Let's back track a little bit for a second and describe the process a little...
So once you get the process of surrogacy going they ask you tons of questions. Some are easier to answer like would you be willing to pump breastmilk for the Ip's should they decide that is something they would like or how do you imagine a relationship with the family after the pregnancy and others require much more thought like how many embryos are you willing to have transferred and how you feel regarding selective reduction and termination for various reasons. I am not going to go into depth here because these are all personal decisions and really need to be given a lot of thought and consideration. You also have a social work screening which is typically a couple of hours long and it is very thorough. You go through your answers to all of the many questions and describe yourself an your family and what you are looking for in a journey. All of this information is not only used to see if you are a good fit for surrogacy, but also to build your profile for potential IP's. Once you are officially approved and move to the matching phase, your profile gets sent to Match Coordinators who use your profile as well as a few other things (like where you live) to find potential matches for you. Once a potential match is found they will email each party the other's profile to review and decide if they would like to move forward with a Skype call to "meet" and talk further.
So back to my journey... we were sent a potential match and while everything was wonderful on paper there was just a disconnect with it and a gut feeling that I could not move forward with it. Everyone was very understanding and supportive and we found a new potential match. We really liked the next profile and were open to "meeting" through a skype call, but the IP's had a personal issue arise and they needed to delay their journey :( I wasn't sure if it was normal to go through a few profiles before finding "the one" or if typically people found their match the first go around so I was feeling a little discouraged and then we got THE profile :) I quickly opened and read through it and knew immediately that everything was meant to be the way it had been and that I wanted to meet them. I probably looked at their pictures and read through their profile 1,000x that day while I was waiting for my match coordinator to tell me if they felt the same way. Finally the email came that they were excited about the potential match and a Skype "meet" was set up. This call is done just the IP's and Ian and I without anyone from the agency monitoring the call. I was really nervous about the call. Ours was scheduled for Sunday afternoon and I had to pee 3x in a matter of 15 minutes once our skype time neared. Ian was just laughing at me telling me everything would be fine (how is he always so chill and easygoing about everything?). Once the call started all my nerves went away...they were everything I had hoped for and conversation was so easy. We spoke for an hour and we all knew by the end of the call that this was a great match and we were all ready to move forward. Both parties had to notify the match coordinator to make it official and yesterday the official match came through by email <3
So what is next? Next we get all of the legal documents in order (which can usually take up to a couple of months), I need to have a psychological test done and Ian and I will fly out to California for our Medical Screenings. While all of these tasks are being completed we also use this time to get to know our IP's and for them to get to know us more too!
The guy's and I were messaging a little bit yesterday and they said they have smiled so much all day with excitment. They applied a year ago and so they are super excited to be at this point now and are so ready to become dads :) Now I just need to get the time difference nailed down so I do not text them in the middle of their night due to the time zone difference... they are 6 hours ahead of us.
I can not contain my excitment to be on this journey! It feels so good to have the process moving a long. <3
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