He still wants to go to Spain on holiday - I don’t!
TV’s sTeph and Dom parker, 53 and 55, draw on their 22 years of marriage to solve your relationship problems . . .
QMY HUSBAND and I are arguing about our holiday plans for this summer and I don’t know what to do.
We booked our trip to Spain well before the virus hit and I assumed that, of course, we wouldn’t fly abroad while it is still circulating. However, he has started talking non-stop about the trip.
I think it’s madness to travel at our age — I’m in my 60s and he’s higher risk, being over 70. But he gets very cross when I say this and tells me it’s the only thing that’s been keeping him going. He says it will be fine at the hotel — and says we could be out of pocket if we don’t go.
But it’s the journey by plane that worries me and I don’t think I will be able to relax. He’s always been the happy-golucky one, while I’ve been the practical one in our marriage.
He says he will go without me if I won’t go. What should I do?
treatment and ease of communication, America was the best place to begin a gestational ‘surrogacy journey’.
It’s also the most expensive, with fees of six-figures when you take into account legal costs, medical insurance, fertility treatment, compensation for the surrogate and her legal fees, and compensation for an egg donor if desired.
We were fortunate to have some savings, and both of our parents matched what we had to enable us to pay for a ‘package’ that covers a limitless number of tries.
While surrogacy is legal in the UK, it is not as yet legally recognised — and, while it does happen, it’s usually informal and, admirably, on an altruistic ‘friendship’ basis, meaning that surrogates cannot be paid, only reimbursed for ‘reasonable expenses’.
This also means there are more ‘intended parents’ than surrogates. After spending nearly three years on this road, and both almost 40, Lewis and I decided we couldn’t face waiting to find a surrogate in this country.
AND
so, one october night in 2018, over skype, we interviewed a clinic in California — a state regarded as offering the ‘gold standard’ of the practice.
The surrogates available are given good medical and psychological care and compensated financially (the amount varies hugely depending on the individual, whether it is her first surrogacy or a repeat, and the circumstances of the pregnancy — whether it is a single baby or twins — but is usually in the range of $45,000-$60,000, which is around £35,000-£48,000).
There is also proper legal protection for both the surrogate and her family (we cannot, for example, share details of our surrogate) — and us, as ‘intended parents’.
While Lewis is our child’s genetic father, after much discussion, we decided to enlist the help of an egg donor to avoid the chance of my passing on my heart condition.
Although, in the U.s., egg donors provide more information about themselves than in the UK — photos, a physical profile including their interests, likes and dislikes, a letter to you and a full family medical rundown including parents and grandparents — it was an incredibly fraught emotional process.
How can you choose who should be the genetic mother of your child if not you?
Two months later, on a warm and sunny January day in 2019, we were in California, preparing to meet our first prospective surrogate for a meal. We’d been to the clinic, my husband had given his samples, it was all systems go.
But, long story short, we’re glad we got the guaranteed package. For various reasons, we’re now working with our fifth surrogate, an amazing 33-year- old woman and mother of two, who has helped two other families have children before us, but whom, remarkably, we have yet to meet in real life.
Before we matched with her in November 2019, we had three failed embryo transfers with different surrogates. No reason for the failures was found. These were almost as devastating as our own miscarriages.
The odds of a successful embryo transfer using donor eggs from a younger woman are higher and, despite outwardly maintaining an air of caution, my mind was subconsciously screaming each transfer was practically a done deal. The news of each failure sent me vacillating between devastation and hopelessness.
I told Lewis I wanted to stop, to move on. It was too hard, too emotionally punishing. It felt like we’d pressed pause on our life.
The whole experience has been a rollercoaster of emotions that,
We had three failed embryo transfers. These were almost as devastating as my own miscarriages
even now, with a confirmed pregnancy, look set to continue.
Each morning, our surrogate is the first person I think of when I wake up. I hope she and her children — and our baby — are safe and well.
I anxiously await her WhatsApp messages, which come a few times a week.
Naturally, I’m desperate to text her all the time — to ask what she’s craving, how she’s sleeping, what sex she thinks the baby is, whether she’s wearing a face mask when she goes to the supermarmedical ket … But I restrain myself for fear of being too cloying.
There is an eight- hour time difference and she’s a working mother, so I don’t want to I bombard her or become suffocating. We’re each taking tentative steps into this new relationship, which we hope will last for life.
We ‘virtually attend’ the scans and pre-natal appointments live on our phones. Technology makes all this possible, but it’s no match for our pre- coronavirus plans, which included a visit to California mid-way through the pregnancy.
Back then, we imagined that, when the time came, we would do as most intended parents did — jump on a flight a week or so before the due date and then go through the well-established routines.
When the child is born, the paperwork done and everyone is able to leave hospital, the parents go to their temporary home and, with the help of U.s. lawyers and their agencies, apply for a U.s. passport for their child.
Ten or so days later, with the passport in hand, the new family can return to their country of residence and begin the necessary immigration work.
Now, though, with travel restrictions in place until autumn at the earliest, and many federal agencies closed, these protocols are fluid, with restrictions and rules changing on a daily basis.
If all goes well, factoring in having to quarantine before the baby’s birth on January 31, we could have to be in California upwards of six weeks.
That’s not really a hardship (although it will be logistically complex and expensive) and we will both take parental leave, but there are also doubts about whether I will be able to travel to America full-stop, due to my preexisting health condition and government recommendations against travelling rendering all travel insurance invalid.
Additionally, my heart condition makes me at higher risk of complications if I get Covid-19, although I am not classed as vulnerable or someone who needs to shield.
As Lewis has no underlying health conditions, we are fairly confident he, at least, will be able to go — but, after going through all of this, the prospect of my missing the first few weeks of our baby’s life weighs heavily on us.
Natalie Gamble, of NGA Law, is arguably Britain’s most revered fertility lawyer and now ours. Lord knows, we need her advice.
Natalie not only campaigns for law change around the practice in the UK, but helps hundreds of families go through surrogacy every year, both in this country and abroad.
she says she has never had so many urgent cases as during these past few months. ‘Having a baby takes nine months: nobody could have anticipated or planned for this,’ she says.
Natalie tells a story of a British couple whose surrogate baby was born in America, but the night before their U. s. passport appointment, the office closed due to the pandemic.
‘I ended up writing to the Home secretary, getting MPs on board, trying to get the UK Government to issue British passports to babies stuck overseas. This process used to take six months,’ she says with audible pride. ‘Now it’s a week.’
NATALIE
says as well as parents struggling to bring babies home, she is also dealing with desperate parents attempting to travel out.
‘With the U.s., we now have a system involving going to the local embassy in London to get special permission to travel. But intended parents must not leave it too late. There is the application process, paperwork, flights and a fortnight of quarantining on arrival.’
of course, before our last transfer, we debated whether to go ahead in light of the uncertainties thrown up by coronavirus.
We decided to do so because, somehow, life must continue and we’ve come so far. We didn’t know if this transfer would work, plus who knows for how long Covid-19 will cast its shadow? It could be years. or perhaps in the coming months, there will be an effective treatment, a vaccine, something that will help.
In the meantime, we are left with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude. For the team in America and the people making this possible for us, not least our surrogate — part of our family.
In the midst of everything that is going on, she has given us the one thing we have been so sorely lacking. Hope.
I told my husband I wanted to stop, to move on. It was too hard, too emotionally punishing. I felt like we’d pressed pause on our life