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Episode 63 – Team Culture – Katrina Hale – Psychologist
Katrina is a Psychologist and Infertility Counsellor with over 25 years counselling experience. She is passionate about surrogacy and a strong supporter of all walks of the community that wish to create a family through surrogacy or assisted reproduction. She is committed to helping Intending Parents and Surrogates and their partners successfully navigate their surrogacy journey together.
If you’d like to arrange your own session with Katrina, you can find her on her website.
What do the dynamics of your surrogacy team look like and how can that be nurtured to ensure a healthy journey during and beyond birth. It is best to see this episode on our youtube channel to see the graph that Katrina has created to explain this concept.
This episode was recorded in July 2024.
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These podcasts were recorded as part of the free webinar series run by Surrogacy Australia. If you would like to attend one, head to this page for dates and registration links. The recording can also be found on our YouTube channel so you can see the photos that are described. Find more podcast episodes here.
The webinars are hosted by Anna McKie who is a gestational surrogate, high school Math teacher and surrogacy educator working with Surrogacy Australia and running SASS (Surrogacy Australia’s Support Service).
Follow Surrogacy Australia on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Are you an Intended Parent (IP) who is looking to find a surrogate, or a surrogate looking for Intended Parents? Join SASS.
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Thanks for watching!
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Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKie, and my aim is to raise the level of awareness of surrogacy through these conversations. This podcast is a recording from a webinar that I host, and you can find more details about those and upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org The webinars are free, go for an hour, and will take you through how surrogacy works in Australia. You can ask questions, typing them in anonymously if you prefer.
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and you hear from a co-host who has navigated surrogacy in Australia, either a surrogate, a gay dad or a straight mum. This episode, recorded in July 2024, was different to the standard webinars as it featured psychologist Katrina Hale. Katrina is a psychologist and infertility counsellor with over 25 years counselling experience. She is passionate about surrogacy and a strong supporter of all walks of the community that wish to create a family through surrogacy or assisted reproduction.
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She is committed to helping intended parents and surrogates and their partners successfully navigate their surrogacy journey together. If you’d like to arrange your own session with Katrina, you can find her at katrinahalepsychology.com.au Katrina is becoming a regular guest on my webinar series for which I am very grateful. You can find all of her episodes on our website surrogacyaustralia.org forward slash podcast cast forward slash katrina hyphen hale. Some appearances have been converted to podcast episodes.
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but they are all available on our YouTube channel called Surrogacy Australia. I particularly encourage you to see the YouTube version of this team culture episode, as Katrina has created a graph which explains the different stages of surrogacy. Even for myself, three and a half years after the birth of my surrogate baby, it helped me to understand the shift in dynamics that naturally happened and why. The different layers she talks about, teams have an underlying friendship or family connection. Then on top of that,
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is a layer of the Surroship connection, which is the story of bringing the child into the world. But then there is the project of Surroship with the intensity rising and falling, and then the IPs, Intended Parents, become parents. Her graph is a great visual way to understand what is happening in every team. And this episode can be used as a discussion topic for teams to help you navigate the different stages of the journey.
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For me, I love this diagram for the children of the surrogate because I think it will be helpful for the adults to explain to the children why they are seeing the IPs a lot during the project and what the friendship looks like once the project of surrogacy is over. Please share this episode with your own surrogacy team, with the community, with friends and family, or listen to it in the future when you have a team. Even come back to it on multiple occasions as a check-in. I’d love to hear your feedback about this episode, so please send me a message.
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either through Messenger, Anna McKie, email, or the Surrogacy Australia social media accounts. I hope you enjoy this episode. Katrina, we’re going to hand over to you and to talk us through team culture tonight. Alrighty. So I’ve been working in the field of surrogacy as a psychologist for over 10 years. I think it’s 12 years or something like that.
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And when I came into the field of surrogacy, I was like, oh my goodness, this place is a mess. So, and I committed that I was going to try and leave it in a better way. But I found a lot of things going wrong in breakdowns in surrogacy teams and not a lot of understanding of the psychological relationship and emotional factors of surrogacy. And it’s sort of been my life’s work for the past 10 plus years.
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And what I sort of did was, was like sort of just slowly work my way through the surrogacy journey, creating these modules and understandings and.
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And then, you know, once I’d sort of grasped that, I’d sort of release it into the community. And I always knew it had been embedded in the community when people started coming back to me and trying to teach me my own theories, using my own buzzwords as if I was an idiot. And then I was like, great. OK, fantastic. That means that that knowledge is embedded in the community. I can move along to the next bit. Yeah. So in sort of following that sort of arc of the surrogacy journey, previous concepts I’ve had, you know, it’s really sort of looking at that birth and beyond phase of the surrogacy journey.
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because a lot of focus is put on the early bit of getting ready for ethics, falling pregnant and then having that pregnancy. And then there’s that concept of like, oh, okay, we’ve given birth. It’s the rest of our lives now. Got to get the parentage order, but we’re friends now. As you probably know, a lot of problems happen in teams post-birth in navigating that post-birth relationship. So tonight’s webinar is about just looking at the concept of team
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plays out, you know, how that changes, what the transition points are over time, and how you can really safeguard your team preemptively from things falling apart post-birth. So lots of different concepts that come along with that. As you probably heard me say previously, surrogacy, it’s essentially a very complex relationship. And the primary dimensions of relationships that I’m going to be talking about tonight in surrogacy is we’ve got the foundational relationship, which is that friendship or family relationship. We’ve got the Surroship relationship, which is that unique
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connection and commitment of surrogacy and then we’ve got the project relationship. All of those relationships have different cultures and what I mean when I say a relationship culture, I mean it’s the purpose of the relationship. You know, what are the rhythms and the routines? You know, what are the activities, the agreements? What are the dynamics of each of those relationship dimensions? You know, how do they function? How do they operate? Because they all have different purposes and different ways of operating. A lot of those relationships, they sort of go through
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significant transition points where the relationship changes and has to sort of adapt for lots of different reasons. So if we think about relationships in general, we’re very familiar with relationships which you can see on the slide there. Family relationships, like we sort of know, there’s like a bit of a template. What’s a parent-child relationship meant to be? What’s a sort of a grandparent relationship meant to be? What’s the role of an aunt or an uncle in friendship?
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acquaintance, online friend, we sort of know how those are meant to operate. We’ve got our expectations. Oh, well, to be a good friend, you sort of do this. And it’s like, you wouldn’t expect that of a friend. You wouldn’t expect that of a friend. You know, you wouldn’t expect that of a friend, you wouldn’t expect that of an acquaintance. As an online friend, as someone you don’t meet in person, but you still chat online and things like that. We’re familiar with how romantic relationships operate. These labels for them all, marriage is de facto. We’re dating, it’s friend with benefits or whatever, you know.
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You can Google it and get definitions of them. You know, like what are 10 features of each of them? So we’re also familiar with work relationships, you know.
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how those are meant to operate and other sort of more general relationships like what’s a good neighbourly relationship? What is it to be a good community member? So we’re very, very familiar and we all have sort of internalised templates, social templates about what those relationships are, how they work, what’s expected of us in them and what it’s reasonable for us to expect of other people in them. So therefore, if it doesn’t align with that, we’re like, oh, that’s not a good friendship. That was a dodgy work relationship. That was an unfair
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romantic experience. So because we have those templates inside us. It makes you realise how many relationships we already have in life in so many different forms and that we understand them when we stop to think about it but then yeah you add surrogacy in and it’s something new. There you go.
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everything’s relationship. Yeah, but then we come into into surrogacy and we have two unique relationship types. So, so, you know, one of those is the surrogacy project relationship. I mean, it operates, you know, it is a project essentially, you know, but the dynamics of surrogacy project are different to any other project that you would have ever.
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undertaken. And then we’ve got the Surroship relationship, which is a particularly, you know, unusual relationship that’s basically, okay, we’ve got a group of people coming together to bring a child into the world, playing that group of people rather than just within a couple or, you know, as a solo. So it’s a group of people coming together, you know, as an act of altruistic love to bring a child into the world where the, you know, everybody’s roles and the connections and the boundaries, you know, between those people is clear. But there’s a child which is,
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years I’ve been sort of trying to think of is there a similar relationship that I can compare this to?
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to be like, oh, you know when you did this, or you know when you experienced that, it’s like that. And I was unable to find anything until quite recently when someone suggested that it was clients I had who’d been in a band and they were like, actually that sounds like being in a band on tour. We always talk about the Surrogacy journey and I’d say, well, it’s actually the Surrogacy road trip and things like that. And they were like, well, that sounds like being in a band on tour because you’ve got your tour bus. And if you think about the concept of a band, all the musicians within it, they’ve got distinctly different roles.
09:07
you’ve got a guitarist, you’ve got a bass player, you’ve got a drummer, like they’re all different instruments, they all do something very, very different. They all come together to form a cohesive unit, you know, which is the band which then produces the music. So I think that’s the surrogacy tour bus, you know, is quite a good metaphor to capture how we can have a cohesive team, but very different roles within that team.
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And then the IVF clinics and the lawyers and the psychologists at the clubs and clubs, you know, on the clubs tour, you know, which the two of us goes on. Because often that misinterpretation of that concept of team where, you know, when people hear the word team, they think, oh, it’s like a corporate project team where we’re going to sit around the boardroom table. You know, we’re going to allocate tasks evenly. Everybody’s going to get to have a democratic say. And basically, you’re going to be sort of the workload is going to be a portion.
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Surrogacy teams are different to that. So at the beginning of a Surrogacy journey, there should be that more sort of democratic, let’s all put our cards on the table sort of culture. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours so that everybody’s sort of coming, this is what I’m bringing in, this is what I’m looking for. But once we go into pregnancy and birth and things like that, any agreements which have been made, then should be sort of followed through. There’s no sort of
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once the pregnancy started, then the team takes on a different dynamic and then it’s more like a sports team. It’s more like, you know, when you’ve got someone doing the Tour de France and they’re out there, they’ve got their body on the line, they’re riding the race and all the focus is on them because it’s physical and it’s gruelling. So they cross the finish line, they win the trophy or whatever they win. And if you think about it, what do all of them say when they’re on their winners podium?
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team. They all give credit to the support team. So that’s more what a surrogacy team is once the pregnancy starts. The surrogate is the person out there sort of going through it physically, putting her body on the line. And then the intended parents and her family and other people in her life are sort of part of that support team. But she’s very much the sort of the visible picture of that. But then post-birth, that changes again, goes through a lot of significant transition points in that surrogacy project relationship. Okay. So if we look at sort of what’s normal in romantic
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and work relationship cultures, they tend to be more goal-directed. It’s like, oh, we’re going to get married, we’re going to have a family together, we’re going to build a house, we’re going to live together until we’re both old or whatever, or we’re going to have a work project goal, we’re going to build a building, we’re going to create a program or something like that. So there’s a lot more agreement and structure and understanding about where we’re going. It’s very
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surrogacy does have a lot of administrative components in the project relationship.
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coordinating a very complex project of a whole lot of moving parts that don’t talk to each other. So there is those typical project management features in a surrogacy project relationship. But in project teams, that’s sort of more just what the function is. It is just a project. It’s not so much a project relationship. So I’m sort of looking more at project relationship. And in project teams and in romantic relationships, less so in family relationships, it’s actually
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you know, to sort of regularly check in. If you think about romantic relationships, intimate relationships, it’s very, very common to have discussions about, you know, how are we going? Are we on track? Is this relationship meeting your needs? Is it meeting my needs? Are we communicating properly? Where are we going? Are we both in alignment? Are we both happy with the track that we’re on? That’s really, really normal culture. You know, similarly, when in treasure teams, it’s like, let’s look at the KPIs and if we’re on track, and if we’re sort of
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Very, very normal to do that sort of monitoring and check in in romantic relationships and work relationship. But if you think about friendships, okay, so in the majority of cases, friendships are a different culture, okay? Friendships tend to be based on shared common interests or values or having fun or we just get on with each other, we enjoy each other’s company and we’ve got the same sense of humor. Friendships tend to sort of operate 50-50, you know, sort of your turn, my turn. And in terms of, you know, how often we see each other or how often we talk or how often we
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catch up. It can be regular, you know, it can be irregular, but there’s a bit more sort of go with the flow, you know, with it, you know, because life happens, things get in the way, the friendship can maintain itself, and so resilience in it that can sort of have a few ebbs and flows in that. If you compare, say, a romantic relationship to a friendship, even though some people might be, oh, well, I sort of, you know, do this in my friendships, you know, it’s less common, you know, significantly less common to sort of sit down with your friend to sort of go, I just wanted to have a talk about a friendship, you know, I just wanted to check in to see how we’re going,
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Is our friendship meeting your needs? You know, it’s like, I feel like I’ve got a few, my unmet needs here. You know, there’s a few inches with our communication that I’d like to sort out. And what’s our friendship goals here? What are we aiming for in the next five years? It’s like, kind of weird. Yes, not many do that. What are our friendship goals? We often, I think I know you said in the past, you know, if you have a friendship where it’s not meeting your needs, you probably just don’t keep in touch with them. But you can’t really do that when it’s with the surrogacy team, can you?
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You’ve got to work at it though. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so it’s sort of like, oh, that’d be sort of weird to do that. So that’s one of the things that I see, you know, causing problems post-birth in surrogacy, because it’s very, very common that, you know, people say, oh, you know, post-birth, of course we’re gonna be friends. Of course we’re gonna catch up regularly. But, and I sort of leave it at that. This is like a model that I developed, which captures the different sort of dimensions of relationship and the different stages of relationship and the different transitions in that relationship.
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It’s a way of looking at this is why things can be thrown to vulnerable to falling apart post birth. And this is a way to safeguard against that earlier on, either pre-pregnancy or earlier on in the relationship. And to look at the pressures that come in with that and make it difficult. Because if we look at that friendship family dimension down the bottom, so some people come into surrogacy and they’ve got a pre-existing relationship, foundational relationship between the intended parents and surrogate.
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you know, they could be family members, they could be work colleagues, but there’s a pre-existing foundational relationship, you know, where they know what their friendship or family culture is, you know, they know how it operates, you know, they know what the rhythms and the routines and the activities and the rituals of that relationship is, you know. But a lot of people meet and form their friendship through the surrogacy community. As a result, their friendship is being developed in the context of surrogacy. You know, they don’t have any
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of being friends where surrogacy wasn’t in the room, wasn’t sort of on the table. So we’ve got that sort of friendship dimension. Okay, we get on well with each other. We’ve got some shared common interests. We like each other’s company. And then on top of that, we put that Surroship dimension. Now the Surroship dimension, like I said, it’s a very interesting one. Pre-conception, pre-pregnancy, it’s about that commitment to do surrogacy. And there’s sort of more intimate conversations that come along with that.
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But then it actually goes through quite a few stages of evolving over the course of the surrogacy. Now, when people come to me for counselling, because often they’re feeling, yeah, they’ve got to sort of convince me, you know, they’re ready for surrogacy or, yeah, they often feel like they’ve got to convince me a whole lot of things. Let’s say I’m sort of going like, oh, you know, you sort of you met three months ago, you know, you should get like six months ago, and now you’re sort of wanting to start transfers and trying to get pregnant. I might be like, you know, do you think you know each other well enough?
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Oh, it’s like, look, we hardly ever talk about the surrogacy anymore. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, we talked about that a lot at the beginning, but these days it’s like, we talk about everything else. We barely even mentioned the surrogacy. We really are just friends. We’re just operating in our friendship. This is just friendship. We’re the best of friends now. But then if I ask them questions like, okay, so how often do you communicate with each other, you know, like online or phone or whatever, and I’ll be like, oh, we can online all day, every day, constantly chatting, sharing memes, sharing jokes, whatever, yeah, we just, we just channel line all day, every day. Yeah.
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how often do you catch up in person? Oh, yeah, like, yeah, we catch up once a week or once a fortnight or once a month. Like, yeah, we go around and have barbecues at each other’s house. Like, we really are the best of friends. So then it’s like, great, sounds like a really robust friendship. So then, you know, obviously, everybody’s agreed that they’re going to be friends post-birth. We’re all on the same page. We’ve all agreed that we’re going to be friends post-birth and we’re going to catch up regularly and we’re going to be like family. I’m like, cool. Okay. So therefore, you know, if we look at your
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who you normally are as a friend, are you telling me that it’s normal for you to chat online all day, every day? Because for some people that is. Some people have a lot of online friends and that is them being a normal friend in their friendship cultures, having multiple online friends with whom they frequently chat throughout the day. For some people it’s not and this is sort of where the difference in the definitions comes out. Some people they’re like, absolutely, this is normal for me. It’s like I’ve found these great new friends
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that once a month. Like it’s, yeah, this is all my other friendships are pretty similar to this. This is the level of socialization that I like to maintain. But then we might have another party who’s like, actually, I’m not really an online person. It intended parent might be like, yeah, like I talked to my surrogate online because she’s an online person. You know, so I sort of do that for her, but with my friends, I’m not really into chatting online. Like I might use online communication to organize something, but I’m not really an online person. I might see people in
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more frequently or less frequently than that. So then if we sort of extrapolate that into the future where everybody’s agreed, of course we’re gonna be friends post-birth, of course we’re gonna catch up regularly. What they’ve created as an impression and understanding and agreement, what we’re doing now is just our friendship. No surrogacy, just our friendship. This is us just being friends and we’re gonna be friends post-birth and we’re gonna catch up regularly. So therefore we can expect it to look the same.
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But when we actually look into the definition of like, well, what do you mean by being friends? What’s normal you? What’s your normal friendship culture? What do you mean by catch up regularly? You can see how when we actually drill down into it, we’ve got very different definitions and neither definition is right or wrong. It’s just individual perceptions and friendship cultures and preferences with that. Like family is always an interesting one. We’re gonna be like family. It’s like, you like your family? Yeah. It’s like, you get on well with them.
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does that mean? Because some people like family is like going, we talk every day, we catch up every weekend. Other people it’s like we see each other at birthdays and Christmas. So like family is pretty broad in terms of like, of course we’re going to be like family. I see my family a couple of times a year. Sure we’re going to be like family. Others are like, my family operates like a village. So it’s starting to actually, you know, instead of being like that, before we get to be friends post-birth, we’re going to be like family. Of course we’re going to catch up regularly.
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to you? What’s normal for you? You know, when surrogacy isn’t sort of around anymore. You can see how it’s really easy to get confused that the enormity of the project looks like friendship but it’s a busy project and trying to understand what does each person’s mode of communication and frequency look like now to maintain expectations for the future I guess. Let’s say we have an extroverted surrogate and more introverted internet parents. They’ve met through the surrogacy
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really well, they’ve got good things in common and they’re starting to sort of talk about the surrogacy, they’ve sort of made that Surroship commitment and yeah, and they’re at that phase of like going, this is great, you know, we’ve got, you know, we’ve formed this new friendship and we’re really into it and we’re going to do surrogacy together. So if we look at the different perceptions of that, you know, if our surrogate is more extroverted, then she might be perceiving, you know, the busyness of the surrogacy project as this is sort of just socializing, you know,
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paperwork or an attendant appointment, but it’s really just hanging out with friends, you know, it feels more social to me. Whereas the more introverted, intended parents, they could be like, okay, this is a big project commitment, you know, we’ve got to meet up more frequently, we’ve got to talk more frequently, we’ve got to organise things more frequently, you know, we’ve got to attend more things together because that’s part of the project. Yeah, we’re really looking forward to when the project is complete and we can have a more chilled out friendship. And we’ve all said that we’re going to be friends post-birth, so I’m sure that she
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It’s like so good that these people are like into talking all the time and catching up all the time and meeting all the time. Like me, I’ve found these new extroverted friends. Can’t wait for this to continue post-birth. So you can see that when we sort of get to that post-birth period, there’s going to be some mismatches and some disappointments and some confusion with no real intention whatsoever. For the surrogates, it’s like, what happened? Where did they go? And for the intended parents, it’s like, what does she mean? We’re busy with a baby.
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not really catch up with our friends. It’s like we haven’t seen our friends for ages. So we’re not treating her any differently to any other.
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other friends. So we can’t work out why she’s upset. It’s because there wasn’t that alignment of understanding of what that meant. If we look at it in the beginning, it’s that sort of making connection and commitment to each other over the longer term. It’s like the Surroship dimension is really the journey of surrogacy. It’s the story of the surrogacy. It’s a much more intimate connection than friendships or family connections. Post-birth, it sort of evolves into the story of the surrogacy and the child’s birth story and the child’s identity. This is how you came into the
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genetic identity, this is the woman who carried and birthed you into the world, you know, these are your parents, you know, it’s like this is your story, this is the group of people who came together to help bring you into the world who your identity is sort of fundamentally connected to. But you know, this is your home and these are your parents, you know, these are sort of the people who take care of you, but these other people are, were involved in that story and your identity. So it’s a very sort of sociologically pioneering dimension, you know, to then sort of explore in the long term. It’s something which is going to continue
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explored by all the different parties. The child grows up and wants to know more about their story and wants to speak to their surrogate or their donor and find out why.
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what did it all mean? Like, you know, there’s genetic implications of the thing, I thought it was an Easter egg and things like that. So that Surroship dimension, it’s also a very long term dimension that continues forever, basically. So we want that friendship to sort of stay strong and continue strong and into the future. It can certainly evolve and deepen throughout the surrogacy, but we need to actually know what is that friendship independent of the surrogacy? What is that friendship independent of the surrogacy? So that when we talk about
24:03
We know what that means when we talk about being friends in two years time in five years time We’ve got a realistic definition that means you know some of the hesitations Come with groups in in having these conversations is what everybody sort of says to me is like what’s the word they use? organic organics got out of fashion
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been out of fashion for years, a few years. Yeah, you have to be organic. Like if I tried to get people to talk about that sort of those definitions and that alignment and you know what their expectations were, inevitably, the switchback I’d get would be like, we want it to be organic. We don’t want it to be prescribed. We don’t want there to be a schedule. Like we just want it to happen naturally. No. And where surrogates are coming very much from in that is around the dynamics of altruism. I want them to…
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want to have me in their life. I don’t want to feel that they are only including me in their life and keeping me around out of a sense of duty or obligation. I want to spontaneously feel that they value me and that they appreciate what I did and that they recognize my role. And I also don’t want to put prescriptions on my expectations because I’m really mindful of not being pushy and overwhelming and making them feel like I’m sort of making claim on maternal territory or their life or something
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sort of like, yeah, I did this for them to become a family, so I’m gonna sort of hold back and wait and see what I’m invited into. For intended parents, we’re gonna have a baby, like we’re not quite sure how we’re gonna be able to do this, you know, like everything’s gonna change for us. And it might be sometimes it’s like we don’t want to give ourselves false expectations or things like that. But a lot of us, it’s just like we just want it to be organic, we want it to be natural, we don’t want it to feel forced, we don’t want
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obligations. So there’s a reluctance to actually sort of drill down into this stuff. But as you can see, if we don’t look at, well, what’s your definition? What does it mean to you? What does regular mean to you? Is that once a day? Is that once a month? Is that once a year? I catch up regularly. Once a year is regular. What’s your concept of regular? So when we get to that project relationship, which in that model, it’s the big one, the big trapezoid one, it’s a very, very busy time. So that’s the real…
26:20
action phase of surrogacy. When a lot of people think about surrogacy, they’re like, that’s it. Surrogacy is the project. Did the surrogacy, we started the surrogacy, we gave birth and then we finished the surrogacy. Parentage order went in and the surrogacy sort of gone. Yeah, it’s like that’s the surrogacy project and the surrogacy project relationship. But there’s a lot of different transition points in that surrogacy project relationship. And the surrogacy itself continues on forever through that Surroship, the story of the surrogacy and the child’s identity.
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relationship dynamics of the surrogacy project relationship, once you know, pregnancy starts and around birth, are more sort of 80-20 rather than 50-50. So it’s a very unique relationship in that, you know, friendships, work relationships, they’re generally 50-50. The surrogacy relationship is more an 80-21 where intended parents’ role in that relationship is, you know, providing, you know, support to the surrogate. It’s almost like being a sort of the concierge service, you know, to sort
27:19
to her and her family to make carrying the pregnancy easier, to sort of financially support the surrogacy. So the surrogacy project relationship doesn’t have that sort of democratic equity in roles. That’s where we sort of morph more into the sports team, where we’ve got a support team supporting the surrogate who’s sort of carrying the baby. It’s got unlike in a friend where it’s like we’ve got friend one and friend two, and essentially those roles are the same. You know, 50-50, give take, you know, your turn, my turn. In surrogacy, the role of the
27:49
parent in the relationship is fundamentally different to the role of the surrogate and the experience of the surrogate in that relationship. The role of the surrogate’s partner is fundamentally different, a fundamentally different experience to anybody else’s, the surrogate’s children. So that’s where we’re looking at the tour band, where we’ve sort of got all these people who can do different things and have different skills and different purposes who come together to form that cohesive unit, but they are not the same. So it’s a very, very unusual relationship because it’s not really like, not many of us have been in a band, you know, which goes
28:19
But if you think about what’s the folklore around bands, there’s a lot of relationship problems when they go on tour. They get sort of stuck with each other in the tour bus and they’ve got to perform every night and it gets a bit fractious. It’s like that common folklore of bands on tours and they break up and things like that.
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So that project relationship, another way that it can play out is with the intended parent relationship with the surrogate’s children. Let’s say the intended parents come in and they form a strong bond with the surrogate’s children and, you know, they spend a lot of time with them because, you know, we’re all catching up regularly. Kids really like them and the kids think they’re great. Is that friendship or is that project relationship? Sometimes it could be friendship. Sometimes it’s fantastic. Like the intended parents have come into the surrogate’s life, you know, they really like the surrogate’s kids and, you know, they form that friendship with them and they
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see that as great, you know, we’re going to continue this, our definition of ongoing friendship is that we’re going to be those sort of close family friends. We love your kids and when you’ve got a child you’ll be able to come over with us and we get to spend family time together and we’re going to form a family-like relationship. The other intended parents spending that time with the surrogate’s kids and you know taking them out on outings or babysitting them and stuff like that, they’re like, you know, like that’s that’s part of the project. You know, that’s us providing
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her by taking her kids out or babysitting them or driving them here, there and everywhere. It’s like why would we do that after she’s given birth? Like that doesn’t make sense to us. It’s like there’s no need for us to do that. So again, it’s like the kids don’t know.
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All they know is these adults have come in who are really, really fun and spent a lot of time with them. It’s important for the adults to know which one’s which. There’s no problem with either as long as we’re clear. It’s absolutely fine if the intended parents don’t intend to or don’t have the capacity to make that long-term commitment to the same intensity to the surrogate’s children because then that can be explained to the kids. They’re spending more time with you because we’re doing this and they’re supporting mom and that’s where they’re taking out. But post-birth, it’s like, yeah, we’re still going to be friends.
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going to see each other less often, you know, that it’s going to be less involvement. And it’s a bit like, you know, you’ve got grandparents who don’t live locally. When they’re living remotely there might be a weekly Zoom or something like that, or a phone call to catch up. And then they come to stay for six weeks and it’s been cold running grandparents. You know, it’s like grandparents are there and then it ends and then it goes back to the Zoom. You know, so it’s sort of having a concept of like, well, this is what we mean when we’re going to be friends post-birth. This is what it’s going to sort of look like. These people who sort of come into your life and are really, really fun. It’s like they’re not going to
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intensity, you know, that’s going to sort of end and that’s fine as long as kids have predictability with that. It’s when it’s what happened to these people, father had a baby for them and then they disappeared out of my life and that’s when it’s difficult for kids. Thinking about my own journey here and what you said there and in other slides is that I can see how powerful this tool would be if teams are thinking about it beforehand and I think if my own journey they’re realizing what was surrogate, what was project and then helping my kids understand that too that it’s interesting to
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this information is to have a structure for everybody to understand. Mm-hmm. Yeah, in groups who don’t have a pre-existing friendship, the boundaries between friendship and surrogacy, project relationship can become quite blurry. We’re not sure which dimension we’re operating in. Longer term friends or family, they have more clarity. It’s like, oh, we operated like this, then we added these ones to them. And again, we can sort of get that mismatch of friendship cultures and things like that. So the safeguarding of the misunderstandings
31:55
what everybody’s expectations are about that post-birth and post-project relationship culture at the beginning of your connection. You know, like what do we mean by that? What do we mean by friends? What do we mean by like family? What do you mean by catch up regularly? How do you like to catch up? Are you an in-person person or an online person? Again, it’s not like because we’re gonna be friends post- birth and then it’s birth and then straight down to what we all agreed was gonna be the definition of friendship. Everybody might be introverted, you know, and it’s like going, that’s gonna be great when we try to do this project, you know,
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and have to spend all this time together. It’s gonna be so good when we’re more chilled out. We just don’t go straight to that one because we’ve got to transition out that surrogacy project. One of the important things is what Anna was mentioning at the beginning in the conversations that she and I’ve been having over the past couple of years around this model. There’s usually someone, there’s usually like one person who’s what I call the culture leader in the surrogacy project relationship. They’re the person who sort of initiates those conversations, how we’re going, are we on track, is it meeting everybody’s needs, are we getting this right?
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if we look at it, it’s normal in a surrogacy project relationship to have those peck ins, like we do in a work project or a romantic relationship. Very, very, very normal. A lot of that goes on at the beginning. You know, what do we want out of this? You know, like, how do we want to get pregnant? How do we want to manage the pregnancy? How do we want to do the birth? And then it’s like, of course we’re going to be friends post-birth. Yeah, once we get there, we’re just going to be friends and we’re going to catch up regularly. Of course we are.
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very, very normal to have regular check-ins all throughout that, all throughout that, you know, up until the point of birth, you know, and then we’re sort of doing parentage order but those check-ins really drop off. But there’s generally one person who’s the sort of the leader of that, the initiator of that, and in my opinion, you know, whoever is doing that at the early stages, it’s still their responsibility, you know, because they’re the person who is naturally inclined to do that, you know. But what can happen is that behavior can completely drop off post-birth because we’re friends now. It’s like the project’s
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so now we’re friends and in a friendship culture you don’t do those check-ins anymore, it’s sort of weird. So those check-ins drop off significantly and let’s say it was the surrogate who was sort of like the culture leader in that, he was the one who was sort of always initiated that. Post-birth she can sort of feel like I’m not quite sure where I fit now because before it was sort of yeah about me communicating my needs to them and what I needed but now they’re looking after a baby and
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I don’t know if I’m sort of welcome, but they were always coming to me. Now they’ve got the baby, then I’m going to wait until I’m invited to go to them to see if the door’s open to me. You know, we’re in a friendship with sort of like, well, your turn, my turn, your turn, you know, both doors are open. But if intended parents have been frequently coming to the surrogate and not vice versa, that’s going to significantly change post-birth. And she’s like, oh, I don’t actually have the experience of going up and knocking on the door and walking in. Big change in friendship culture and rhythms and routines and rituals and things like that. So if those check-ins stop,
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there’s no way to sort of capture that transition in how things are going to operate. Are we getting it right? Where are we going? Are we meeting each other’s needs? Are we communicating properly? That drops off if the leader sort of no longer does those check-ins. So if we look at the point of birth, okay, that’s where the surrogacy project has been that sort of high intensity. And then at birth, we have to transition the surrogacy project relationship out in the same way that pre-birth, we sort of transitioned it in an escalation of intelligence.
35:18
intensity and then a de-escalation of intensity. What happens at birth is that intended parents become parents, which is the big purple one, which is like, oh my goodness, I am lost in the baby vortex, sleep deprived and it doesn’t stop. And now I’ve got the parentage order done and all this stuff. So it’s very, very intense for my new parents post-birth. But then we’ve got a surrogate who’s just given birth, so she’s got all the same needs as any woman who’s given birth.
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needs that come with being a surrogate who’s given birth. If you sort of imagine how many changes there are in that project relationship post-birth as it transitions out over that first 12 months, you know, we’ve sort of got getting through the first third, fourth trimester.
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we’ve got getting through the parentage order, the first Christmas, the first Easter, the first Mother’s Day, the first Father’s Day, first birthday is really sort of a milestone. That sort of first birthday is that sort of milestone of that sorority project relationship sort of transitioning out and it’s like, okay, cool, we did it, we made it, we got through it and now we can sort of be friends. Now we sort of know who we are as friends post-birth. We can sort of explore the sorority dimension and we’re doing this all in the new context
36:32
being parents who survived that first year as well. If you look at in terms of resourcing, anything which is blocked in as coloured is demand, climate, energy, demand, commitment, demand, resources and things like that. So you can see that post-birth.
36:46
the entire demand of the system goes up significantly, which is another reason why things fall apart post-birth. Because during the pregnancy phase of the project relationship, we were pretty much able to meet all needs through taking good care of the surrogate. Through taking good care of the surrogate, we took good care of the baby, where we met all her needs and intended parents, they were sort of living, they weren’t without needs.
37:08
They sort of were just living their regular lives. You know, post birth, we suddenly have a whole lot more people with a whole lot more needs. You know, we’ve got the surrogate and her needs. We’ve got a baby who’s entirely dependent, you know, on adults for care. And we’ve got two people who, you know, one or two people who just became parents, you know, with the high needs that come there. So now we’ve got a whole lot of people with a whole lot of high needs, which has happened from one moment to the next, that everything changed.
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So let’s say the intended parents were cooking and cleaning and ferrying kids around up until the moment of birth. It’s less realistic for them if they’re sort of caring for a baby that they’re going to be sort of doing that so much. So it’s really sort of, can we bring in external resources or, you know, like, let’s just make sure that we’ve got enough resources to cover everything. It doesn’t matter sort of how it’s going to get done, but it has to get done. Not the point of sort of intended parents going, oh, but we’re going to be busy with a baby post-birth. You know, we’re going to be too busy. So, well, Sarah gets going to have to sort of sort herself out. You know, it’s like, well, you didn’t get to be too busy.
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with a baby post-birth, aside from the fact that she just pushed your baby out of her vagina or had it removed from her stomach. So it’s sort of like there’s that sort of responsibility to sort of everybody in the pain at that point in time. That’s really sort of all the transients and points. I’ve got the parentage order as the moment of truth, because it’s like surrogates being very vulnerable to that fear of being used and abandoned by their intended parents. The parentage order is a very significant one relationship-wise.
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and emotionally, psychologically, because that can be, you know, for surrogates, it’s like, okay, this is the moment of truth. When I sign that consent form, they don’t need anything more from me. So the fear is like, this is the moment where they abandoned me. You can see with that transition point in the relationship, you know, that punctual leader needs to anticipate that one coming and go, what can we do to provide that consolidation and that reassurance that we’re still on track and we’re still heading in the right direction and we’re still transitioning this relationship out. It’s not like, great, glad that’s over,
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and dusted, we’re friends now, you know, when we still got another six months to transition out. There’s a really interesting moment which I sort of call the surrogate.
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her cup runneth over. It’s absolutely beautiful for me to be seeing this more and more often. It’s where surrogacy groups have put in the work. They’ve made those commitments to each other, had an amazing supportive surrogacy journey, like it’d been the usual wild ride, but they’ve, you know, they’ve hung in there with each other. And post-birth, you know, intended parents, they can be very diligent and very committed to meeting their surrogate’s needs post-birth. So they’re still giving her a lot of attention and check-ins and phone calls and things like that.
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that comes sometimes where the surrogate’s like, I sort of need them to back off, yo. It’s like, it’s too much, it’s too much. They’re abandoning. You know, and I’m like, oh, hallelujah, bring it on. It’s like, really? You know, because I’ve spent so many years with surrogates telling me, yo, I’m feeling used and abandoned post-birth, like they’ve.
39:58
they’ve disappeared. I’m not even getting 25% of my needs met. So it’s like, really? You’re finding them a bit much for you. You know, it’s a bit overwhelming. You want them to back up. But basically what’s happening is the surrogate is feeling emotionally fulfilled. She’s feeling recognised. She’s feeling appreciated. She’s feeling validated. And she’s feeling like he’s not going to be used and abandoned. You know, so she sort of has that embrace, you know, to sort of go, please, please, you know, focus on yourself. You know, please, I did this so that you could be
40:28
like, I really want to watch you just be parents and relax into that and not have, you know, the responsibility of me so much. Like, I’m feeling secure. I’m feeling secure in our relationship. And it’s a beautiful transition point, you know, but unless someone’s paying attention, intended parents get to keep going for their support. And so I guess you’re going to be like, I don’t know why I’m feeling weird about it.
40:48
they seem to be needing this more from them, so I’ll sort of, yeah, go with it. Whereas if we actually discuss what that transition point means, we can actually significantly change the dynamics of the relationship, you know, so that everybody’s like, oh, this is great, like, wow, you know, this is a real milestone for us to sort of be able to move on in that sort of transition to sort of, you know, the goal that everybody had, which was intended parents, parent or parent at home being parents, normal parents like everybody else in the parenting boat, you know, with the surrogate part of that story, you know,
41:18
But if you look at it in terms of that surrogacy project relationship, it’s like now we’re sort of leaving that project in the past. We are friends who have a surrogacy connection, who did a surrogacy project in the past, and we’re transitioning out of that. There’s very sort of significant milestones and transition points that we need to calibrate through those regular check-ins. Yeah, really powerful. And obviously I’m reflecting and thinking about my own journey while you’re talking about that and imagining how powerful this will be for teams.
41:48
Also, that’s the goal, isn’t it? The cup.
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run us over that her love tank is full so to speak and then it’s like everyone’s done a good job the team navigated that well the ips are paying her so to speak in that time friendship and love and everyone’s done a great job and then yeah as the project ends and they just settle back into friendship and reflecting on the Surroship it’s that’s the goal really isn’t it? Absolutely that everybody lives happily ever after you know. It’s lovely to hear that people are coming to you now well not only with you know your own buzzwords it’s been happening you know for a while but that you
42:20
more of the success stories from teams. Oh yeah, it’s like makes my heart sing. To feel nice that you know your vision that you had for the community to leave it in a better place than you found it. I know, I know it’s like the tipping point of the surrogate cup run-a-thon that I was like going oh I didn’t pick this one. It’s like when it first happened I was like this is a fluke yeah then happened again. I was like yeah what? Then I got three times in in succession I was like I’ve done it. And to help the surrogate see that this is actually
42:50
That’s great, so it’s like, the intended parents, well done, you can step down a bit. Yeah, it is a hard gig, it’s busy for the intended parents, isn’t it? I’ll read out Sue’s question. Her first question is, how to support an experienced surrogate whose previous team did not end well, promises of the relationship not met. So if you’re going into a journey with a surrogate who’s already been a surrogate, how to address that as a new team, perhaps? Well, obviously, like, it’s a surrogate who has had a previously disappointing experience
43:20
but the fact that she’s signing up for another one means that she has that belief, that hope, that optimism, you know, that vision of what it can be and what it should be. She wants to sort of try to create that. Like, you know, she believes it can happen. If she didn’t believe that it was possible, if she was like too burdened for it, there’s no way in hell she would sign herself up to take that risk again if she thought it was inevitable. That opportunity there as an intended
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in my commitment to have this longevity of relationship when I actually think about it in terms, not in just those general terms, because we’re gonna be friends, because we’re gonna catch up regularly. And it’s really to sort of follow this modeling in having those conversations with your surrogate, to give her that sense of reassurance, instead of sort of going, oh, what do you want as a friendship post-birth? What are your expectations? What it would look like to you? Because then it’s very vulnerable, probably what happened to her before, where the intended parents went, absolutely, that’s what we want too. Everything you want, we want.
44:20
you know, to actually sort of go, well, this is what it would look like to us. This is what we’re like with our friends. You know, this is what we’re like with our family. This is who we are. This is what would be normal for us. And then there’s the risk that she’s going to be, well, that’s not right for me. If it’s not right, it’s not right. Thinking about, well, what can we realistically offer? What is our friendship culture? What is our family culture? What does it mean to us to catch up regularly? If I was thinking of me, you know, like, you know, what I’d expect in this surrogacy project, if I was a surrogate versus who I am as a friend, in-person catch-ups once a year,
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that’s regular. You’re lucky if you get to see me once a year. But I’ll chat online all day. But when I was in that surrogacy project, I would expect my intended parents to be there at my beck and call essentially. But it’s like, oh, please, please go away. I’m not actually that social. I don’t want you coming over all the time. So I’ve got very different cultural expectations. That’s why I give you that structure and that terminology to go, okay, what’s our
45:20
friendship, what do we think the Surroship is? That’s an unusual one. What’s our project relationship? It’s like a, so our friendship was our project relationship. What do we think is going to be going on here? What do we think is going to be going on here? Who’s our culture leader? And they’re signed up for the full thing. I mean, you can stop them around or it can be one or two people, but it’s really like it’s that person’s responsibility to keep the trajectory of those check-ins. It’s not like, oh, we’ve given birth, we’re friends now, we don’t do that anymore.
45:43
It’s like you still need to do it for a time after that. Well, yes. So Sue wrote there that you essentially answered the second question as well, which also seemed to answer the comment or question that Jacob.
45:53
had is that is that normal for new surrogacy teams to ask each other questions or share insights over the webinar? I’ll quickly add my bit and say, yes, I think it’s really powerful to use these webinars as a, like a third party resource that everybody in the team listens to. And then you chat together about it. It’s like homework if you like. So then you’ve done the same work. And so you’ve got the same reference point to have conversations about. So particularly this, you know, webinar about team culture, if your team goes into it now with an understanding of what did our family or friendship look like? The surrogacy.
46:23
and now the enormity of the project might help everybody to understand and keep expectations in check too, I’d imagine. Mm-mm.
46:30
I mean, this is sort of what I do for a job, you know, like thinking about this type of thing and talking about this type of thing and having the language around it and the frameworks and the thinking. It’s like often people are like, oh, when you say Katrina, it just made so much sense. But you know, when we tried to sort of do it, it didn’t sort of work so much. So again, to sort of listen to this webinar and then independently go in and sort of try to then turn it into action. You know, it’s a big link. You know, this is like years of me thinking, you know, to sort of make it look so simple.
47:00
and get that information and it’s almost like, oh yeah, Katrina said we had to do this, you know, so if it sort of feels a bit awkward to be like, we need to talk about our definitions of friendship, we need to talk about who’s the cultural leader, we need to talk about, you know, what does regular mean, we need to talk about, well, do you like your family? You know, it’s like, well, Katrina told us we had to, so, you know, that’s the rules. You become helpful because we can blame it on Katrina. Blame it on me, yeah, blame anything on me. Yes, we often say blame it on Katrina, blame it on SASS,
47:30
this is what we’ve told is a good thing to do so it can take away sort of the awkwardness or someone feeling like why are you asking me those questions I want to be organic. It’s because people with years of experience are telling us. Well I reckon we’ve sort of covered all of it there I was going to say if you’ve got anything else you’d like to add or that you’ve covered it all I reckon. We’ve talked enough yeah. Thank you everybody. Yes wonderful some feedback there thank you so much for the information they’ll need to re-watch it to to absorb it all and thank you for
48:00
Thank you for sharing your time and your knowledge and your experience, Katrina. It’s lovely to have it. You’re such a… Yeah, I’ll come together. See you next year. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your time with me for this episode. If you’re finding these episodes helpful, please share them with friends. If you’d like to see the images mentioned, head to our YouTube channel for all of the recordings. If you’re looking for more individualised support,
48:23
consider joining SASS, Surrogacy Australia’s support service, so you can be connected with a mentor and also with me to help guide you on a journey. You might think of me as your Siri for surrogacy. Until next time, welcome to the village.
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