Look Daddy and Papa, my face and my hand...

Ah, technology is amazing! In the past 3 months, we have been receiving USG scans of our babies. While these were quite informative, they didn't really reveal any qualitative features of the twins. So, it was great to get the 3D scan of our twins recently. We could make out real faces of the twins this time. It's incredible!

One twin has a full face image, while the other twin was showing off his/her five fingers. We got a side view profile of the face (despite having echos of the remaining fingers on the head appearing as bumps on the image). Now, back to waiting.... in a month's time we'll have an update from SCI. Here are the 19th week 3D images.

Twin 1

Twin 2

Twin 2

Daddy, I want my...

One of the twins apparently like to use his/her hand lately. It looks like he/she will be left handed based on the scans thus far. The other twin seems content. We don't know if one or both twins are actively moving about, since the scans are snapshots at a specific moment in time. I wish we could ask GT if she feels much movement. We plan on sending her a card for the holidays -- knowing that she doesn't celebrate the same holidays, we will send her a plain card just to let her know that we are thinking of her.

I'm very glad that many SCI couples share their experiences as well. The tips on what to do and how to deal with the system help us a lot in the future. We will have to deal with many of these things as well.

Here are 17th week images. Twin one looks like he/she is sucking his/her thumb. Twin two is just hangin'....

Surrogate's privacy...

Today we got a new USG result. We are pleased to say that the twins appear to be doing well, and our surrogate (we'll call her GT), is also fine.

Speaking of GT, I noticed that a blogger (who I completely understand their excitement when they posted the USG images) has completely forgotten to remove the full name of their surrogate. I don't want to sound like an old hag, but we need to protect the identity and privacy of those kind women who are helping many couples fulfill their dreams to become a family. I don't know much about the Indian culture, and I don't know the possible consequence of such privacy breach, but let's not wait to find out what the negative consequences could be. So, please, if you see a post of USG images online with the patient's name, please let the blogger know about it. Thanks!

Here is an 11th week scan of one of the twins.

Going back, but moving forward

We are approaching 19 weeks. It's still scary as things could still go wrong. I believe that the "bleeding" experience really traumatized me and my partner. Yes, it's somewhat normal to have a bleeding in the course of a normal pregnancy, but we were really scared because we actually had a single fetal reduction (SFR) 10 days before the bleeding occurred. As you can see on the image, we had 3 gestational sacs (see below).

I have been quite liberal and very progressive as far as I remember. Nothing, however, prepares anyone for an SFR. The experience made me realize how hard it would be for a woman to make the decision to terminate her pregnancy. In today's politics (well, actually since the GOP has called themselves "righteous"), I am absolutely baffled why the GOP thinks and treats women as if like they go to a "salon" (so to speak) for an abortion. Notwithstanding, our experience was emotionally taxing. We held a ceremony with several friends to say goodbye to our third baby.

Goodbye my precious one! We thank you for your sacrifice....

Our Surrogacy Experience

I guess, eventually, I would have to do this... Well, today is the day! I was inspired by many intended parents (gays and straights) to share the experiences that my partner and I are going through right now.

Like some of the blog posts I've seen online, we have a common bond -- surrogacy! Surrogacy Centre India (SCI) is the clinic that we ended up choosing after many online researches.

Anyway, we are now 18 weeks with twins. We had a "bleeding" scare just over week 14 that lasted for a whole nerve-wracking one week. This was a real emotional rollercoaster for my partner and me. We were not prepared for it! We both got depressed and waited for the worse news. Needless to say, one bump on the road, and hopefully no more ahead!

While we are still at a stage where things could go wrong and lose the twins, we are cautiously optimistic that they will come and will be in good health in April 2013. Based on our nuchal translucency scans, we think we will have a boy and a girl. Here are the scans.