It's Only My Opinion...

Okay, we drove back to Mumbai yesterday. The ride was better--less traffic, but still long.

As we drove towards Mumbai, you could see the cloud of smog hanging over the city. Everything seems gray and dingy compared to Pune. The crowds of people on the streets, the traffic, the beggars knocking at your windows at every stop--Mumbai is much worse than we had prepared ourselves for.

If we are blessed enough to come back here for a baby, we will stay in Mumbai as little as possible. We will take the baby to Goa or Pune while we wait for the passport to process. We find the city overwhelming and depressing. If we had not gone to Pune and stayed only in Mumbai, our overall opinion of India would have been vastly different.

The smells here are incredible. Every place you go you will find yourself greeted with a new, strong scent. Sometimes bad and sometimes incredibly good, but always distinct. Bob made me laugh so hard yesterday when we got into a cab and spoke in code to me... "Youstink-Um." Body odor is par for the course here. Lavendar, too.

We are staying a beautiful hotel, The Maratha. I will post pictures soon. The hotel has a decor that feels like the old Bristish India--ornate and over-the-top. Bob's best friend booked us here for five days using his reward points. Thanks, Tommy! The breakfast buffet so luxurious...today I had a croissant, a salad, an omelet with salmon roe and steamed asparagus. (Bob was horrified at my omelet combination.)

Well, anyhoo, lets get down to business. Yesterday we went to the clinic for monitoring. It looks like I have a good number of follicles, so we are continuing on our stimming and returning on Monday morning for our next monitoring. I am hoping that they will trigger on Monday night and perform retrieval on Wednesday morning, but we will know more after Monday's appointment. Dr. Kaushal is very warm. Bob asked how many surrogacies the clinic has performed and was told that last year they did 15, 2006 they did 10 and in 2005 they did two or three. Dr. Kaushal also told us that they are opening a low-cost sister clinic which will make fertility treatments available to people that couldn't normally afford it. I was impressed by that.

A few words about the clinic. Things are very basic there; little things, like disposable paper over the tables, are missing. I feel very comfortable with the cleanliness overall. It is a well-run operation. While we were in Pune, I dropped a vial of Follistim and it shattered (Ugh!), so we had to buy more at the clinic. I bought two vials of Gonal-F (450 UI) for $550. It was the same stuff that you get in the U.S.

Well, we are off to the pool and to take some pictures!