Sunday, June 24, 2012

The calm before the storm

As expected, not much going on in my surro world this past week, but all my other worlds have been spinning almost out of control. It's so cute and naive that I thought May was going to be our busy month, and that I'd have a nice, restful summer. Maybe things might slow down for a bit in August. Maybe.

I heard from both J and S this week, which was nice. I feel bad, because I rarely sit down on my computer, and mostly access the internet from my phone these days, and when I opened my laptop today, I saw my response to S from Wednesday, sitting there in my outbox, unsent. Oops! But it was good to hear from them; I feel more like this is real when *something* is happening.

I also heard from my agency and the lawyer that had been assigned to me on Thursday. Apparently my IFs have decided to switch lawyers, and they want to work with the office that had previously been assigned to me, so I'll be assigned a new lawyer. But the old lawyer called me to make sure I was comfortable with all of that, which, of course, is totally fine with me. I don't have any sort of preference when it comes to my legal representation, and I trust my agency to only let me be assigned lawyers of good quality.

It was nice talking to the lawyer briefly, though, because she took it upon herself to answer some questions I didn't know I had (I'm not too concerned with the legal portion of the process, but some friends and family are). She wanted to make sure I was informed as to the specific legal issues that we will encounter whilst dealing with a gay couple from China. Apparently a gay couple is not allowed on a birth certificate for China, so legally and medically I will only be in contact with J, and he will be the sole parent on the birth certificate (I think). That does clear up my curiosity as to why S won't be fertilizing eggs also, which tends to be the case in a lot of gay couples. It also could be that he's just not concerned with a biological tie to their children, but even if he wanted a biological child, as per Chinese law, it sounds like, we need to be able to substantiate who exactly the father is in this case, so S will have to wait until next time if he wants a biological child. At least, that's the way I understood it.

I also learned this week that J should be in LA from July 22-25, which is exciting news. And here is where I will outline the craziness of the next couple of weeks: On Wednesday, the 27th, Tony and I are so looking forward to running away to Reno, childless, for 2 days. We'll be back be on Friday, and then the following Thursday, July 5th (as long as my period cooperates), we're getting down to LA for medical and psychological screenings. We'll be down there for anywhere from about 12-36 hours. Not sure yet. Then, at some point in the next 2 weeks following that, we need to make it back out to San Jose and Santa Cruz to celebrate my step-mother-in-law's birthday. And then we'll need to go back down to LA to meet J on the 25th, because that's the only day that Tony doesn't work during the time that J will be in LA. And then, the very next day, the 26th, we had been planning on leaving on a week long trip to Washington.  Phew!

So, to weed out the surro details, at this very moment, I'm looking forward to starting my period mid next week, which will put us on schedule to get my med screenings on July 5 (the have to happen between 7-14 days after I get my period, I think).  And then, I think we have to wait for all of that to be cleared before we can start on contracts, but I'm not sure. Clearance should take about 2-3 weeks, I think. And then I think contracts can take just as long. So, we may be meeting with J before we have medical clearance. And hopefully they're getting all the egg donor business squared away, so that when tests and cleared and contracts are done, in about 6ish weeks, the egg donor and I should be all ready to sync our cycles in anticipation of a transfer, maybe late September? Does that timeline sound right? :-)

But, for now, just counting down the moments until grown-up time in Reno!

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