🌷This past week, Evelyn Eleanor Day officially became ours. 

When we first embarked on our gestational journey, we had no idea just how complicated the process was, from well before an embryo transfer occurs to well after a birth. There is the medical, psychological, and legal clearance (along with insurance review) that has to be completed prior to a transfer. Then, if there is a pregnancy, you have months and months of gestation - related protocols. All the hormone injections, all the payments, all the doctors’ appointments, all the contractual, legal questions that arise during the 10 months of gestation. Even after the best day of your life - the birth of your child - you still have to go through the adoption process.

You read that correctly. After your genetic child is born, there is a presumption that the “actual” mother is the person that gave birth (at least in Minnesota). (There is a bit of comedy in the fact that the birthing person can choose whomever she wants as the “father”). It feels a little odd having Kimmy’s name (and Phil’s) on the initial birth certificate. 

We knew this was part of the process, but we were also very anxious to have our official court proceeding where we would establish that we are Evie’s legal and physical guardians, her biological parents, and have the initial birth certificate destroyed, and a new one created with Phil and my name as the biological parents of Evelyn.

So, this past Wednesday, Kimmy, her husband, Phil, myself, and Evelyn, along with our attorney, sat in front of a judge, and answered a plethora of questions. Questions establishing that we all signed the gestational carrier agreement, we all understood there are risks in not having a paternity test completed on Evelyn (the risks being the reproductive endocrinologist inserting the wrong embryo OR Kimmy getting pregnant on her own after the transfer, and thus, Evelyn NOT being our child.) We were establishing that we were all 100% confident that Evelyn was/is our biological child and there are no concerns about paternity, and Kimmy has no legal or physical rights to Evie, now or in the future. 

During the hearing, everyone was extremely joyous, even the judge. It did, however, make me appreciate just how lucky we are to be living in a time where one, we have good, safe, and diligent fertility clinics (we never once worried that the wrong embryo was transferred,) and two, that we found someone we trust so implicitly, there was never a question of whether Kimmy would even risk getting pregnant before or after a transfer (abstinence all the way!)

At this point in our gestational surrogacy journey, it is almost impossible for me to wrap my head around how easy it can be to have child. Have sex and BAM! baby! Do I wish we could have that luxury? Of course. But if nothing else, when little Evie is old enough to understand our experience, she will never have to wonder whether she was wanted or cared for, because we fought for years to make her existence a reality, and during those first ten months of gestation, we entrusted her in the care of the most trustworthy and caring human, Kimmy. How lucky are we. 🌷