The First Days

We returned yesterday to the Hospital to complete the paperwork.  The main issue was the unusual fact that the mother (me) was not present in the country when the birth took place.  I signed the birth certificate form and we will pick up the actual certificate next week.  At this point we will be able to apply for a US passport.  As for the UK situation we are still waiting to hear from the lawyers, who are still waiting to hear from the Home Office.  Most likely what will happen is that we will register the birth at the UK consulate in San Francisco although the best outcome would still be that they would allow us a temporary visa to come home on the US passport since this can be obtained far more quickly.

It's a worry but it's something that will just have to get dealt with and compared to all the problems we could have had there is nothing too serious about which to complain.  Sleeping beautifully in her cot, all wrapped up snug and tight, is a healthy and happy little girl.  

Our main wish for being back in the UK is of course that we want to show her off to family and friends.  A small consolation has been our celebrity status in the hospital so that when we went in to the finance office to settle the bill for Harriet's stay (thanks to her rude health a mercifully small amount in the context of US medical bills) we were immediately surrounded.  People desperately wanted to see her and were so enthusiastic and warm.

I have caught up on all the details of the birth and I am so pleased that it went so well.  The hospital have a protocol for surrogacy and while it was a bit of a new area for some of the staff they caught up quickly.  Harriet was treated completely as our baby (and was admitted as such to the hospital once she was born) and Jay was treated as the mum.  Jennifer never took her eyes off him during the birth because that she was concentrating on what she has always seen as her role: not having a baby but making us a family.  She is well and is back with her children and Jay talked lots and heard such encouraging and wonderful things from her.  Jay met her mother and father and we have received supportive messages from other members of her family.

 In short, my absence aside, everything was perfect.

I was there the next day and arrived just after they had been discharged.  It has been a magical few days with a perfect little girl.  I cannot wait to show her to everyone to let you see for yourselves.  Words are not enough.

Not in Kansas Now

Harriet Edana Love-Mason, born Sacramento, California at 3.37am February 24th 2009.

This is a day for joy and celebration and nothing will diminish that. Yes I would have loved to have been there for the moment rather than sitting at my desk waiting to join a meeting on regulatory value-at-risk but that is as nothing. All that mattered to me was that everyone was safe and healthy and that is what I got.

We had joked of course that in many ways it looked like we had made it all up and we just liked going to California. After all no-one had ever met Jennifer until Gill travelled to the States and we could just have paid her off with cinnamon flavoured coffee! The story, let us be honest, seems too strange to be true. Where it begins is hard to say. The practical steps began in the Lord Palmerston pub in Walthamstow as Jay began to break down my resistance to such radical thoughts. I'm not ashamed to say that it was not high on my list of priorities - there are two of you in the relationship to get your priorities in order after all.

It's an awesome responsibility but I'm sanguine about it all because I know that between us we might not have all bases covered but we've got the wit, the wherewithall and perhaps just about the right amount of recklessness to give anything a fair go.

Anyway back to the story. I managed to phone my mother, sister, brother and Aunty Betty and talk to Jay of course and hear her for the first time, reducing me to tears. Then it was time for lunch and then to attend the Ongoing Derivatives meeting and hammer home my points about the risk management of some new trades. I then spoke to HR about parental leave and they need to do some research into my rather complicated case but my management have been superb and it was not an issue to take more time off. I booked my flight to leave Heathrow the following morning at 9.30am and soon I had done all the other necessary admin by booking the car parking and the hire car at San Francisco. Then it was off to the Valuations Working Group to opine some more and I stayed till 8pm trying to leave everything in an orderly fashion.

Oh I forgot Mango so I need to speak to Claire and tell her the news and arrange cover and then I have to do some washing and tidy up and then...

So it's been a bit of a rush, which is good because I almost don't want to stop and have to contemplate it all. At least that is until I have her in my arms and then time and work and opinions and booking flights can stop, if only for a little while.

Home

There was a bit of drama at the airport when the bag I was carrying back weighed in at just over 30kg and the British Airways staff were reluctant to take it. When they finally agreed to take it their credit card machine would not work for taking the excess bag fee so yet more delays; in the meantime the queue behind me just grew and I can imagine the choice terms some of them were using.

After about half an hour I finally left the "Fast Bag Drop" counter and headed home.

I had hired a car at Heathrow and was excited when the assistant told me they didn't have any mondeos so I would be upgraded. So what did I get you ask - a convertible? a mercedes? a BMW? No they gave me a huge MPV the width of Arto, oh the glamour.

I went home and said hello to Mango and then went into work. It was good to catch up on everything. There was some good news including the fact that two people who were made redundant whom I liked have returned to firm and one of them in a much better job. After all the doom and gloom I'm so pleased for them.

My apologies to those of you, particularly those of you in the public sector, who were offended by my previous blog. I was just feeling a bit defensive about why I had to go back to work because people had kept asking whether I could hang on a few more days and I couldn't. I don't want to be back here believe me but I think it is for the best. There are of course many people in the public sector who are losing there jobs although sadly not any cabinet ministers yet.

The first two days were fine but the jet lag is really bad today. I'm writing this on Sunday at 11am and I am desperate to get to bed. Normally I would just play on the computer but we have another person coming to view the house in twenty minutes so I can't. Things might have picked up since this is the second person who has come in a week but I'm not hopeful. The expense of the surrogacy means that a realistic offer for the house is probably not enough for us at the moment.

Still no news from the US although at tomorrow's hospital appointment we should at least book the induction. I will probably go out next weekend for a few days and then once again depending on how long sorting out the immigration takes. It will be nice to see a bit more of California than the hotel room and the drainage canal and hopefully their winter storms will have subsided.

Time for another coffee.

Flight Booked

I have booked my flight back to England (well changed my original return date, for the princely sum of fifty pounds).  I will leave tomorrow for the land where a scone is something to eat with jam and cream (rather than the mashed potato and gravy that is more popular here).  

It's desperately sad on many levels but we did have some good news today.  We were sent to the hospital for some activity tests.  This meant that I got to see the hospital, got to spend an hour in the labour room with Jennifer wired up to machines and basically just picture the scene and feel part of things.  There was no actual labour but on the plus side all Harriet's vitals were good.  We got to see a scan as well although this was done rather too efficiently and was for the purpose of checking how much fluid there was (plenty apparently).

I have wasted valuable holiday and been terribly bored but she is well and I am happy.  There will be another appointment on Monday and then the induction will be scheduled.  I will come out fairly soon afterwards for a weekend and maybe again.  It will be hard to do all that travelling but it will be worth it.   

Still

The only news we have relates to the US pre-birth judgement.  This was finally issued on Friday and although we have always treated it as a fait-accompli it is still one of the most remarkable pieces of the jigsaw and is precisely the reason that we wanted to do it in California in the first place.  It establishes our parental relationship with the child "due to be born on or around the 9th February" (lol) and the fact that this is the sole parental relationship.

I will certainly be returning to the UK next week.  We still hope desperately that Harriet will be born before then and I will leave the booking to the last possible minute but we need to be realistic.  There is simply no way to predict accurately when a birth will occur.  The best information that we had (namely that this will be a fourth baby and there was a scare about early onset labour at 35 weeks) meant that we chose to come out early and we would have to do the same again.  

Our surrogate is following every possible old-wives tale no matter how unpleasant - walking, climbing stairs, taking very hot showers and drinking  concotions of spices, balsamic vingegar and just about everything else.  She is separated from her daughters until the birth and enduring all manner of pains in just about everywhere.  We're all desparate but desparation and want does not a baby produce and we've all just had to get used to it.

It will be terrible if I'm not there but it will not be the end of the world.  The reality is that I have pushed my luck being out this length of time since finance is not a stable industry at the moment and everyone is obsessed about 'face time'.  This is not the public sector and I will need to tread carefully because we need the job and the greater good is being able to provide for her and making provision for one day doing it again.  

I also need to make sure that I still have some leave so that I can spend some quality time with her when she is actually back in the country and we can go away in Arto on holiday.  I can't wait.  Well, actually I can and I'm going to have to.  

 

This is where we are

The news is that there is no news. The most important thing is that Harriet is safe and for that I am grateful. Alas she is not willing to show her face yet and there is nothing we can do about that except just wait. The best case scenario now is that she will be born and I have a few days with her before I go back to work. Jay will have to deal with the consulate and registration by himself with me doing as much of the work by telephone as possible. Today we got an email from our UK lawyer who copied to us the extensive correspondence between him and the Home Office. This depressing chain of emails starts positively based on an existing precedent but it can't apply directly to us, the problem being that our surrogate is married and so Harriet will be 'illegitimate' and ineligible for automatic citizenship. Despite having the details for a few months now and referring our difficult matter to their senior management weeks ago their opinion is that they need a letter to give it individual attention although happily they are going to give detailed guidance on this type of issue in the "near future". The likelihood is that Harriet will need to stay out in the US until a decision is reached. Maybe I'll see her before she's three months old, maybe I won't.

Of course I should have checked this out before but the cast iron nature of our legal relationship in the US meant that I really didn't see that there would be an issue and certainly the idea that it boils down to legitimacy is so absurd and so unfair. That said, the US law is yet another pain. We paid months ago and signed all the documents before we came out after hassling the lawyer to get his act together. Then we had to resign the documents for reasons unknown and wait yet again. We were promised that the judgement would be here today but it has not arrived. I hate being beligerent, chasing people by phone, email and text for any information but it's all I've go to do.

I'll skim over the fact that our surrogate was involved in a car accident yesterday (she was not hurt, everything is fine) and the fact that the doctor has the wrong due date. Here we are stuck staring at the walls of a hotel room, starved of any sense of control and going slightly mad. Let's be clear, I am not writing this because I'm looking for any commiserations or even any word of encouragement. Everything will be fine and will be sorted out in due course and years hence it will all be a good story or least good legal case history. I am writing it because the whole point of the blog was to keep people informed and involved in the journey during the good times and the bad. Writing about these problems is significantly easier than when I wrote about our losing the twin and I return to the place I opened this. We are so grateful for her and so glad that she is safe and well. We couldn't ask for more.

There's Probably No Bus

The weather has taken a turn for the worse - we've had a little bit of rain in the past few days.  Not that Californians regard it as a turn for the worse; they are probably glad of the water, which is as scarce a resource here as sunny summer days in Britain.  

We still have no news so we are still sitting around listening to BBC radio via the internet.  The snow is a small consolation for my coming out here too early since if I had left it later I might well have become trapped in Heathrow for days.  There is little chance that I would have made it to work since the B1004 is unlikely to be a priority for Hertfordshire County Council.  It would have been lonely being stuck in the house with no dogs, just a pestering cat.  

We can't travel too far, ever hopeful of the call to the hospital, so we restrict our visits to the outside world to nearby restaurants.  Having had more than enough burgers we extended our diet to Chinese food and then yesterday to Cheesecake factory.  One of the little differences and one I would like to change is the American habit of making starters absolutely enormous and bringing in the main course almost immediately afterwards.  At least in the Cheesecake factory we had wised up to the fact that a single start would be more than enough for all of us but that 

was more than cancelled out by the cheesecakes themselves.

It's 9am and now we are settling down to another day of waiting.  The only decision to make is where to eat.  Hopefully it will be the hospital canteen.

Time Passes Slowly

Our last trip out was Saturday when we visited Lake Tahoe but since then we have not been able to travel too far.  We are very close and expecting the call to the hospital any time soon.

In the meantime we must try to occupy ourselves.  Like many people who have unwanted time on their hands I have written a letter of complaint in response to a newspaper article, walked in pointless loops by the river (or to be more precise the "main drainage canal") and read all the books I have brought.

I have been trying to read some American fiction and began with John Updike's Toward the End of Time.  The backdrop to this story, namely a devastating war between China and the US in 2020 and the breakdown of state organisations, is so interesting to me but makes very little impact on the story.  The voice of the novel, a 66 year old whose journal it is, is a generally unlikeable man and the frequent sex is pretty unpalatable.  And yet, while not exactly a fluid novel, it does carry you steadfastly through a keenly observed year with many quotable paragraphs and reflective moments.  The heaviness of the prose is apt for a novel fixated, in addition to sex, on death and decay.

I much preferred Cannery Row, which casts its net wider and brings in many endearing characters.  When I first visited California I raved about it and asked an American friend to recommend to me a book that would put me off it.  Cannery Row was the best she could come up but it achieved no such purpose.  The depressing fact of greed's extermination of the sardine stocks in a space of two years exists outside of the book.  It is a good reason for taking a dim view of California, of the developed world generally, but on the other hand my dominant thoughts are of Doc collecting starfish and octopus at the Pacific's edge, of Mack and the boys in the model T and the insane stocklist of Lee Chong's store.

If Cannery Row cheered me my heart started to race with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon.  I had picked him out because I had recently read and hugely enjoyed Gentlement of Road before I came to the US.  I am not yet a 66 year old ex-financier living in a world destroyed by war and I will never be a resident of Monterey full of working canneries but I have been a student gazing out on a long vacation, waiting for the next stage.  It tells the story of a final year student's summer and his friendships and affairs with four others.  It's such a beautiful story and awakened so many memories in me that to some extent I am now a bit deflated that it is finished.  

I discovered that a film has been made to be released in 2009 and was horrified to learn that the relationship that meant the most to me, between Arthur and Art, had been removed.  Apparently the director felt that having four characters and a love "rhombus" was too complicated and he proposed a simplified triangular structure by combining the important aspects of Arthur with Cleveland.  Yes well, maybe whisky and wine is too much for a single meal but the solution is hardly to mix them in the same glass.  This piece of celluloid idiocy I will not see.

So there we go.  Now the book review is finished and still no word; time to find something else to do to pass the time that doesn't involve just slowly banging my head against the wall. 

 

 

Musing in the sunshine

Is this the worst time to be a child in the UK?  The Good Childhood Inquiry produced by the Children's Society and released this week paints a dire picture and it's consistent with so many of the stories that have dominated the news recently.  It is welcome but it is a difficult subject to discuss because people feel very defensive about the issues that are too close to them and it is so often picked up most prominently by the reactionary right-wing press.

Like many people whose preference is for the hard science of test tubes and particle accelerators I am usually dismissive of social science.  An individual case tells you next to nothing.  Everyone knows examples where both parents stay at home and the home environment is terrible and examples where there is one parent who does a wonderful job.  Where is the numerical tipping point at which you can start to conclude what is best?  More likely I suspect you start with some preconceived ideas and beliefs generated some other way, often through membership of some ideology, religious or political, and then go hunting for the data that supports your view.  

This report may be no different and my own approach to it may be that which I have already identified but overall I think it reaches sensible conclusions with which most people could agree.  The basic charge is that the excessive pursuit of individual needs and goals has made children's lives harder.  Some people will be automatically defensive because they feel that this implies that women shouldn't go to work or that single parent families are doomed.  Yet although it clearly is about individuals and their choices it is equally about matters of public policy that will allow people to make sensible choices.

The difficulty for public policy makers is that they need to find that numerical tipping point where their actions benefit as wide a section of society as possible while at the same time doing the least amount of harm to everyone else.  My instinct is that I do not want or require any advice from a state employee on parenting although I am happy to read the gospel according to Miriam Stoppard.  I will need state advice of course, particularly on aspects of dealing with the state such as the health and education systems; it just needs to be available conveniently and not bother me with the information that a diet of chips and cola is not sensible.

For the moment this is all academic theorising since we are still waiting here in the Californian sunshine.  I really want to start putting it all into practice but patience remains the watchword of the day.  Not exactly my strongest suit but probably good practice...