End of the weekend plus a few thoughts

We forgo a bath on Saturday and do a major dip and scrub on a Sunday in preparation for the school week ahead. Our weekends are less structured than school nights so we want the week to start well with the fresh smell of ‘Johnson and Johnsons’ (a family company) lol… and nicely pressed school uniforms for T and A.

Yes our first born of our older set of twins is actually Amritsar. But we like to use Tara’s name first as much as Amritsar’s. Politics and diplomacy start young nowadays – we’re hoping to avoid any resentment on whos name comes first later on – they are both as equally talented and both as strong willed, although they excel in different areas.

We didn’t realise when the names were considered that they would add up to the word ATTAC (Amritsar, Tara, Thor, Aaliyah and Caleb) with the timeline of the births. And no – that’s enough – there will be no sixth child with a name starting with the letter K (ATTACK) lol.

All of our children were born via a c’section. So in the case of twins and we have two sets, the weight of the babies at birth determines who is the first born. For us the c’section was an important factor for our surrogacies. Our egg donors and surrogates helped us assisting in very different ways. I definitely feel that to go through the process of a natural birth for the surrogate for a child who was not biologically theirs’ would just be so conflicting and thankfully the IVF clinics we had used in the past subscribed to the same ethics!

One also has to consider – we chose surrogacy and more so compensated surrogacy (not legal in the U.K.) as the way to plan our family as altruistic surrogacy (where no payment is made, just expenses), quite legal here in the U.K. had its potential problems! John and I planned this family – we are our children’s true and only parents. I don’t feel that a moral or ethical argument exists here. We just chose not to be dependent on an unknown person to assist as the progenitor in our pregnancies. The thought of a third party (mummy) in the background looking in every now and then to ‘check up’ on us as parents was just completely unacceptable. We both chose to be parents, John and I, not the egg donor or the surrogate.

Anyhow ATTAC. We had to smile when we realised that…

Our Sunday has flown by. Another birthday party this morning at 11am. Our three youngest were also invited so it meant that we could all seven go as a family. The birthday was another set of twins from the girls school. Our girls and they are best of friends. I guess with them all being twins – birds of a feather! The party was great – though I am not the biggest fan of entertainers who call themselves clowns (too many nightmares as a child). However he did well and freed up the time for all the invited parents to chat and network – as they do. One boy had an aversion to clowns and hid behind the veranda for the first thirty minutes, but the clown did well and won over the boys confidence eventually.

We all had a good day – so I’m gonna sign off now and relax a bit before bedtime.

Another week awaits.