Episode 174 – Mahesh – gay dad

00:14
Welcome back, or if this is your first time, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series with me, your host Anna McKie. My guest on this episode was a co-host on the regular webinar series that I run. Those one-hour webinars are free and will take you through the surrogacy process in Australia. You will hear from a surrogate or parent and there are opportunities to type in your questions and we will try to answer them. You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org.

00:44
This episode, featuring Dad through surrogacy Mahesh, is one from the archives and was recorded in November 2022. Mahesh and Phil from Sydney are parents through surrogacy twice. Their surrogate Megan, who lives in Queensland, was previously a stranger and now a lifelong friend. Their sons, at the time of this recording, are Isaiah, aged four, and Jordan, nearly one.

01:08
Mahesh has been a mentor with SASS and has supported many new gay intended dads who are at the beginning of their journey. I hope you enjoy this episode.

01:17
So Mahesh, obviously there’s a lot to get to the point of getting pregnant as a surrogacy team, which is about where these photos are at. So we might come back to the beginning later, but tell me who are in these photos and what’s going on here? These are photos of both of our journeys. The right-hand side is second journey at the beginning. The left-hand side is first journey at the end, a couple of days before Isaiah was born. So we were just doing some R &R.

01:40
before Megan went into hospital. So you’ve got Megan and her husband at the end and then Philip and myself closest to you. And again, Megan and Nathan on the right and Philip and myself on the left in the second photo. The second photo, so the one on the left was most recent journey. So that was prior to embryo transfer. So just before we went into the transfer room.

02:02
In the clinic, we scrubbed in, scrubbed up like we were going into surgery. Yes. It’s definitely not surgery. It’s over in a matter of seconds, really. so many people in the room when Megan gets pregnant. Yeah. So, us four, then you’ve got the IVF clinician or the doctor, then you’ve got the nurses, then you’ve got the embryologist. What a team. Not sexy at all. No. And how many embryo transfers did it take on each time? We were very fortunate at both times. So for us, it was one.

02:32
both times. If we get time, I know there’s other parts of your journey in surrogacy we could come back to as well. It has to work first time for some, so I’m glad it did here. I’ve got some stats on that if anybody’s got questions about.

02:43
This is a beautiful photo here. So Megan and I met through one of the Facebook pages many years ago, just perfect strangers. I’ve been sort part of the surrogacy community within Australia since 2014. So you could call me a seasoned IP, I suppose. Definitely. An elder. Yeah, an elder. This photo was when Megan and I sort of started chatting and getting to know each other and from a post that she put on one of the pages.

03:07
I commented on, um, and then we kind of took it offline and we found some common grounds and the common ground where we were pretty like laid back and chilled kind of people. We, we, we liked to also kind of be in control and kind of, yeah, the person who steers the ship in our respective relationships. So this photo was basically with her daughter. her oldest daughter on the right and youngest daughter on the left. And just a photo, our initials with a love heart. I, I’ve got the photo somewhere, but I’m just trying to remember what that baby, is Phillips and I might

03:37
her name. So that was her offering to be a surrogate for us. Yeah. This might’ve been in conjunction with how she actually physically offered. Cause what happened was her and her family flew down to Sydney. She’s Queensland based. So in Brisbane flew to Sydney and Phillip and I, and extended friends and family have a thing for board games. So she fabricated some, we were playing Monopoly and she fabricated some

03:59
um chance cards and one of the chance cards now thinking about it was clue as to why she kept wanting me or philip jelena on chance so we could pull out one of these bloody cards anyway one of us eventually did and i pulled up a chance card i didn’t even really think of think of it twice it says a chance megan will have like meigan will carry your baby or and i kind of

04:18
just was like, oh, okay, and then it sunk and I was like, wow, and then like the emotion and yeah, it was, it was crazy. It’s on video. So I’ve got, mean, we’ve got a run video. It was touching because it, you know, just the spending the time to get to know each other and you know, investing that time.

04:32
Um, with nothing on the table, nothing lost, nothing gained, you know, just invest in us and know, you know, what we enjoy doing and things like that. And then for her to put that together, was quite touchy. And I think, yeah, that’s a great example of the friendship building and getting to know each other. Yeah. The likes and doing it through the board game. then eventually we get to this point here. Yeah. I’m in pajamas. Sorry about that. But yeah, anyway, so this is a few hours after Isaiah was born, um, in 2018, Megan had a planned induction due to

05:02
gestational diabetes. So Isaiah was born bang on 28, sorry, bang on 38 weeks. Yeah. We went in that afternoon around 4.30 and went through all the paperwork and all the, you know, the, um, ad hoc administrative tasks and things like that. And then we moved around to the birthing suite. Yeah. It was game on. Isaiah was Megan’s fourth pregnancy. So she has three children of her own. then Isaiah being, um, surrogate child with a egg donor, gestational surrogacy. So no kind of genetic compound of Megan, given it was her fourth.

05:32
pregnancy, we weren’t sure how label would go. She historically was fairly in and out quite quickly. Her label with Isaiah was 56 minutes including placenta.

05:44
and start to delivery. that was… What an hour! Yeah, unheard of for her. Generally for most people. Yes, yes, that’s intense hour. Wow. So… You were barely ready. Yeah, but look, it happened so quickly that we missed out on birth photographer. She was stuck in… He was born just before 11pm that evening. And because of the time and areas of the hospital closing and things like that, our birth photographer missed out because she was trying to get through security.

06:13
So she made it after the birth and you know we got some photos after the birth but the birth itself unfortunately we missed out on but he arrived safely and that’s all that really mattered. And what a day for you, your life changed. What was the time frame from I guess the first chat meeting or you know connection in each other’s lives to birth? What’s the time frame we’re talking there? Two years? Yeah so wind it back a little bit so

06:35
With the initial introductions and things like that, I think the offer and the kind of the team decided that we’d pursue surrogacy within six months of meeting each other. It varies from team to team and there’s no right, there’s no wrong. I think that if you really genuinely connect with someone and you get to know that person and you feel that genuineness and that, you know, level of trust and similarities, the biggest thing for me or for us collectively, for Philip and myself was remove surrogacy from the equation altogether. Megan and Nathan and their

07:05
their families, someone who if we saw in the street we would kind of forge a relationship with or in a restaurant you know would you turn around and how are you or something like that so if the the incentive or if it wasn’t incentivized is this someone that I would ordinarily forge a relationship with and the answer for us was yes 100 % and it needs to be yes doesn’t it I think that’s great advice for people that if you remove surrogacy from the equation it’s almost like maybe if you go to a new workplace are they you know a new colleague that you’d strike up a friendship with and then if you remove the common workplace would you all still continue to

07:35
friends. yeah, as you say, it’s important to find those connections together. Yeah. And I think six months that I’d like to that too. Six months to decide to team up. then from there, I think, because we had embryos ready to go. And I think from there, was probably another, by the time we did the legwork, mean, the counseling, the legals and all that kind of thing. think it was transfer was just before Christmas of that year. So probably another six months on that. So I think two years to birth from, yeah, adding to birth. That’s quite common. was

08:05
two and a half, a realistic timeframe for people to get their heads around. So we’ll keep moving through the photos then. And so this looks like some catch-ups with Megan and Isaiah and then her pregnant and Isaiah kissing her belly. so catch up with in the photo on the left, I actually wasn’t there. So I was working because Philip was on parental leave. We’ve got family in Queensland as well. So Philip and the boys and

08:28
my father-in-law and other family went to stay with them in Queensland. So Megan came down from Queensland for the day, went it with the boys. So that’s the photo on the left. The photo on the right is just before Jordan was born. When we got out of our two-week quarantine in a four-by-four with a two-year-old in Queensland, that was us visiting Isaiah kissing her brother in Uttara. His brother, sorry, in Uttara. What a magnificent thing. I suppose we are moving on to journey number two then, aren’t we? So we’ve seen Isaiah’s birth and then at some point in time Megan has offered

08:58
I’m going to go back a photo. I’m going go back to this photo then because this is her pregnant then. So we’re now heading into the second journey heading toward Jordan’s birth. so I guess was there sort of, guess sibling journey must have been talked about at some point, but then officially there must have been a conversation or an offer to come again. So sibling journey was talked about early on because it formed part of our conversations in the initial stages of our, in the late up to Isaiah’s pregnancy. It was always tabled as a loose kind of consideration. We got to the end of Isaiah’s pregnancy and birth and

09:28
complications, Megan’s pregnancies of her own were quite textbook, uneventful, easy, Isaiah’s wasn’t. Whilst Isaiah’s wasn’t, it was relatively seamless apart from having gestational diabetes. So that threw a spinner in the works because she had never had that with her own children and it caused a lot of extra appointments, closer monitoring of growth and things like that. So we went from having a scan every once every two months or whatever it was to basically having appointments weekly.

09:57
check the growth. look, doctors do sometimes get it wrong because they just do. At one point we were sent to a tertiary, like, organized like a tertiary hospital for a tertiary scan because they thought that Isaiah’s wasn’t measuring, his femur wasn’t measuring where it should have been and they were worried, I mean, not that you could do anything about it, but…

10:14
I suppose emotionally mentally preparing us. They thought he may have possibly been dwarf, like dwarfism. Um, but they also didn’t tell us at the time, which now knowing, whilst a femur is a good indicator, it’s also one of the hardest bones to measure because of the movement. So they did get it wrong. Um, Isaiah’s in the 90th placenta for height at the moment. yeah, no concerns there at all, but you know, that, that’s what happened. Um, yeah, sorry, off topic, but yeah, moving into the second journey. Um, like I said, it was discussed in the first journey, but

10:44
When Isaiah was born and because of everything that happened, she kind of regressed a bit and was like, nah, I couldn’t, couldn’t do it. Some time passed and she saw Isaiah growing and, you know, us, you know, as a family and, you know, being able to do things as a family and go away on holidays and all that kind of thing. And then I think, um, the cluckiness came back. She enjoyed, she enjoys naturally being pregnant. So caught us by surprise and she, yeah, she brought it up as a topic of conversation and we were like, okay, timing was right. We still had embryos and then yeah, Jordan’s story started.

11:13
Wonderful. And so on that you had embryos. So from an egg donor, who was your egg donor? Was that a known friend or someone? Yes, a known donor. So you touched on it before with reaching out to your own network. There’s advertising and there’s getting opinions. And I took the opinion approach with my social network because our family knew and there’s no one in our immediate family that would be able to assist us. I’m an only child and Phillip’s one of four boys. that, you know, whilst he’s Greek and his family is massive, the immediate family are all boys. So that was

11:43
And it wasn’t a thing for us. yeah, I put a post out on our social network and it was just asking for opinions. Like there’s no right or wrong and just getting, you know, a topic of conversation and some chat going on around, you know, people’s opinions around surrogacy and egg donor and sperm donation and all that kind of thing. Striked up a bit of conversation. then from that conversation, I kind of filtered through a lot of the comments and pulled out ones that I thought were a genuine kind of approach to the topic rather than like you were saying before.

12:13
people offering in hindsight, great thing in practice, completely different. And to save us that kind of heartache, I suppose, in potentially investing time in…

12:21
something that isn’t really going to eventually into anything filter through those, got some chats going in the background. And then we did egg donation with one of our friends. Wonderful. Yeah. So you spread the word and sort of people were learning about how you felt about egg donation and your thoughts on it and conversations struck up from there. think that’s a good way to do it. Yeah. So, and also just going back to that previous comment in regards to the advertisement, I think Australia-wide, just because we are autistic, it’s not incentivized by financial gain. You’ve really got to tread carefully because whilst your intention

12:51
isn’t to advertise how you word things in public forum, it is particularly important just because you don’t want to find yourself in any kind of strife unintentionally. Good point and I think that can sometimes be quite valuable if you’ve met other people within the community like if Mahesh was like your mentor or he’s another person that you could chat to, you could get them to read your post before you post it and get an experienced person to check it. So that’s why it’s great to make connections in the village so to speak. So then you transferred another embryo because you had some left which is great and then you hit it into

13:21
2021 and here’s us thinking oh COVID will just be 2020 that’ll just be my year of pregnancy. I don’t know you guys got hit with it in the eastern states so you guys being Sydney and Megan up in

13:31
Brisbane. And so what was the impact of COVID now on this second journey? So journey, journey two was nothing short of horrendous. Yeah, it was a nightmare. we exactly what you said, like COVID kind of happened and then it kind of slowed down. And then we took a window of opportunity to do a transfer thinking that COVID was coming to an end and it very much wasn’t. So we did the embryo transfer. I think the only scan, we were there for the heartbeat scan, which is about six to eight weeks after transfer. She knows probably four to six weeks after transfer. We were there for that.

14:01
The last game we were there for was 12 week game. Other than that, lockdown between our own localised lockdowns and then the state borders were closed. So yeah, it was a nightmare to put it quite frankly. We travelled so much with Isaiah’s pregnancy. Given that Megan had gestational diabetes, just for support, I would do day trips to Brisbane weekly for appointments because her husband was working, kids were at school and she was sitting at the hospital for three hours at appointments by herself. one day of work or one day of sacrifice for me was a massive gain for her.

14:31
those couple of hours, you know, and it was nice to just be connected. Yeah. During that time and, you know, just showing that whilst we’re in another state, you know, whatever we can do to make it just a little bit more.

14:42
bearable and easier for you, we would do. A great example of the types of time investment that you can do sitting there next to your friend. You can’t carry the baby because she’s doing that, but you can help carry her through that emotional support, showing your friendship, rocking up and being together. And as much as one can manage within interstate teams. So it sounds like you did an amazing amount and you committed to that as a family. then second time around, nobody, nobody wants a pregnancy where you don’t see each other. No surrogate really chooses that, they? Nor do you as IPs because your friends do

15:12
this for you, you want to be together and that just threw it out. Yeah and it was also look with the with the clinics and confidentiality and things like that I get that as like I got that as well but what they also don’t understand is is the again the emotional implications the mental implications for not only Megan but also us given that she’s carrying our child and ordinarily you can’t video.

15:32
scan, like you can’t video scans, so to try and explain to them to just at least allow us to FaceTime during a scan so we could somehow be involved. Yeah, just trying to have those discussions and getting the point across. Most of the time it happened, but not all. Sure. Heading towards a birth, the end of 2021, so I was frantic since like I was, I wrote to the health minister of both states. wrote, um, goodnight.

15:55
Is that Isaiah? No, that’s you and Auntie May May. don’t know if you can see. Where was the dragon? Sorry, sorry, was the dragon? This is Isaiah. Hi Isaiah. Say hi. Hi Isaiah, I’m Anna and we’re looking at photos of you and Auntie Megan. Yeah. Off to bed. Daddy, where was the dragon? The dragon’s gone. Ella, high five. I want to give it the high

16:23
Okay, high five. Go with Bova. enough now. Alright, sorry about that. That’s life. So I was writing to the health ministers of both states. I also wrote the premiers of both states getting really, really anxious because we were basically three weeks out from needing to go to Queensland and making enough time to get out in case she went into labour because we knew we had to quarantine. We had to fly into Queensland, ship our car. Quarantine cost us $5,000, which was unexpected. Shipping our car cost us $1,000, which was unexpected. just

16:53
to Queensland, we had $7,000 collectively worth of expenses that we didn’t anticipate. then got out of quarantine after the two weeks, picked up the car, thought we would have a week or so just to kind of settle into our apartment, relax and whatever. Day two out of quarantine, Megan calls in the morning and said, my waters have broken.

17:16
Meanwhile, Jordan is complete breach. So she was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. When she got there, was a category, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not sure how it works, but she was either a category one and went through a category four or was a category four and went to a category one. Because what had happened is Jordan’s foot, left foot, think, I think it was left. Anyway, one of his foot was coming out the cervix. So he was complete footling breach. Footling breach, right, wow. So there was a risk of him.

17:41
coming out the cervix and getting caught. So they had to basically get him out. they emergency C-section, which also wasn’t planned. Emergency C-section. Absolutely. Yeah. Not planned. Yeah. Scary for everyone. So that’s why we don’t necessarily have any birth photos. So this, guess, was moving onto a photo here of Megan feeding him with a bottle and then her with both lads on her lap. Yeah. Couple of days after birth with Jordan being

18:05
um, bottle fed. she expressed breast breast milk with Isaiah and we had that for the, about the first month, but with Jordan, she didn’t. And that was her own personal choice, um, for various reasons, which is completely fine. The one on the, on the right is just out at lunch with both boys on a visit to Brisbane. That was.

18:25
well after his birth. So I think that was March of this year. And I guess that’s examples of life going on, isn’t it? Yeah. So then to finish up with our photos here, here’s some, you had some professional photography and one photo of your boys, hey, on the mat. Yeah. So that was when we, a couple of days after we got back to our apartment in Brisbane and then the birth photography, that was probably my favorite photo of both of them together. Yes. Jordan looks so little there, doesn’t he? They’re all rugged up, all little cocooned up there. And there’s, there’s your family, hey?

18:55
That’s beautiful. So do you occasionally look at these photos and does it catch you and go, wow, that’s my, there’s our hundred percent. I constantly like, and I probably will do that. I constantly pinch myself thinking, you you, you dream of, mean, what’s normal in today’s society, but you dream of having a normalized life and you know, having what society perceives as normal to, or what society at one point perceived to be normal and having kids of your own and being, you know, just easy and you know, we don’t consider, we, we often take for granted what can potentially happen.

19:25
happen. Just because I’m a gay man doesn’t mean that, you know, I’m not entitled to have a family and just because, you a woman

19:31
doesn’t have a uterus doesn’t mean that she’s not entitled to a family, you know, everyone is entitled to, you know, have a family of their own and to be loved and you know, all that kind of thing. So yeah, I constantly pinch myself at how lucky I am. That’s beautiful. And so I think for those listening to even to see Isaiah come in and go to do those normal routines, you know, that he’s being bathed and stories and bedtime to get to that point of going, we’re having a family. I hope it’s something everybody wants to experience it gets. And so then this is Isaiah’s fourth birthday here.

20:01
those things. Yeah so that was Isaiah’s fourth birthday in August of this year and then like you said we’ve got our Jordans coming up at the end of this month. First birthday so. Wonderful. Well thank you for going through all those photos with us and explaining the things that are happening in there. We’re going to answer some of the questions that we’ve got there and loop that back into your journey. Mahesh have you got any knowledge on this? If there are any requirements on the quality and the grading of the embryos that are being transferred for example do they need to be grade A or B or PGD tested? My understanding is

20:31
is each clinic will be specific. So I’m like, we’ll have their own set of internal guidelines. I don’t.

20:37
know per se whether there’s actual country-wide approach. But for clinics, some clinics choose to freeze embryos on day three. Some clinics choose to grow them out and then defrost and grow them out. Some clinics choose to grow to day five because if they don’t survive day three or you freeze it day three and they don’t grow to day five, you would never would have known, you know, had they progressed naturally, what have they got today? It’s just, I think it’s specific to the clinic, but in terms of PDT testing, if you haven’t, like my thing to this is if you don’t have reason to do PDT

21:07
testing.

21:08
then it does put an enormous amount of stress on an embryo because you know, when you think about it, you can’t see an embryo. It’s a microscopic size group of cells. And what you’re actually doing is you, and look, I’m not a doctor, but this is just research that I’ve done. What you’re actually essentially doing is you’re pulling out cells from that embryo, which is essentially damaging or could potentially damage that embryo. So unless you’ve got reason to do PGD, I wouldn’t recommend it. But like I said, I’m not a doctor. I’d still recommend, you you take the advice of your medical professionals. Instead of grading and things like that, I

21:38
and I think it’s clinic specific. think if, you know, the higher the grade, the better.

21:42
better the chance, but then I’m a firm believer it only takes one. So yes, we have heard of stories of things, lower quality grades. Anonymous, I think to answer your question then is no, there’s no official, you must have this level of grade in Australia to do surrogacy. Not at all, because people often create their own embryos if they’re say a hetero couple to try to implant them into themselves. And they, doesn’t matter what that grade is. And then, surrogacy is their path. So no, there’s no requirement from, from what we both understand. But as Mahesh is saying, check with your fertility doc.

22:11
Another question there is through your social circles, how would you recommend starting that conversation or making some sort of public discussion? Because it’s the starting that discussion that this particular person that’s asking the question is hesitant over. Just quite simply just starting conversation about surrogacy or about even just about egg donation or sperm donation and you know gathering people’s thoughts. Maybe just asking the question, there’s no right or wrong answer. I’m interested to know you know other people’s opinions on XYZ and then from there it should filter

22:41
down into a conversation. And like I said, you can, know, your social network and you know, the genuineness of people and the flakiness of others. And then yeah, just take it offline. Like I did for the people that you thought were genuine and, you know, reach out to them directly and try and spark up a bit more or dive a bit deeper into.

22:57
conversation. Would you recommend slightly different path? Because I think I know of a few people that have done this, this spreading the word idea of letting them know, like, let’s say they knew you and Phil have been together for many years, but just because you’re two guys doesn’t necessarily mean you want kids. So it’s that idea of going, Hey guys, you know, here’s an update of what we’ve been up to. And also letting you know, you know, in the new year, we’re looking to start a family and the path that we’re going to have to go down is surrogacy. we’ve been learning all about that.

23:21
100 % most of our network knew that we were like our intention was to start a family. But then like I was saying before, it goes back to just being cautious of how you were composed because you don’t come across as an advertisement. Yes. So you don’t want to say, so if there’s anybody out there reading this that could be my surrogate, please make contact. Like that’s a bit transactional. You want to keep it to you’re trying to build up your supporters of people who will support you on this village. Cause none of them might be able to directly help you, but they in turn might tell somebody else that you need help there. Yeah. So somebody’s asked a

23:51
question in the chat is the cost of the process. can probably give some summary of this. Do IPs need funds upfront? Perhaps how much? And if not, you know, how much might you need across the timeline of that journey Mahesh? So look, how long is a piece of string? And look, I know that very cliche to say it’s true. If you’re buying a house, you need costs for your conveyancing, you need costs for your like conveyance or illegals, you know, extra money to pay for your stamp duty. Um, you need extra money to potentially make modifications to the home once you’ve set

24:21
all those kinds of things. you need to also account for the unexpected. Philip and I went into this international and commercial surrogacy. Like we’ve got friends that went to the States. They spent 400 grand on one child, like to bring one child into the world. Wow. Not to scare you or anything, but all touristic surrogacy in Australia will not come even close, remotely close to that in Mayan. We collectively spent between both boys, probably about 170 grand between both boys. And that’s because of, you know, just logistics. I traveled to Brisbane a lot more than some other

24:51
people would travel would think normal to travel. I invested a lot more time in doing that, but that was because I felt not I felt obligated to, I wanted to, I wanted to invest and show that, you know, whilst we couldn’t be there all the time. Um, this was my way of, you know, showing that we’re still present and still in the moment. Um, I think ballpark figure anything from maybe 70 grand upwards, just to be, just to be safe. And that’s to, you know, if you have money in the pocket, in your pocket afterwards, then fantastic. If you don’t, well, then that’s the way, you know, it happened, but you need to also account for the unexpected.

25:21
I’ll add in, so I have a survey that I’ve had quite a few IPs do once they’ve done a journey and to gather their costs. So from that data gathering, the average is about, let’s say $60,000 with a range of about 30 to 90,000. So my team costs 60,000. So those at the lower end might be those teams who it worked first embryo transfer. They didn’t have many expenses like loss of wages to cover for the surrogate and they live locally to each other. And then those up at say the higher end, well us in the 60,000,

25:51
had to have two egg collection cycles with their egg donor and you don’t get Medicare rebates for that currently when it’s surrogacy and then we had a couple of transfers and things but they didn’t have loss of wages costs and then those up at the upper end would be those where multiple IVF collections probably multiple transfers and a lot of interstate travel but in terms of having how much up front for my team it was over two and a half year period if you had what 20 grand in the pocket to start with Mahesh let’s say an IVF cycle will go on the higher end so IVF cycle plus a transfer I’d say yeah anywhere

26:21
between 20 and 25 grand. Yes, so having that and make sure you got backup plans. You can draw on your mortgage or if you’ve got parents that can know spot you for a five, ten thousand dollar loan if you you needed it. Having plans like that I think. So hopefully that’s giving you guys a bit of a guide as to some of the costs there. And not to scare you, it’s just to prepare you because you don’t want to get midpoint through a pregnancy and be like I’ve got six months to go but I have nothing left. That’s right and my surrogate’s pregnant with our child and we can’t cover her costs. So it is expensive unfortunately surrogacy in Australia.

26:51
So that will knock some people out, unfortunately. So as we sort of head towards the end of our webinar, we’ve got time for another question if somebody wants to type one in. But Mahesh, sort of two questions to sum it up. What advice and guidance would you give for people at the beginning of their journey? And also, is there anything differently in your own journeys? Advice would be if you have a gut feeling of any kind of red flag or any apprehension about anything, whether it be doctors, fertility specialists, clinics, lawyers, counselors.

27:21
potential surrogates.

27:23
Trust your gut, don’t go with your heart because your heart, it’s not rational. And if you feel red flags, there’s a 99 % chance that there’s some underlying truths to it. that’s probably advice. Anything that I do different, delay COVID by maybe two years. Just have it not happen. Yeah. Or have it not happen at all. Yeah. In all honesty, look, our journey was fairly, if a journey is textbook, mean, both our journeys were fairly textbook apart from, you know, things that were beyond our control throughout pregnancy.

27:53
woman’s hormones are all over the place. There’s going to be times where she just doesn’t want to talk or anything that you say to her is just not going to cut it or there’s no rationalizing with them. Just knowing that, and for me, I’m a people pleaser and that’s just who I am in my day to day life, in my work, in everything. I’m an overachiever and that’s how I am. I can’t change it. I need the reassurance to know that I’m doing okay and I’m doing well and I’m doing what’s required of me. And sometimes that

28:18
That’s overbearing. I suppose it’s just reality checking both ends of the spectrum, your end and your end. So what might be okay for you is possibly not okay for her. giving, you know, allowing that space. Interesting. Yes. Cause it’s a relationship, isn’t it? And you’re dealing with a pregnant hormonal tired woman.

28:35
and that friendship changes because it’s like, hang on, you’re not quite the person that we’ve known most of the time because there’s a lot of extra things at play and distance and COVID too can add some tension to those friendships, can’t it? So keeping the communication up. Did you therefore unpack some of those tensions or did you let some of them slide? No, we unpacked because…

28:55
Again, we’re very similar people in terms of overthinkers, planners, all that kind of thing. And then addressing the elephant in the room when it was appropriate to do so, we did every time. And that just re-solidified what we’re already knew anyway. That’s wonderful. And I think that’s a credit to your team that you had put in that work, got to know each other so that when you did have to have that…

29:14
some uncomfortable conversations. You had a base of friendship and care for each other to do it from. So it meant you could address those elephants in the room by the sounds of things and move forward. Wonderful. Well, I guess it’s time to sum it up. Any last bits of parting advice? You’re here for a reason. Like you’ve come to the webinar for a reason and you’re doing your research. I’m a firm believer. I’m not overly religious or you know, anything like that, but I’m a firm believer of when the universe is, when your stars align, the universe will deliver and you put it out to the universe and it will happen for you, but you have to be in it for, you know, the long haul. Absolutely.

29:44
And so I hope it happens for all of you that are here tonight who have joined us. I hope that it’s something that becomes a reality for you all. As Mahesh has said, you know, you’re here for a reason, so let’s go and make it happen. Thanks guys. All the best. Thank you so much for joining me. On our YouTube channel, you will find many other episodes as well as the images mentioned in this webinar.

30:03
If you’re looking for more resources, check out the show notes for this episode and consider joining us for one of our webinars so you can have your questions answered on the spot. Please subscribe to this podcast if you found it valuable and share it with someone so they too can benefit from this conversation. Until next time, welcome to the village.