Rules of Engagement

It's been quite some time since my last update, but as things go in a stork adventure, there's a lot of slow and tedious work to do be done up front. I look forward to the entries that will tell you all about how the little storkie is growing and moving, kicking up a storm, and demanding bizarre treats at all hours of the day and night. With patience we will get there, but today it's all about contracts and legal procedure.

When we left off a month ago, Ellie and Matt had sent our contractual plans to the CFO of the agency, and we all waited for a contract draft to come our way. I can't speak for Ellie and Matt, but I had a great amount of patience in the first two weeks. Early on in the process, one of the agency directors had mentioned that the typical timeline of the contract phase was 2 weeks to draft the document, and 2-4 weeks of conferring with attorneys while requested changes are made and sent to each others' attorneys for review and further conference. Seems reasonable. So by week 3 I was starting to wonder how things were going (not that I would dare to check in with the agency!). I was counting weeks and days left until July 23 - the day that the contract has to be signed and notarized by all parties, in order to do the transfer on the date scheduled in August - and trying to not get impatient. Ellie emailed me at the 3 week point with great news: The draft would be sent to her within the next 3-5 days. We both went back to our day to day activities while we waited, and we were both completely swamped at work; sufficiently distracted. Five days later, Ellie's attorney contacted her to say that it would be another 4 days before the draft would be done, so back to the distraction of work we went. Life was bustling for both Ellie and I; besides work, all of my kids were out of school and in the full swing of summer activities. We can't even sit down for 10 minutes at our house without having to run out the door to the next activity. Again, it's nice to not be hovering over my email inbox waiting for it to ping. However, when we passed the 4 week mark, and got to the (second) date that the attorney promised the draft and there was still no draft, I was starting to lose my patience. Ellie's attorney sent her a message saying that it would be done early the following week. When it finally arrived in Ellie's inbox (after 4 weeks and 5 days), I have to admit that her attorney did a great job. It was VERY thorough (75 pages!) and sufficiently accurate. After taking a few days to read it over and make comments, Ellie, Matt and I Skyped to discuss our comments and thoughts. We were all quite happy with how it turned out and had only a handful of minor changes, so they were able to send it back to their attorney at the end of last week.

As of today, we're in great shape to finish the contract in time for our target transfer date in August. My attorney should be receiving the completed contract today or tomorrow, we'll have a conference call to review it on Monday, and coo coo cachoo: we'll have a completed contract! This, a full 10 days before we are scheduled to start meds for the transfer. And you were worried that our 9 week lead time wouldn't be enough. Pssshh, we just like living that close to the edge.

So it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work on the really exciting part of this adventure. Let's make some scientific magic happen! We need to get everything prepped with an impressive, month-long medication protocol involving lupron, estrogen, and progesterone. The countdown is on: 24 days to the first injection. Did I mention that I'm needle-phobic?? I'll be back to let you all know how this goes.