Hi bananafish81
Always love a good surrogacy post as you know!
Our hospital were a bit iffy at first, but once they realised it was all kosher they were great. I had a meeting with the head matron when i was 30 weeks to talk things through alone - i guess she wanted to give me chance to say 'oh god help me i've made a huge mistake' but of course it didnt happen. I explained what i hoped for; both dads to be at the birth unless c-section was required, initial skin to skin to happen with dad, dad to cut the cord if possible. We discussed what happened if i had to stay in - the hospital would not allow baby to leave without me. If baby was healthy & i needed to stay in, i would physically have to hand baby over to dad outside the hospital otherwise it would be put through as kidnap believe it or not. If baby had to stay in & i didn't, i would have to sign paperwork to say dads had full & open access to her & any information they wanted/needed.
It felt like quite a drawn out process but the matron was very friendly, very accomodating & i realised quite quickly it was just to cover their arses. As it was, none of it was needed anyway because she made her appearance super quickly at home 8 days late! Exactly one year to the day that me & her dads had agreed to match.
The CAFCASS side of things was a farce. We had one officer who didn't know what she was doing, who then went on leave without properly handing over to anybody. So we had to play catch up; the paperwork was handed to the courts on the last allowed day. It was pretty scary tbh as i wasn't sure what the protocol was if we missed that deadline.
My meeting with our CAFCASS officer was easy, she asked lots of questions about my motives, my experience, how i felt after the fact. She spent a chunk of time on expenses because she said they were 'astonishingly low' but was ultimately happy with everything. Her report was amazing, so so positive. When we went before the judge she actually made the unusual step of asking if we were permitted a copy each as she felt we deserved to see her comments - i almost cried. The judge told us he had no issues approving it, that it was clear baby was well loved by everybody & that it was clear us adults were very close. He said we were the most positive surrogacy story he had heard so far. Baby even got a little teddy from him.
Haha just reliving those bits has made me smile. She was 3 in August & i still look back at the experience with fondness. The only thing i didn't enjoy was when i was pregnant with DS (my own bubba), everybody kept asking me if i was 'keeping this one' - i guess people still see it as giving away a baby instead of handing a baby to their parents!