Today is our amazing son Noah's 1st birthday. As we celebrate, our thoughts turn to the people who made this day possible and the support we've felt along the way.We're especially thankful to our anonymous donor; we'll never meet you and yet we see you in Noah's eyes every day. To our incredible surrogate who carried Noah with a smile despite him kicking his way through the pregnancy. And to the team at our clinic for their care and professionalism. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Along the way we met some wonderful couples. We shared the same determination to become parents yet most had had more challenging journies than ours. We're thrilled that all are now either parents already or becoming parents very shortly. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Our own families are richer for the arrival of our little one and Noah's four grandparents, two aunts and uncle are there for us all the way with their loving support.And finally, we're now surrounded by other parents with great kids of Noah's age. Most of those families have a mum and a dad but we share exactly the same daily challenges of raising our little one and so we don't feel any different.
Adam and I were chatting last night about this year gone by. So much has happened that for once it doesn't feel like a year that has flown by. We've had so many milestones to celebrate along the way: the precious time we spent in India as we recalibrated our lives as new dads, introducing Noah to our families, first smile, sitting up, crawling, first word......
We often reflect on how our lives took a fork in the road this day last year when we heard "It's a boy!". As I'm writing this I can hear Noah playing "Bam Bam" with some object he's found that makes a loud noise. And Adam shouting "Ouch ouch" as he's being slapped. A boy he certainly is!
So Happy 1st Birthday to our precious little man. You really are the best thing that ever happened to us.
Happy birthday gorgeous boy! Your family will always have a special place in our family's story. (The part where I describe the difficulties associated with ordering ice cream in India, ha!) I cannot believe how big Noah has gotten! Much love to you all.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Noah. Guys he is just adorable!!! Sorry I missed this post!
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI am Dr. Sharvari Karandikar, Assistant Professor at the College of Social Work, Ohio State University, USA. I am contacting you because my colleague Dr. Lindsay Gezinski and I are interested in conducting research with couples that have used transnational surrogacy services. We are specifically studying your motivations and experiences of international surrogacy. We would also like to learn about your perceptions of the surrogate mothers. The interviews will take 30-40 minutes and will be conducted via Skype or telephone. We will give you a $10 amazon gift card as reimbursement for participating in the study.
This research will help us develop empirical knowledge base on experiences, problems and difficulties of international gestational surrogacy. This information is not available to social scientists and there is a big gap in the literature on this topic. This research will also help us advocate for rights of parents and surrogates involved in the process, in doing so we hope to be instrumental in informing social work practices and policies on the issue.
Your experience is very important, so we hope you will consider participating in this study. Please let us know if you are interested. You can email us your decision to participate at karandikar-chheda.1@osu.edu
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Sharvari Karandikar-Chheda, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
College of Social Work
The Ohio State University
http://csw.osu.edu/about/faculty-staff/faculty-directory/karandikar-chheda-sharvari-ph-d/