Secrets

I have been keeping a secret that is important to this journey.

When I first began this blog, I intended to take it down once we had our child. At that point, in our journey we still did not know what information we would share with our child about their unusual beginnings. Honestly, at that point we were sure that we were never going to tell them that another woman carried them. It was not that we were embarrassed, we thought that we would be protecting them from pain and hurt. As an adopted child I went through a time in my life when I felt flawed and carried guilt about my start in the world and I would never want that for my own child. Then I began to have nightmares of our child finding some piece of paper or picture and no longer being able to keep up the charade. All I could think of was how much worse that situation would be than just making it part of their narrative and leaving it at that.

Over that hurdle, we then had to decide how much of the story we were going to tell. Was it enough to just tell them that my stomach was broken and that another lady gave birth to them? Would it be better to let them see pictures of, talk to, or meet this woman? How far would we allow that relationship to go? How were we going to handle the relationship more to the point how was I going to feel about that relationship?

After weeks of debate and looking at every advantage and disadvantage, we made a decision. If we were going to tell the story, we had to tell them everything. It was an all or nothing deal. For those of you who know us will not be at all surprised, we are very much all or nothing people. One of the things infertility has not been able to steal away from me the commitment that no matter what the story of how our child came into the world I never wanted the time between thinking that they got here like anyone else and the true story would not exist we would always be honest with them. I still do not have the words for that day.

Okay so now that I have completely written us into some circle I guess I should tell you what the point of this was. Wow, I am actually nervous about this, and I am not ever nervous about saying anything here. We are using an egg donor. You will be happy to know that my head did not explode, I was afraid of that happening at this moment. I am not sure why it was so hard for me to say. For me this was the hardest part of choosing to use surrogacy. I had to make sure that I was not going to feel that I had less of a claim to our child or blame my husband when they turn out to be horrible people I cannot stand to be around, well at least not any more than a normal person would.

Before we entered into the world of surrogacy, we were preparing to adopt from China. I had researched everything that I could about the process, down to what airline discounts we could use and filling out a few applications with agencies. Something just never felt right, I knew that we were both able to parent a child that was not biologically ours and I knew that we could handle the extra challenges of adopting a toddler who would need extra help. After a year or so I realized what would not be right was that I would miss out on possibly the first year or two of my child’s life, and remember when I said we are all or nothing people because that is what drove me to this decision. I want to have every moment I can with my child, without being the type of parent who moves to the same town their child goes to college in, or calling to ask the nice man at company X who did not hire my child.

Surrogacy became the answer for us. We could be parents from day one and having a child that was not biologically mine seemed to be about the same thing as adoption. At least that is what I thought, until the day that I realized that I was ashamed to tell anyone and was considering breaking rule number 1 “always be honest”. I knew that when I consented for my surgery that I would loose my ability to have a child and I have never questioned that decision.

It began with the “creepy” factor of looking through hundreds of profiles. Somewhere in the middle of narrowing down these profiles, there were things that I had to start weeding out that made me uncomfortable. There were those things that were obvious, like a history of cancer and then there were things like eye color and GPA’s. I began to feel like I was living in one of those insane private preschool parodies in the movies. The real punch in the face was looking back through those I had narrowed down were nothing like me and part of that made me feel great and another part of that felt horrible, horrible in a way that nothing had ever made me feel and very shocking. I have never thought that biology had anything to do with being a good parent. My parents are great and not a bit of biology is shared between us and that has never made them love me less.

I believe that what was so hard to accept was that I was not just going to have a child “assigned” to me; I was going to have to choose a woman to be half of their genetics. For a while that felt strange, and then it felt hugely overwhelming. My first real decision as the mother of my child was to pick their genetic mother and that is one decision that I do not want to get wrong. I have talked about my paralyzing fear before and this was a time when I was really stuck. More people have looked at egg donors with me, and the more people that I pulled in the more my choices were confirmed. Having others agree that they too were seeing what I was seeing was so helpful.

Affirmation of your choices is so rare in the world of infertility, that when it finally happens it feels like Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. I have no other words to describe that feeling of elation when you finally feel that you are competent enough to make “parent” level decisions.

We are using an egg donor, because I would not be able to live with myself if my child inherited even one of my disorders. That is the trouble with knowing just enough to be dangerous when it comes to the heritability of disease and disability. Well that is at least what I am telling myself for now. Other than me being able to carry this baby on my own like most women no solution is going to be perfect. Surrogacy just happens to meet more of our criteria. At the start of this process I believed that I would have, a much harder time dealing with my feelings about the surrogate, so far that had not been true.

There is my little secret. Now it does not seem like such a big deal.