Friday, March 14, 2008

First Official Step

It's official...we have an attorney on retainer and the contract underway! We met with an attorney with experience drafting surrogacy contracts yesterday and went over our GC's requests and ours and various parts of a contract. It went really well. We hope she can have the contract complete by the end of the month and then we both can sign it have it notarized!

It's a weird feeling having an attorney on retainer. It feels sort of cool to be able to say, "OUR attorney says..." or "OUR lawyer says..." LOL. Thankfully she is retained for a fairly benign matter and not some criminal issue :-)

Our GC is a little confused about what she thinks was her first post-partum cycle. She said it lasted for only one day, but she's still crampy. Since I don't have children and have no experience with post-partum cycles, I don't know if that is in the realm of normal or not. She does have three children, so I'm assuming based on her confusion that her post-partum cycles with them were more normal or at least longer. I'm trying not to worry. We won't know if it was a cycle until she either has a more real cycle or if her April cycle begins when she expects.

We also have the lovely task of figuring out who gets our child(ren) if both Husband and I die during our surrogacy journey. THAT will be fun. Right now we are leaning towards Husband's mother because we trust her to do the right thing and make sure that the other grandparents see the grandchild(ren). I'm not sure if I trust my mother to do that. Sad, but true.

5 comments:

niobe said...

Congratulations on your first official step.

Since you're considering the topic, one thing you might want to review with your lawyer is the weight that courts in your state would be likely to give your designation about who would take custody of your child(ren) in the event of your deaths.

I was told that in our state, our designation would be treated essentially as a suggestion and that, if another family member decided to seek custody, s/he might well get it, despite our wish for someone else. Everything depends on what the courts view as the best interests of the child(ren), not what the parents wanted. In other words, even if there was a family member that I didn't really trust, there was absolutely no way to ensure that s/he wouldn't end up with custody.

JJ said...

Congrats on this big step! Excited to talk to you about it tomorrow=)

Anonymous said...

How fantastic that you've made the jump to the first big official step. Congrats! I'm excited for you :)

sara said...

That is so cool that you guys are officially underway! I can't wait to hear every step of the way.

theatheistbaker said...

Congrats!! That's so exciting:) I'm a former GC- I delivered my surroson October 16th for my IFs.

I'm going to bookmark your blog so I can read your updates if that's ok with you. I know what it's like going through this as a surrogate, but not as an IM. My IFs live in Paris, France, so we maintained contact, but we weren't very close because of the physical difference and a bit of a language barrier (they spoke english, but not fluently). It was a wonderful experience from my end, but I don't know much how it was from their POV aside from what they told me in e-mails and the few times I saw them while I was pregnant.

I can't wait to do it again, but I've promised myself that I won't until I'm finished with nursing school (December! Can't come soon enough!)

I have an online diary that I've kept for the last 3 years and wrotein a lot during my pregnancy as a surrogate (though it's not exclusively about that, so it may be a bit boring. lol). If you're interested to see what it was like from my perspective, I'd be happy to send you the link.

Good luck good luck good luck! Are you on SMO by any chance?