Moments of naive excitement...followed by more upset :-(

On friday they - (The Indian High Commission) returned our passports without our visas inside.

There are three since I had to give my old (pre marriage) passport also....I didn't really want to see these again until they had the 'magic stamp' in them....*sigh*

On tuesday 9th October, when we went to give all the documents we had fought to gather together - to replace those requested....The manager at the visa office in Wilton road advised that she request that our visas be treated together as a joint application rather than separately as we had planned. She was shocked we had been advised by her colleagues to apply separately to avoid hubby being treated as a referral case (as of Pakistani origin)

 So on friday we received our passports back. Because of my Pakistani origin Hubby and I are a referral case, the decision on both of our visas thus (as expected) gets sent to Delhi (which is ironically where our beautiful surrogate mother and baby is, the world is a small place). These documents have now been sent off...They'll take approx 6 weeks or so...(I expect 6-10 weeks) from now to verify all of the mass amounts of information and supporting documents we provided last week. Fingers crossed that we get called in for our visa stamps in 6 or 8 or however many weeks! 

It was really rather annoying on friday... as we both received automated emails from VFS telling us to collect our processed passports, so for the 40 minutes it took my poor hubby to run to the VFS office and wait in line to collect our passports we stupidly, naively thought we had our visas!!  

I may have screamed down the phone "Oh my *** we are actually allowed to go to India!!!" in pure excitement. How naive and premature and silly of me, temporarily forgetting my problematic heritage.  they'd never grant someone of pakistani origin a visa in 2weeks 2days...why? I don't know.....that's another discussion for another day.

Roll on the next 6 weeks!!! 

On other happier news.....

Our pregnancy is going very very well. Our beautiful Ms R is doing a wonderful job and everything is looking healthy and perfect.

At least we don't have to add that to our list of 'concerns'.....*touch wood and pray*

The future...

The future is one big unknown
Worrying about it makes you scared in the 'now'
Getting excited about it makes you happy in the 'now'
Over-thinking it makes you go crazy in the 'now'

Lately the future has felt scary 
because the 'now' has been scary

But on reflection
The truth is whether the 'now' is wonderful or terrifying
calm or stormy,

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, good or bad,
terrifying or wonderful
 to any of us.

Wishing you all a better tomorrow.

Stress

So we are both now very stressed out, it all began on monday.

The Indian Visa office here in London contacted my hubby and asked him to check his email. In his email inbox it stated that his visa application had been returned with a request for further information. *GULP*

They have requested that we provide some more information.

They are treating our visa application under some brand new Indian laws on surrogacy.

These laws state that anyone travelling over for surrogacy must provide ALL of the following documents...

 These laws are intended to limit new agreements taking place and so are really for people starting the process....so they are treating us as though we are about to start the process by travelling over to begin treatment and set up the agreement etc....which as you know is not the case, we are at 22 weeks and our baby is on our way, whether anyone likes it or not....I digress, the documents they require are for a medical visa,....

The documents required:

Ø      The couple should be married for two years (Marriage certificate) 
We've been married just under 2 months not 2 years! But further advice from them said it should be sufficient we proove the duration of our relationship prior to marriage & explain delaying marriage.

Ø      The clinic should be recognised by ICMR (Indian council Medical Research) to conduct Surrogacy treatment. Hmmmmm we are working on this one

Ø      The letter from the home country of the applicants- Foreign office (FCO/foreign Ministry in this case) should provide the confirmation in the letter that surrogacy is recognised in their country and child would be allowed in the country (applicant’s home country) post birth. 
This one is by far the toughest one since nobody's interested in UK government, but our solicitor has helped us....

Ø      The surrogacy agreement (Notarized)between couple and the surrogate mother in India, including the expense cover during the treatment of surrogacy for both child and mother (surrogate). 
Done - Check!

Ø      The letter from the Surrogacy clinic undertaking the surrogacy treatment including the names of both the parties involved. 
Done - Check!

Ø      The couple should furnish an undertaking that they would take care of the child born through surrogacy.

 Done - Check!

I've been off work all week, with my new job being to beg, email, call nationally and internationally, visit visa offices, beg some more for the tricky documents above.

We are both terrified but hubby handles it much better than me. I can't sleep, eat , do anything really. Items keep moving from the 'list of worst case scenarios we can't discuss as they're too painful to consider as outcomes'  onto the 'list of things we must consider and confront and address even though they're absolutely terrifying in every way'.

I feel like our baby is moving away from us. We no longer have much certainty in our route towards him/her.

Any ideas welcome.

SR x