Medical and Legal Blah Blah Blah -- The Most Boring Posting to Date I Believe

There's always something new, right? The first trimester is done, but now there is genetic testing, finding out the sex (which I'm hoping not to do), delivery options, fear of the twins coming early, buying things for the nursery, baby proofing the home, finding a new home that accommodates everyone, etc., etc., etc. And this is before they even come! Lord knows how stressed out I'll be when I have to take them to their first day of school, put them on the bus to sleep away camp or let them get drivers licenses! I don't know how parents do it.

But you all would be proud of me. I'm accepting things as they come along. We had a little bit of a problem last week. Because my surrogate had spotting a couple weeks ago and ran to the doctor to get checked out we got off the normal check up schedule. Plus, her doctor wasn't the right doctor for a twin pregnancy so we had to find a new doctor and a new hospital for delivery. All of that made getting routine testing go off track. Now we're at week 13 and a half and, long story short, through a series of unfortunate events we are not able to do the nuchal translucency test (which is done on twins) because we waited too long.

At first I stressed out about this. After some time I realized that
1. The test only tells you the chance of a problem, it doesn't actually diagnose a problem.
2. There are a lot of false positives and false negatives so the test isn't very accurate.
3. Considering my history and age and the egg donor's history and age there is a very low chance of a problem.
4. Would knowing even make a difference to me? I'm not sure.

So we missed the window of opportunity for this test and there's nothing I can do. Derek and I have been talking about the miracles technology can do but also the curse of knowing too much. Sometimes it's best to just let nature take its course. We'll be able to do a blood test in another week or two and get mostly the same information.

Meanwhile, I have to start my application for parentage. I thought I was mostly done with the legal mumbo-jumbo, but no. My lawyer is going to make forms for the doctor to keep on file which basically say that I am the father and the birth certificate will say "gestational surrogate" where the mother is usually listed. I get copies and my surrogate gets copies too in case she delivers in an unplanned location and we need legal proof that the babies aren't hers. Illinois has some of the best laws protecting the parents (so my lawyer says) but it still is a pain to go through more legal stuff and it costs another $500. I've also been told that in IL we can do a second parent adoption even if the second parent is the same sex. Or, more likely, Derek and I will do a civil union. The laws are pretty murky, though, because everything is still new. I also have to have a will made in a few days as part of the agreement. I stumped my lawyer a little bit as he tried to find language to describe my relationship with Derek which is basically a husband and father to the kids without the legal rights...yet. If the stupid politicians would just grant equal rights to everyone these documents would be so much easier! But that's a posting for another blog.