Summary of Meeting with TN - Surrogate #1

Tarzan and I met in Lansing ahead of our lunch meeting with TN. She ended up texting that she was going to be a bit late, so we drove around campus for a while and watched the football tailgaters.  I was a bit worried when she said she was going to be late that she was blowing us off, but not to worry, she showed up. We ate at PF Changs and got to know her for about an hour and a half.  We got their first and ordered an appetizer and she came up to the table and said "Hi Tony and Kelly".  She looked different from her picture, but only because yesterday she was dressed very casually, like a college student.  Yoga pants, hoodie, hair in a pony tail, and those furry boots. It was cute and it reminded me of my nieces.  We talked very easily with her, she told us more about her family. Her father is Italian (surname Rossellini) and went to college in Croatia and that is where he met her mother. She was born in Croatia, well at the time it was still Yugoslavia, but it became Croatia again in 1991.  Her family left Croatia when she was very small because of the war,  and went to Munich, Germany for 6 years. She pretty much grew up in Germany and of course speaks German, all of the Yugoslavia languages/dialects - Croatian, Bosnia, Serbian and a little bit of Italian. I thought it was funny that her father didn't teach her Italian. It was the same way with Tarzan's parents - he speaks okay Italian, but not fluent. In 2000 the US was giving green cards to the victims of the Bosnian war, so her family came to the US and settled in the Lansing area. She went to junior high and high school here and now attends MSU.  She has the slightest accent, but it is hardly noticeable at all.  Sounds like her parents have some money because they just bought her a house, and she drives a Mercedes which Tarzan was drooling over. 

She does seem to have her head on her shoulders straight, and she says she is doing surrogacy for the right reasons. She knows she is fertile, she believes in God, and feels drawn to help an infertile couple have a child.  She says she wants to find the right couple; she is talking to 2 other couples besides us - one in NY and a gay couple not sure where.  The NY couple wants to choose her and get started right away, but she is not sure about them.  I think she really liked us. Although Tony and I wonder if we screwed up in answering some of her questions. She asked me if I work and I told her about my job at HP and how I work at home. She then asked me if I was going to stay home when we have a baby and I was totally honest with her. I told her that eventually I'd like to stay home, but that I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it immediately since we will have to pay off the surrogacy.  Tarzan then saved the day by saying that he would even consider staying home and having me be the breadwinner.  It was sort of a joke, but not totally. I have a potential job opportunity for a year from now that could lead to a lot more money. Believe me I want to stay home, but it just may not be possible at first.  We've already spent more than the cost of her Mercedes on failed fertility treatments and are about to spend that much on surrogacy.  We'll see.

She is not on Facebook, so I'm sure we'll have to meet with her a few more times in person to see if we are truly comfortable with her.  I told Tarzan that whomever we choose I want to run a background check on even if I think they are the best thing since sliced bread. He agreed. 

Physically she is pretty. She is tall like me, but has the opposite shape. Where I am all legs and a short torso, she has shorter legs and a long torso. She has brown eyes although she says she is the only one in her family with brown eyes, her mom, dad and sister all have blue or green eyes. Her dad is 6'5" and her mom is 5'10".  She has very fair skin like me, well maybe not quite as fair, but close. 

All in all we were very pleased with our first meeting with TN and she is definitely still on the list.  We told her that we plan to skype with the other 3 potential surrogates we are emailing, so we wouldn't be making any decisions quickly. She understood and we agreed to just keep in touch via email and texting.