8 Days...

The stats: 

• 8 days away from leaving for India now
• 9 days away from being in India
•  2 1/2 days left at work for me
• 1 major holiday Thursday where we'll see all of my mom's family
• Aprox. 1 million things left to do

Yup, that about sums it up.

The natural worrier inside of me has apparently consumed any part of me that could have ever been described as "laid back."  My efforts both at home and at work have tripled because I want to leave no loose ends when we're away.   Even sitting here now typing, I hear that little voice saying, "You should be typing that math quiz." 

A meeting has been arranged tomorrow with my sub to go over everything that's been done for the next month - lesson plans, curriculum movement, classroom management, tempo of the room, and anything else I can think to tell her at that point.  I have a tough group this year (whom I love), and will pray for her as she tackles a field trip, a classroom party, crafts, and a major holiday in my absence...oh yeah, and she's supposed to be teaching too.

On the homefront, Harris and I have just packed a big box of things to ship over ahead of us in hopes that we won't have to pack that extra suitcase.  According to my research on the UPS website, if we ship tomorrow and use the cheapest speed (because we need to pinch pennies where we can since we'll be parents next year, right?), the box will arrive about the time we're leaving the USA on the 30th of next week. 

I have assigned Harris the job of writing the "How To Run Our House While We're Away" manual.  That's going to contain all of our personal information, contact information for us in India, names and numbers of people to go to with emergencies for the house/cats/insurance/banking/anything else we can think of, for the two people watching over things while we're gone.  We're leaving some blank checks, have notified the vet and set up a billing arrangement with them in the event of a problem, and have added our loan officer to our "circle of trust" (as Harris has named it) so that she can watch over our accounts and be on call if we are swindled or locked out of our accounts overseas. 

This week and weekend, we'll visit family to say goodbye in a covert way.  I am telling my other teaching partners on Monday and I'll say goodbye to them.  I'll hug my kids at school and tell them goodbye on Tuesday, then send home a note to the parents on Wednesday.  I've said goodbye to the world's best girlfriends who also are members of the infertility family!  It's an amazing adventure we're getting ready to go on, my girlfriends keep saying.  They're right!

Living vicariously...

Finished reading the updates and am so encouraged by the positive results from Jill and Alex(http://hopefromtheashes.wordpress.com/) and Bernadette and Duane (http://rastalesstraveled.blogspot.com/)!  I am so happy that you both have such wonderful results to write about from your time in Delhi at SCI. 

I can't help but appreciate the community of support that we are able to find online during this process.  It has been such a blessing for me to find support in real life for the infertility process and, now, online for the surrogacy and infertility process.  It's human nature to fear the unknown but, thanks to some gracious and open people willing to share the intimate parts of their journey to have children, it's less scary somehow.  One of the best and most comforting things I've read lately has been from Jill and Alex as they've been in Delhi.  I love that Alex gave Jill her injections just like Harris does for me.  Somehow, reading what everyone is going thru in order to reach the ultimate goal helps me to feel a lot less alone in this process.  It lets me live vicariously thru others and I am now emotionally invested in their lives, success, bumps, and questions.  THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR BEING WILLING TO SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES!!!

In that spirit, I do have a question for those of you who have travelled to India already.  What did you do to combat the mosquitoes and malaria?  The foreign travel nurse said there were 3 options but one was an antibiotic (that's probably out, right?).  How did you handle this?

Off to do my infectious diseases panel in the morning.  This will be my third day of needles this week.  Urrr!

Off, Off, and Away!

Thrilled to say that my medical records have now been emailed to SCI for Dr. Shivani to look over!  I am so excited to get this process underway!!!  Harris' results from his semen analysis should be in on Monday and I will send those as well.  Yay!

Tonight, I had dinner with part of my infertility support group.  We are a group of 11 women who went thru a 4 week therapy session last summer because we all had common ground.  Since then, we have stayed close and grown to feel more like family than friends.  We celebrate each other's pregnancies, cry for each negative test result, help mourn the loss of a pregnancy, and recently have started to bring flowers to the hospital as babies are being born from within the group!  It's awesome to watch these fierce, passionate, loyal women become mothers.  I am so blessed to have them in my corner. 

At the restaurant, over shared cheesecake, one of the girls was listening to me talk about India and she said with complete acceptance and support, "You need to do what is right for you.  Forget about everyone and everything else and do what's best for you and Harris."  That meant so much to me and the amazing thing is that they all feel that way.  Nobody looks at me cross-eyed like I've grown a horn in my forehead or spoken some tribal language when I talk about this with them.  I will never be able to show just how much they mean to me.