Somewhere in the deep recesses of childhood memory, I vaguely recall a fuzzy black & white Lee Majors sprinting across the television screen at incredible speed in the TV show The 6 Million Dollar Man.

We Can Rebuild Him

We Can Rebuild Him

For the unfamiliar, Majors played Steve Austin, an astronaut who was severely injured in a test flight of an experimental aircraft.   Rebuilt by the government with a bionic body, he had superhuman strength and speed, infrared and zoom vision, and the greatest in 1970’s fashion.

The total cost of this life-saving operation? 6 Million Dollars. That’s a lot of money to create one amazing human being. With inflation, that 1973 procedure would cost more than $33.5 million today. Or would it?

Over the past few months, using the latest in modern technology, we have managed to create an amazing little human of our own at an expense of slightly less than $7,000 (although certainly that is only the down payment)

That’s right, Winnie is pregnant!  We are both pretty excited

For anybody that has been reading GCC for awhile, this will probably explain some things: Why did our alcohol budget plummet to zero several months ago, and why would we stay in Taiwan for so long when there is so much of the world yet to see?

Due to some self-inflicted fertility obstacles, we sought some outside assistance.  In a perfect example of medical tourism, based on convenience and cost this took the form of IVF, aka in-vitro fertilization aka test-tube baby making at a hospital in Taipei

Over the course of the last few months we have gone through two iterations of this procedure, and the second round was a success.  Today we saw the heart beat for the first time on an ultrasound at ~7 weeks

Go Curry Cookie

Go Curry Cookie

Although we will likely remain in Taiwan throughout the pregnancy, we have considered a destination birth.  We are open to recommendations on countries that offer great lifetime passport benefits to newborns

Afterwards we will most definitely undergo additional adventures (but absolutely no bionic body parts until age 18!)

 

Update: Read about our IVF experience, including costs