teared up I can't see the screen to tell you all... She's here.... Sachi Kaur Lamba is here. 

No more fertility treatments, no more travelling to places, hoping and praying cause you are here baby girl you are finally here, thank you most high.   

Packing, packing, and more packing

The day before ... 
Of course when would I have time to write this? I have been running around with all of our last minute preparations. We leave tomorrow for India. We are flying Emerites Airlines out of Seattle. Of course first we have to get to Seattle. We live in Edmonton, Canada. So our flight is well, not so direct. Hmmm.... Maybe I don't want it to be direct, more chance of blood clot forming from lack of movement in my economy seats, but I digress lol. 

I have my fall coat on today and could of had some mittens on this morning. Now the weather is going to be hot again. So weird. 

So for updates, our surro mommy was in the hospital over the weekend, however, still no baby. 37 weeks today, woo hoo!  Bb is breech so will be born via c-section. I spent many sleepless nights waiting for that email beep/telephone call. Bb wants to gain a little more weight I guess.

Your Mommy and Daddy can't wait to meet you. We packed so much you have your own suitcase and you are not even here yet :) we love you so much and see you soon. 

Congratulations to my friend Ben, can't wait to see you guys and your new daughter. A great blessing for us all. 

This is a portrait of Lynn, Raja and Daisy's hand/paw prints. Soon to include one more. 

Last day of work

Well, today had mixed emotions. It was my last day of work. I am off until April. Its hard to believe, 

1. I won't be at work for 6 months, I don't think I have ever been off work for that length of time. I have worked since I was 16. So its odd somehow to picture not working. I suppose I will be busy LOL

2. Our baby is coming! Soon! This is hard to believe too... I posted this picture below on Facebook and Dr. Shivani commented. Neat. So neat. Can't wait. This is how I feel today. 

3. We are leaving for India in 2 weeks, October 10th. We will be there for a LONG time. I am so excited to learn more about the culture. Last time we were there the visit was too short. I put my pictures away, actually that is a lie. I did not put them away. I looked at them and secretly wished and hoped that things would work out. Worried nearly every single day. 

This is our picture from my last day of work, we had a potluck lunch. No baby shower for me, of course I still worry and will continue to do so, till I am holding our gift. We have had so much loss, I just can't help it. I cry tears of joy tempered with trepidation. I wait for our email updates holding my breath, such is the way of my journey and its nearly complete. 

The other picture is me at Red Fort, in New Delhi. We were there last November. The second picture is the Golden Temple, in Punjab. We flew there to visit. Our journey started in India a year ago and will begin again. I am so excited, i can hardly wait!

Tickets are Booked

Hello everyone

Greetings from cyberspace. To update you all, I have struggled so much in wanting to write my blog. I started and stopped it about a dozen times. To be honest, it was very painful for me. I found myself dwelling on all the failures we have suffered through. So I decided to not blog until I had something to say. Then when I had something to say, I worried, well… what if I have to UNSAY it. Because I have had to UNSAY it before. And if you have had to tell people you are not pregnant, it is indeed difficult.

So I decided to write my blog about my experience in India, when we go and pick up our baby, because that’s right folks, we are indeed pregnant. A lovely woman in India is keeping our child safe and he or she is waiting for us… and bb we will be there soon!!

We loved this child from the moment it was conceived, we loved the idea of this child before even that. I invite you all to join us in our journey. We leave in 2 weeks for India.

On 2013-02-21, at 2:42, Neha Yadav <neha.scihealthcare@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Lynn, 

cOnGrAtULaTiOnS...!!!

We would like to inform you that as per our schedule we have done a Beta HCG test for Soni.

We are happy to inform you that her beta value is 97.41.

Please find  attached file for the same.

We would like to congratulate you as you are pregnant now.

We will now do a USG scan for her within a week to check the pregnancy sacs.

Once her scan will be done, we will get back to you at the earliest.

SCI wishing you good luck for this beautiful journey ahead.

With Best Regards,

Jyoti

SCI Healthcare
A-28, Kailash Colony
New Delhi- 110048
Ph: 91 11 41034631
[Please do not send any financial information at neha.scihealthcare@gmail.com.  You can contact Dr. Vishal at vishaldgour@gmail.com & Mr. Gourav at account.scihealthcare@gmail.com ]

      

The Road so far....

This story starts actually many years ago. A girl met a boy and well...

Ok that story will take too long to tell. But this story begins as as we receive an email confirming our confirmation in a adoption seminar in 2012. Are we truly ready to open up our home to strangers for a home visit; ready to pay $10, 000 and wait on a list with the hopes of someone 'choosing us' after waiting for 2 years to reach the top of this list?

Again we discussed surrogacy. Would it be possible financially? In our long travelled road of trying to have a family, I had mentioned travelling to India many times, as my husband's family is from Punjab.

So I look up surrogacy IVF India in Google, don't know what we would do without it these days, and found a medical tourism website. Who gave me the name of three clinics, and somewhere along the road of all this internet surfing, I found the amazing Kerri, a fellow Canadian who had raving reviews for the clinic Surrogacy Centre India (SCI) as well as a daughter, born in India.

She went out of her way for me, giving me her personal email, and managed to quell all my fears.
Her Blog is amazing, every tear she shed, every form she filled out and every untravelled road she had to take recorded. If it had not been for Kerri, I would have never had the courage to send that first email to the SCI clinic.

Here is is:

On 8 August 2012 14:13, lynn wrote:

Hello 

I would like to get more information about possible egg donors, what information is available to me? Would a global egg donor be possible? Do they come to India to your clinic? 

Thanks.

Lynn 

This is the email that started our journey,  one that is soon going to be heading into it's next chapter.