The pictures

Monday September 23rd, 2013 will always be remembered as one of the most special days of our lives. This morning at 2:48am EST (New York time), Lalit from SCI sends us this email:

Dear P&S,

We hope you are doing fine.
We would like to inform you that Shabana has gone into labor and she is having strong contractions.

In view of the same, our Obstetrician team has taken her into labor room and planning her delivery.

We will request our colleague- Ms. Nabanita to please visit Eden Hospital to capture photos of your babies after birth.

We will get back to you soon with good news :))

With Best Regards,

Lalit

 

Of course we were sleep at the time. But apparently 10 minutes later (3:01AM and 3:03AM EST),  babies are born via C-section. At around 7am when I was waking up to go to work, the phone rings. As soon as I looked at the caller ID, I knew it's from India. Dr Shivani congratulates us and gives us the update. It was so wonderful to hear her voice giving us the good news. Then we get this email with pictures attached: 

 

Greetings from SCI Healthcare!!!
Congratulations on Achieving Parenthood.
Please find attached the Pics of your babies.

Also please find below the health status of your babies:

• Both the babies are healthy and fine.
• Both the babies are on Demand Feed.
• Vitals and Systems of Both the Babies are Stable.

We would like to inform you that your baby girl & baby boy are in Eden Hospital.

We would like to request you to please find below the contact number of Dr. Anuj (Pediatrician at Eden Hospital).
If you have any concern in mind or you need any updates regarding your baby girl & baby boy, you can directly contact Dr. Anuj to clarify the same.
We all at SCI are very happy for you and looking forward to meeting you soon.

Please feel free to contact me for further assistance.

Thanks & Regards
Nabanita 

So the babies showed up 2-3 weeks earlier than expected. But the good news is they are healthy and won't be needing NICU. So now we are in a hurry to pack and get ready to book our hotel and head to Delhi. Have spent most of the day dealing with work, HR, talking to family and friends and doing last minute paperwork. It's going to be a crazy week. Have shed a few tears when talking to loved ones. Have been waiting for this moment all my life, and I cannot believe it's finally here and we'll get to hold them in our arms in few days. I feel emotionally drained and my brain is scattered all over the place at the moment. Need to get some sleep soon. 

We haven't finalized the names. Would like to see them in person before naming them.

May all your wishes and dreams come true. Ours definitely did today. 

Introducing our bundles of joy :)

Our baby girl born at 3:01AM

Our baby boy born at 3:03AM

Babies are here!!!

Speechless Monday!

Dear Brooklyn Couple,

 

 

We would love to Greet you as God has blessed you with a beautiful & lovely baby girl and a smart & healthy baby boy.

 

We wish your babies to be as fascinating, beautiful, cheerful, smart and kind as you. Let the lucky stars always follow them.

 

Please note their details :

Twin 1-

Sex: Female

Date: 23rd September 2013

Time: 12:31 PM

Weight: 2.33 kg

Twin 2- 

Sex: Male

Date: 23rd September 2013

Time: 12:33 PM

Weight: 2.25 kg 

Your little master and little princess are so cute and we all are so happy for you as you have got the most precious present.

 

Our Colleague Ms. Nabanita will get back to you soon with their photos and further details.

 

 

With Best Regards,

Arpana

on behalf of SCI Healthcare

A-28, Kailash Colony
New Delhi- 110048
Ph: 91 11 41034631

Week 34

Just a quick update that we received our 34-week scan and our surrogate mom and the babies are all doing well. Here are their stats:

• Twin1: 4.8 pounds (2191 grams)
• Twin2: 5.2 pounds (2343 grams)

That's exactly 10 pounds together! Sorry Ms S for having to carry all that weight around for us! :) According to the report, both babies are in cephalic presentation now.

Supposedly week 34 is a big milestone in pregnancy. Still cannot believe we are at this stage and getting closer to the finish line. We have checked with Dr Shivani and she's recommending we should be there by week 38, which is mid October. But something tells me we have to go before then! I have read that majority of twins are born around week 36-37. Hoping the babies will stay put for another 3 weeks so we can finish our remaining shopping and shelf projects. We don't want to inconvenience them with those tasks when they are here!

The war for picking baby names continues. Lol. While we have pretty much settled with the 2 boy names, the girl names are still up in the air because we have too many choices. For their last names we want to hyphenate ours. Hoping we won't have any issues for their birth certificate or passports. Would like to hear from other parents with similar experience.

Congratulations to SCI clients Anwar and Magnus each having twins recently.  Best wishes to each family.
Will share our packing list in next blog.

Week 32

No news from SCI, but a few random thoughts in my head to share. Have been quite busy with the remaining preparations. Most of the shopping for the major baby items are done. Still need to pick up a few smaller things. I have to say the hardest decision was buying a double stroller. As other parents can attest, you would need at least two sets of car seats and two sets of strollers for babies throughout their childhood. The choices for double strollers get limited and can get expensive compared to single strollers.  After lots of research and visiting baby stores, we finally decided to start with a simple "Universal Baby Trend Snap N Go" stroller, where you can easily snap two infant car seats into it. Hopefully after a few months when we don't need to snap car seats into the stroller, we will buy them a double stroller (hopefully City Select or City Mini). Funny how these days I turn my head on streets when I see strollers, not only to check out the stroller, but also the babies inside! :)

In past few months we have got many great advice from parents from all walks of life. Interestingly we find many contradictions. What works for one parent may not work for another. For example, our neighbor keeps swearing the diaper genie is a must-have, whereas I hear from others it's waste of money! At the end of the day we have to assess each item to see if we really need it. We tend to lean towards the advice of other twin parents, specially those in NYC because they share similar challenges.  In past few months our good friend Stacey, an SCI mom, has been so helpful with her advice on so many things including stroller and car seats. I have relied quite bit on her because she has twins via surrogacy, and they live in a small apartment like ours.

Since we live in a two-bedroom small apartment in Brooklyn, at this point we are only buying things for newborns / infants below 6 months. For examples, we are starting with a mini crib and will eventually buy two cribs once the babies get bigger. That should give us time to make room and do the research and also knowing the gender will be helpful in making decisions later on. Definitely raising kids in a big city like NYC is quite challenging as space is limited. I love this storage ad that I recently saw in Manhattan:

Last week my sister and her family visited us from California (the Bay Area), and it was so wonderful spending time with my nephew and niece one last time before becoming parents. Those kids have been a major reason for us to pursue parenthood, and we would always love them and cherish the relationship we have with them even after we have our own kids, although I know we won't have as much time for them as we used to.  This weekend my sister surprised us by announcing that she's expecting her third baby in January! So I am thrilled our twins will have a cousin their age to play with :) My sister and I are only 16 months apart so growing up we were very close like twins. So in a way it's nice to have kids in the same age so we can share the experience. We were joking that once we all get together next year, people might think our kids are triplets! :) Interestingly we have about 7 friends from various cities that are pregnant within few months of us. This is in addition to all the friends expecting via surrogacy. So we should have plenty of support as we go through this journey.

Our next scan is due in 10 days. Time is flying fast. We are now focusing on buying a car, hotel and airline reservation. October 11 is supposed to be my last day at work.  Have a great September everyone.

Week 30: Shower Time!

Last Saturday, August 17th, five of our female friends put together a memorable shower filled with great food, fun games, music even dancing at the end. The party was at our apartment, so we couldn't invite too many people. But we managed to squeeze about 30 guests including 5 toddlers (two sets of twins)! My mom and sister were the only family in attendance. It was such a delight to see all, and we are very thankful to everyone for the gifts they showered us with. 

Baby shower gifts

At the end our wonderful hosts turned the shower into a disco event!

Construction is completed. Babies room painted light purple. Nursery setup is in progress

Shower party favors given to all the guests depicting our monkeys! :)

Our favorite gift of the shower arrived from New Delhi 3 hours before the party in the form of an email from SCI for week 29 scan!  Happy to report our surrogate and babies are doing well. The little ones have been putting on weight (in fact doubling since last scan). According to the scan, twin2 has now surpassed twin1, weight wise:

• Twin1: 3.1 pounds (1420 grams)
• Twin2: 3.3 pounds (1513 grams)
Twin1 is currently in breech position and twin2 is in cephalic position.
Hoping the next few weeks will go smoothly and the babies don't trouble Ms S too much.

While we are happy with our pregnancy and grateful for everything that SCI has done for us, we wish smooth journeys for other IPs currently pregnant as well as those who are trying. And still hopeful India will reconsider its surrogacy laws to include singles and gay people in a near future. Having a child should be everyone's right not a privilege for a few.