Goodbye Winter
Kia ora,
It’s been a minute, or 5 months exactly since our last blog. As the days got shorter and winter rolled in, we got into a routine with work and home life, so things have been pretty quiet.
Journey to parenthood
On the journey to parenthood front, the last couple of months has given us hope, a dose of reality, and clarity on our dream of becoming dads.
Hope came in the form of a close friend reaching out and letting us know that they’d be open to becoming a surrogate for us if we have no luck finding someone. But…, because surrogacy is never straight forward, there was an added challenge of her being based overseas. We reached out to Fertility Plus, whom we’ve been liasing with around embryo creation, who brought as back down to earth and gave us a dose of reality. Although our friend is a New Zealand citizen and would’ve come back here for the birth, we were advised that a surrogate must be living in New Zealand for the duration of the pregnancy. We were gutted and bewildered really, and thinking, why does it have to be so hard! While extremely dissapointed, we won’t give up and we still have an abundance of optimism and hope.
At the end of June, we attended a surrogacy and donor conception seminar, hosted by Growing Families. We were initially hesitant to attend due to feedback we had seen online from a past attendee who had said the event “was more of a sales conference with multiple overseas (surrogacy) agencies”. One of the organisers replied to the comment and assured people that the format for this year’s event had changed and it would focus on people’s experiences and provide professional guidance for intended parents. After reviewing the agenda for the seminar, we decided to register and make our way down to Auckland to hopefully take some learnings from the seminar and further equip us for our journey - and learn we did! For anyone who has just started the journey to parenthood via surrogacy, we highly recommend attending future seminars hosted by Growing Families. We had done a lot of research ourselves prior to attending the seminar, but hearing directly from the likes of Oranga Tamariki, legal experts, intended parents who are now parents, surrogates, children born through surrogacy etc., it was so invaluable!
One of the key learnings that we took from the surrogacy and donor conception seminar was that overseas commercial surrogacy is potentially a last resort, even though it is our most viable pathway to parenthood. We were told in the seminar that if we created embryos in New Zealand, which is our preference, these embryos cannot be shipped to another country for use in a commercial surrogacy arrangement. This would mean we’d need an egg donor in the country where we’d undertake commercial surrogacy, and in Mexico, where we had considered as an option, egg donors remain annonymous. For us, this annonymity of the egg donor is not something we’re open to because we strongly believe that a child has the right to know who their biological mother is. Yes, we could ask our egg donor to travel with us to Mexico and have the embryos created there but for now, this is not something we want to do and we’ll continue our search for a surrogate in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Life
On the life in general side of things, Ryan escaped the winter cold for a couple of weeks and flew across the Pacific ocean to Colarado, U.S.A to visit his brother, who he hasn’t seen in a few years. Ryan’s mum was also visiting, so it became a family holiday with a busy, action packed itinerary, enjoying the sights and sounds of Colorado. The scenary and interesting creatures, big and small were amazing, but the dry heat, along with the altitude took some time to get used to.
At home, here in Waipū, it’s been quite wet, but the sheep and chooks don’t seem too bothered by it, poor things. While the rain has put a dampener on outdoor activities, one positive from all the water are full water tanks, which will come in handy for the expected hot, dry summer this year. When the sun was out, we made the most of it and got busy planting more natives around the property. Last year’s mānuka and kānuka are thriving, so we look forward to seeing more growth over the coming year. The pūkekos have been a pain in the backside though, pulling out some of the young plants, so we’ve had to invest in plant guards after Nann tried his best at being innovative with plant protection!
And last, but not least, we invested in a mulcher recently so we can make some headway on getting rid of the macadamia trees in the back paddock. People always ask us why we’d want to get rid of the trees because macadamia nuts are delicious - we could sell them! Yes, we could make a little money off the nuts, however, they attract rats and this year, the rats seem to be as abundant as the nuts, so enough is enough. Previously, we were burning the wood and leaves which was hard work and the pollution from the smoke is terrible - great for toasted marshmellows though! The mulcher is much quicker and quite fun once you get into the rhythym of it.
Bring on the warmer months, and more day light!
Nann & Ryan x