The Announcement

Today Mark and I announced to the world (well.....our families and close friends) that we are outsourcing to India.

We make sure that our families are the first to know.  My siblings are all very supportive - they know that this has been a real struggle for Mark and me.  My mom asked me why we didn't think of this sooner.  I thought that was pretty funny coming from my mom.  Mark's family is also very supportive.  His parents even offer to help us out with some of the costs.  Before I had turned them down.....but I think we are going to accept their offer this time.

We then made sure that our closest friends who weren't going to make it to the party later that evening were in the know.  They were also super supportive.  They were so happy to hear that our journey is still going and that we have taken a very important step towards someday having children of our own.


We had a party that evening for Mark's birthday and several of our close friend were able to make it.  When we told everyone there was some shock - we hadn't talked about India before so this was pretty big news.  Once the shock wore off, everyone was really happy for us and they were full of questions.  We only had so many answers - we had landed on timing, but had not yet chosen a clinic.

Two of our friends that were able to attend were a couple that just had a baby of their own last year.  Their little girl was born early at 32 weeks and getting to 32 weeks was a struggle.  Both Mom and Baby almost didn't make it.  Mom and Baby incurred a lot of medical bills both before and after the birth - they estimated $25K - and it has been a real struggle for them to take care of these bills.  Their poor little girl has struggled with a lot of health problems which has also been very stressful for them.  They don't know if they will try to have another child due to the fact that these issues could very likely happen again in future pregnancies.

This couple said that they maybe should consider India themselves the next time....that they should just consider $25K to be a sunk cost in having a baby.  I thought about this and the same is really true for us.  We could try to have a baby ourselves and if we are lucky get to 32 weeks, possible lose myself and/or the baby in the process, and most likely incur $25K of medical bills.  Or, we could use the $25K to use a surrogate who would most likely deliver a healthy full-term child.  This makes our choice seem even more obvious to us than it even was before.