Updates from India, Day 10

The biggest news from here in Mumbai is that Julianne and Henry are thriving. They’re eating more all the time. Julianne now regularly drinks 40-55 mL (1.3-1.9 oz.) of formula, and Henry guzzles 75-100 mL (2.5-3.4 oz). We couldn’t be happier about that. Henry has been an eating machine from the beginning, but I’m so excited that Julianne is now having a much easier time staying awake during her feedings, which are getting much more consistent.

All this eating means that the twins have put on some weight, which also makes us very happy. Using a digital scale here in the hotel room (first weighing me, then me and each baby, and doing the necessary subtraction) we’ve learned their approximate new weights. Julianne was 1.87 kg (4.1 lbs.) at birth, and yesterday, at 10 days old, she weighs 2 kg (4.4 lbs.). Henry was 2.2 kg (4.9 lbs) at birth, and weighed 2.6 kg (5.7 lbs) yesterday. That means she’s added about 8% to her body weight, and Henry has added about 17%. (With those percentages extrapolated to an adult, that’d be like me gaining 15-25 lbs. in just 10 days. That’d be a lot of donuts and pizza.)

Henry has been making all kinds of great faces from Day One, but now Julianne has joined a bit herself. A couple days ago I saw her smiling for the first time, which was pretty awesome. She has a beautiful smile. Practically melted my heart right out of my chest. Of course, smiling at this age is usually just gas, but we don’t mind! Gas or not, it’s pretty much the cutest thing ever. After a long night of feedings, sometimes fussy or overlong with extra doses of hiccups, just one of those smiles makes you totally not care about the hours of sleep lost or whatever else. Brings everything into perspective.

On Monday, May 20, we got the birth certificates, which is so much faster than we thought we’d get them. We thought we’d be waiting another week for those, but our awesome lawyer, Urvi, really got things moving. It’ll help us get home to New York so much faster.

Having those birth certificates in hand meant that we were able to visit the U.S. Consulate on Tuesday, May 21, where we reported the birth of our babies to the U.S. government. The twins also did DNA cheek swabs to prove that Matt is their legal parent. Since our egg donor is anonymous, and our surrogate is genetically unrelated to the children, the only “known” genetic tie is Matt. Since Matt is an American, the kids are automatically Americans as well. (Handy, huh?)

Once those DNA results are confirmed, we’ll be issued U.S. passports for the kids. We’ve been anxiously tracking those DNA swabs as they travel via FedEx from Mumbai to Arizona (where our DNA lab is located). We watched as the swabs went from Mumbai, to Dubai, to Paris, and then to Memphis, TN, where they are now. We’re hoping that later tonight we’ll log on and see those swabs in Arizona.

Until then, more feeding, more swaddling, more sponge baths, more cuddling, more kisses, more tears wiped away, and many, many more naps. (They’re still sleeping the vast majority of the time.)

We’ll keep you posted. 🙂

–Josh

Matt and I also want to thank everyone for the very warm outpouring of support and kind comments from Twitter (@thenewdads), Instagram (@joshcentral), and right here on the New Dads blog. It’s been very sweet, as we trade off baby duty throughout the day and night, to scroll through all those messages as we’re burping a baby or folding infant laundry, etc.

A big thanks also to Joe.My.God for posting the video of us meeting the twins for the very first time, leading to Buzzfeed writing a story about us (which, as of this moment, has been seen more than 75,000 times, shared 180+ times on Facebook, and liked 800+ times on Facebook). Great blogs like Boy Culture and Queerty also wrote about our baby adventures, along with TheGailyGrind, as well as a radio station in Australia, and even blogs from as far away as China (screenshot at right), France, Israel and the Netherlands. We’re just completely blown away by the response. Never did we imagine our story would get picked up like this.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your kind support and well wishes.

–Josh & Matt