Christmas

Dr. Seuss

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?”

I think Christmas time can be a very hard for many, especially if you are desperate to have a family. Everyone is excited about the kids getting excited, it can be hard to escape. I have many expectations around Christmas; the American Disney movies have so much to answer for. I want the huge Christmas with all the trimmings. I want the ever-illusive Christmas cheer so much it hurts.

The reality is that the harder I push the further away that dream becomes.

In Australia, Christmas is in the middle of the summer, it is hot. For my family it is often at the end of a hard harvest, that is rarely as good as it needs to be financially to sustain the family through the next year.

So, needless to say there are heaps of barriers to an outrageous Christmas filled with credit card driven consumerism and over inflated expectations.  

This year needed a new approach, this year I tried to back right off. I let the day unfold with no expectations.

Earlier in the year, I had raised the idea of Secret Santa, where we bought one present that was something the person wanted. There are no children in the family so, for now, there is some agreement to this approach.

Personally, I loved it. Secret Santa reduced my Christmas shopping stress to a manageable level.

My brother and his girlfriend made an amazing Christmas lunch. All the roast vegetables your stomach could desire with roast pork, turkey and chicken, where too much meat was not nearly enough and some good wine.

While our Christmas is pretty low key with family coming together for the day, we are not tradition free.

We traditionally support the Australian film industry by falling asleep to a comedic movie of some sort. This year was the embarrassing “BoyTown” (2006), which enabled me to cringe and knit at the same time.  All day, I would look up, laugh and then have to look away.

We have had some great movies in previous years:

• Siam Sunset – 1999
• Kenny – 2006
• The Mule – 2014 (not so funny but amazing)
• Crackerjack – 2002
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – 1994
• Muriel's Wedding – 1994
• Red Dog – 2011

As a family it is really nice to come together and laugh. By searching out some great, sarcastic, dark comedies we are all able to relax and have a chuckle.

Rather than last minute, I am now going to need to plan the next Christmas movie. I have used up all the well-known movies; perhaps one of these will make the cut next year:

• The Castle (1997)
• Road to Nhill (1997)
• The Dish (2000)
• He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001)
• Crackerjack (2002)
• Mullet (2001)
• Garbo (1992)
• Housos vs. Authority (2012)
• Strange Bedfellows (2004)

Seasons Greetings everyone, and I hope you had a lovely, relaxing day with loved ones.

Surrogacy Seminar

I think it very important to support the local surrogacy community, so when there is a seminar on surrogacy in town, I try to attend.  I am hopeful of learning something new and meeting others that are trying to take a similar journey. It is good to feel that we are not alone. 

The following are some comments from a recent event. 

Sam Etherington from “Families thru surrogacy” chaired a surrogacy seminar in Perth recently.  

The seminar included:

• Presentation from a NSW lawyer in relation to the legalities of surrogacy across different jurisdictions
• Heartfelt stories from Intending Parents (Arranging parents)
• Comments from a Director of an IVF clinic in USA
• Legal insights from lawyer in Canada, who has been an Arranging Parent twice
• Advice from a surrogacy organisation that has worked in Israel, Nepal and Ukraine

As part of the seminar, Mr Etherington provided a brief summary of international surrogacy:

• Thailand – closed down
• Nepal – no surrogacy laws, closed down
• India – banned foreigners, closed down
• Cambodia – no surrogacy laws – only 2 IVF clinics – considered high risk
• Mexico – a new country to surrogacy, very difficult to get paperwork organised
• Greece – opened up 8 months ago to heterosexual couples only, locating a surrogate is difficult
• Ukraine – presentation from Lotus Surrogacy, Dana Magdassi, - surrogacy is legal in Ukraine, socialized medical system, all requirements are provided during the pregnancy
• USA – many IVF clinics, presentation from Oregon Reproductive Medicine, John Hesta, formed 1989, 1000 egg cycles a year, about 150 surrogacy cycles per year, 140 egg donors
• Canada – Altruistic surrogacy, tolerant society, surrogacy is legal, reasonable costs, approximately 4 months to find a surrogate, system allows intending parents to reimburse surrogate expenses each month (one month at a time, rather than all up front), surrogacy legal in Canada for 35 years

While the seminar was only 2 hours long there was a large amount of information. Much of the information was not new to me, but I did start to understand some of the differences with the USA and Australian IVF processes.

In USA, Comprehensive Chromosome Screening is undertaken far more regularly than Australia, which has an impact on how and the number of embryos that are transferred. Comprehensive Chromosome Screening is about remove 5-10 trophectoderm cells from 5 to 6 day embryo. Genetic material is removed from the embryonic sac, not the future child.

In USA, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) collates surrogacy data. The is  very large body of information as IVF has been undertaken for a few decades. This  data set can be a useful resource in understanding the live birth rates from an IVF cycle across different age groups.

I got chatting to a number of lovely potential Arranging Parent couples. The question on the tip of my tongue (and all other couples) is how do I find a surrogate.  We all had a chat and came up with the standard people to ask, but we also identified some very “modern”, “innovative” methods:

• Family
• Sister
• Cousins
• Mother
• Aunts
• Friends
• Friends of friends
• Newspaper advertisement
• Social media
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Surrogacy forums

Note: In WA, Arranging Parents can advertise for a surrogate. In many jurisdictions across Australia advertising for a surrogate is illegal. Make sure you know what you can and cannot do.

Good luck on your journey

The hard questions...

Finding a surrogate is a highly emotional task.  The searching and waiting can be frustrating and then you have to tackle some difficult topics.

We are very uneducated in respect to the types of difficulties an unborn baby might go through.  Hopefully we are not confronted by any hard decisions during our journey, but we thought it would be good to know about as many different conditions as possible. Ryan and I have discussed what we think our approach might be if we ever have a baby that is impacted by any of the following medical conditions.

Chromosomal

Trisomy 21 – Down Syndrome – intellectual and physical difficulties

Trisomy 18 – Edward Syndrome – intellectual and physical difficulties

Trisomy 13 – Intellectual and physical difficulties

Neural Tube

Spina Bifida – Unclosed neural tube

Anencephaly – Underdevelopment of brain and skull

Encephalocele – Underdevelopment of brain and skull

Heart

Tetralogy of Fallot – Structural heart malformations

Transposition of the great vessels – Structural heart malformations

Other

Cystic fibrosis – Lung and digestive abnormalities

Sickle Cell Anaemia – haemoglobin abnormalities

Tay-Sashs – Neurological abnormality

Canavan – Neurological abnormality

A little bit of dreaming...

I am not sure if I have mentioned it previously but Ryan and I are practitioners of the weekly date night.

The idea of date night is to have an evening where we both commit to:

• ·      Getting home from work at a reasonable time
• ·      Being nice to each other
• ·      Practicing some active listening
• ·      Doing something special that is about us

Our definition of special can be dinner at a restaurant, walk around the park together, open air cinemas or on some really special days baked beans on toast in front of the TV.

Even our next door neighbours know about date night and sometimes we all head out for what we call double date night.  Our beautiful neighbours are elderly and we are quite a funny foursome. What can I say they are perfectly placed to give us some great tips, they celebrated their 50 wedding anniversary last year.

So this week, even though our heads were both caught up in work matters and I was late home and normally it would have resulted in a cancelling of date night…we pushed on.

We managed to coordinate collecting me from the bus, so no chance to slump on the couch and never move again.

We had a homely Italian meal that was big enough to feed us for the whole week. Inevitably, we talked work but something fun happened. It is a bit premature and we are usually very careful not to get too excited like this but we allowed ourselves to play around this children’s names.

Ryan is Big R, I am little R and if we ever end up with a beautiful baby it will be Really Little r.

I often joke that we should be the three Rs.  Needless to say, we spent a large amount of the evening reading through boys and girls names starting with R.

There were some we liked, some that were more of a joke and some I liked and some Ryan liked.

I can hear the groan of our little baby…sorry Really Little r, you cannot choose your parents.  

Adopt Change

From the little I understand it sounds like there are some good arguments to review the current processes around fostering and adopting in Australia. 

15,000 kids waiting for parents to read them a bedtime story

http://www.adoptchange.org.au/home

Our Vision

Every child deserves a family, and we embrace adoption as a positive way of forming a permanent loving family.

Our Mission

To raise community awareness, encourage reform and empower all Australians to ensure all children have a permanent loving family.

End Game

1. Create a community movement supporting adoption.

2. In the next 3 years, double the number of children adopted in Australia and halve the wait time.

3. In the next 10 years, ensure adoption is available to every child who cannot be cared for by their biological parents.