Blog Six

We had a long weekend this past weekend in my part of the world, so I got to spend lovely, lovely, lovely quality time with my darling Pink Peril. I always enjoy that. Two remarkable things happened over that weekend, remarkable because to my mind they represented emotional intelligence way beyond what I would expect from children at the tender age of 17 months.

Instance 1)

We were at some friend’s son’s birthday party and had decided to swim in their pool; being terribly, terribly, poowah, we don’t have one ourselves so on such a hot day it was a real treat. The Pinkies are of an age where laying patiently on their backs while a nappy (of the swimming type), is changed into, isn’t what they want to do. K_____ was performing dreadfully. Wriggling, struggling, protesting, crying – real sack cloth and ashes type moaning. All this despite my pleas that she’d enjoy the swim if we could just get the bathers on and R_____’s sweetest attempts to gently restrain her, we were getting nowhere. We were of course in strange surrounds and using one of the spare rooms (essentially a junk room), we’d found some floor space but piled behind me and out of my vision was a lot of bits of junk on a low bookshelf. A_____ who was walking around exploring and patiently waiting her turn for bather nappies, walked behind me and retrieved something from the pile then returned around to my front and graciously handed to her sister, a small Thomas Tank “Henry” model train. K_____’s reaction was to instantly calm down and examine the new object, whilst having her nappy rapidly changed. Besides being pleased I could now change the nappy I was aghast that someone... anyone; of 17months, could determine what was needed so astutely and move to action to ‘just do it’. Fluke? Possibly; but I nearly burst with pride and mid change was forced to bow my head to the crown of my clever daughter, kiss it and give her praise aplenty.

Instance 2)

The following day, at home; again it was sizzling in the shade so we stayed indoors (pool-less) and tried to entertain ourselves. We ate lunch and feeling still a little hungry, I chose an apple from the crisper and began to share it with the Peril. One bite for me, two bites for you (you all know how it goes).

Anyway after a few bites, I’d had my fill and clearly the way the piranha like feeding frenzy was going, I was going to lose a finger if I didn’t give up the core.

I let go, assuming they’d already got the idea of sharing but K_____ being bigger and stronger achieved dominance and A______ set up a whine that meant I couldn’t hear what came after “C” on our baby Einstein DVD.

I chose to facilitate the ‘share’ process by cutting what was left of the core into bite size pieces. A piece for each hand and the balance of them into a bowl on the coffee table. I then returned comfortably to the lounge – resuming at “G” (damn – I’m sure I missed a letter or two there). A____ came around the coffee table where they were both hungrily hovering over the apple bowl, to climb up and join me on the lounge, so we could watch ‘H’ together.

K_____ hovered in front of the coffee table a little longer before putting down one of her treasured pieces of core on the table top, selecting another morsel from the bowl and proceeding around the table to join us. I thought at this stage there would be another tussle to see whom would sit next to Daddy.

Far from it. K_____ offered the morsel in her hand to A______’s waiting mouth, which scrunched a bite and then put down one of her treasured apple bits (smearing it onto the lounge suite) and took the piece K______ had offered. K_____ smiled a satisfied smile. Was I seeing a ‘gifted’ apology for her taking the core earlier or a thank you for yesterday’s nappy change help? I don’t know.

Again the moment was poignant, tender, wildly bizarre and I felt compelled to give them both the biggest hug and let them know that they are wonderful, wonderful human beings.

Do these ‘early’ displays of empathy mean R____ and I are doing something right? I like to think so. I’m sure everyone of us raising children have these leaps in development that make us smile and wonder. I’m sure that if a child protection worker had been attending our family at any of those points they would have given us a big tick.

Which is why I don’t understand that this week, I’ve heard of a couple applying for a parenting order, being scrutinised in a way that no other kind of parents are. By that I mean, there has been no complaint of abuse or neglect by anyone, there is apparently no legal reason, in that they aren’t applying for adoption of the children or legal recognition of parentage, they don’t have that option.

I can only assume they are applying so that they no longer have to suffer the ignominy of being full-time primary carers, who are put through more time, effort and expense to do so. If we assume and I think we can, that most parents have their children’s best interests at heart, then we have a situation where some of us because of the way we have been forced (yes forced) to have children are under a heavier microscope than others.

The parenting order application I’m talking about lead to a this situation – and I quote,

“Parenting Orders in NSW - has ordered a home assessment on my partner and I to see whether we would make suitable parents. We will have to satisfy a long list of demands including a guarantee that the children will be able to contact their birth mother. She (Judge) has ordered us to get more DNA testing to establish paternity - she was not happy to accept the testing done for the Australian High Commission in New Delhi. She spoke at length of the importance of establishing in these cases that babies had not been traded or pregnant women trafficked across borders. She said several times that she was very surprised that we managed to get Australian citizenship by decent. The court also appointed a lawyer for our children - so they now have separate legal representation. It was a pretty dispiriting experience...”

I just bet it was.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this process (dispiriting as it is, particularly to the ‘good’ parent) I can understand. I can understand it being necessary, initially. The institutions of this land have to satisfy themselves that they are doing the best thing for children and children’s safety and covering all their international obligations - but if it doesn’t lead to full parental recognition in the end and could be ‘re-worked’ at any stage, again and again... and again at the drop of the proverbial topee, it then becomes institutional bullying and bullying of any kind is ‘bad’. Bad for families, bad for individuals and most certainly bad for the children of those families. It reduces their stability and security.

BUT FURTHER

I note with some concern in this particular case, that a few of the conditions of these parenting orders will in certain circumstances be impossible to adhere to (particularly the contact with surrogate). It feels a lot like the intent is to make the bar so high for families with overseas assisted reproduction children, that they must fall short at some point, so the authorities can claim their only choice was to rip the children away from their parents. The parents they love and who care for them. In reality, it seems more like it’s to set an example to others in the same predicament. A “Do this and we’ll definitely take your kids” message. It’s like the darkest section of Chitty-chitty bang bang movie or a horrid bleak orphanage scene from a Dickens novel. Institutions deliberately turning happy families into ruins.

Is this process done to potential adopters? I think not, because otherwise no child would ever have the chance of being adopted into a secure, caring, loving family. Is this done to people who are too dysfunctional (for whatever reason) to be able to care properly for children (despite their biological ability to have them)? I look down the streets of my neighbourhood and reply ‘obviously not in general’. In fact do we have any sort of ‘licensing system’ for new and potential parents in our country? NO! That would be a limitation on personal freedoms, the right to breed, the right to raise children and counterproductive to the ‘breed for Australia’ message we once heard from a prominent politician on our nightly TV screens. Clearly these messages were meant only for people who were fortunate enough to be biologically capable of having children or were lucky enough to have a surrogate (who wouldn’t shy from the task), here in Australia, not for people like me.

I once before threatened in a surrogacy forum to immigrate with all my assets (such as they are) to another; more sympathetic, country. Where laws have caught up with the times. And if necessary even declare myself and my family refugees. Ridiculous as it sounds, I’m beginning to think that is the more sane option.

And now folks - sadly my personal circumstances mean this will be my last blog for some time, possibly permanently. I hope you have all enjoyed reading my little family’s antics and I also hope I’ve provoked some food for thought in any anomalies I’ve tried to highlight. Get out there, be a family and enjoy every moment with your kids, they grow fast and none of us know what tomorrow will bring. Love, hugs, peace and joy.

Blog No. 5 - Citrusful of Inspiration

What inspires us? What makes us keep putting one foot in front of the other despite the hardships.

My Pink Peril do that for me.

Knowing I have the support and backing of a community do that for me.

Knowing I have the backing of a family does that for me.

Having my work performance assessed as poorer than previously in a process that I don’t agree ‘works’ properly, let alone is a valid thing to do, doesn’t. Yes it’s performance assessment time in my office.

I’ve had a rough week this week, as far as work is concerned. No this is not a sour grapes bitch, I only have so much room to blog and because it’s all about the detail and the detail is complex. In short form, my work performance has been assessed, by a group of faceless men (despite me knowing them all by name) based on how well other’s provide me with the information I need, yet that is something I have no authority to control. I haven’t been given it. They sat in a room and tut-tutted; no doubt, over the fact that my project was lagging, whilst it has never been given the priority it needed and I had no authority to move it up the list. In turn this means my rating such as it is, won’t be getting me a pay increase this year (even one matching CPI)!!! Despite my very best efforts.

Essentially though, I’m up against a machine of a system that I don’t agree with. I will voice my protest; sure and it will be heard with a smugly satisfied attitude that the tick box of allowing the employee to protest has been done - but nothing will change. I am left with only the choice of bending over, bracing against the nearest piece of office furniture and taking the ‘situation’ as it is up to the hilt OR standing rigid on my laurels (knowing I have done a better than mediocre job with the tools I have to hand – which were none) and giving them the Big Kit-Kat as I hold my head high walking out (hopefully to a waiting position in another more agreeable company). There isn’t any middle ground here, most of us know this issue – take it or leave (it). Most of us know what it’s like to be an employee, working for the man.

But this struck me as similar to the struggle I have with a faceless system that doesn’t recognise me as a parent, that however is a role I don’t have the option of walking out on, I have to plod along trying to change it. Why don’t I give up? Well of course there is my Pink Peril and the support of my loving partner (despite our occasional upsets over dishes not done and whose turn it is to do them when we are both tired at the end of the day).

But this week I have to say, it was comforting and inspiring to read an article by Jacqui Tomlins. It rebutted much of the nastiness I found in an article likening children born through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) from a soon to be retiring Archbishop (who shall remain faceless) and the diatribe of one anatomically incorrect (as well as politically incorrect) pastor.

Jacqui’s description of her family and it’s work-a-day dynamics gave me the same ‘arrr’ feeling as sinking into a ‘just right’ bath for a good long relaxing soak. Her children’s chatter around her home, the interactions between her and her partner and children all spoke to me of ‘family’ and if felt warm and friendly and something I not only want to be a part of but AM a part of damnit! We’re not a semi-family, not quite part of ‘the real’ community; this is real.

Here is a little of the text (a very little) reproduced.

I sit watching the kids at dinner. Corin is eating his spaghetti with mind-numbing slowness. He has his book secreted on his lap and we are both pretending it isn’t there.

The girls are talking non-stop - our youngest has just started Prep and she’s full of it. There’s a red dot on the page, she explains, and you start at the top and follow the lines and today we did “S”, which is very tricky, Mama!

Then Scout, her older sister, takes up the story: Maddy was mean to Jenny, and Mia told Maddy she should say sorry, but Jenny had already gone off with Sophie. An ordinary family meal played out with some variation in millions of homes every night.

I look at my messy floor at meal times and the fact that the peril grow in their tastes and confidence in self feeding with every meal, every day and think... Yeah we have a variation. I’m sure as parents we all feel like this and should have the right to feel like this, without pre-judgement making us feel nervous about our position.

Yes for me it’s been a tough week, work has wrung me through the wringer but what I’ve learnt is

• Life is hard for parents, they don’t need to be made to feel inadequate on any level but instead supported to be the best parent they can be (including giving them legal status as such)
• When life is handing you sour yellow citrus (and yes I know – this risks blogging a cliché), you really appreciate others with the same green-grocery dilema, joining your corner to make a giant bucket of refreshing lemonade.
• Finally, it surprised me how wonderfully soul nurturing the fact that a family with two mothers is so much like one with a mother and a father is so much like one with two fathers because of shared love for children born of A.R.T. and that bond of similarity can support and strengthen us; bringing us together enough to drag one foot over the next to squish judgmental old sourpusses.

So if anyone out there knows Jacqui Tomlins the writer of that wonderful punch article, I hope you’ll let her know that she inspired my week and helped me through it and maybe, just maybe a little of my writing will help give her some of the strength she needs to go on and write another powerful knockout punch.

Terry

Weekly Blog Four - Lodgement

The appointment was made, rather hopefully, yesterday for today. Perhaps I anticipate it being worse than it is, but a slight lump settles in my throat as I approach the local passports office. The variation and degrees of treatment that I have heard of in fables and stories from far off previous applications has un-nerved me. My palms begin to sweat and my hands start to shake. I fear I look guilty of... frankly I’m not thinking of what... I figure I simply look generally guilty of something nebulous... it could be stealing an apple from our next-door neighbour Mr Granger’s tree (well they are scrumptious) OR it could be of Axe murdering the entire population of our local nursing home and urinating on their poor dismembered corpses (simply to answer that age old nursing home chestnut – “Where’s that wee smell coming from?”). I don’t know? I press the elevator call button and note the lump in my throat has now grown to cut off the airway and my throat now feels as dry as a dead dingos donga. Do I feel woozy or is that the rush of the elevator?

This is for my Pink Peril, so I gird my loins (does anyone do that these days?) and enter the office, right foot first (because I’ve been told that’s lucky), press the requisite buttons to take my place holder ticket and immediately get engrossed in the perils of travelling with Passports DVD on the screen. The terror of having your passport lost or stolen makes me wonder why we even bother leaving our houses, let alone going abroad. I’m so engrossed I miss hearing my name called, or perhaps I’m finding yet another reason to procrastinate.

In the end I am greeted by an extremely friendly Marilyn, (with a Y). She begins the tick-off, I begin the excuses. I rushed out of the office in a hurry to get here, so I forgot my ID, can I bring it tomorrow? We’ve been told this section may or may not need to be filled in by my partner, that’s why we haven’t signed here... er... or here.

Long story short, I’m sent home, with a rubber duck stamp and a “Needs to try harder – More work needed”, written in red ink across the top of my application. Everyone on this journey has been so kind but especially Marilyn (with a Y). I count myself lucky. I guess I got full points for effort because I wasn’t given an immediate F-fail. Did I mention she’s a sweetie.

Because we want to declare ourselves parents (in spite of the law?) we need to fill out the B11 stat dec, stating the surrogacy, the surrogate “legal” mother’s last know nationality, our belief that we are actually parents (if not legal ones), the fact that our children arrived here as citizens by decent from yours truly – oh and we can’t do ONE form for each of the Pinks and both sign, oh no that won’t be good enough for Canberra if there are questions... we need to do one each for each. Four statutory declarations. I have the smug satisfaction of knowing that as bio parent... I’m bound to get a C (I mean, not an A like a legal parent, I’m being graded on a very biased curve here; but at least a pass).

R____ on the other hand may only scrape through with a D, which may mean a catch-up ‘summer class’ but hey whatever gets us the damned passports huh?

Sweet Marilyn (with Y) informs me that all these need to be filled in ‘just in case’ Canberra have any questions, better safe than sorry huh? Better ‘overkill’ to be sure than doing merely what’s necessary. Better to not actually have a stated, publicly posted process for our particular circumstance to save the ‘recircle’ time... just in case, she informs me sweetly as she puts the steamroller into reverse for an ever so gentle second go over my deflated sense of worth and ‘right to privacy’ as a tax paying individual. From a cuckooed father I’ve become a ‘just in case’ parent. No wonder my throat nearly closed up on the way in.

On one level I can understand the departments precaution on this issue and would be happy to have our lives peeked into if it once and for all established our parentage of our children: unequivocally. But this is not the case. This is but one department that I may have to deal with, within government on all levels and that’s before we start to deal with non-government organisations such as schools. In the main and on the whole, in everyday life these things don’t matter greatly, mostly no-one asks because they don’t need to know... but it’s the dire and extreme circumstance, when my Pink Peril, my partner and I NEED the system to be there for us, that it’s most likely to crack under the strain... precisely the point at which it shouldn’t.

Anyway the darling Marilyn (with a Y) sets up another appointment for a similar time tomorrow and promises to keep the steam roller putt-putting on idle for me. Lovely. A lunch hour would have been nice but... Come to that several of my missed lunch hours would have been nice. Being acknowledged as the legal parent of my Perils would have been nice. Having forms that fit would have been nice, really so much in this world could be nicer, couldn’t it?

P.S. Upon return visit – another lunch hour, I finally manage to lodge.

Weekly Blog Three

The forms, the forms... oh the forms

A quick guide for the surrogate parent on how to fill out any official document associated with your child.

(For example a passport application).

You will need. A pen, the required forms, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and a shredder.

Step 1. Plug in and turn on the shredder.

Step 2. Take your ego and shred it (you won’t be needing that).

Step 3. Take a sip of coffee/wine.

Step 4. Pick up pen and read first question.

Step 5. Become confused at possible ambiguity.

Step 6. Refer to step 3.

Schtep 6.5. Head to kitchen for armful of junk comfort food (you’re going to need it – to soak up alcohol)

Step 6.5.1 Pop chocolate from box or biscuit from packet to ensure brain is working and not starved of nutrition, schip whine to ensure intschtin’l f... (hic) for’tude.

Schtepps (oops) Schtep 6.7531457. Reconschider question 1

Schtep Scheven. Move onto next question.

Schtep (Buuurp) Aaaate. Repeat steps 5 - 7 until the end of the form, finish biscuits.

Step NEIN! Poo (burp) Poo (hic) Pour another teensy glass of wine then chugg the rest of the wine from the bottle, finish the entire percolator of cuppa’s, schearsh box of chocsh for hard centres by pressing thumb into top of each, roll drunkenly around room laughing at attempt. Screw up papers and throw to corner, retrieve, iron out with hands on table surface and return to step 1.

Point Dix: Next day take tattered and beaten form to authority, along with any paperwork you’ve ever had or thought you had; throw forms, papers and self on their mercy and hope for best. (allow 3 hrs min)

OK – fortunately it wasn’t quite that bad but it certainly wasn’t easy, and sipping wine between confusions would have seen me very drunk, because I’m not a big drinker and there were a LOT of confusing questions with (in our case) two or more possible answers and no explanation of that circumstance in the blurb.

The problem (as I see it) is that the forms are simply not designed for children born via IVF/surrogacy overseas, we’re being squished onto a ‘single parent’ form. Not the case. I have a partner who is also the carer: My Pink Peril have two very caring parents.

But...

There’s a ‘make do’ with the forms we have and ‘make them fit’, mentality. To change them would mean a government, (some government past, present or future) would have to admit that there is a growing number of people for whom the template of tick boxes doesn’t work.

I can understand the departments caution around issuing passports where children are involved (surely all the more reason to create the ‘right’ form). It’s reasonable - but I also see an anomaly that applies to me as a genetic and clearly ‘intended’ parent of an overseas surrogacy arrangement and doesn’t apply to an Australian Couple who were; say, fortunate enough to have an altruistic surrogate in this country or even a couple who perhaps adopted. It is not a besmirch on these people’s parental reputations; that they are unfairly ‘given’ legal parent status, while I and others are not; NO, children are precious and being given the opportunity to have them in your life to care for is a wonderful gift and I’m sure these parents treasure that as much as I do. Nor is it a case of pure sour grape on my part, the anomaly is there, it is real, it exists in black and white ( and in this instance purple in fact) under what could be considered very similar circumstances.

This then reflects on the welfare of the children in the ‘bio’ parent’s care. It often costs them more (and sometimes a good deal more), it generally takes more of their time (and sometimes a good deal more) and in rare cases can be limiting of their ability to give and/or share an experience of the world with their child/ren in general.

Not in the best interest of the child/ren.

I won’t give up, because this is for my Pink Peril; equally I won’t give up resenting the lack of simplicity in a clear, concise, fit for purpose form: because governments refuse to acknowledge and legislate my circumstance.

Weekly Blog Two

The Significant Birthday

A significant birthday is always a cause for celebration - This year is R__’s significant birthday and he’s always wanted to go to Bali. Why not? It’s cheap enough as a present for this particularly birthday and the travel experience will be a great learning for the girls and set them up for future travel opportunities. Of course the Pink Peril will need passports.

An enquiry is made of DFAT. What’s the process. A female answers the phone. I ask her about applying for children’s passports. We’ll need the purple application form, available at Post Offices. Great, simple. Luckily; I think to ask – is the process different for children born via surrogacy overseas. Sound of tapping on the keyboard. Is the mother’s name on the birth certificate? No. You’ll need a B8 form as well, simply cross out mother and put father where appropriate. Wonderful. More paperwork and it doesn’t sound straight forward. Still if it gets the job done, what’s an hour out of my life.

I head to the post office, with hope in my heart and a pen in my hand. No B8’s available at the stand. I enquire. They’ll need to print one. Again the tick off of questions. Is the mother’s name on the birth certificate? I say I don’t think so, a few more questions. Surrogacy? I’m told perhaps I need the B9. Can I take both so that I don’t need to return? Yes that can be done. I look at my watch, my lunch hour is dwindling away. They’ve all been so kind and helpful but oddly I feel bludgeoned already.

Lunch hour done and I’m about to turn my attention to work, I take a quick look at the forms. B9 seems pretty straight forward but perhaps deceptively so, B8 seems more fraught but perhaps in the end is less messy. I decide to call DFAT again, just to reconfirm. This time I speak to a friendly, competent young fellow. It’s definitely a B9, oh and you’d better throw a B11 in to be sure. B11? Yes to take into account any extraneous circumstances. I haven’t yet even put pen to paper and I already feel like I’ve been minced up and spat out by the system. So just out of interest what B form would anyone else have to fill out. Oh they wouldn’t. They’d simply have to fill out the purple form and get it counter signed by the other parent.

Well why can’t I do that, I still live with my partner? We haven’t split up or anything (and after 23 years, we’re hardly likely to now) Yes but you see neither of you are the legal parent.

Well I hope you’ll explain that to my pink peril when they’re old enough to renew their next passport because I’m going to have a hard time, working out how to tell them their primary care giver, funder, protector and closest genetic link in this country - is just a figment of their overactive childhood imaginations.

If this is the process of just getting the right forms, what will filling them out and submitting them be like?

Terry

Weekly Blog - The Cuckooed Father

Each day I thank the serendipitous circumstances of the universe that created us, because I can watch my two daughters growing. I thought I would never have children, that were biologically related to me under my care and protection. I call them the pink peril because they are now; at 15 months, running everywhere and in at least two directions at once, (sometimes it seems like more). I love them. I love it when they whine at me. I loved every minute of sleep deprivation and midnight formula mixing when they were infants. I love their irradiating smiles that have the power to arrest total strangers and brighten their days. In short I love everything about my little bundles. MY little bundles.

But there are dark clouds roiling at the edge of this blissful domestic scene. A sword a Damocles; if you will, hangs over my head. In this country, legally and only legally, I’m not a parent. In this country because of the way my beautiful pink peril were conceived, carried and born, their only legal parent lives in another country. My biological connection to them is seen as “sperm donor”. There are a million little ironies in this situation many of them hysterically funny but the sum of these little ironies and at their core is pure bigotry.

Anyone physically incapable of carrying their own embryonic child in this country and with no generous, altruistic connection for an alternative is seen as sub-human and not entitled to the ‘rights’ of all other parents in this country. I never wanted to be a cuckoo father. I wanted to have and hold and care for my own babies, then children and finally young adults. Why shouldn’t I? I’m capable, possibly more capable than many others... but the laws in this country have turned me, and many other parents into a cuckooed parents, merely because we don’t know or have access to a woman in Australia who would altruistically carry and bare a child for us.

In the practicality of day to day living, it “generally” isn’t an issue - though it can be. And... where it is, it is a very big issue indeed. Medical treatment preferences can be overruled by a totally unrelated physician. Wills require greater care to prepare. In some situations even schooling can be an issue. Something as simple as going on holiday has caught me recently. Applying for a passport requires more time and energy and is fraught with more difficulty than for parents of children born through altruistic surrogacy here in this country. Of course these are mere obstacles and in most cases can be got around but at greater expense and taking more time, cheating my pink peril of their parents attention and finances that could be better used on them in the process. It isn’t fair nor right. It is not in the best interest of these children and it should be changed.

Terry

Surrogacy Australia

Welcome to Surrogacy Australia's Blog site.

NOTE: 7.30 - 8.30pm Tues 22 March SBS, Jenny Brockie's Insight forum is on the topic: Commercial Surrogacy - the critical issues

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