Love CAN last a life time...

Gerry keeps bugging me that I still haven't posted for October...so here I am!

Well we are getting back into the swing of things, work, preparing for winter(if you call it that in sunny AZ) and getting ready for Mom and Dad to come snowbird for 5 months. November 2nd is their arrival date and it can't come soon enough. We have picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off and are moving forward in a positive direction.

I often wondered if love truly grows with couples after being together so many years and I realized this past week it certainly does. My parents have always had the 'Leave it to Beaver' marriage for the past 40 something years, but that was a little close to home and I hoped for even a little of what they share in my own marriage. As many of you know I am a Director of Nursing at a long term care/rehab center. I visited with a couple of my patients the other day. One little old man and his wife were celebrating their 70th (no joke) Wedding Anniversary. They were all smiles and when I asked him at one point where his 'beautiful wife was?' He replied without hesitation and a huge smile that lit up his face, 'and you know Rhonda she gets more and more beautiful to me every single day!' It truly brought tears to my eyes. The other couple were sitting on the couch holding hands and I went over to do some 'nursey' stuff and they were chatting about how they had been married for 68 years. I smiled and said, 'how absolutely wonderful that was.' She looked up at me and beamed,'it is so wonderful to spend every day with my very best friend.' Okay, at that point I truly lost it! I had to walk away as I had tears rolling down my face. I know you are all probably thinking this is all way off topic to what our entire blog is all about, but I don't believe so. Through all of the struggles, disappointments, heartache, exhaustion, hormones, tears and so much more, Gerry and I continue to fall more in love every single day. I am proud to say after 10 years (since we met back in Oct.1998) that I truly am blessed to have my best friend and soulmate by my side. I truly cannot imagine spending forever with anyone else than him.

So on to the surrogacy stuff...
We have talked and discussed till we are blue in the face and we have decided that we are going to go ahead with egg donation very soon while we continue to try on our own. We won't have to make a trip back to India for this until our child is born because Gerry still has his frozen 'back up' sample there. But we may just go back 1/2 way through since I am sure we will be going crazy with anticipation. I was having some hesitation about it not being 'my baby'. I have talked with some people on the forum who are going through this and talked with friends and family who have all been extremely supportive and insightful. I am still the baby in the family and my parents opinions have, and will always be important to me. I called and talked with my Mom and she made me cry. I guess it doesn't take much for tears these days. She said, it WILL be my baby and no matter what we decide they will both love that baby as if it came from my belly. Her and Dad are 100% in favor of us using donor eggs Indian or other. My dear friend and co-blogger Amani said the most amazing thing, 'Also remember, you love Frankie to bits and she has no genetics from either you or Gerry, not even a human! Love just is.' She is so RIGHT!!! It will be our child and I will love it like no other. A baby is a miracle and we will be the best, most amazing family together. We will work through others ignorance if it comes and we will talk to our child and tell them how they were created and they will know they were brought into this world because of our love and desire to have them. Gerry on the other hand is having absolutely no hesitations he is ready for our family and as he says, had we adopted it would have been neither of our genes and we would love that child like it was our own.

We are proceeding to the next step. Picking our Indian egg donor and deciding which factors our important to both of us. We both agree certain traits like intelligence and arts or musical stuff are a learned behavior, maybe that goes against what the experts say, but my sister has a beautiful voice and you don't want my parents or any of us other kids to sing! As far as physical traits...I don't really know, I think when we see our donor we will know she is the one! Our wonderful surrogate has agreed to try again with us. She has the opportunity to go with other couples soon, but when the doctors asked her if she would wait for us to decide what our path would be and that it may be 6 months or so, she told them she was honored that we wanted her and she would absolutely wait. So, for those people out there saying Indian surrogates are forced into this...I say that's just a load of S@%T, just listen to our surrogate and decide!

Gerry has been following the India news on-line and misses our wonderful Mumbai and Docs daily, he is ready to go back and even said tonight,'can't we find a way to work there half of the year?' I finally hung our beautiful curtains we purchased while in Jaipur and it is wonderful to look at them every day and remember our fabulous vacation.

Will keep you posted and I promise Gerry will be back with some more tips for you future India travelers. Stay tuned...