Nervous. Anxious. Excited. Hopeful. It’s like a blind date.
We didn’t know what to feel but we wanted to present ourselves in the best light, and also to impress her. We figured that we don’t really have to worry too much as our surrogate, Hope, has seen our bios and she knows what we look like and some information on us. We have to remember that she was the one who chose us, and she obviously liked what she saw and read on paper… or on email. We only had to show that we had personalities and that we are able to communicate with her openly and if our personalities mix well.
It is 3 January 2017 and the Skype Meeting was at 2 pm. I thought I should send her a WhatsApp message to remind her 15 minutes before. She responded saying that she just woke up and may be late! She sounded frazzled! She was going to be late for a ‘blind date’! I told her she didn’t have to doll up to the nines and she needed to just be herself. Cameron and I were in t-shirts after all. She was ready at 2.15 pm. And I called her. She took the call in her bedroom and she was dolled up! She wore a black spaghetti-strap top paired with a gold necklace, had her hair neatly brushed, and had make-up on. We were surprised that she went through the effort of dressing up! Luckily we had our hair brushed and styled to match our t-shirts. hahaha.
Hope was cheerful and she expressed her excitement to work with us and that she have always wanted to do this when she was younger but she was not in the position to do it until now. She is now in a better place to be a surrogate. Through the jokes and the light chatter, we managed to get some of the issues out that Cameron and I wanted clarification. We wanted to get confirmation that she was really open to carrying twins – and when we say that, we explained that we are hoping to transfer two embryos rather than hoping for identical twins. Both Cameron and my family histories do not have twins, so it is unlikely that we will have identical twins from any of our embryos. She said she is open to it. We did further clarify that there are risks that come with having twins and she was okay with them. We even said that if at any point she does not want to carry twins, we will move on to our Plan B, which is to have two surrogates going more or less at the same time to achieve a similar result. She said it is still okay.
We realised that Hope decided to be a surrogate with the mindset that the surrogate will do all that they can to give the IPs what they want through the surrogacy journey. We were shocked, as we told her that it is not about us, it is about her as a surrogate, that she being the beautiful person that she is must not be forced to do anything that she is not comfortable with. We will respect her decision/s and will work with her. She is not our employee, so she shouldn’t be taking orders or instructions from us about how she should go through the surrogacy journey with us. We will never, ever, EVER take advantage of anyone like that. We want our surrogate to be safe, and to be happy with the decisions that we make, and the decisions that she makes in relation to her part of the journey. When we told her that, she became happier and more comfortable. Hope, Cameron and I are all new to this surrogacy process and we needed to guide each other along, with the coordination of Canadian Fertility Consulting (CFC), our appointed surrogacy agency.
Through the chat, we also raised another issue regarding her expected embryo transfer time. CFC mentioned that she is looking at a June transfer of embryo. Hope mentioned that she is actually open to anytime for transfer, and doesn’t have to be in June. I suppose after all the legal contracts, egg donor retrieval, etc, we will be looking at End April to May 2017 transfer. Well, let’s hope so.
Anyway, after having about 45 minutes of chatting about everything and each other’s background and situations, Cameron and I had to rush for another appointment so we had to continue the chat on another day. Both parties left the chat happy and hopeful.
We love the way Hope is… a strong, independent woman who has a heart of gold.
