Finishing the surrogacy story, Part 1
One of the things that keeps me awake in the middle of the night is that we promised to write this blog on our journey with surrogacy but once we were deep in the dramas of Covid, Georgia and a new baby we really didn’t have time to write the blog and the longer we waited the more awkward this post was to write.
But as we approach the second birthday of our son Theodore and start to consider a sibling journey it feels appropriate to write a little wrap up post on our first experience.
To get the important stuff out of the way first, Theo was born happy and healthy at Gudushauri Hospital late march 2020 and is now nearly 2 years old.
So to pick up where my wife left off. We had travelled to Georgia just before the borders closed due to Covid restrictions. Because we arrived earlier than planned out apartment wasn’t ready yet so we stayed in local hotels and enjoyed the amazing food and wine Tbilisi has to offer.
Living in Tbilisi
When it came time to move to the apartment we were planning to stay in for the next 2 months we packed up our things and headed to what was billed as a modern apartment block with co-working spaces and everyone one could need to work and live for a couple months while we waited for Theo’s passport. As is becoming a theme for this experience, things were not as they seemed. We arrived at a barely finished, sparsely populated apartment building with no furniture, no working space and all the shared amenities not yet completed. Needless to say we bailed. We quickly looked up alternative airbnb’s, went to view one and booked that for the next few weeks.
Over the next few days things begun to lock down more in Georgia we realised that we were basically going to be living 24/7 in this apartment so decided to move once again to a bigger apartment further outside the centre that would be more comfortable but less convenient for walking to the shops etc.
Here we stayed for the duration of our trip and we learned a couple things:
Glovo and Wolt amazing, you can basically order anything from food to groceries to pharmacy supplies from the shops around you. Drivers are friendly. Once T was born we basically lived on deliveries.
Driving in Tbilisi seems quite tricky at first but honestly, everyone is friendly and used to seeing rental cars driving around like idiots so keep calm and carry on.
The internet is quite spotty at times and power can be too so be prepared with plenty of non-internet connected entertainment and batteries. That being said when its up the internet is more than fast enough to stream Netflix etc. We bought an apple tv locally and used that to stream shows, it worked perfectly.
The Birth
As I said earlier Theo was born at Gudushauri Hospital in March. Our experience was heavily impacted by Covid so i’m not sure how valuable our insights will be but i’ll share regardless.
When we arrived we had a very difficult time communicating with hospital security who quite rightly were trying to prevent as many people as possible for entering the hospital given the covid situation. Our New Life coordinator did try and help where she could be honestly everyone was learning how to operate in the “new normal” and it was incredibly stressful. On top of that we our surrogate had requested a c-section because she didn’t want to deal with the drama of getting to the hospital in labor with covid restrictions etc. This meant that every second we were waiting outside we knew we were getting closer to missing his birth.
After about 20 minutes of back and forth with translated text messages we finally got in and were directed to our room. The room was essentially two rooms, a normal hospital type room with a hospital cot and another room with a pullout bed.
Within a few minutes of arriving we were informed that Theo has been born and was on his way up. Because of COVID my wife wasn’t allowed to be in the room with our surrogate as she (our surrogate had wanted).
A minute or two later Theo was rolled in in a baby warmer and we finally after a year of planning and waiting we were able to meet our little boy. everything that came before, and was yet to come was worth it.
Hospital Stay
We stayed in the hospital for I think 3 nights while initial observations were done and hospital nurses were able to make sure we were able to feed him etc. It we was rough. The monitor / warmer T was under would beep every 30 minutes and a nurse would come in and stop it which made sleeping even more impossible. The bed was insanely uncomfortable for two people to sleep in.
Normally you are able to order food in using delivery services but with COVID we were not able to do that and well… the hospital food was terrible. Luckily we only had to last a few days on the meagre rations we had brought with us and the bits of the hospital food we could eat.
Everyone at the hospital was amazingly helpful and thoughtful, we always felt we were in safe hands and the team there did an amazing job in very very difficult circumstances. Many people may remember stories of surrogacy during covid on the news both in Ukraine and Georgia, although I don’t have personal experience with Ukraine I would like to say that at least in Georgia the babies are absolutely top priority and in situations where Intended Parents were unable to collect their children the hospitals went above and beyond to ensure the babies had the best possible care.
This post is already far too long so i’ll pick up the rest of our stay in Georgia and how we eventually got home in a part two.
