I barely slept last night I was so nervous. Poor Mr3 picked up on that and for the first time since starting kindy (1 month) he didn't want to go. Of course, 5 mins later it was another story thank God!
It was so lovely having hubby with me- I find its so much easier to do scary things like this when you have the solid backup of someone you love. He had to be there anyway, but I still appreciated it.
We spoke to the counselor for all of 5 minutes before she brought the couple in. All she asked of hubby was 'Do you consent?' and 'Do you have any questions?'.
They walked in and we immediately remembered seeing them at the clinic walking past the waiting room. She walks in and said 'Oh I thought it must have been you when we walked past'! I suppose we were the only couple in there with a wriggly child in our lap!
Their first question was a biggie- Why are you doing this.
It stumped me at first as I wasn't expecting it. My answer is pretty simple though.
If I dont then who will? I have written a post 'what drives me' but haven't popped it up yet.
We talked about various things- they asked about family histories of illnesses etc which I thankfully dont have a lot of and also things like family trends. My family has a long history of being quite musical so they were keen to know about things like that. [My mother plays piano, her mother plays piano, her mother played piano, her mother played piano... and so on!]
One thing that I keep thinking about is that they wanted to talk about any 'restrictions' I wanted to put on donating. That struck me as strange. I do understand many people prefer to donate within certain boundaries but my logic was always that everyone should be given the opportunity to be parents. I didn't put any restrictions on who I wanted to donate to and so I wouldn't put any restrictions or requests onto the donation itself. [NB. the example the counselor used was 'if X & Y moved to Timbuktu, how would you feel about that?' My response was 'Well if they want to move, its none of my business!]
Some also want regular updates if a child eventuates from the process- photos, letters etc. Again, if the couple wanted to do that (for closures sake or whatever other reason) I would be open to it, but I certainly wouldn't request that they send me any updates! I personally feel that once the embryo is implanted into her, then its really none of my business.
Having Mr11months with us was a nice ice breaker too as he grinned, and toddled (he's nearly walking) and generally looked pretty cute while doing naughty things so it was helpful to have him there. We had taken a photo on hubby's phone of our 3 year old in case they were curious and showed that around (tongue poking out. silly!)
It was a very strange meeting in the sense of being guided to talk about certain topics by the counselor but also feeling quite comfortable with these new people. The nurse had talked about matching people who would normally get along in a social situation and boy, she had got that right.
We came out of it with a great feeling of peace and purpose. The recipient couple were overwhelmed, but that's understandable.
So the next step, as I've said before, is weaning and then we go from there. Normally 2-3 months after weaning will be the cycle.
xJ
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