Day 1

I'm only a half day late in posting the recap of Day 1. Which is good for a non-blogger like me.

The good news is that we made it. Bad news? It took 30 hours, visited Washington DC, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi on the way. And true to the 6.5 million people living in Hyderabad, it took us over an hour to get through immigration at 3:45 a.m. when we arrived. That wasn't fun.

We got to our hotel http://www.thegolkondahotel.com/index.aspx around 5:30 or so, just as the sun was coming up. Exhausted, but full of culture-shocking thoughts, we went to our rooms for a few hours of sleep before we had to visit Dr. Samit. I thought fatigue would drive me to sleep, but instead, nerves and anticipation kept me awake. I finally dozed off for an hour or two, after checking in back home and recapping the journey.

Our car picked us up from the hotel at noon (which really meant 12:30) and took us to appointment numero uno (that's for you pinch). As we pulled up to the Kiran Clinic, we noticed a few women looking out the window at the arriving car. We think they were probably a few of the surrogates who are living in the apartments upstairs (all surrogates agree to live in the apartments for the duration of the pregnancy, under nutritionist and medical supervision -- more later on what a positive that is). It's a simple building, clean and full of friendly people.

We were shown upstairs to the office of Dr. Samit where we sat down to go over paperwork, health history, etc. They came in and took blood from both the donor (you'll notice I'm not using names to keep it all somewhat private) and myself. They must be magic needles because I didn't feel a thing. Then they had to do an ultrasound to measure the follicles on her. All in all it took about an hour or so. Very easy. Dr. Samit was very friendly and the donor couldn't get past how young he was (youngest in India to have such success as an embryologist).

We were told that all seemed good and that we needed to come back on Friday. Donor has to give herself the injection on Thursday (she's a pro at it) and then we're back Friday for her blood work and ultrasound again. They think the retrieval will take place on Monday.

We spent the afternoon getting driven around from touristy shop to touristy shop before we ended up back at the hotel pool to cool off a bit. The hotel has a nice pool area. Very Vegas. Without the people (we were the only two there), the crazy prices, the music, the gambling and the massive size and excess. Ok, it was nothing like Vegas. But it looked like it could be (black and white lounges around an infinity-type pool -- small though).

Still exhausted we decided to have dinner in at the hotel. We both had some really good Indian food. No idea what it was (chicken and veggies of some sort).

Went back to the room at around 10pm with all intentions of going to sleep. In true work fashion, I was up until 2 a.m. trying to put out a few fires, catching up with home in the middle of it all, and trying to keep my eyes open. That was until I had enough and sent an email saying "I'm going to get a few hours sleep, the first in three days, so will have to catch up with you all tomorrow."

And that... was Day 1.