Today is 3rd of January in the new year (2017) and it’s been over one week since being formally introduced to Mellisa, our surrogate. We have not really spoken with her as we found out that she may not have enough credit on her phone and that she was moving. It was also closing in on Christmas and the New Year. We were busy with friends coming over to visit us and she was also busy with her own things for the festive period. We wondered how we would communicate with each during this vital 14-day period that the surrogacy agency has given us before we have to provide feedback if we wanted to go with Mellisa… and she will also have to do the same, to let the agency know if she wants to work with us. We didn’t know what we should do. The last thing we wanted to do was to be too pushy and she decides not want to work with us because of that.
Firstly, let me put it out there that our surrogate wanted us to call her Hope, as it is her first name. Her second name is Mellisa, which she gave to the agency. Hope is such a pretty name and it gave us the Hope that we needed.
I emailed her yesterday to arrange to have a Skype video chat today at 2 pm, which is 2 January in Canada. She didn’t respond to that email.
2 pm came. Nothing happened. 2.30pm came and I decided to call her to see if she has even received the email. She picked up the call and this sweet voice greeted us. I introduced ourselves and asked if she saw the email that I sent and she said no, and was apologetic about it, and said that she will be more available tomorrow for the Skype video call at the same time. I asked her if she has any other ways of communication such as WhatsApp. She said no. At that stage, Cameron and I started to find that the commutation might progress to be a bit more difficult than we thought but we were still hopeful as we have to speak with her and see what she is like and what situation she is in. We may be able to find a middle ground to get a satisfaction on communication methods and frequency.
Within half an hour, we received an email from her saying that she has just downloaded WhatsApp. What a surprise! Immediately, I went on the app and created a group chat for her, Cameron and I. We started saying hi and telling her how wonderful she is to choose us, etc. She was very excited about us and also started asking questions. All of us spoke on WhatsApp for a few hours. It was a great start!
Now we are looking forward to tomorrow’s Skype video chat!