Week 19

All is quiet from India.  We are scheduled to receive our next scans in two weeks.   The time is passing by quickly and Lee and I are happy to be more than halfway through the pregnancy (twins almost always arrive before 40 weeks).   We have both told work about the twins and now find ourselves completely out of the closet on the pregnancy front.   Telling people has been much more fun than I expected.   It was difficult telling the first few people, but now that we have some practice the questions seem to be very similar.  I was expecting people to ask a lot of why, what, when and how much does this cost type questions, but we have received very few of them.  So far, the common questions we have received have been:

·         Do you know what you are having? (No, we will find out when they make their entrance into this world)

·         What is the immigration process? (they are automatically American citizens because they are genetically related to a citizen and therefore we need to apply for a passport at the US embassy and an Indian exit Visa)

·         When will we go to India? (at approximately 35/36 weeks and then we wait for their arrival, hopefully we wait for week 37)

·         Where will we be when the babies are born? (outside of the operating room)

·         How long will we spend in India? (depends on when they are born and how healthy they are at birth)

·         How did you find your surrogate? (Our doctor found her for us.  She has an agency that matches intending parents with surrogates)

·         Will we stay in our walk-up apartment? (For now we will, but we can’t promise for how long.  We first want to get our babies home and then we will figure out the timing/location of a potential move)

Everyone at work has been supportive and no one has been anything but considerate of the situation.  I hope that everyone else going through this has the same experiences we have had.  One thing that I have received is some strange looks.  I always start with, “we are expecting twins in late October”, which has produced some strange looks because I am clearly not pregnant and more than once I have been holding an alcoholic drink in my hands.   

It is exciting to think that 19 weeks from now we will be in India holding our babies!  Hopefully the next 17ish weeks are uneventful!

One year ago today, Lee finally asked me to marry him.  We were celebrating the eighth anniversary of meeting in a bar when he finally stopped talking about the buildings in midtown and asked the big question.  I, of course, said YES.  The last year has been amazing…two trips across the pond, a destination wedding and the first half of our twin pregnancy! 

Week 17

We received an update from Delhi this morning.  Everything continues to look good with both babies and our surrogate.  We were hoping to get some images of the babies profiles, but all we received were several pictures of the top of their heads.  Now we will wait for a month and hope the next images feature the faces.

My brother got married this past weekend.  Lee and I took care of his 4, 2 and 11 month old boys.  It was a glimpse into our soon-to-be life of crying babies in the middle of the night and little ones deciding that 6 something is a good time to get up, despite the fact that we didn't get to bed until almost 2 AM.  Lee changed his first diaper in ~20 years.  My two year old nephew helped him out by instructing him on exactly what to do and agreeing before hand that he would not pee on him.  We both agree the sneak peak made us even more excited for TO and TT's arrival!

We told my brother and his family our news yesterday!  Now that they know, we will be sharing the news with the rest of my family and many of our friends.  

Hello from the soon-to-be-daddy

Embarrassed by a friend today who thought I really do refer to Facebook as The Facebook, I decided it's now time for me to show that I'm part of the 21st century and the best way to do so is to post to my lovely wife's blog.

For the benefit of friends and family with whom we haven't yet been able to share our happy news, the quick synopsis of this is basically, starting backwards, we're roughly 16 weeks pregnant with two little Khans. We won't find out sex until they make their grand entrances in late October, but they're being baked by a surrogate in Delhi, which is a large part of why we honeymooned in India. It's been a long process of research and getting comfortable wih a pretty non-traditional route (including what will be two trips halfway around the world) to parenthood, but we couldn't be happier, especially since we've been blessed with a double, as I've been saying.

So excited and nervous as hell at the same time, I can't help but think how hectic life will be and going from doing what we want, when we want, to right away having two little ones telling us what, where, when, and just because. But then again, it's not like we do most things in a traditional order or when people expect anyway, so why not jump right in with both feet? If I weren't nervous enough, how about the lineup of birthday gifts I'll have to figure out and be on the hook for all in the span of less than a month - the three most important women in my life (wife, mom, baby sister) and TO & TT (twin one and twin two), yikes.

On that note, time to go enjoy one of the last inpromptu dinners out for a while.

Oh, family and friends, please don't make reference to the new additions on Facebook - we want to keep them under wraps through next weekend so we don't steal any thunder from Stacey's brother's wedding. Thanks.