There Is A Song

It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. It is a powerful song. It comes from deep down inside. It sounds beautiful. It is one of my favorites. It is really out of context, but it triggers a memory of mine from ten months ago. It reminds me of my nightly cab rides to visit Ezra in the hospital when I had my iPod cranked just loud enough to drown out the sounds of Delhi traffic, just loud enough to forget the sea of people that surrounded the car at the stop lights, just loud enough to forget the smells of burning India during the cold months, and just loud enough to get me into the NICU with a smile on my face.

There have been four days that the twins have not been in the same place. Those have been the hardest four days of parenting twins.

Today is Doug's birthday! Happy 30th to my wonderful husband. Due to my lack of culinary skills and my inability/unwillingness to make quality things without a box, Doug actually made his own birthday cake. He takes full responsibility for this since I volunteered to make the cake first, but he didn't want a box cake.

I am finally feeling well enough to get out of bed. I have been crazy sick and on strict Douglas instituted quarantine since Wednesday morning. It all started with chest pains, then it turned into fever then no fever and aches, then fever again, and repeat. There was one day I slept almost twenty hours. The final day was full scale strep throat which quickly went away after I overdosed on antibiotics. I misunderstood that doctor's orders of "take three times". She meant take once each day for three days. I understood take three times each day. Needless to say the strep is gone, but so is all my good bacteria.

We are off to Hong Kong on Friday to officially celebrate Doug's birthday. We decided that since we had a four day weekend the week after his birthday we would delay the party and travel to a new country. We are both really excited... oh and I am sure the boys are excited too!

Here is that song: Adele - I Found A Boy

Chad

Today Is the Seven Billion Day

Just not our seven billion day! So, no, neither twin will be the seven billionth inhabitant of planet earth. But, that doesn't make me any less excited. Far from it! I'm becoming nearly non-functional with excitement.

But, just to tide you over while our twins take their time to arrive, here are some interesting seven billion statistics:

• It is estimated that the population of the world reached one billion for the first time in 1805. 
• Right now only two countries, China and India, have populations over one billion. 
• Because of higher population and longer lifespans, humanity's absolute numbers continue to rise, even though the number of children per woman has halved since 1950. 
• The world's richest 500 million people produce half of the world's carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gasses responsible for climate change; whereas, the poorest three billion are responsible for only seven percent of emissions. 
• Although it's an odd fact for a surrogacy blog, at least 150 million couples in the world want, but don't have, access to reproductive health services. 
• There will be 125 million births this year! 
• And, finally, this interesting estimation from the BBC about yours truly (based on my birth date):

According to the same website, twins A and B will be approximately 7,001,277,363rd and 7,001,277,364th (if they make it all the way to 37 weeks).  But, Just Two Out Of 7,001,277,364 doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I think we'll stick with our current blog title for now!

Cheers, 

Douglas 

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-population-reaches-seven-billion

http://www.overpopulation.org/faq.html

One Out Of Seven Billion

"In the midst of all the handwringing over population explosion in the country, the Indian government might miss preparing for a global record-setting event — the birth of the baby that would take the population of planet earth to the seven billion mark."

(The Times Of India, January 24, 2011)

Chad and I were walking our dog this evening around the embassies here in New Delhi. We do this every weeknight as it keeps our labrador, Jyoti, very happy and it gives us some uninterrupted time when we can catch up on our day and how life has been treating us. As is frequently the case, Chad was filling me in on the day's news stories. Today he caught me up on the growing world population, as if walking out in India wasn't enough insight into the crowdedness of our planet. I don't read the news very often, as I have Chad's news service that keeps me up to speed on everything I need to know (and his retelling of news stories is far more entertaining than reading it for myself). So, for those of you without your own news-agregator-spouse sitting next to you, I will give you the highlights from the article:

• The 7th billion earthling will most likely be born in October or November.
• In India, 51 babies are born each minute.
• Just one state in India (Uttar Pradesh) has more births per minute than any other country except China.
• Almost one fifth of the babies born in the world are born in India.

In other news - the kind not covered by the Times of India - Chad and I had our second meeting with the IVF doctor and the surrogacy specialist this past Saturday. We are officially starting our journey to having a baby. Yep, we're hoping for just one little guy (or gal) out of seven billion. Just one!