The Real "Vacation" Photos

I am a huge fan of souvenirs, but my favorite thing to bring home from trips are photos. They help you remember all of the little moments and details that fade from our memories over time. We took hundreds of photos in India. It feels like I am living a lie though. Friends are seeing photos on Facebook like this one. The caption would say something like "Me and My Love at the Taj Mahal for our 4 year wedding anniversary". What it should say is: "Me and My Love at the Taj Mahal on the 4 year anniversary of trying to have a baby. It was a pretty depressing day." So, here are the real photos from the trip. 

This is a brand new baby girl born to a surrogate from Dr. Shavani's program. Her father and two other men who were there on their own either picking up their children or attempting to become fathers became my fast friends and looked after me until My Love arrived in Delhi. Thank you to Sean, Max and Pete for taking me under their wings!

This is a picture of me being followed down the street by a mob of children. The children in India were amazing. It took everything I had not to kidnap one of the precious street children who would beg for money each time our tuktuk came to a stop. Don't think the absurdity of our trip was lost on me. I looked into adopting from India. It's impossible unless we convert to another religion. Only about 250 children are adopted out of India a year. I'm toying with the idea of giving up on a baby altogether and just moving there to work in an orphanage. People who know me will know that I am serious. My Love is not enthusiastic about this plan. 

These are the meds that Dr Shivani's office kindly packed in a Styrofoam box full of ice packs for our trip to the Taj Mahal for our wedding anniversary. 

 Meds in the minibar fridge. 

One day's worth of meds  being prepped. 

This is the Salim Chisti Tomb. It is said that he preformed miracles. Mughal Emporer Akbar-e-Azam went to him to pray for a male heir to his kingdom and soon after was blessed with the first of three sons.  

This is me in the tomb. I am smiling, but I was in a miserable mood because I'd just had a fight with My Love. You have to donate a piece of cloth to be able to make a wish in the tomb. Of course the cloth was a rip off by local standards, but I didn't care. People come from all over to pray for children at this spot. My Love happened to be carrying all of our cash that day. I had to fight with him to get him to give me 100 rupees ($1.82). He was more worried about being ripped off then me being able to say a prayer. It was not a happy time for me. 

Once the tears came I finally managed to get the 100 rupees and the strings necessary to make prayers. You get three strings to tie to the screen to signify your wishes. I cannot tell tell you what my wishes were, but I'll bet you can figure out one of them. 

This is one day's worth of  a menopur type med. I don't remember what the name was. The four vials with the metal lids had a freeze dried power in them. You had to snap open the long thin glass vial, use the syringe to draw out the liquid and then one by one mix it into the four vials of freeze dried powder, dissolve it, draw it back into the syringe, inject it into the next vial, roll the vial to dissolve the power without making bubbles, draw it back into the syringe, inject into the next vial, and on and on. Once all four vials were dissolved into the fluid you had to get it all into an insulin syringe and inject that into my stomach. It burns like hell and within 15 minutes my head felt like it was going to explode for the next 8 hours. I had to do this at 10am every day so it certainly put a damper on things. 

 

More pics of my meds. 

 

This is the truck that broke down in the middle of the road holding us up for more than 30 minutes as we were rushing from Agra to Delhi to try to make it back for our ultrasound with Dr. Shavani. I almost had a nervous breakdown. 

Yep, that's the box of meds hanging out with us at Gloria Jean's for our morning cup of coffee. 

This is a happy smiling photo that would appear on Facebook. 

This is what I really felt like that day. 

Me and my meds once again.

This is my stomach covered with all of the bruises, pin pricks and scars I bear from infertility. 

This is the shop where we bought gifts for our surrogates to receive on the transfer day. We aren't really supposed to buy them gifts, so we just got them pretty boxes of dried fruits and nuts. We are supposed to save the gifts until once the children are born. I wasn't that hopeful so I wanted to give them something up front. Those poor women are cursed with my old eggs. They should at least get a consolation prize for trying. 

This is the crib in our nursery. I bought some little paper prayer flags in Nepal. I had no particular plan for them and was most likely going to give them as a gift. Once I got home I thought of the perfect place for them. Hey, can't hurt, might help.