our surrogacy adventure

Picture!

2010-10-19T22:54:00.000-05:00

So blissed out over this little guy!!!!

Hi

2010-10-18T22:33:00.000-05:00

I would like to introduce you to Thomas Edward or just Tom as we will call him. He was born at 11:45 PST 8 pounds 8 oz and 20 inches long!!! We are just completely and madly in love! Still at the hospital waiting for someone to pee. I promise a picture just as soon as I get to a real computer.

4:33

2010-10-18T06:34:00.000-05:00

At the birth center. Water broken and just waiting.

internet therapy

2010-10-08T01:37:00.000-05:00

Sometimes F.acebook is the best therapy ever. A friend of mine just posted the following.
"Make peace with the here and now. Let go and stop resisting. It doesn’t have to mean you’ve given up on the possibility of something better. It just means you’ve decided to pursue it from a place of freedom and peace."

That was exactly what I needed to hear at this moment.

Floating For Now

2010-10-08T01:04:00.000-05:00

I have been in Oregon for almost a week now and am finally settled enough that I can post. Settling has been a bit overwhelming, I had to get everything at home ready to bring the baby home and then had to do a lot of it all over again here. Now I am just trying to enjoy these last few days before the real adventure begins.

Just being here has really made me feel so much better. I no longer have to worry about missing the birth and just being near Sabrina and Cletus really takes away so much stress. The thing that I am dealing with now is letting down these walls so that I can feel like this is really happening. I am so excited that Sabrina is having a baby in just a little bit, but I am still having a hard time letting myself feel that I am about to become a mother. The title that had eluded me is so close and yet I am unable to let myself really believe.

Unlike the other times that I have felt disconnected I am not afraid. I know that this will all go away the second I hear my son scream. For right now I am just going to go floating along because I have the ability to float! For years I was drowning in the longing and fear of never being a mother. Now I just have to convince my psyche that this is real and that it is okay for me to let those defenses down, but I am also sure that this will work itself loose.

I had a very interesting experience the other night. Sabrina and I went to her last birthing class, which was a small class taught by Sabrina's doula. The setting was comfortable and I was not nervous because at least there was a big belly sitting next to me. Trying to do "mommy" things in a surrogacy situation is not always easy. People often have a hard time disguising their feelings when you bring up the topic of surrogacy. The majority of them try to be supportive, but there is often an underlying judgement that comes out in some way.

At the birthing class I was the one feeling a little weird. It is not always easy to know that your role is as an intended mother. Yes, I am the one who will raise my son and I am the one that will have the honor of being his mother, but I am not the one that has to bring him into the world. My job only begins when he gets here and until then I am really nothing. I know that sounds bad, but it really is not I am just still having a very hard time explaining what this feels like. Of course, I will do whatever I can to make this easier for Sabrina, but she already has a HUGE support system that is much more capable of supporting her.

For right now I am just going to float and hope that the path is clear of power lines! We have a midwife appointment tomorrow and I will update then.

Emotional Speed Bumps and Surrogacy

2010-09-26T23:49:00.001-05:00

I need to blow off the cob webs around here. I cannot believe I have taken so long to post. So sorry to all of you who are still reading here, I have a million reasons but I think I will just start writing again.

Some of the reason that I have not been here for a while, other than just being plain busy, was that a few weeks ago I had a very emotional day that has taken me a while to process enough to be able to write about. Infertility quickly teaches you the lesson of longing and feelings so intense you feel physical pain. Once I finally got to the point that Cletus was really coming and that I was really going to be a mother I forgot about those feelings. Years of my life have been wasted on living in the emotional sludge that infertility brought into my life and all I wanted to do was but that all behind me. Then the bomb dropped and I found myself slammed with this feeling of longing like I had never felt before.

This being that has ruled my life for all these years is finally an almost reality. My comfort for those many years was the belief that once I became a mother that somehow I would no longer be the infertile woman who could slip into an emotional state at the drop of a hat. Not that I thought I would escape these feelings in motherhood, just that those sharp pains of longing would leave. Yet, there I was ramped up so much that I was crying uncontrollably and having some thoughts that really scared me.

From the moment that I got to know some really fantastic surrogates, I never once understood how someone could just take their child and never see the person who helped give that child life was infuriating to me. There I was sitting in the middle of my son's room and the only thing in the world that would make me feel whole at that moment was to have him. I wanted him all to myself, I was just done sharing anything anymore, or what the husband calls hitting the "Kindergarten Wall." My soul and body were hurting like they never had before, I just felt so empty and defeated.

A couple of days later the reality of what had really happened terrified me. What I believed I would never feel, what I had not felt at all until that moment, had slapped me straight in the face. I just wanted to have this all be over and I wanted to finally hold my child I have fought so hard to make a reality. My child that has no connection to me other than the fact that I have willed him into being, and for the first time I felt that my intention to be his mother was no longer enough. I was just this thing floating out in space and feeling so disconnected from everything that was causing me so much pain. It is not something that I can easily describe, but I can say that it was possibly one of the worst experiences of my life.

Like all of these intense bouts of longing and feeling of defeat these went away. As horrible as all that was, what has happened since had been fantastic. Difficult to work through yes, but here on the other end I am really much better for having been there. On this side of those horrible feelings is this place of just knowing that it is all going to be just fine. I should have known this, because it always has been, every horrible moment over all these years of me being so close to becoming a mother. Infertility has stolen many chances from me, but I will not let it steal one moment of joy and happiness out of these next few weeks.

Surrogacy is the closest thing to true altruism that I will ever know. A woman who was a perfect stranger volunteered to put not only her life but her family's life on hold so that our family can grow. All the nasty pain and heartache are just being cleaned away by our own BumpFairy, and there is nothing in this world that can ever express the love I feel!

3rd Trimester, Baby Shower, and JOY!

2010-07-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

I did not fall off the end of the internet, things have been soooooooooo busy around here.

First, we are in the third trimester! I really have a hard time even thinking that without getting teary. I never thought that we would be here, so close to holding our son. Guess I forgot to do that whole big post. We are having a boy and we could not be more excited!

Second, I had the most amazing baby shower EVER! Being surrounded by so many people who love us and who already love our son was just amazing. We are so lucky that so many people in our lives have been so accepting of whatever fertility decisions we have made. Really, I could not have designed a better group of people if I tried. Having so many of them in the same room was just something I will never be able to describe and I am not even going to try.

I will give you a few highlights and pictures!!

My sister and mom playing Mad Hatter Croquet! My sister is also wearing one of the aprons I made for my guests.

Just pure joy! The night before the shower a bunch of my friends came to my house to get the final touches done. Nothing like making centerpieces with 2 pairs of scissors and 1 wire cutter!

My sister, my Nana, Sabrina, my mom and me!

I am so lucky that I still have my Nana to share this with us. She kept looking at Sabrina and saying, "That is my baby." Nothing could have made that moment more perfect!

I am just so lucky to have so many amazing people in my life. 3 of my friends from high school came from out of town, we had a blast being together. So many other people were there and it was a BLAST!

I have so much more to talk to you all about and I promise I am going to get better at coming by here.

navigating a relationship

2010-07-01T14:11:00.000-05:00

As we seem to be approaching the birth at the speed of light (25 weeks tomorrow) many people are starting to question the relationship that we are going to have with Sabrina after the birth. I know that people are coming from a place of love and concern, really I do get that, but at the same time I find this to be the most invasive questioning and really it is something extremely personal. So what does one do with such a personal question? Writes about it on a public blog! I know that seems insane but really I try to be very open about things and this is the easiest way for me to do this.

All things in life are only understood through the frame of reference which someone has to understand what they are experiencing. Surrogacy is becoming more mainstream, or that could just be the fact that I am just seeing it more, but still more people know others who have gone down this particular path to parenthood. Of course, more people just know the horror stories that make the news. Ours is the farthest thing from that kind of story. That is not to say that we are skipping through a field of daisies all the time, but when there are things that we do not view the same way we are able to be respectful of that and still express our opinions. In the end we either just agree to disagree or one of changes the other’s mind.

This is a relationship of friends where one person just happens to be carrying a baby for the other. For purely selfish reasons I want to keep Sabrina in my life. Then there are the multitude of reasons that I want our son to know the family that completed our family. I will also be the first to say that when we first started looking at surrogacy I was perfectly happy with having someone have the baby and that would be the end. My only frame of reference was that of adoption, which does not fit into surrogacy very well. As an adopted child I knew that having my birth mother be part of my childhood would not have been good for me or my family, not that I have anything against open adoption.

Adoption is only a good reference for surrogacy in that it teaches you that genetic makeup has nothing to do with who you consider your family. Other than that there is nothing similar between these two paths to parenthood. This pregnancy began as ours. Yes, our son is the genetic product of an egg donor and the husband. Yes, he is being carried by Sabrina. But I literally willed him into being. I worked through all the years of emotional sludge that comes with infertility and got myself to that place where parenting was way more important than pregnancy. Without my intention to be his mother Cletus would not exist.

Along this journey there have been those moments when I have felt the twinges of jealousy. I do not think there has ever been a woman in my position that can honestly say that they have not felt the same. Then one day I realized that there were always going to moments in his life that others are going to experience with him first. I am just a little ahead of schedule with this particular mommy moment. In a perfect world I would never have had to deal with this, but we do not live in a perfect world.

Sabrina is currently playing the most important role in Cletus’s life. I will be doing that for the rest of his life. She loves him like she loves a few other people’s kids. I am filled with this amazing warmth and light and unbelievable amount of love every time I look at that picture of Cletus as a five day embryo. We all have people in our lives that have made a huge impression and have made our lives better for being in them. All I can hope is that Cletus has Sabrina as one of those people in his life. To me denying the existence of Sabrina would be the same as saying we were ashamed of how our family was created, which is the same as saying we are ashamed of our son on some level.

Honesty with our child about how they came to be was really the first big surrogacy question we ever asked ourselves. For us part of that honesty was maintaining a relationship with the woman who carried for us. In the end this is the story of how we became a family until Cletus draws his first breath, then it becomes his story which is not ours to edit. I am not going to pretend that it will always be easy to tell him this story. I know that there will be times when it is downright painful to help him process what this all means to him, but we are prepared as his parents to do whatever we can to help. We made this commitment to ourselves and our child from the first conversation we ever had about surrogacy.

Then there was the moment in the ultra sound where I was holding onto the husband, also holding Sabrina’s hand, Cletus was on the screen, tears streaming down my face, and it felt like this was just the way it was meant to be. I am not sure that I have the words to adequately explain what that moment was like. All I know is that any worry I ever had about being able to handle surrogacy and whatever came after just melted away. That squirming little image on the screen was all that mattered to any of us and he was perfect. I cannot imagine anything that would make me ever not want to continue having those moments. So Cletus might just be the first “insert brilliant thing here” to have both his mother and surrogate at his “insert fancy award ceremony here”, but I would not have it any other way. I will always be his mother and she will always be his Aunt Sabrina who spent nine months growing him under her heart.

I will spend the rest of my life trying and falling miserably short of repaying this gift.

Yikes!

2010-06-25T12:26:00.001-05:00

Yikes, these past few weeks have just flown by! The mother in law was here for a week (everyone say HI she is reading this) really it was a wonderful visit and I am so happy that we got to see her. The husband could not take the whole week off of work, so for the first time ever she and I spent whole days together. I will be the first to admit that I was a bit terrified of this, not that she is a scary person, just we had never really hung out alone for that long. When the husband is around they get into conversations that go strait over my head most of the time, which relieves a lot of pressure to talk. It was truly a silly thing to worry about, and I seem to be doing a lot more of this needless worrying lately, we had a great time or at least I did. Since this is my blog I get to say that WE had a fantastic time!

The best part of the whole visit was getting to be around someone else who was so excited about Cletus. Our immediate families live in different parts of the world, and the ones that live in the same country are very spread out, so there has been little sitting in the same room excitement. My parents are coming through town this weekend to get me my next fix. I really think that there is something addictive about people sharing their exicitement with you. I have actually delayed telling people just so I have enough people to get me enough fixes between now and the baby shower. I have always known that the husband and I have amazing families and friends, but there is really nothing like the love that surrounds talking about Cletus.

This is something that I have never heard anyone talk about before. Now, I have avoided pregnancy talk like the plague making it entirely possible that I just missed this part. For those of you who know me, I am not a sunshine and rainbows kind of person, but this is just an amazing amount of puppies and unicorns pooping rainbows. It is also completely terrifying. We are going to be parents, that cluster of cells in the picture on my fridge is a real being that we are expected to raise to adulthood. YIKES, this is suddenly a little scary, not that we can’t handle it, just a bit terrifying.

I have really had a lot in my head that I need to get out here, but those are for different posts, which I promise will be coming quickly.

A True Gift

2010-06-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

Our weekend in Oregon was nothing short of magic! I know that it sounds corny, but really there is no better word to describe what we experienced with Sabrina and her family. It was a weekend of fun and laughter, but mostly it was the weekend where I learned so much about myself. Being an intended mother is a very weird kind of limbo not good or bad just very different from anything that I have a frame of reference for.

I understand adoption as an adoptee and through my mother as an adoptive mother. When we first started this journey I used adoption as my reference frame which is not even close to what this all feels like. Never once have I questioned that our child will come home with us. The baby has always been ours and always will be. Of course, surrogacy is not without it's own set of challenges.

Jealousy can be a very powerful feeling that can ruin a relationship. I have worried that I would be jealous of Sabrina getting to spend this time with our child, and at small moments I have felt a little of that. Then out of the blue Sabrina e-mails me with some little event that only I would ever care about and I go back to knowing that for right now she is the best one to care for my baby. Thankfully, I do not think that these feelings have ever effected our relationship, and after this weekend I know that they never will.

On our first night there Sabrina brought ice cream to our hotel, because that baby LOVES some ice cream! Then came the big moment that I had been dreading since we began this journey, because if there was something that was going to drive me over the ledge I knew it would be watching my husband feeling the child that was made with his and an egg donor's genetics moving in another woman's body. I got to feel the wiggle worm first and it was amazing to feel our child dance around, for the life of me I will never be able to put that experience into words it really was just magic. Then the real magic happened, my husband sat next to Sabrina and felt lots of wiggles and kicks and I got to sit there and watch this look on his face that I will never forget. In some ways I am happy that I got to sit outside the experience and just enjoy watching his face change every time he felt something. My hubby is not the most expressive person all the time when it comes to this whole baby thing, not that he is not excited, just that he does not get giddy about it all. From the first huge smile that accompanied the first movement I melted. Yes, we were having this whole experience in a completely different way than most, but it was still our moment and I cannot imagine having it any other way.

Once I realized that I was fine, the world did not stop spinning and I was not a sobbing mess on the floor, I knew that this was all going to be just fine. Like most things in surrogacy the fear of the unknown is infinitely worse than the reality. For once since we began this whole process I am not worried about being jealous and that is a wonderful relief.

That right there is our perfect little baby. Everything looks great and we could not be happier. I sat in the ultra sound holding the hubby and Sabrina's hand, and it really felt like it was always meant to be that way. I have so many more things that I want to talk about, but I think this is enough for now.

You can see the sucking of the thumb, but what you cannot is that this is the compromise for not being able to get the whole fist to fit! Oh, are we in for it!

Saige, in answer to your question there was no flavor to the lip stuff, but someone needs to make that into real lipstick because it never went anywhere!

One Moment Please

2010-06-08T23:19:00.004-05:00

Our trip to see Sabrina and her family was amazing! We had tons of fun, that sadly wore me out so much so that the big long post is going to have to wait. So a couple of pictures will have to tide you over.

I got my face painted because it is fun and why not?

The ultra sound went great! The little one is doing great, but more about that tomorrow!

Half Baked!

2010-05-29T20:58:00.003-05:00

Not only only of my favorite flavors of ice cream, but also the mark we hit today! This pregnancy is officially 20 weeks today, and no one has any idea where the time has gone, except for my parents. Sabrina is doing very well and says that Cletus is a very active little one, which I am hoping is not a sign of things to come. The husband and I are making our way up to Sabrina's for the BIG ultra sound on June 7th! So let me know what you believe, are we have a Cletus or Cletusette? I hate to let you know that I already know. In fact, I have been keeping this semi-quiet for a good long while now.

In a journey where there is so very little you get to have to yourself, knowing this has really been a wonderful thing. We never had that moment when we were the only two people in the world that knew we were having a baby. Really, we did not with the gender either, but for some wonderful moments we have been able to pretend.

When we first began looking at surrogacy it was very difficult for me to wrap my head around sharing all these moments with someone else. To my surprise it has been much easier than I could have ever imagined. Most of this is due to the fact that we have an amazing surrogate who lets us know everything that is happening and really does everything she can to make us feel like we are going through this with her. The other part is that there are little things we know that we are not telling others and we are so happy to have these little things that we really do not worry about the bigger ones. In about 20 weeks, we will have millions of moments that just the three of us share, and really that is all that matters.

a different feeling

2010-05-19T23:34:00.002-05:00

I have been trying to post here for a week. For the past seven days I have come here, written a little and then walked away. I just cannot seem to hit the publish button. Whatever it is that is standing in my way is so powerful that I am feel paralyzed when it comes to this space in my little universe. There are so many things that I want to share, but at the same time I know that for some it is going to hurt to come here and see these posts. I know this, because I have been on the other side reading about the happiness of pregnancy and wanted to just crawl back in my bed.

I am sorry if you are one of those people who stumbled over here today. As frightening as this has all been, being firmly in the 2nd trimester is such a huge relief. The fear part now comes from the panic that comes when I get terrified that I am going to forget to get something that Cletus will need and then some ridiculous crazy thing is going to happen. It is all silly craziness, and sometimes it even gets to be funny.

Since Cletus has been making sure that Sabrina remembers there is a passenger on board, I am feeling like I can do more permanent things. I know that we are never really out of the woods, but I have to do something to keep me busy. So many people do not seem to understand that when you are expecting through surrogacy there is just no other experience the feelings can be compared to. I have known the date the baby was due since before the transfer, I know that sometime in October that baby will be mine. Until then there is nothing to do except drive myself coo-coo with every detail, and I mean EVERY mind numbing detail! The things that I know about strollers alone is enough to fill a book, and some days my brain is oozing from being stuffed with information on baby bottles. I am loving every minute of this. I have earned every minute of giddy pleasure that I get from this tiny step into motherhood.

We are no longer playing house in our heads. I put paint on the walls in the nursery, and trust me paint seems enormous when you have ignore that whole part of your house for so long. Our child has a room with paint picked just for it on the walls, that is just the most amazing statement in the world. Our child is real and we are about to become parents, we are about the end years of wanting and wishing. It may be taking a gestational surrogate and an egg donor, but our family is going to finally be complete.

Which leads me to one of the other reasons that this space is a bit uncomfortable. I know that infertility will never end for me. This child is not the cure to anything, nor should it be. Infertile will always be a label that belongs to me and I am sure that there are going to be many days when I still feel the pain of that label. For now though, my mind is other places and moving in a very different direction. I am not going to stop writing here, this is the place that has sustained me through this process, I am just going to have to figure out how everything fits together here now. Thank you all for being patient with me. I am working very hard to figure this all out while getting used to being happier than sadder!

The "What IFs"

2010-05-01T22:29:00.002-05:00

All the what if questions I have ever asked is a variation of the scariest "What IF" ever. What IF becoming a mother turns out to be the worst decision I have ever made? Over the years I have tried so hard to avoid all of the “What If…” questions that seemed to permeate every part of my reproductive life. At some point I had to put these questions aside, I had to accept that parenthood may never come for us. Infertility is often accurately described as being on a roller coaster, for me accepting living child-free felt something like finally breathing in from an oxygen tank and sitting quietly on the sea floor. In that moment, just as on the sea floor, all I could hear was my own breath.
In that single moment I gave up on a lifetime of dreams because that dream was threatening to drown me. My body had failed me but somehow I needed to find a way to move on with my life and focus on the wonderful things that were attainable. Without accepting that I would never be a mother was something that I had to do for my own survival. Thankfully, my wonderful husband made this very easy for me, after we got married he made a rule that we would not talk about kids for three years. Not that I was always able to do this, but having him fully take the pressure off of me was exactly what I needed at the time. For those years I concentrated on those things that would fulfill me because I was going to have a lot of time on my hands. There were times when months would pass without me thinking of adding a child to our family. I was really getting to the point of total acceptance when our fourth anniversary rolled around.
We agreed that we would give it a little more time because we were just not in a place in our lives where children would have made sense. More and more our conversations turned to children, until we knew that we were really ready to take on the challenge of becoming parents. My infertility was no surprise, we knew years before we got married that reproduction was not going to be our strong point. I cannot properly express the level of happiness I felt knowing that some way we were going to have a child.
So here are the big huge questions that haunt my thoughts.
What IF becoming a mother turns out to be the worst decision I have ever made?
Somewhere deep inside I must really not want to be a mother if I could really imagine my life without every hearing, “Mommy!” On that day that I let go of this dream there was so much relief. Our life as just a couple has been wonderful. We really are those people who fly off to see concerts and once we took off to Europe on the spur of the moment. A child will make these things impossible, but then again we do these things much less these days.
What IF this dream turns into a nightmare?
There has never been a time that I have dreamed of sitting up all night with a sick child, or fondly imagined walking the halls with a child that will not sleep unless I keep moving. In my head there are always those wonderful moments of watching our child discover something for the first time or giggling uncontrollably at a magnificent laugh. The reality is that, for a while at least, my whole world is going to be turned upside down. That imaginary piece of baby perfection is going to become a real child with real demands. I worry that I will just be overwhelmed, that what my heart tells me is what I was born to do become something that I am unable to handle. There will always be the part of me that feels like being just a good mother will never be enough.
I am being given this child. Two women have given up parts of their lives to give me this child. We have spent years fighting to have this child. Our ability to have this child is a privilege that I can never take lightly. A culmination of living in a country that allows surrogacy and egg donation, access to finances, and a wonderful support system of friends and family have all made this child possible. For all these reasons I know that I am so fortunate to even have this chance at motherhood. Someone so fortunate should never complain. Long sleepless nights, days without a shower, and all the other joys of parenthood are not something that I can ever possibly complain about. All these things are what I signed up for, not only that but these are all the things that I have fought so hard to finally have.
What IF all this junk in my head is really just junk, and what I know in my heart is exactly right?
I worry about everything; it is just part of who I am. The worries about becoming a mother are just my way of preparing for the worst, so that the best is that much better. All it takes is a simple glance at the embryo or later ultra sound picture for me to know that this was what I was meant to do with my life. When I look at those pictures the amazing amount of love I feel for this child, grown in another woman’s womb and from another woman’s egg, makes me know that I was put on this earth to be that child’s mother. Yes, infertility has robbed me of my compassion, self-esteem, sense of purpose, and years of my life, but the sight of my baby makes me know that these things are not lost forever. Wounds heal, not through our children, but by a shift in our focus. I will always feel the loss of not being a physical part of making my child, but it will not always be the center of my universe. Love is too small a word for what I feel for this child.

This post is part of Project IF. For a better basic understanding of infertility: click here and for the background of National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW): click here. To read other posts in this project, please visit Mel's list.

a mole ate my line

2010-04-15T00:44:00.003-05:00

i guess this is the new form of "the dog ate my homework." a mole really did eat my internet connection. i am back up and running now, but of course life has been turned upside down.

when we first started looking into surrogacy i imagined that once we got to the actual pregnancy, that each day would be torture. was i ever wrong! there is a reason that nature gives you morning sickness, because without it the crazy cleaning sickness strikes. i am not complaining, i have gotten so much done, but there is still so much to do.

the second trimester is here and it feels like our first BETA was yesterday. for some reason it seems like all these years of waiting should have slowed down this part as well. maybe this is because i am not there to experience every day's ups and downs. this does not mean that life is blissful ignorance. sabrina and i talk at least once a week so i know everything that is happening. i am so lucky that i really have no worries about anything pregnancy related, because i know that sabrina is taking perfect care of cletus and i also know that sabrina will tell me any and everything that is happening.

we are going to our first huge family thing next weekend. the husband's grandmother is turning 100, so we are making the trip up north. i adore my husband's family, they are all really wonderful, but we do not have a ton of contact with them or at least not as much as we do with my family. i am nervous about the whole thing, not that i for one second think that anyone would say anything out of line, but because this is a bit out of my comfort zone. everyone knows that cletus is being carried by a surrogate and some of them may or may not know that we are using an egg donor. talking about all of this does not bother me in the least, i have always tried to be an open book about the process.

this is just going to be very different from dealing with my family. no one gets into my family the "old fashioned" way. we prefer to use alternative methods to achieve parenthood, or at least nature has decided that we should. our conversations at family gatherings sound like an RE convention. i am not expecting our situation to be the center of conversation, really i expect that it will be a small side note.

it is just a little out of my comfort zone. i will be the first to admit that we are extremely fortunate that everyone in our lives has been so incredibly supportive. this is rarely, if ever, the case with people who create their families through surrogacy. i know that my husband's family will be no different. the anxiety will stay until the whole thing is over and it turns out to be such a minor thing. it is just that i know the more people we tell the more times we open ourselves up for stupid comments. thankfully, some of the people who have stumbled over here have taught me that those comments come only from a lack of education on a subject that i really wish no one ever had to learn about.

Wiggle Worm

2010-04-01T21:03:00.002-05:00

this is an undercover video a friend of sabrina's shot during our 11 week ultra sound. everything looks perfect, cletus spent all the time wiggling around!

sorry that i have not been writing more. there are a million things running around in my head and i promise to get to those, but right now i am in the start of the homestretch of this whole cleaning and organizing the whole house thing!

parenthood through surrogacy part 2

2010-03-24T19:55:00.001-05:00

Where my thought process has evolved the most is how I see the relationship I wanted with our surrogate. When we first started looking into surrogacy I was terrified of this part because I had no idea how to handle my relationship with the woman that was carrying our child. There is no comparable relationship that I have found.

I wanted her to be open to meeting our child if the child wanted to, but I was worried about having a close relationship between the her and us. My biggest worry was that my mommy toes would get stepped on if we were too close. It did not take me long to realize that I could not carry all of my infertility baggage into this relationship. There are wounds that will never heal, but they do not have to control my life or affect my relationships with others. Some part of me will forever be sad that I cannot carry our child, but that is a very small part that I give little attention to these days. Once I got to the point that I KNEW that I was our child's mother, no matter how many other people helped us get Cletus here, I am the mother.

Coming from a family that is very blended made it easier for me the know that biology is the smallest part of creating a family, but there were still many concerns and fears that I had. Adoption is often the nearest reference point that most people have when it comes to surrogacy, but surrogacy is a completely different situation. Our child is coming into this world with the help of an egg donor, gestational surrogate, and my husband. There was a lot of new territory for me to work through. I struggled with feelings of being completely left out of the process and a lot of guilt that I could not just be grateful that all these people were willing to go through all of this to make my dreams come true. Giving myself time to heal and work through these feelings also gave me the ability to have a trusting and honest relationship with our surrogate.

I will be the first to admit that we are extremely fortunate to have Sabrina, there is no one else I can imagine going through this with. She is an incredible woman with a wonderful husband and children. While Sabrina is doing the physical part of this, it is really her entire family that is involved in this. Her husband moved their house while she was away at our first transfer. There are going to be things she is not able to do with the kids in the coming months and she has been away from them because of transfers. Knowing that they are all doing this because Sabrina wants to make us parents is an overwhelming feeling.

I have spent many a social psychology class arguing the existence of true altruism. You have never experienced drama until you have told a good ole southern boy that his mama does not love him for purely unselfish reasons, I highly recommend this if you ever get the chance. Creating a family is the closest, I believe, that I will ever come to experiencing true altruism. Yes, there is compensation, but I will always believe that it is a small token amount of appreciation. Really, how do you put a price on completing your family?

So, the question becomes how do you not have a lifelong relationship with someone who has literally given birth to your dreams? For me the answer is that there is no way that I can imagine not having Sabrina being part of our lives. My own selfish reason is that I adore Sabrina and want to be friends with her forever. Even if this were not true, I would feel the need to have a relationship where there was communication about how the munchkin was doing. In my opinion, denying that relationship is disrespecting your child's story. I cannot deny how my child came into the world. We have always been committed to telling our child everything about their background from the time they start asking questions, this story belongs to them and it is not our place to deny them that. Again selfishly, it is much easier to explain who someone is when they are a part of your life, children are not very good with the abstract. Of course this all goes back to being comfortable with my place in my child's life.

parenthood through surrogacy part 1

2010-03-22T03:24:00.003-05:00

over the past month a few people have contacted me about starting their families through surrogacy, and i hope that i was able to answer some of the questions they asked. this got me to thinking that i had not written about the whole process in a long time. right now our journey is changing so quickly that it is almost hard to remember how far we have come. i am going to break this up into a few posts so you don't have to read the whole novel at once.

when we started this journey 2 years ago, i was so frightened of the road that lay ahead of us. the prospect of having someone who was almost a stranger carry our child was a huge ball of fear. most of all it is a very lonely place to be, while surrogacy is gaining popularity it is still relatively rare. it still amazes me when i meet someone outside of my infertility circles that has a connection to surrogacy. because of this rareness there are a lot of misconceptions about the entire process as with all infertility treatments. not only are you trying to find the answers for yourself, but everyone you share the news with has a million questions of their own. i am the kind of person who has a hard time keeping anything to myself, which means that i have answered a million stupid questions and heard things come out of people's mouths that made me want to live in a hole.

surrogacy is controversial, this is just a fact. there are people who are never going to understand what is really happening and there are people who will say very hurtful things to your face. nothing is more hurtful than someone saying something horrible about the way your child is coming into the world. people do not choose to enter into surrogacy lightly. this is not about vanity or not wanting to carry a child for some other stupid reason. i would gladly endure the worst pregnancy in the world to become a mother but that is not possible for me.

i was fully aware of both sides of the surrogacy arguments, in fact i obsessed over these arguments. at the same time we had decided that surrogacy was the right path to parenthood for us. i knew that there was no going back but i continued to read every argument for and against surrogacy, which is really the same thing as torturing myself. the more that i read the more i understood that all the terror and fear was really coming from a fear of the unknown. there is no surrogacy how to manual, there should be, but there is very little out in the universe.

our first stop was an agency. something that did not turn out well in the end but was well worth the experience and knowledge we gained. there was an issue that we were unable to resolve and decided to move onto another agency. i found a great deal of comfort in having people who do this for a living to help us navigate what feels like an overwhelming experience.

in the end we did not go with an agency. for us it was because we found the perfect surrogate and felt that we were willing to put in the legwork to get the rest of the process completed. this has not always been easy, in fact there have been times that it was down right difficult. everyone had their own comfort level and our comfort level is light years away from where it used to be. it can be overwhelming making sure that every i is dotted and every t crossed, because there are a lot of i's and t's. at some point you get passed that part or at least get a prolonged break. the best advice that i can give here is to protect yourself and your surrogate by using a reliable surrogacy attorney and a clinic that works with surrogacy situations, as their requirements will often help to guide you through the process. if something does not sound right or does not sit well with you speak up, you should be comfortable with every step that you take in this process. not everything can be changed but sometimes just understanding the rational behind it can help ease stress.

as you can see all of these questions and choices are enough on their own. add to that everyone and their cat giving you an opinion or asking a question you cannot answer and i fully understand why people choose to go through surrogacy without the knowledge of those closest to them. we have not chosen to do this. not that we made some grand announcement about our plans, but we have never hid what we were planning either. we told our parents and other family members first, and as things became more concrete we began to share with others. there were of course a lot of questions, but surprisingly very few negative comments. in fact, i have gotten more negative reactions from comments here than in real life. either people are talking about us like crazy behind our backs or we are incredibly blessed with very supportive friends and family. i know that it is the latter, because they have all been very supportive and i have really enjoyed sharing this story with them. there have been times that i did not want to answer any questions and they always respected our space. it was very clear that i would share what i could and that was all i was capable of at the time.

these people have been my crutches through this whole process. there were many times when i had to just let others be excited for us because i was emotionally spent. i believe that these ups and downs are no better or worse than going through any process to have a child. making a family is an emotionally taxing process. i have spent many a distracted month or two recovering from some of the huge events along the way. right now that is getting much easier but i am sure it will show up again in some other form. then there are the moments that give you enough steam to make it through another event or two. an example of this is finding the perfect surrogate, but more on that tomorrow...

a simple sound

2010-03-22T00:32:00.002-05:00

wow, how did it get to be the end of march and ILCW already? if you want to read how this story came to be go here.

this month has really just flown by, and while i have gotten a lot done there is still so much more i have to accomplish. saturday marked the 10 week mark. while this is wonderful news, when sabrina called to let me hear the heartbeat i really got a big smack in the head.

for just over 2 years we have been working to become parents through surrogacy and egg donation, and making a lot of really difficult decisions. a funny thing happened to us, and it is something i suspect that a lot of people dealing with infertility deal with, we got so wrapped up in the day to day process of getting to pregnancy that we forgot that we have to bring a live human being home. that beautiful heartbeat that makes my heart melt belongs to a real human being who we are expected to raise into adulthood. don't misunderstand me, we are so excited about becoming a complete family i cannot adquetly describe how happy we are to take on this challenge. that said, this is terrifying.

i have thrown myself into the books, checked into infant cpr classes, cried a little, and researched much more than i should have. information is power, and sometimes that power can make you a little batty. what i am most terrified of cannot be easily fixed with books or information, at least not fully. i have wanted to be a mother since i was a child, and when motherhood did not come easily i lost pieces of myself along the way. at the same time, i picked up a lot of anxiety. when you face not having the life that you have always wanted, and spend years knowing that the main desire of your heart is just out of reach, two things happen. first, there is a tendency to loose sight of the bigger picture, because it is hard enough to focus on the next step. second, the desire to protect this dream becomes so strong that it can overtake your life. it is the second part of this equation that feeds the terror monster in my head.

children are not born knowing how they came into the world, they do not care that you have waited years for them. they have every right to live their life without having to carry the burden of being the cure for years of heartbreak. i know that i have to let my child experience all that life has to offer, including those things that can cause bodily harm, like walking! i also know that there is a part of me that is terrified that something horrible is going to happen. i know that this is a normal reaction, and i am really trying to curb the desire to buy up the world's supply of bubble wrap because a bubble wrapped kid would make potty training a wee bit difficult. still i cannot shake the feeling of terror. there is going to be a human being depending on me for everything and that is scary because it is supposed to be scary.

surrogacy is an amazing experience, but this is one of the downsides. i have way too much time on my hands. because i am not worrying about holding down breakfast or fitting into the pants that fit perfectly yesterday morning. i just have unlimited amounts of time to think about everything that could go wrong and all the things that could go right. there are no feelings of jealousy that celtus is being cared for by another woman, because there is no person that i would trust more than sabrina to bring cletus into the world. there are just those moments when i wished i had something else to occupy my brain. preparing the house is helping, because that process comes with millions of distractions.

having to take an honest look at everything i own and the purpose that it serves is exhausting, but so worth the effort. i am still amazed that i let things get to this point, but the deeper i dig through it the more i realize that i am ready for this part of my life to be over. i am ready to take on this new role and i am ready to do all the hard work that i need to do on myself. as hard as this all is, there is nothing that i would not do for the person attached to that heartbeat. because that simple sound is part of my heart. there may not be a grain of my dna, i may not be the physically pregnant one, but that heartbeat belongs to a person who will change my life forever. that heartbeat belongs to my child, and there will never be a mroe beautiful sound in the world.

psychotic nesting!

2010-03-11T22:53:00.002-06:00

i have discovered a really bad part of being an intended mother, i have NOTHING to at the moment and then suddenly i will be momma. can i just tell you how terrifying and overwhelming that feels right now? A WHOLE BIG HUGE MUCHES!!!!!

when we moved into this house we both were very busy. instead of really getting everything put away properly most of our stuff ended up wherever it would fit. add to this living here for the past 4 years, well i will let you do the math. i have worked non-stop for the past couple of weeks, with the help of an amazing friend who i am forever indebted to, and managed to get my house to the middle stage. i knew that it was bad, but i had no idea how bad. i have to put a lot of things away and finding new homes for things that need to come out of the guest room, because everything has to come out of there. another week or so and i should have everything finished.

it feels wonderful to be at this point, but also very frustrating that i let it get to this point. i think that i thought i was handling this whole reproduction thing a lot better than the state of my house showed. there is no doubt that the past three years have been some of the most overwhelming of my life so far. there was no energy left for me to take care of the house, most of the time i was just hanging on till the next day. then there were the weeks that i waited for the next phone call, email, or smoke signal. those were the days when i would sit in the dark. rarely did i open the blinds because i could not face the mess and i just did not have the energy to open the blinds. i did not realize this until i started going through here and that terrifies me. the terror part is not from knowing i was feeling those feelings, but in not having any clue that i was not doing well at all. the fact is that i was miserable and unable to work my way through the feelings because i had no idea that i was in such a hole.

i open the blinds every day, things are not perfect but i can somewhat stand to see the mess. there is a different person living here, that real me i hope, i feel like i can breathe. there have been tiny exhales, but i really cannot remember when i was able to really feel like i was breathing. all the things that could possibly go wrong now are so much easier to handle, we have gotten farther than we ever have and for right now that feels great. we are getting there and i still cannot believe that we are really here.

these past two weeks have shown me just how easy it is to ignore things that are just too big to deal with at the time. at least i know there is a good chance that this can come back if the littlest stress could make a huge crack. not because i am fragile but because it is going to take a while for me to trust this new feeling. that happiness stuff is invading my misery and throwing me all off balance. forgive me if i am not great about writing, but hope that it will be a very short time.

a member of the tribe.

2010-02-23T20:09:00.003-06:00

We infertiles often talk about the people who give us the stupid comments or insensitive remarks because those hurt. The people who go through this journey right beside us, we often overlooked. Without two women being willing to go through infertility treatments for me I would not be becoming a mother. Neither of these women need to do this, they both have children of their own. It is easy to dismiss their willingness to go through all of this with thinking that they are just in this for the money, but anyone who has gone through this will tell you that no amount of money in the world would be worth volunteering to play the role of an infertile. These women join our tribe for a myriad of different reasons, what really matters though is that they are there. They show up and take on our pain as if it was there own, carry our hopes and dreams, and they do it voluntarily. For all the stupid comments we get, they get just as many. No matter how many times I see this happen I will always stand in awe that these women show up and voluntarily join our tribe.

In May of this year, a voluntary member of our tribe was diagnosed with breast cancer while she was carrying a beautiful little girl for an infertile couple. At that moment, she became part of a tribe no one wants to join. Nikki was a month away from her 32nd birthday when she found the lump that would forever change her life. Instead of giving birth early, she put off her treatment until the baby was safely born. Over the past eight months, she has gone through a double mastectomy, chemo, and radiation with an amazing amount of grace that often leaves me breathless.

I have lost people I loved to cancer, watched others battle and win. All the time I knew that anyone could get cancer, but it had never happened to anyone my age. Nikki's diagnosis was a real wake up call for me. I have always done self exams, but it was just something that I never thought about happening, it was more of a baseline thing. Sadly, breast cancer does not care how old you are it comes whenever it feels like it and the destruction is horrifying.

Please join me in joining Nikki's tribe, by clicking the button in the right upper corner. She willingly joined ours, the one that we were dragged into kicking and screaming. Sometimes, just knowing that there are others in your corner can heal more than any medicine. If you can get yourself a piece of jewelry, it is pretty and 100% of the money goes directly to Nikki. We all know how expensive medical treatment can get, even with insurance coverage. I have verified that Nikki does get all the money, and I love my necklace. This is something that I rarely do here, but this is someone who has stood by me on this journey and this is a way that I can support her.

Thump, Thump, Thump

2010-02-22T11:42:00.003-06:00

I know it goes more woosh,woosh, woosh, but we are not talking about Cletus's heartbeat, we are talking about mine. His is just PERFECT at 114 beats a minute and he is snuggled in all by himself.

When Sabrina called every moment of anxiety, way more than I knew was there, just came flooding out. I mean heaving, sobbing, flood of tears. I cannot tell you how good it felt to cry and smile at the same time, something I have not done in years. I still cannot believe this is happening, but every milestone makes it just a tiny bit more real. Now it is on to the big 20 week u/s!

from the start!

2010-02-21T11:29:00.002-06:00

Well it is that time of month... No not that time silly. It is ILCW!!!! Since it has been a while since I have participated, I am going to give a little back story, well as little as I can.

I do not think I have ever met a woman who was happy about getting her period, but I also have not met one who hates it with as much passion as I did mine. This loathing could stem from the first time my period tried to kill me and almost succeeded! At some point we all get the period talk from some adult woman in our lives. I got mine twice in school and from my mom, but everyone forgot to mention that having your period for SIX weeks was not normal. In my 12 year old brain if I did not have a period for a few months then bleeding for longer was normal, right?

Not only was I bleeding for way too long I was flooding pads to the point that I would stand up after class and have blood in the seat. One morning in chapel I stood up and went right back down again. My mom came to get me from school and took me straight to the doctor. For week I had been having trouble staying awake and always wanted to just be sleep. That day my blood pressure was 60/40, no wonder I was tired! I was admitted to the hospital and given a blood transfusion. I knew it was going to hurt when the nurse made my parents leave the floor and then turned to me and said, "You are allowed to say any bad words that you want while we get this needle in." When adults are giving you permission to curse something really bad is about to happen. Thankfully, this was the last transfusion I needed. This was also the first on many estrogen shots I would endure, OUCH!

I was put on birth control pills, and then doubled the dose, then tripled and finally when I was taking four pills a day I got to graduate to Estrogen and Provera. During this time we were trying to get the bleeding under control, you know having a five day period once a month. There were times when no amount of drugs were going to make this body do anything, so we turned to surgery. I had my first of MANY D&Cs when I was 12, it was the only way to stop the bleeding. During this time I was also diagnosed with von Willebrand's. Now before anyone thinks that I have a stupid family that did not recognize a genetic bleeding disorder, I should say that I was adopted as an infant and there was very little in the way of a medical history.

This cycle went on for many many years. When I was in my early 20s the hormones started giving me horrid side effects and frankly I was sick of taking them. A wonderful doctor fell into my lap and it was at this point I was diagnosed with PCOS. Apparently, what was causing all this bleeding that that my body believed it was in menopause and just forgot to turn off the faucet. Without the hormones I was never going to have a normal cycle, with the hormones the rest of my physical and psychological life was a mess. I gave up the hormones and decided to just deal with the bleeding. At first it was not so bad a few months of bleeding and a few months of not. Sure it would get to the point that I would stand up and not be able to see or hear and drop straight to the floor, but it was occasional and something I could live with.

At 25, I married my wonderful husband, a man that was willing to put up with all these problems and so accepting of any decision I made. After a period that started on the day of our wedding and lasted for six months I was done. Six months was just unacceptable to me, I was exhausted and recovering from that took months. My hormonal balance was so off that there was no lining NONE, I was just free bleeding. Conceiving would be next to impossible because my body had decided that it was not going to work with any hormones. We made a decision that we were not willing to go through years of treatments and add more pressure to our lives.

I went to another doctor that had the answer. I had always said no to a hysterectomy because I saw no reason to go through menopause before I had to, who knows what the hormones will do then. In March of 2006, I went into the hospital and gave up my fertility. I know for some this is unthinkable, but for me it was the only way I had to have a life. With this endometrial ablation I took back my life. Yes, I gave up the chance to carry my child, but having a child when you are tired and sick most of the year would have left me unable to enjoy my child.

We began looking into surrogacy in 2007. Our first encounter with an agency turned into a NIGHTMARE. In fact, it was so bad that we really considered living childless. It was in the middle of this debate that Sabrina found my blog. She was an amazing support for me and made me start to think that going through the process without an agency might be possible. It is difficult to really understand trusting someone so much that you would transfer an embryo to them and know with everything part of your being that they will not only take care of that bundle of cells while it grows into your child, but also to give you back that baby. It is hard to imagine until you there with some of the most amazing people in the world. Sabrina is one of those people and there will never be a day that goes by that I will not thank the universe for putting her in our path.

Once we decided to work together it was then figuring out all the nitty gritty details. Which was actually easier than I could have ever imagined, yes there were points that were uncomfortable but everything was very smooth. Well until we decided to let my body get into the act. I did not want to pass on the von Willebrands, so I decided that we would use an egg donor that was easy enough. Then we talked to the RE who would handle the transfer and were given the option of doing genetic testing and then PGD to rule out those embies with von Willebrands. Give some blood, wait six weeks, and then transfer a healthy embie. Only problem was that we were dealing with me, and as my parents will tell you I have never been one for doing anything the easy way. After TWELVE weeks of waiting, due to mess ups with the lab, we learned that instead of having a genetic mutation causing the von Willebrands, I have deletions that are causing the disease. There is no lab in the U.S. that can make a probe for deletions of this kind. We had the option of waiting another few months for a lab in Europe to attempt making a probe but there was no guarantee.

It would have been nice to use my eggs, but it was not a huge deal to me. We picked a donor, which is a weird process unto itself. Our first transfer was in October and that one did not take. On January 28th we transferred one beautiful embryo and tomorrow we expect to see ONE very beautiful heartbeat. It has been a long road here but one that has made me grow as a person, strengthened our relationship as a couple, and brought some truly wonderful people into our lives.

Thank you for making it this far. I know this is a long story. I hope that you will stay around to find out exactly how it ends!

hi!

2010-02-21T05:01:00.001-06:00

if you are here for ILCW, please come back soon for a real post. just having a crazy busy weekend, sorry.

a tiny exhale

2010-02-15T23:00:00.002-06:00

Today we had our first ultrasound to make sure that Cletus was in the correct spot. I am happy to report that Cletus is tucked safely in Sabrina's uterus and not in her shoulder! The gestational sac is measuring 3 days ahead of schedule. Our little overachiever is not disappointing, let's just hope this continues! Next Monday is the heartbeat ultra sound, just thinking of it puts knots in my stomach. I am really trying to just take things from day to day, but that is a lot easier said than done.

Other exciting news for the day: Sabrina's birthday!! Go over here and wish her a happy birthday, you can also see Cletus while you are at it. For some reason the picture does not want to upload here.

a horrible husband

2010-02-14T10:54:00.003-06:00

No, I am not talking about my wonderful hubby because he is truly the best ever. Anyone who can put up with me for all these years could never be horrible. I am speaking of myself.

At this point, and for the next 8 months, I am really in the husband role of pregnancy. Well, really not even that, I am the husband that is home for a single weekend over the next 8 months. I did my small little job and then flew the coop, or at least that is the way it feels.

Sabrina is awesome about letting me know every little thing that goes on with her and I love hearing her complain about every minor thing. I of course also feel bad that it is all my fault, but really not that bad. Though I am sure that once the symptoms really hit I will feel worse. Other than those phone calls I am feeling like I am just floating out here in space, which is just part of the ride and not something that can or needs to be fixed.

To cope with this neurosis, and it has turned into neurosis, I am starting to do that nesting thing. Well really it is more like complete panic over where am I going to put Cletus and all those baby things!! Our extra room has turned into storage over the past few years and the amount of stuff in there is a bit frightening. It is not Hoarders bad, but it is getting there and I am horrible at throwing things away. I have thought about hiring someone to come in to assist me, but I am embarrassed to let anyone see the level of crazy in that room. In my first attempt to do something I found a box which contained, among other things, the candles from my 16th birthday cake. I know CRAZY!!!

There are things that I can pitch in the trash without a second thought and then there are things (stupid things) that I have a very hard time letting go of for some unknown reason. For right now I am just going to purge the things that are easy. It might not be much but at least it is a start. In some ways this feels great, being able to rid myself of baggage that only serves to weigh me down is always a good thing and I am hoping that I will get addicted to that feeling.

Just as I needed to rid myself of the infertility baggage to get to this point, I need to rid myself of the physical baggage to make room for this new chapter in our life. I will get there, I always do, it is just a little overwhelming here at the bottom of the hole!

The other thing that is getting really strange is people telling my congratulations. I know that they are happy for us and I am so thankful that Cletus already is so loved, but it just does not feel right. Yes, I have willed this pregnancy into being but that is all I have done. In the grand scheme of things that is really nothing. Right now it just does not seem to fit, like last year's winter coat it is tight and makes my skin crawl a bit. I accept these showings of love the best that I can, but they just do not seem to fit me right now. This is a process and one that I am still learning to navigate, so be patient with me I will get there.

Take That!!!!

2010-02-08T15:55:00.003-06:00

Our BETA number is so good that we are not even having another. Sunday would have been the normal day to test. Since we are insane TTC people that would not work so we had a pratice one on Friday. So I guess you want to know what that amazing number is, because it is so amazingly wonderful that I might just be taking it to college at 10. Oh, something that I need to tell you first the baby has a name Cletus! Since we live in the south no need to worry that the kid will be made fun of, Cletus will fit right in.

Oh yeah you wanted to know the number. How about 139! That is an awesome number.

239 is a much better number and just happens to be ours!!!!!

How I lost the ability to count!

2010-02-05T23:01:00.001-06:00

I promised you the transfer house of horrors story.

The day before the transfer I called the clinic to confirm our appointment. At that time I went over what our wishes were. What I thought was a very clear conversation that was understood, I was so very wrong.

We, Sabrina and I, get to the transfer on time which was no easy feat in the pouring rain. Thankfully, the hospital has valet parking, of course I think that the grocery store should have valet parking but that is another story entirely. Everything is going well. Sabrina got all geared up. Embryologist comes into talk with us, and this is where I should have known something was up. She shows me two pictures of very adorable embies. I do not want to know the gender until maybe 20 weeks and I am seriously considering waiting till birth.

We go back to the transfer room. Sabrina gets all strapped in, lights are turned down, and the doc calls for the embies, as in plural. To tell you the truth I did not even really hear him. Sabrina turns to me and asks if we are transferring two. Since this whole adventure began the husband and I have been fanatical about only transferring one at a time. It is something that we feel very strongly about, our lives and personalities are just better suited to parenting one child.

After some prodding I ask if they are aware that we are only transferring one embryo, open flood gates of misery. The doctor stands up and walks over to me, all 6 foot plus of him while I am sitting on a tiny surgical stool, and starts talking about lower percentages of success with just one, blah, blah blah. The problem was that he did not stop there, he asked five times, in five ways, to get me to agree to both embies. Not only was I willing to do two, but I could not have made that decision even if I did want to transfer both. The husband was almost a thousand miles away and unreachable that the time. How many children we purposefully have is not a decision that I could make without consulting with him. Finally, I just said we are only doing only one in a big girl voice that made him stop pestering me or at least I thought.

The embryologist finished prepping the single embryo and brought it into the room. At this point I was just elated to be almost finished with the whole thing and just get out of there. “You do realize that there is only a 30% chance of this working. I really hope this one works for you,” all said with the most condescending bordering on accusatory voice coming out of the doctor’s mouth. Basically, he was making sure that I understand that if this transfer did not take I was fully to blame. I wanted to scream and run out the room after stomping on his foot, but I decided to be a normal person and just wait. After the transfer no words were spoken to us by the doc, which was fine with me.

The more I have thought about the situation the angrier I get, which is very rare for me. 99.9% of the time things bother me for a day and then I am over it or at least very close to being over the situation. Not this time, because there are some very fundamental things wrong with this whole situation that could have had serious consequences for not only my family’s life but also Sabrina and her family. The responsibility that I feel for Sabrina and her family is overwhelming at times. Pregnancy is risky, we all know this, but when that risk is being taken on by someone who only wants to see you happily become a family it creates a need to do everything to reduce any risks. As a mother your first priority is the safety of your child, as an intended mother my first priority is to the woman who is giving our family the chance to grow.

In the eye of this fury hurricane I lost my ability to count. So if you have made it this far you get to hear the real news. Because our BETA would fall on a Sunday the nurse agreed to give us an order for a BETA today. At 8dp5dt our number is a 71!!!! Next BETA Monday!

Short Update

2010-01-30T21:35:00.001-06:00

The transfer happened, I promise to get the whole story, let's just say some good and some bad.

Practice BETA 2/9

First Real BETA 2/11

Almost There

2010-01-27T11:00:00.002-06:00

Well at 2 pm cst, we will be doing the transfer thing again. Keep all appendages crossed that this is the one. I will do my best to update as soon as I can. Of course, me being me I forgot my computer cord, so updating may take a little bit.

Meet Guilt and Questioning

2010-01-12T00:34:00.002-06:00

Okay, so here is the update that I have been promising you. Sabrina started her meds the day after Christmas in preparation for our January 28^th FET. To tell you the truth I have given very little thought to the whole thing, but more on that later. We had a wonderful Christmas with my family, so wonderful that I did very little thinking about the whole baby thing at all. For once I was really able to just be in the moment and enjoy the time that I had with the people who I love, instead of being distracted by that non-existent human who has haunted me for so many of the previous years. I am so grateful that I was able to just live in the moment, because they are beautiful moments.

For Christmas I gave the husband a trip to San Francisco to see two members of the Grateful Dead play on New Years Eve. To everyone’s shock, mine mostly, I was able to keep this from him. I am horrible about not being able to keep secrets from him, so this was a major accomplishment. It has been a couple of years since we have taken a proper vacation, and although this one was short it was amazingly wonderful. Between school and just day to day life we get very little time to just really be together. We partied way too hard on New Years Eve and spent the next day paying for it, but it was still the most fun I have had in a long time.

During all this fun and acting way younger than we apparently are, I had a profound moment. For just a tiny moment I questioned whether I really wanted to be a mother. Let’s face it a kid is not going to allow us to have much time with each other just being silly kids ourselves. As usual this fleeting thought brought along two friends, meet guilt and questioning.

I live in this constant state of fear about being a good mother, which I know is natural, but that fear quickly turns to guilt in the blink of an eye. I put so much more pressure on myself because of the infertility. The fact that we must go to extremes to have a child has made me feel the need to be the perfect mother, something I know full well does not exist. Every time I even entertain the idea of living without a child or start to enjoy moments that I know will be few and far between once our child is here I feel an overwhelming amount of guilt. No matter how irrational I know this all is, the feelings never seem to change.

Part of all of this is that I still, and always will, feel responsible for my infertility. Yes, I have PCOS which was going to make getting pregnant very difficult at best, but at the end of the day I know that I did this to myself. Really, there was very little choice in the matter, having periods from 2 to 6 months did not leave me with a life. The uterine ablation was the only chance I had at living a “normal” life and there is not a moment that I ever regret making that decision. The fact remains that it was a decision. Unlike the vast majority of women in the world of infertility, I walked into a hospital and signed a consent form to make myself forever infertile. Which also makes me feel guilty about ever calling myself an infertile, because medical conditions caused me to get to that point but in the end I put the final nail in that coffin.

I know that I want to be a mother as much as I want to breathe. I know that parenthood is going to be a great new chapter in our relationship. I also know that I am going to miss these amazing moments that we have together as just a couple. My world is a wonderful place, I am married to the man who was really my best friend before we ever got romantic and no matter where life has taken us we have maintained this friendship. Our world will be an even better place when our child is finally with us.

a quick word

2010-01-07T13:22:00.002-06:00

we just got back from spending time with family for the holidays. unfortunately, one of our journeys came with a parting gift, SICKNESS!!!! i promise to give you all a very long update, but this will have to do for now, as i am pretty sure that my body is going to fall into a billion pieces at any moment.

Giving Up To Gain

2009-12-14T09:46:00.004-06:00

I should be writing here, I know that when I am avoiding this space that it is when I need to be here most. Last week the failed transfer just hit me. Life had finally calmed down enough that I was able to catch my breath and that first deep breath was filled with all the crap that we have gone through this past month.

What surprised me most is that there was very little sadness. The guilt is just overwhelming, a guilt that I truly believed I was over. Over the many years I have had to process what it really means to me to be infertile, it was always the guilt that made me feel the worst. A guilt that came from being a burden. My body would not work right, which meant denying myself and others another child to love. It was/is costing us a small (HUGE) fortune to make this child come to fruition, money that could be used for other purposes. My emotional baggage from all of this turned me into a miserable person to be around, either the tears or the rage kept me from being a person who was pleasant. `

In the middle of my big pity party, the husband said something. He said that without all of this I would not be the person I am. Which got me thinking. Yes, this has changed me in ways that are both good and bad. More importantly though, without all of this we would not be creating our family in such a beautiful and amazing way.

Surrogacy would never be the first choice of anyone to create a family. Being able to give up so much to gain something so huge is not easy. At times it feels like walking through a minefield, the other side is amazing but every step is filled with anxiety and fear. Having another family come into your life forever is not always easy, for all the same reasons that no relationship is ever easy. I am so grateful that we found someone who is so easy for us to work with, someone who just fits so perfectly into our lives. Like all relationships you have to be ready to fully let someone into your life. I had to really look at what was important to me in creating our family.

Giving up control. Giving up so many moments. Fearing that all the worst would happen. It is easy to say that you would do anything to have a child, but walking into the world of surrogacy really challenges that idea. Going into this process carrying all the pain, hurt, anger, and fear increases the chances of having a very miserable journey. I am not saying that it is ever possible to rid yourself of all this, but having these be the primary emotions of your life is just going to serve to make everyone miserable.

I will be the first to admit that I am so lucky, blessed, glitter covered, or whatever you want to call it to have Sabrina. It is easy to trust someone who is as open, confident, and sure of herself. I am able to trust her with such ease and for that I am truly grateful. Yes, this is not the first way that I would have chosen to create our family. Now that I am here I cannot imagine not creating our family through surrogacy. For all that we have given up, we have gained so much. We are on the receiving end of the closest thing to true altruism that many people will ever experience, and that is a beautiful and amazing way to bring a child into the world.

holidays, again

2009-11-30T01:11:00.003-06:00

Wanting a child that is not here has always been hard. So, I am not sure why I really thought this year would be different. Being closer than I have ever been to becoming a mother has made this holiday season almost unbearable. Really, I just did not expect this.

When the transfer did not work, I was really okay. Other people were way more upset than I was and really that bothered me. Not because I was upset with them, but because it really made me realize just how many people want this for me and for themselves. I have always known that my parents and sister want a new addition to our family, and I carry an extreme amount of guilt for not being able to just give this to them. It was all the other people in my life that I had just never really thought about. I am so thankful that there are so many people who are going to love this child, I just wish that there was not the disappointment.

Over Thanksgiving, we just stayed home. Part of the reason was that the husband was a bit sick, but the biggest reason was that I could just not face being around people who felt badly for me. I hate the pity more than I hate the infertility. Yes, it sucks there is nothing about this that is fun, but it is the hand we have been dealt and we are dealing with it. Failure is just a part of this, and having everyone know about the failure is a horrible part. The comfort is wonderful but for me it always seems to come along with pity, and it is very possible that I am just reading it that way.

Maybe this will be the last holiday season that I feel this way, and maybe I still have many more ahead of me. You just never know, but whatever happens I am going to be okay because I have no other choice. A very long time ago I decided that infertility was never going to get the best of me. Parts of me are forever changed and not all those changes are for the better, but in the end I refuse to be beaten by this. I refuse to have the fact that I am infertile forever define my life. If I end up with a child or not, I refuse to be the person who lost herself to a medical diagnosis. Right now, I am not sure that I am doing a very good job of this, but I am doing the best that I can. My life is still happening and I am still standing and for today I will call that a victory.

greif

2009-11-21T16:51:00.004-06:00

a dear and wonderful friend of mine is in more pain than i can possibly comprehend. her 2 year old son, lincoln, choked to death yesterday while at daycare. no parents should ever outlive their child, and i am unable to even imagine the amount of pain that she and her family are experiencing at the moment.

to make the situation even worse, they were between health insurance coverage. the costs are piling up quickly. we are organizing a relief fund for the family, if you would like to assist Frances and Brandon please contact me at jaymeegiddings@gmail.com.

frances has been a huge support for me in my pursuit of parenthood, and this is just one small way that i can assist her in a time of great sorrow.

please keep Frances and Brandon, and Corbin who lost his little brother in your prayer and thoughts. they need as much healing and support as we can give them.

here is a link to the news story. Lincoln Weathers

back to the drawingboard

2009-11-16T17:26:00.004-06:00

the second beta confirmed that sabrina is not pregnant. the number was 8.6, so we doubled backwards which is about par for course with my life.

i really thought that i would be very upset by this news, but really it has not been difficult at all. i am more concerned about sabrina and how she is feeling than about myself. this is really one of the nice parts about surrogacy, i have someone other than myself to focus on when bad things happen.

the plan right now is that we will cycle again in january, with one of our 9 totsicles. the reason for the delay is that our clinic does not do cycles in december for the obvious reasons. no one from the clinic has contacted me yet, i heard the news from sabrina, so i am not exactly sure of the details yet. she is supposed to speak with the doctor tomorrow so i will update when i know more.

the update may be a little late, as i will be attending the funeral of my great aunt. she passed away on sunday.

thank you all for the positive thoughts, prayers, and encouragement, it means so much to me.

really?!?!

2009-11-13T19:00:00.003-06:00

Sorry that this post is coming so late, but I just found out myself. Apparently, everyone at the clinic has their heads up their butts today. The number is not great, but we all know that not great still makes it just fine. They want to see anything over 5 and we have 19.5, so not great but good. I think that we just have a very slow grower. The pregnancy tests, regular and digital, are all saying positive so who knows at this point.

I am super emotional because I am sick and I just want something to go right.

sorry i forgot to add that we are 9dp5dt. next beta is monday.

bad blogger!!

2009-11-12T12:42:00.002-06:00

i know i have been horrid at updating! i just got home from dallas on tuesday night and now i have pneumonia! everything went wonderfully. we had a great time with the family and a perfect transfer of a perfect single embryo, plus we have 9 to freeze. BETA is tomorrow and i promise to be better about letting you know that number.

here are some pictures from the transfer to hold you over. in the spirit of not taking this whole thing so seriously we decided to dress a little crazy. i tried to get a pink wig, but waited too late and could not find one.

Today

2009-11-04T07:35:00.002-06:00

This is a day that I have been waiting for, 12 long years of waiting, tears, sadness, anger, pain, fear, all culminating in this one day. Not that I really believe that this is it and after today everything will magically go back to normal, because after IF nothing is ever normal again.

On the day that I went in to give up my uterus, somewhere in the back of my head I just knew that all my hopes of ever being a mother was dying in the operating room. At that point I as at peace with that, my health was so horrible that I had to make that decision. Today, really the first time that I have felt any glimmer of hope that I may be a mother. Not a lot of hope, I have not lost my mind to that extent, but the tiniest little sliver.

I spoke to the embryologist yesterday, he thinks I am crazy, but that craziness has a purpose. We have 12 healthy embryos. PGD was done on 16 and 12 are as healthy as they can be. Our preference is for the healthiest first and then a girl over a boy. Now here is where he thinks I am insane, I do not want to know the sex of the embryo we are transferring. Knowing would make a loss a million times harder for me, because it will go from a collection of cells to a baby once i know the sex. To me, being able to detach from the embryos in this way has been the best part of using donated eggs, I have zero connection to them at this point. Living in my head is what I do best in stressful situations and I have been able to do this.

At 3, Central Standard Time, Sabrina and I are going to the clinic. Dressed in our crazy shoes, her insane socks and my insane fingerless gloves!! I just cannot take this too seriously! I promise to get plenty of pictures up ASAP.

I just want to thank all of you for getting me this far, your love and support have been my solace.

DATES!!!

2009-10-29T02:49:00.001-05:00

egg retrieval FRIDAY!

transfer WEDNESDAY!

For The News Junkies!

2009-10-27T01:27:00.001-05:00

sabrina has perfect lining, 10.7!!!

the egg donor has 19 follicles ranging from 19mm to 13mm. they are still waiting for her hormone levels to come back, but are thinking that retrieval will be thursday or friday!

transfer will be 5 days after retrieval!

Joining the Tribe

2009-10-24T00:19:00.002-05:00

In May of this year, a voluntary member of our tribe was diagnosed with breast cancer while she was carrying a beautiful little girl for an infertile couple. At that moment, she became part of a tribe no one wants to join. Nikki was a month away from her 32^nd birthday when she found the lump that would forever change her life. Over the past five months, she has gone through a double mastectomy and chemo with an amazing amount of grace that often leaves me breathless.

I have lost people I loved to cancer, watched others battle and win. All the time I knew that anyone could get cancer, but it had never happened to anyone my age. Nikki's diagnosis was a real wake up call for me. I have always done self exams, but it was just something that I never thought about happening, it was more of a baseline thing. Sadly, breast cancer does not care how old you are it comes whenever it feels like it and the destruction is horrifying.

Please join me in joining Nikki's tribe. She willingly joined ours, the one that we were dragged into kicking and screaming. Sometimes, just knowing that there are others in your corner can heal more than any medicine.

ILCW!!

2009-10-21T05:19:00.003-05:00

Welcome,welcome! This is by far my favorite time of the month!

What is happening here:

October 28th: First possible egg retrieval for our egg donor
Wait for PGD results to come back. We are doing PGD to avoid testing once pregnant.
November 2nd: First possible transfer date for our amazing surrogate and single superstar embryo!

Basically, just in a holding pattern and waiting for all those medications to kick in. As I said in my last post I am pretty much shut off emotionally from the whole process, and I am really okay with that. This baby making has been many, many years in the making and I see no reason to get my hopes up now.

If you want to read story of how we got to this point it lives here!

Thank you for stopping by. I promise to get a better post up soon.

So far away

2009-10-16T03:07:00.002-05:00

Over the course of my life, I have been used to things being far away, out of my reach, and completely unattainable. This is a space I know exactly how to occupy, and yet in this situation it all just feels so horribly wrong. In about 2 and half weeks we are going to be transferring, we are going to be going into the clinic and transferring an embryo that could turn out to be my child and yet I feel nothing. I have these fluttering moments of fear of it all falling apart, but other than that nothing. Half the time I do not even think about it, really this has snuck up on me. This is not supposed to feel like this, at least in my fantasy world this is not supposed to feel like this. Maybe it will be different tomorrow at least that is what I keep telling myself. The reality is that it never does, I am not depressed my mental state is just fine, I just cannot get excited about this transfer.

I know that some of this is just natural. I have nothing to do with any of this right now. Everyone else is involved and I am just standing here watching it all happen. No one is excluding me from the process; in fact, everyone has been wonderful about trying to make me feel as much of this process as they can. Some part of me does not want to get my hopes up in fear of the let down and for me that is really a good thing. At the same time it just feels crappy. It makes we worry that maybe I do not really want this as much as I thought, which I know is just a stupid thought because we would have never made it this far without the desire to be parents.

Right now this whole thing just feels so very far away for my reality. There is nothing that I can do to change these feelings. In many ways, this feels like what women describe as their husband's reactions to pregnancy, it just is not real until the baby is born. I really hope that this will not happen, I want to be more involved than that, but if it does, there is really very little I can do to change my feelings. I know that I want this child more than anything in the world. No one goes through everything that I have to become a mother because they do not want a child. I will get there; it might just take me some time. So, in about 2 and half weeks we will be heading off for the transfer. Sabrina is doing wonderfully on her meds and everything looks perfect, but I would expect no less. We are very fortunate to have her on this adventure with us, I could not ask for a better friend.

awards, awards, and more awards!!

2009-10-15T20:45:00.005-05:00

I have been a total slacker about this, so I am going to combine them all in one post.

Thank You Circus Princess
Here are the rules that accompany this esteemed honor:
1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award - check
2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog. - check
3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award. - check
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people may not know.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they’ve been nominated.

And here's another seven things you don't yet (but are about to) know about me:

1. I have a current obsession with Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches, it is really becoming a sickness.
2. My dream cars, because I could never pick just one, is a VW Bus or a wooden paneled stations wagon. Dreaming really big here.
3. When I build a house one day I want a living room with a huge glass garage door and furniture that can be pushed out of the way so that we can roller skate and ride bikes in the living room. I also want a trampoline room!
4. I will not eat avocados, they are just yucky!
5. My dream vacation is to go to Hobox Island and dive with the whale sharks.
6. The first trip I took that required a passport was to Kenya, skipped Europe all together.
7. I love the fact that my parents video taped my entire life, but don't tell them that.

The criteria of this award is that I have to list 7 things I love and then 7 bloggers I love to pass this award on to.
7 Things I Love:

1. My husband for a million different reasons!
2. My hot tub, hands down the best money I ever spent!
3. The two furry rugs that live with me, otherwise known as my cats. They can be pains but they make me very happy.
4. SABRINA! Go check out the pictures she posted the other day and you will understand why.
5. All of my friends, of the real life and bloggy kind. I could have never come this far without you.
6. My camera, because it gives me room to live in the world without being petrified.
7. All my music, it gives me peace and room to figure out the world.

Rules
1. You Can Only Use One Word
2. Pass this along to 6 of your favorite bloggers
3. Alert them that you have given them this award
4. Have Fun!

The Fun Part
1. Where is your cell phone? Car
2. Your hair? Wet
3. Your mother? Wonderful
4. Your father? Amazing
5. Your favorite food? Any
6. Your dream last night? Crazy
7. Your favorite drink? Diet DP
8. Your dream/goal? Parenthood
9. What room are you in? Living
10. Your hobby? Photography
11. Your fear? Darkness
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Home
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. Something that you aren’t? Unhappy
15. Muffins? Tops
16. Wish list item? Baby
17. Where did you grow up? Texas
18. Last thing you did? Shower
19. What are you wearing? Towel on my head
20. Your TV? On
21. Your pets? Furry
22. Friends? Too far
23. Your life? Fun
24. Your mood? Happy
25. Missing someone? Friends
26. Vehicle? Passat
27. Something you’re not wearing? Ballgown
28. Your favorite store? Williams-Sonoma
29. Your favorite color? All
30. When was the last time you laughed? Last Night
31. Last time you cried? Two Weeks and 6 days
32. Your best friend? Lacy/Sam/Hubs
33. One place that I go to over and over? Kenya
34. One person who emails me regularly? Emily
35. Favorite place to eat? Flemmings

Okay, so now that I have slacked I need to pick a million people to pass these onto, but I am not that good at blog reading so I am just going to break the rules a bit. I am going to nominate a few and then if you want one feel free to have it. I love all of you who read here and I could never pick a favorite.

Heather
Life Happens
Kelli
Niki
Blonde Dawn
Allison

Stolen

2009-10-08T03:19:00.002-05:00

Someone that I know very well stole our daughter's name yesterday. I am crushed, the betrayal is unbearable. Being in a place where I want to destroy someone's life over a name is not something that I am used to and not a place I want to be. Every tear that I cry feels wasted. Yes, I do not own the name I get that. It is most likely my entire fault for even opening my mouth. I asked that they not do this; I was told that they understood and I trusted that this would not happen. Worst of all I cannot even bring myself to look at the child, because for now all I can think of is that she has a name that should not belong to her. I know this sounds insane, but bear with me because I think that by the end of this it may make at least a bit of logical sense.

Like every situation that makes me react so strongly I feel the need to over analyze every aspect of the situation, blame it on all the therapy. Going over and over this, putting it through the blender and sieve, rinsing and repeating, and turning the whole situation into unrecognizable mush has made me see things very clearly. Infertility is just one huge thief and for that, I am irate. This situation was my tipping point, sending me flying back to a place I fought so hard to escape. The difference being that it has really given me a chance to look at my feelings in a different way and uncover pain that I did not know I was carrying around.

All the things that infertility has stolen:

My dignity got up and walked out after the umpteenth test and doctor.

Any sense of being a woman ran off a long time ago, because my body refused to perform a very basic function.

Friends have been left by the wayside, for a lack of understanding or the inability to deal with all the pain and sorrow that surrounds my life.

Tons of bodily fluids, tears, blood, bile, urine, and whatever else I have sacrificed to the reproductive endocrinologist.

Happiness has been so hard to find in so many situations and fighting the soul crushing depression delivered the final blow.

Romance, it is hard to feel desirable when you do not feel worthy or even human, even harder to make someone else feel that way.

Brain cells, all of the information and knowledge that is required to comprehend what is happening to me made my head hurt and I know that some of my brain cells just gave up.

Trust, faith, and hope took compassion and empathy and moved to the Bahamas, where they send postcards from time to time, between sips of frozen drinks, to the black piece of my soul that they left.

Worst of all infertility has stolen time. In the waiting, I have lost moments, months and years to be with my child. This is not something that I ever want to talk about because the reality is so heartbreaking. For every extra year it has taken for our child to arrive, I have grown older, moving closer to death. All this time I could have spent with the child that I am waiting to come into my life. Just typing those words bring tears to my eyes and nausea to my insides. No one wants to face their mortality, even more no one wants to think that there will come a time when their child will not have a parent. Spending so much time focused on an infant tends to blur the road ahead. Of course, this time is stolen from everyone that will love our child. Our grandmothers will have precious few moments as great-grandmothers and our grandfathers will never have those moments. This child will lose grandparents years before they would have if we could have just gotten pregnant. Words are not capable of conveying the hurt and pain this reality brings. Nothing about our infertility comes close to the grief that stolen time causes. I did not let myself even think about this until now.

My anger at the taking of the name is really all about the anger of stolen time. This baby who has that name may have more time, her parents may get those precious moments that I will not. Like everything in life, there is no guarantee that this will happen, but the possibility is agonizing. I do not know how to grieve this loss and finding a way to live with the pain just does not seem possible. Maybe I will learn, but this is not a lesson that I ever wanted to learn. I am okay with this path to parenthood and even grateful that I was having this amazing experience. Lost time is something that I will never embrace and something that I will never get over, because it is a loss to great and a price much higher than I am ever willing to pay. If we are to have a daughter her name will be the same, it is the name we chose for her many years ago, and nothing will change that.

and we're off!

2009-10-04T22:11:00.003-05:00

Bright and early this morning the fabulous Sabrina Skyped with me, she went to all that trouble for one very special reason. I was there when she gave herself the first of many Lupron shots. She is such a trooper, what would have taken me hours, took her all of five seconds. This is really happening, we are one our way!!

and then i cried

2009-10-02T02:07:00.005-05:00

Now I just feel stupid about my last post. Today is just a simply amazing day. I never thought that seeing TONS of medication and needles not meant for me would bring me to tears, but you learn really fast in this process that anything is possible. Sabrina has her medication, a lot of medication. This is really happening, for real, like in reality, where I live part of the time. Seeing the pictures brought me to tears. Never did I think this was going to happen. Through countless phone calls and tons of logistics, it all just seemed like I was watching a movie of someone else. Now it is real, we are really going to do this.

In The Bog

2009-10-01T02:08:00.002-05:00

I found myself in the bog yesterday, one that I have witnessed others sunk in but one that I have never visited. I pulled myself out, with the support of the man who has always stood there and pulled me from the edge. His love and willingness to sit with me through the worst moments will always amaze me, always. This is our relationship, we have seen the worst in each other, we embrace the ugliness, and move through it together. Without our ability to maintain our love for each other through all the dark and frightening places my life with him would not be possible.

Yesterday was the first time that I was terrified of letting him see me in the place where I was sitting. In some way this has all been building over all these years of trying to become a mother, but I ignored the fact that there was the possibility that I could fall. Each turn that we have taken on this road has just been taken. I would feel the pain, mourn the loss of the moments that we would not share and then move to the next step. At times getting to the next step took a long time, but I always found my footing. Every email and every phone conversation felt like it was all part of the universe telling me to just stop, just give up on this silly dream of being a mother and go get a life worth living. Never had I questioned that I was going to become a mother, some way some how I was going to have a child all I had to do is just keep trying and one day I would have the honor of becoming someone's mother.

The bumps were so minor yesterday, miniscule compared to everything that we have gone through to get this close. Our donor had a very low level of nicotine in her urine. The pharmacy and the clinic had a minor bit of miscommunication. The clinic was having miscommunication with Sabrina and I. My husband will be on the other side of the country around our expected due date, if this works the first time. All these things have one common thread, every single one of these is completely out of my control. This is my dream, the one thing that I want more than I can ever begin to describe and it is all in the hands of others. This is something that I have never worried about, I trust Sabrina completely, and I trust our clinic.

Having to stand outside of all this has been bothering me for a while. Not because I have a problem with not being able to just do this on my own. Not having a role at the moment just feels weird. Having a woman willing to give up her body, time and ability to always be with and do things with her own children so that I can become a mother is always going to just be strange. Knowing that a woman is willing to hand over her eggs to us will always be amazing. It is easy to diminish what is happening by saying that monetary compensation is involved, which they are. In the case of the donor I believe that this is a bigger motivation, but in no way is it the only motivation. When it comes to Sabrina I know that the compensation is the smallest part of her motivation. Part of feeling strange about this is my inability to accept that other people are willing to give to me, I am horrible at this. Another part, possibly the bigger part, is that I need to feel a sense of control over what is happening in my life. Handing over the biggest dream in my life is simply terrifying.

Add all of this together and you get a perfect combination for a lot of self doubt. Yesterday, all of it just came to a head. I feel so guilty about even entertaining the idea that I should not be a mother. I have wanted a child since I was a small child myself. Friends in high school called me mom, because I spent a great deal of time mothering them. There is nothing else in my life that had been a more stable character trait. Through all the changes that have occurred at the center of me is my desire to be a mother. Doubting that I should continue to pursue this, even for the briefest of moments, was crushing.

I am much better now. We are going to retest the donor, but our doctor does not believe that such a small amount of nicotine should be a problem. The pharmacy mess up was fixed in 13 minutes. I believe that the communication problem with the clinic has been worked out. If the husband has to be gone, then there is nothing that I can do about it, he has to do what is best for his career. Missing the birth would be sad, but there are years and years of moments that he will be there for and that one moment is really small in the big picture. I no longer believe that there is a vast conspiracy to keep me from motherhood. I just hope that I never go back to that place, because it scared me in a way that I have never been scared.

No Pollyanna Here

2009-09-22T02:09:00.003-05:00

Thank you all for the wonderful comments I just adore ILCW!

I want to make something very clear I am no Pollyanna. I have gotten many comments about how positive I am, and thank you for thinking so, but the truth is that it has taken me a very long time to get to this place. Reading posts about the hurtful comments, the wading through the muck and the just general despair is all so familiar. I go to these places all the time, but I have also learned so much from being there.

Hearing people say something just stupid because they have no other words was the first thing that I really had to work on. It was either lock myself in the house or learn to deal with the platitudes. We were at a party a year or so ago and someone asked if we had kids, a person that I had met ten minutes before. The poor unsuspecting woman, who was just trying to start a conversation, got the meanest and nastiest response I could muster. She obviously was embarrassed and for a moment, I took so much pleasure in watching her just squirm. Then I just felt horrible, it was not her fault, she really had done nothing wrong. It was in that interaction that I knew I had to find another way to cope with the questions and comments, because I did not want to be that mean person that took pleasure in others' pain, and I was not going to let my infertility take my humanity, that was a price I was not willing to pay. Intellectually I had known for years that all those comments, from "Just relax" to "A dog is just as good" were never meant to be hurtful, they came from people who loved me, from people who did not want to see me hurt anymore, or from people who were just at a loss for words. In a very bizarre way, they were all telling me that I was loved, in the same way that my husband tells me he loves me when he takes out the trash or cleans the dishes. It may not be the way that I want or need to hear it, but it is still all about love and concern. It is the same way that I instinctively tell those who lose a loved one that I am sorry or a friend with a horrible disease that it will be okay, I have no idea what to say so I pull out the safe platitudes that do nothing. I just had to learn and constantly remind myself that this was love, it was not meant to be hurtful it was meant to make the hurt go away.

In May of 2007 I had my first major baby boom, it seemed like everyone was pregnant and they all announced it at the same time. Every announcement ripped my heart out. I had dealt with those announcements before, but they had always been spread out. Two of the announcements came at the same party; a party that I could not just walk out of and trust me all I wanted to do was run. I was happy for them, I really wanted to share in the joy but I just could not muster the strength. My pain and hurt, my firm belief that I was never going to be a mother stood in my way. I missed the baby showers, I sent a gift and made an excuse and everyone kindly pretended that it was not about the pain even through they knew. I missed the first birthday parties for the same reason. Really, who wants a crying person sitting in the middle of the floor at such happy occasions, no one wants that and no one wants to be that person. Then a friend of mine, a woman who is so amazingly wonderful and who has stood beside me for so long, was having trouble conceiving her third child. Instead of picking up the phone and calling the one person who understood right where she was, she sat with the pain because she felt guilty complaining because she already had two children. Being stuck in the muck of infertility had caused someone I cared about to suffer the same pain without my support, and that ripped my heart out more than any pregnancy announcement or party invitation ever could have. I had to pull myself out of my world and help her deal with her world; I had to find a way to support her through her misery and fear. In order to help her I had to get out of my pain and myself. As difficult as that was, being able to help her was the best thing that could have happened. Her daughter was born two months ago and for the first time, in a very long time, I was able to be happy because a new life came into this world. For those few months I was able to remember, what it was like to not sit in that misery.

As a teen and part of my young adulthood, I was clinically depressed. During that time I believed that it was easier to be miserable, being in that place where all I had to focus on was how unfair the world was and how everything was nothing but a conspiracy to keep me feeling like the dirt on the scum of someone's tennis shoes. Then at some point, and I really have no idea when, it lifted and I felt so much better. I remembered how to laugh and have fun, and that place was so wonderful and amazing. Somewhere along the road that pain seeped back in, and it came so slowly that I had not recognized that it was back. Knowing that someone I loved felt like she could not come to me with her infertility struggle made me realize that I was back in the muck. My misery was so apparent to everyone else that they were afraid to upset me. I knew that being miserable was so much harder than being happy and I knew that if I did not find a way to get out that I was headed back to a place I had fought so hard to get out of. Yes, my infertility hurts and yes, it is unfair, but it is not the only thing in my life. I have so many other things that matter; most importantly, I have amazing people who need me as much as I need them.

The only way that I knew to get out of the despair was to face the worst-case scenario. What would really happen if I were never to be a mother? As terrified, as I was to look at that possibility I knew that without doing so I was just doomed to live in a space that I hated. I would still have amazing people around me, I would still have my husband, and I would still have all the children in my life that I love with all my heart. Childless I would still have a purpose in this world, I would still be a social worker and I would still find ways to have a positive impact on some area of the world. Yes, it would be heartbreaking, but I would still go on. I did not have to be a mother to justify my existence as a woman, being a mother would make me no more of a woman than I already am. The worst thing that could possibly happen would be a deep sadness, and I knew how to deal with that, I knew that there was help and that I was capable to accepting that help. I also knew that there is another side of that pain and that I was capable of making it there. Knowing all of this gave me the power to not always be in that pain. Yes, I want to be a mother more than I want to breathe, otherwise I would not be where I am at the moment. I also know that if this never works my life will still have meaning and purpose I will still have worth.

The weirdest part of being infertile and trying to conceive is that you become a parent to a person who does not exist. You live your life for someone who is not real. Every decision and every action becomes about them, and it is so easy to lose yourself in the process. When I was going through all of this I felt an immense amount of guilt, I felt like even considering the possibility of failure made me a horrible person. What I learned is that it did not. Being able to see the reality of the situation gave me the freedom to heal some wounds and really become a better person. I am in no way saying that every infertile person needs to work through these issues, I would never dare place that on others. I just know that this helped me get to the place where I am able to not always fear the future, and where I am able to enjoy parts of my life that I was unable to before. It has given me the power to control the parts of my life that I am able to and not to constantly worry about the parts that I cannot.

Welcome and the Cliff Notes

2009-09-21T01:38:00.001-05:00

Welcome to ILCW!! My favorite time of the month, when I have enough time to participate. It has been a while since I have given a quick rundown of me and how we ended up in the amazing world of surrogacy, so I thought I would do this for all of you who are new, and those of you who just may not know.

The problems really began when I was 12, and started having very irregular periods that would last for months when they finally showed up. This landed me in the hospital getting a blood transfusion because my blood pressure was 60/40. It was at this time that I first started taking birth control pills, and more birth control pills, and finally moved onto estrogen and progestin because there was not a high enough dosage to keep me from having breakthrough bleeding. I was diagnosed with von Willebrand disease shortly after my first major episode of severe bleeding. When the hormone therapies were not working, the best option was to do a D&C, the first of which I had at the age of 13. At the age of 21, I was diagnosed with PCOS. After years of buckets of hormones and countless D&Cs, I decided that having an endometrial ablation was the best course of action, so in March of 2007 I went into the hospital and effectively killed my uterus. This is a decision that I have never regretted for a moment. Having periods that lasted for months on end, six months being the longest, I was ready to have a "normal" life. I was tired and drained all of the time and the hormones had just stopped working. We were ready to start a family and there was no way that I could be the mother that I wanted to be feeling the way that I did most of the time. The greatest gift of being an adopted child has been that I knew having a child that was biologically related to me was not the most important thing in the world, being a mother has nothing to do with seeing your eyes looking back at you.

In March of 2008, we met with a surrogacy agency. It was a wonderful and awful experience at the same time. We had some major issues with their contracts, were never able to work those issues out, so we decided that they were not the agency for us, and moved on. When I started this blog one of the first posts that I wrote was about being so alone in this process. It was then that I got an e-mail from a woman whose blog I had been reading for about a week or so. She was an amazing surrogate, we emailed back and forth and I watched as she had two perfect little girls for an amazing man. I just knew that she was the only person in the world that I would want to go through this journey with, so I became a bit of a stalker in a perfectly nice way. We were worried about doing this journey without an agency because this is all a bit overwhelming when you start to go it alone. On February 4^th of 2009, I got an email with her phone number; I was so excited that I totally forgot to read the rest of the message. I called and we talked for a good 2 hours. We talked about everything, but her offer to be our surrogate, because I never read that part, and even though I wanted to call and beg her, I was trying to come off a little bit less insane than I actually am. A week went by and I was cleaning out the in-box, and finally read the part where she had offered to carry our baby. Words cannot express the embarrassment and stupidity that I felt, while I was also feeling amazing. With my stomach turning back flips, I called her back, and was just crossing everything that she had not changed her mind because I was an airhead that cannot finish reading an email. Thankfully, she did not change her mind, in fact she found the whole thing very amusing.

We had always intended to use an egg donor, because I did not want to pass on my bleeding disorder. Then we learned that there was a possibility that we could do genetic testing and just implant the embryos that were free of the disorder. Well, when you are given a chance like this you take it. While we were working on our contracts and getting the details hammered out, my blood was in a lab being tested. True to form, my body never does anything the normal way, instead of having a genetic mutation like most people, I have a whole series of genes that are missing. In order to do PGD we would need to send the blood to England and then have the test verified here, and it all boiled down to a whole lot of waiting for something that was just not that important. We went back to the drawing board on the egg donors.

At this moment we have our donor, we have the world's most amazing woman willing to put herself through a pregnancy, and we are just waiting for the planets to align so that this family of ours can grow.

From Wounds to Scars

2009-09-06T03:52:00.003-05:00

A week or so ago a dear blog friend of mine, emilythehopeless, came under attack by a group of adult adoptees. The attacks were so ruthless and horrid that she decided to move out of her blog home, and the world of infertility blogs lost an amazing voice. Part of the blogging experience is dealing with negative comments it is just something that comes with the territory. This went way beyond hurtful comments; these people took it upon themselves to contact the adoption attorney that she is using and inform the attorney that they believed that she was an unsuitable candidate for adoption. This is taking the whole thing to a level of insanity that I just cannot wrap my head around.

I have thought a lot about this situation and have tried, as an adult adoptee, to understand where these people were coming from. In the end, I cannot. In my teen years, like most teens, I was angry at the world. Adoption was my ammunition because that is what I had to work with and it would have been some other issue if I had one as powerful. Anger at the world is just part of the growing up experience for most of us. Adoption is not an easy issue for anyone involved in the process. As an adoptee I felt abandoned, unloved, unwanted, and lived in constant fear of abandonment. Living in that space becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you become the person that no one wants to be around and every person that tries to get close to you had to wade through the swamp of misery to do so, and who wants to put that much time and energy to a black hole of misery. I found myself caught in this vicious cycle that was difficult to free myself from.

At some point, I realized that it was so much easier to live my life in a state of happiness instead of the misery I had wallowed in for years. Of course, people had been telling me this all along, but it is not something that you learn until you are able to experience it for yourself. Misery was comfortable I knew how to function in that world. Learning to be happy was a long process, but life was so much easier once I got to that place.

As an adult I am grateful that I was adopted. I am grateful that my parents wanted me so badly that they were willing to jump through countless hoops to become my parents. I am grateful that my birth-mother wanted me to have a better life than what she could provide, and made the difficult decision to place me in the care of others. Most of all I am grateful that I have been able to learn and grow in ways that I would have never been able to. Seeing these adults, and I use that term very loosely, have the need to attack others because they are unable to move on from this pain, has given me a new perspective of where I could have ended up. Without being able to recognize that I have my own issues, and that these issues are my responsibility, I could have been these people who need to focus on others rather than dealing with themselves.

No one has the perfect life. We all live with deep wounds, some more traumatic than others, but just as horrible to us personally. Given the chance, all of us would change some parts of our lives; it is part of being human. What makes us adults is the ability to let the wounds grow scabs and become scars. The ability to recognize that we are not defined by our pasts is so incredibly freeing. For me to know that I have survived the pain of so many parts of my life has made me a stronger person.

Knowing that one day I am going to have to tell our child that I am not biologically their mother is not something that I am looking forward to, but it is something that I know I can handle. All my experiences have taught me that there is very little I can deal with in this life. Those experiences have also taught me that no matter the reaction the child has, that one day they will understand that all the decisions we have made and all we have done was because we love them more than words can convey. Every twist and turn that occurred in making our child a reality was done because we have loved him or her for years before they were a reality.

Debates, Labs, Decisions and Love

2009-08-30T12:24:00.002-05:00

There has been a major debate raging in my head for the past week, well actually more than one debate, but I will start with the first and see where it goes from there. In writing this blog, I have been very open about who I am and what has gone on during this journey. At the genesis of this little space in the world, I was a dark place where I felt completely alone and there were very few people who were blogging about beginning a surrogacy from the intended parent perspective. At that point this was my story, the end goal was to have another person walking around in the world, but a year and a bit ago that person felt so far away. So distant in fact that I never really let myself think that this was really the story of creating a new life, instead I saw this as a story of creating a mother. I know that this does not make a ton of sense, but little that goes on in my head ever really does. The closer that we get to making this dream of a person a reality, the more I feel that I have less of a right to tell the story to the world.

There is no easy conclusion to this debate. This story belongs to another person just as much as it belongs to me, but the other owner cannot give consent to have the story out in the world. Other bloggers write about their children all the time, and write about parts of their child's life that the child may not want everyone knowing when they are older. The main reason that I came to have this space in the world was that I wanted others to not feel like they were to only ones, to pull the curtain back from surrogacy, and hopefully change at least one person's mind about what this incredible journey was all about. Part of this process is giving information to complete strangers that one day my child may be angry about, but at this point I can say that I am okay with this. Not because I am a cold and heartless person, but because I hope that in telling this story, I am in some small way normalizing surrogacy so that the child may run into one less cruel comment. I know you are reading this and thinking that I have some really high opinion of myself, which could not be farther from the truth. What I do have a high opinion of is people's ability to talk about issues to others and helping others look at a situation from a different side. It is easy to sit in judgment when there is no human face on the other side, it is much harder when a real person is able to tell you what the experience was like for them.

Really, all of this is just a roundabout way of saying that I have some very big news, and have known for about a week, but I have been unable to find the right words to share the information. The clinic in England finally got back to us, saying that they could do the test. We received a timeline of 2 months, which is not great but something that we could live with. Call the clinic and let them know, and this is where the bomb drops, wait for it cause here it comes. Using a lab in another country would require that a lab in the US verify the results. The whole reason that we were going out of the country was because there was no lab that could do the test here! Verification could take anywhere from one to six months. To say that my heart sank into my stomach is an understatement; it dropped clear to my feet.

When we began this process, it was always our intention to use an egg donor. My main priority has always been to ensure that we had the healthiest child possible, and passing on von Willibrand's Disease would not accomplish this goal. Not that using an egg donor guarantees that our child will be the picture of health, but it does increase the odds. The other part of the egg donor decision, is that we have waited and waited for this to happen, put our lives on hold and we were ready to move on. Becoming a mother is way more important to me than seeing my own eyes rolled at me when I embarrass the kid. Yes, I was excited about the possibility of being able to use my eggs, but it was something that I have come to realize that other people wanted more for me than I ever wanted for myself.

The one aspect that has bothered me most in using an egg donor is how to tell the kid. To me, it is a much more difficult conversation than the surrogacy conversation. Children can grasp the "you grew in someone else's tummy" concept much easier than the whole egg donor concept, if for no other reason than having the intellectual capacity to understand the associated concepts. In other words, I do not want to have the BIG talk with a 3 year old. At the same time there is a very limited window of time when they are old enough to understand and when you have waited to the point that they will feel as if we lied or tried to hide something from them. Yes, I know that they are going to feel this way about a million things, but to me this is too big to let them feel this way about. So I am sure that this will be something that will take a lot of debate and cause a lot of worry, but it is also something that I know we will be able to handle.

So, we are moving on and creating our family with the help of 2 extraordinary women. I cannot begin to describe what it feels like to be on the receiving end of such an overwhelming amount of love. Sabrina has been such an amazing woman through all of this, taking on the role of sounding board, cheerleader, comedian, and the definition of patient. The gratitude that I have for her can never fully be expressed, but I will keep trying.

Tick Tock

2009-08-15T16:09:00.002-05:00

I have no new news on the genetic testing front. I hope to hear something by Tuesday at the latest. Right now the plan it to wait until then and move on from there.

I just want to thank all of you for the love and support, it has been very overwhelming. I cannot imagine going through all of this without all of you standing behind me. Over the past couple of days, I have been able to really see what is important to me in this whole journey. Yes, the end goal is to have a baby, but there is so much more in this situation. When we first started to look into surrogacy, I had a vision of what this would all look like. We would find a surrogate, do what we needed to do, have a baby, and then there would be a few letters and pictures, but that would be the end of the relationship.

There is no way that I can imagine having that type of relationship now. Not just because Sabrina is someone that I would want to be friends with no matter what, but also because I have realized just how personal this relationship needs to be. Sure, this is my husband and I's child but Sabrina's whole family is involved in this situation. We are the ones waiting, but they are the ones giving up so much to help us end the wait. When I first got the news that we would have to wait to do the transfer, Sabrina was the first person that I called, and I cannot even begin to put into words how much easier she made the whole situation. I was able to see the forest for the trees after talking to her. We are in this together, and this is a partnership like no other. We are all going to make it to the end together, so how could I possibly just walk away after all of this. The answer is that there is no way that I could ever do such a thing.

She does not want to be the mother of our child, she just wants to be a part of our lives as a family, and there is nothing wrong with that. When I got the horrible call, I realized that there are so many people who want to be part of our life as a family, so I can always welcome one more. Just like each person who reads this blog, we are all a part of each other's families. It is an amazing thing to know that as we wait for our child and while we are raising our child, that we will have this amazing support. So thank you all for giving me a safe place to fall, it means more than any of you could ever know. This goes for all my real life friends and family and my blogsphere friends. I only hope that I can be as supportive of all of you as you are of me.

Who Pressed the Delete Key?

2009-08-13T23:52:00.002-05:00

Apparently, my body was not weird enough. We finally got the results back from the genetic testing. Instead of just having a simple gene mutation that causes most von Willebrand's disease, mine is caused by multiple gene deletions. There is no lab in the United States that is able to produce a PGD probe for genetic deletions. A lab in England will have to do this.

So what does this all mean? The first thing that it means is that we will not be transferring in September. I have no idea when we will be transferring. The second thing that it means is that I have had a hard fall today. As much as I tried not to get my hopes up, as much as I tried to stay detached from this transfer, this news has hit me like a ton of bricks falling on my head.

All of my energy has been focused on this transfer. I guess it was just inevitable that anything going wrong was going to feel this way. At the moment when I was finally able to let myself feel like this was going to happen, that this transfer was a real thing, this news hits. Part of me is angry at myself, because if this could happen to anyone it is me. Medically nothing has ever been easy for me, I should have know that something major was going to go wrong. Of course, I also know that if this had not happened I would have never given it a second thought. Right now I just feel beaten, what seemed so close this morning seems so incredibly far away now.
I am trying to find the good in this situation. There is the upside that now I have more time to work on my physical self. There will be more time to get myself centered before I become a mother. Something that I feel incapable of doing at the moment, but I am willing to try and that has got to count for something.

I should hear back from the genetics people tomorrow or Monday. I will know more then.

Lupron and Injections

2009-08-11T14:03:00.003-05:00

Okay, I am a month out from the part of this process that scares me most. To say that I am just a little on the nervous side would be like showing up to breakfast in a ballgown (that you did not wear the night before), a tad bit on the crazy side. As is the needle was not bad enough they are filled with something lovingly called Loopy Lupron. I have read a lot of stories from fellow bloggers, but I need more information. I must know the non-sugar coated version. So give me the honest truth.

What is your best injection advise?
Do I need to send the husband away for the sake of our marriage?
Should I buy a roll of duct tape for my big mouth?
How much extra migraine medicine am I really going to need?
Are my dishes safe, or should I pack them away so that I have dishes left?
Do I need to book myself a padded cell?
What am I really getting myself into?

Friendship and Lessons

2009-08-11T00:36:00.003-05:00

I have been a really bad blogger and a really bad blog reader, forgive me.

Things are going well and I have made my peace with the school situation. For those of you who asked, I went as far up as I could and there was just no changing anything. I will be working on changing the policy and will have some considerable help doing so. Thank you all so much for encouraging me and standing behind me as I went through all this, it helped more than you could know.

Please take note of the ticker in the right hand corner, more on the title in a moment. We are getting close to the transfer and I am freaking out just a HUGE tiny bit, but I will get over that, you know after I knock myself over the head and wake up after it is all over.

While I was finishing up with school, I got a blog award from my darling Emily. Since I hate to admit that I have not read one new blog all summer, I am going to change the rules a bit, cause I am a rebel like that.

I have decided that I am going to tell you a little bit about Emily and why getting this recognition from her really makes it that much more special. I found Emily through ILCW and I hooked. When I first came upon her little space in the blogsphere she was in the process of doing IVF (#2?) and I have never wished harder for anyone to be successful, her tattoos alone would have been enough to make me want this for her. Though what really struck me was all her tickers, and one in particular, the ticker she had for Darby. Her precious pup had not been gone long, and every time she wrote about Darby I cried like I had lost my pup. The sincerity and emotion reached through the screen and tugged at my heart. Then of course, there were her wedding pictures, you are hitched in custom Converse and well that is just about the coolest thing EVER.

Over the past year or so, I have watched Emily and Steve make some very major life transitions, and Emily has been gracious enough to let us all share in every moment. With the moving, heartache, and questioning, I have been privy to an amazing transformation. Their transition from attempting to conceive to waiting to adopt was really a magical thing to watch, because they got there without bitterness and hate. Yes, she mourned the loss of having a biological child, but she embraced having an adopted child with such beauty and fervor it astounds me every day.

I have met a lot of really amazing women through this blog, more than I could have ever imagined. There is just something special about Emily. She has given me something that I did not even know I was missing. In her story I have found the strength to feel the anger and unfairness, but not to let these feelings be roadblocks. Those feelings are just that feelings, and you have a choice to be paralyzed by them or to use them to propel you to the next step. If I could make her and Steve parents tomorrow I would, but I cannot. I would have a baby for her in an instant, but that will not work either. What I can do is beg and plead with all of you to go buy a bracelet. I know I have asked before, but I am just going to keep asking until you do it.

Emily, you are an awesome person and your child will be so lucky to have you as their mother.

Disconnected

2009-07-17T21:17:00.003-05:00

Infertility stole my sense of being a woman and at times my sense of belonging to the human race. All of this happened in a matter of moments and required a huge shift in my sense of self, because at some point my life had to go on and I had to get up out of the floor. One of my greatest lessons was learning that I was so much more than my body, my ability to reproduce did not define me, my body's lack of cooperation was not my fault, and eventually I had made it back to being able to function. There was one problem I ignored my entire body, I forgot that part of taking of me was taking care of the body that I was walking around in.

Weight and body image has been a problem since I hit puberty. Standing next to my mother, at the house of her friend, in the afternoon. Her friend was getting something for them to drink and she looked up. The words that she said to me were not meant to hurt, because she was one of the sweetest women in the world. She said it looked like I had put on some weight. I was 10 at the time and 23 years later, the memory of those words can bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. This was in no way the beginning of my poor body image; it is just the first memory I have of someone making a comment about my weight, someone validating what I believed about myself. The fact was that I was going through puberty just a little bit earlier than most of my peers made me feel out of place. Looking back on the photographs I was not even close to being mildly overweight, I was just a girl going through puberty.

Now the body that I have ignored is screaming for me to pay attention. I know that I need to get this under control and I am sick of being the fat chick. There is only one problem is that I find myself caught in this vicious cycle and the mere idea of escaping is completely overwhelming. I hate the way I look, I eat, I am sad, I eat, I am happy, I eat, I feel bad about something, I eat, I am stressed, I eat. I eat because food is constant and comfortable.

Part of my healing the deep wounds of infertility is integrating myself back into myself. No matter how angry I am at this body for failing me, it is my body and I deserve better than what I am giving myself. In no way would I let someone else treat me the way I have treated myself. It all stops, the abuse that I have inflicted on myself stops today. Just as the misery was comfortable in the depression, the fat became my friend it has kept me safe and warm. I do not need this anymore, what I do need is to integrate my body back into my identity and begin to take care of myself again. I have a hard road ahead of me and I know that I will stumble and fall flat on my face at times, but the time has come for me to really respect myself.

emily the hopeless

2009-07-13T11:09:00.002-05:00

Over the weekend, I went to Atlanta to meet Emily and her husband. Let me start by saying that they are the first people that I have met from the internets, thankfully they are who they say they are and are very wonderful people who I completely ADORE!!! Talking with them was just like talking to people I have known my whole life and plan on knowing for the rest of it. We went to a vegan restaurant, which for my carnivore self was a stretch, and it was soooo yummy. I had some of the best mac and cheese I have ever had in my life, and if you do not know I am a mac and cheese connoisseur. Mac and cheese is the best food in the whole world, sadly it all likes to live on my hips.

Meeting someone whose life I have been following for a while is a surreal experience, albeit a wonderful experience. You are sitting with someone that knows so much about you already that the conversation is just natural, and yet this is the first time that you have ever been in his or her presence. I really gained a new perspective on this whole blogging thing and how I relate to the people on the other side of the computer screen. Not that I was unaware that real people were on the other side, it just framed the whole thing in a different way for me.

Emily and Steve are just beginning the adoption process. As someone who is involved in the adoption process, I can say that they are some of the most prepared people I have ever met. We are all researchers in our path to parenthood, but they are reaching the level of experts. I would do anything to make them parents, if it was possible for me to have a baby I would be having one for them, and this is not something I can say for the vast majority of people. There is one thing that I can do to help them. We all know how expensive this baby making stuff can get, and adoption adds up the same way. Emily and Steve are selling the cutest bracelets to help them fund their adventure in adoption land. To help get the word out Steve designed a button for your blog that takes people to the place where they can get their very own bracelet. Come on you know you need more jewelry, one can never have enough accessories! Plus, you get to help a wonderful couple become parents, with the added benefit of helping our future child have a friend and that kid is going to need all the help they can get with parents like us ;)

Symbiosis

2009-07-07T23:36:00.005-05:00

Eight years ago today, under an overcast sky with a smattering of raindrops, I married the love of my life. We did not get to that day easily, our relationship evolved out of a lot of stops and starts. Stops that were so painful I was sure that I was going to die and starts that were so amazingly high that I never wanted them to end even though I was always waiting for the fall. Yes, we have a bi-polar relationship. When I was seventeen my therapist said that our relationship was symbiotic, and she was right but it works for us. We are better together than we are apart. Together we are invincible we may stumble and fall but we do so together. Our relationship is insular, no hurt is so deep that our little sphere cannot protect or heal. I love this relationship just as it is with all the dents and faults, with all the shininess worn off, and with all the other things that outsiders think is wrong, it suits me.
When I was seventeen he was just my best friend, he was the one who I needed to make my life better, and more importantly he one of two people that made a horrific time in my life tolerable. Something beautiful and tragic happens when a relationship is formed in a dark time in both the people’s life, and being able to maintain and grow that relationship outside that space is frightening at times. Knowing just how far the love of your life is capable of falling is scary and comforting at the same time, and it lets you know just how far they are capable of flying.
I am a better person because of him. I have taken risks I never would have dreamed of because I knew he was standing beside me. For seventeen years I have loved him, and still to this day I catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye and he takes my breath away. What I did to deserve this amazing man in my life, I will never know, but I am all too aware of just how lucky I am to have this amazing love in my life. A love that has given me more than I could ever return. Honey, I love you more than these simple words could ever express.

Whack-A-Mole

2009-07-06T21:02:00.002-05:00

The depression is getting better, I am still taking Chantix but it is working so I am okay with feeling a little down from time to time. I finally finished painting the kitchen and got my awesome retro table moved in so now we can actually have people over to eat. My next challenge is getting all the junk in our guest room organized, but I think that may take a crew of people to get done. Are we the only people whose stuff seems to multiply all by itself? I swear we have bought very little since we moved and we are outgrowing this house already. Thankfully, there is a huge attic and most of this stuff will be going up there to live.

Of course, once you get one problem under control another one pops up. Yes, my life really is a game of Whack-A-Mole. I may have found myself in a situation where the answer is obvious, but not at all easy. Since we are scheduled to cycle in September (doing back flips) I am going to have a major problem with school. While we are cycling I have to be in Dallas for monitoring, but school is in Alabama. Monitoring could take up to and most likely will be two plus weeks, thank you PCOS. Then there is being there for the transfer, another three to four days. The nurse coordinator actually asked if I was going to be there for the transfer. First, it never occurred to me that it was optional. Second, nothing in this world could keep me away. I may not be the one carrying or giving birth, but I am going to be there for the conception or at least the part they will let me be there for. Are there really people who are not there for the transfer? That question just really bothered me for some reason.

As you can imagine this is not going to go over well with the graduate school thing. In one way this is the easiest decision ever, in another it is difficult to make the only choice that I have. Baby making beats out school every time. I know that school will still be there and I can always go back, but I do not know that I will. It took me sixteen years to finish college and that was not the experience that I wanted in graduate school. Part of getting this degree is having something to keep me busy while we are waiting to be parents, but another part of this, the bigger part, is completing a degree that means a lot to me. Granted, I do not intend to use this degree for a couple of years after the baby is born, but that is not the point. This is not a degree that will be easy for me to attain, doing it as a mother is going to mean a lot more sacrifice than I feel prepared for at this point. Maybe this will all be for naught, it is still possible that I can work something out, but I am really thinking that it will not.

On another note, thank you all so much for the support after my last post. It really meant the world to me, and helped more than I can ever express.

sliding away

2009-06-22T11:04:00.002-05:00

There is a lot that is going on in my life right now. Since, no one wants to read a novel I am going to take this one thing at a time.
I am depressed, seriously having problems sleeping even though I am exhausted, I care about very little, and for right now this is a comfortable place for me to be. A medication that I am taking is causing this current bout of depression and I knew that this would happen when I started the medication. Why would I volunteer to take a medication that I knew was going to do this to me? I am quitting smoking, which I have been quitting and starting for a little over a year now.
Sadly, without the Chantix I am incapable of putting down my companions. I hate admitting that I am so attached to these things that I know are killing me, but I am. When I am smoking I have to know where they are all the time, they come with me everywhere, and they make me feel better. Most people think that it is disgusting, and it is, but at the same time, these companions of mine have seen me through a lot over the sixteen years that we have been together. Our relationship has just runs its course and it is time for me to finally get rid of them.
The depression is also coming from another place. I am under a lot of stress and pressure, and the way to cope with that for me is to just lay down until it passes. Well, there is no way that I can do this now. I have to actively get myself out of this, but it is a struggle. Graduate school is just overwhelming, it is not difficult the actual work is simple, it is just the pace and the massive change to my routine. I commute an hour each way three days a week and I cry most of the way home, I know that it is simply cathartic, but I am getting sick of this.
The other component, the nastiest, most appalling component, yes worse than the smoking. I am scared of being a mother, in fact I am terrified of that overwhelming responsibility. To think that someone would work so hard to attain something and then be terrified of actually getting there, I feel horrible for even thinking that this is true. It is true though. I know that people say I will be a great mother, and I am sure that they think they are helping, but it does not help. Those reassurances only make me feel that the bar has been raised that much higher. To me this is the dirty little secret of my infertility; I feel that I have to be a better mother than any other mother on the face of the earth, and I know me well enough to know that there is no way that that is ever going to happen. I do not think that I am going to be a horrible mother, but I know that there is no way that I am going to win any mother of the year awards. This idea has been floating around in my head very long time, but the closer we get to the reality of parenthood with a child the more that this weight is laying on my chest.
I spent much of my pre-teen and all of my teen years in a deep clinical depression. I remember someone asking me why I was so miserable, and of course I had no idea why, what I did know was that it was comfortable there. I knew miserable and it was easy for me. Years were wasted in that state, years that I will never get back and years that I would never trade. I learned to many valuable lessons, most importantly I learned that true happiness is the best thing in the world.
I will come out of this place. A couple more months on this medication and it will be over, and I will come out the other side happier and healthier. I just wish there was an easier road.

ABC

2009-06-21T23:43:00.003-05:00

Adoption- I was adopted when I was 12 days olds, I am thinking about working in the field of adoption, and we seriously considered adopting before we started down this road
Bella- what my mother’s grandchildren will call her, because any incarnation of grandmother (makes her feel old) just is not good enough for her. she is going to be a great grandma.
Crying- something that I have been doing a lot of lately, and I have no idea why, more of that in the coming days
Daisy- my favorite flower and my insane kitty
Exhaustion- what I have been feeling since starting graduate school, I am going to beat it before it kills me
Fat-what I am, what I have always been or at least felt like I was, and what I am determined to not be for the next chapter of my life. of course, I am failing miserably, but at least I am determined.
Gasping- what I have been doing for air these days. Not only am I running around like crazy, but it is so hot and humid that it is hard to breath. I hate the south this time of year
Happiness- something that is at least coming and going at this point, it has taken me a very long time to get here
Igloo- what I want to live in at the moment, have I mentioned it is HOT
Jaymee Joy- my name. I was named after my mother’s parents. I spent every weekend with them and those are some of the best memories of my childhood. I am so fortunate to have my nana still here. my papa died when I was 17 and I will always miss him.
Kenya- where the husband was born and one of my favorite places
Laughter- what I desperately need more of in my life at the moment
M- the husband, who wanted a stupid blog name that I am currently refusing to use, well not currently, I am never using it again. He is the love of my life and I could never imagine having to face the world without him.
Never- when I truly believed that I was going to be a mother
Octopus- my favorite sea creature, they are just so damn cute
PCOS- my first fertility issue
Quest- what my life has been for way too long, a quest to motherhood, a quest to the undergraduate degree, a quest to the master’s degree
Rage- something that I think I am finally getting over. The anger that came with the infertility has been the part that has bothered me the most, I am just not a good angry person.
Sabrina- the most amazing woman I have ever met, I could not have custom made a better person to carry our child.
Time- something that I have wasted too much of and never have enough of, and that makes me sad.
Understanding- something that I have a lot of for other people and very little for myself
Von Willebrand’s- a bleeding disorder that has made my life crappy and my second fertility problem because it is just not good friends with the PCOS
Water- something that I have always loved in all it’s forms except to drink, which is really bad
X- really you expected me to come up with a x word, yeah I am just not that talented
Yesterday- when everything that I need to get done was supposed to get done
Zoos- I love them, I have no idea why but I just have the most fun.

so that is a bit about me. i have a lot going on at the moment and i will tell you all a bit more about that later.

Decisions, Decisions

2009-06-17T00:35:00.002-05:00

You know when you have that one subject that keeps coming up in your life, where every thing you seem to do seems to turn around that issue. Well, this has happened to me, and I feel that I have to talk about it now, not that it will make the issue go away but because it is so important in the world of surrogacy and infertility. For me the focus has always been on getting the child here, all the rest of it could be dealt with once that precious gift was in my arms. Only problem is that every choice that I make now affects my child's future. There is such a huge burden, and one that many people who have babies the "old fashioned" way never has to grapple with. Often, way too often, when things scare me I just want to hide, and this time I cannot.

The issue of how we are going to tell our child about their very special beginnings and all the amazing people who were involved is frightening. After years of questioning my place in the world as a women, and something that I still have trouble looking at some days, my immediate reaction was to say that there was no need for my child to ever to know if they were the product of donor egg or sperm. This is not about all my insecurities, this is about a child that has no say in how they came to be, but have every right to know where they came from.

When we thought that we would need a donated egg, we put a lot of thought into everything that we were going to use as selection criteria. I have written about how weird that whole process was, and how at times it was just down right creepy. The part that was the most difficult was deciding if we could choose a donor who was not willing to meet the child later in life. After all the debate and putting the whole thing under a high powered microscope, we decided that we had to make sure that the child had as many options as possible and it was not our right to take any option away from our child.

Yes, in some way it is awful. I want to believe that I will be enough for them. As a child of adoption, I know in my heart and my head that it has nothing to do with me or the husband being good or bad parents, in fact it has absolutely nothing to do with us except for the fact that we made the decisions from the start. This issue is about our child having the right to know whose nose they have, if they are at a risk for disease, or any other fact that they want to know. Yes, I believe that there is a difference between being the child of donor sperm or eggs and adoption. I am not really sure exactly what all these differences are, or if this is just something that I tell myself. In the end, at some point in time I am going to have to do a thousand things that make me uncomfortable and upset because it is best for my child. I just thought that we would be able to hold that off until preschool.

We still have every reason to believe that we will be able to use my eggs. This is just an issue that keeps coming up in various aspects of my life.

Moving Along

2009-06-08T20:12:00.002-05:00

On Thursday of last week, yes, I am very late in posting; we had a very good appointment at the clinic. Everything is right on track and we should be doing our transfer in September. Sabrina has a calendar of all the medications and blood draws that she will be doing leading up to the transfer. Let me just stop and say that all that is completely overwhelming. Those needles are HUGE!!! All the awe that I have for what she is doing for us grew by a thousand when the nurse took out that needle, not to mention the oil suspended medication. I know that most intended mothers have been through all this before themselves, but I am the exception. This is the first of many things that I am sure where I think I am totally prepared and understand what is going on, only to be knocked on my butt by the reality. Just wait till we get to the actual birth, I am still advocating for an epidural for myself.

We were with my parents over this time, because the doctor is within walking distance of their house. I learned a very important lesson in telling them about our plans. As excited as we all are about getting ready to start this process, we need to guard ourselves at the same time. The need to make sure that we have not set ourselves up for an emotional train wreck also has to be balanced with our want to just be happy and excited. Things go wrong, no matter how tempting it is to act like an ostrich in this situation, it is important for me to stay aware of how attached I am getting to this date. It is after all just another date on the calendar.

My main job at this point is to be a support system for Sabrina. Yes, this is our child and the genesis of our family. It is just the start though, and she is the one that is really going through all of the physical process. The most physical thing that I am going to do is a few minor injections (please remind me of this later) and an egg retrieval that will be finished in a matter of a few weeks. I have been reassured a thousand times that she knows what she signed up for and that she really wants to do this for us, and I believe her but I also feel bad for her butt (cause it is going to HURT.) Once our child is born, then I will start to worry about them. I have the luxury of being able to just worry about Sabrina, because I trust her implicitly. I have no doubt that she will do everything in her power to make sure that we have the healthiest child possible.

When we first started this process, I was most afraid of losing the control of how the baby was gestated. Now I am just worried about making sure that Sabrina is treated with the upmost respect, is as comfortable as possible, and has the best pregnancy possible for her. Over the past few years, I have read the same horror stories that everyone else has about surrogacy. I have seen relationships go horribly bad, and I have learned from each of these experiences. We want this amazing relationship to continue, and I feel confident that even the pitfalls that I am not aware of can be overcome. My confidence comes from knowing that we already have a relationship that was strong enough to survive the contracts, and that there is nothing that I do not feel comfortable discussing with her.

We are moving forward!! I never thought that this would happen. During all those months and years that we spent researching and working towards this day are finally paying off.

Due Date

2009-06-02T10:13:00.002-05:00

We have a due date!!!

Okay, not that kind of due date, but a date none the less. On August 7^th we will know if we will be able to use my eggs! The genetic results will be back on that date. There was a mess up in the insurance and the clinic that delayed the results, we should have had them weeks ago. I was furious when I found this out, and really got to the point where I just wanted to go ahead and get a donor. It was the plan in the beginning so why not?

Why not, becomes a very loaded question where you asurrogacy re talking about the genetics of the child that we are creating. In the beginning, and now, my first priority has been to make sure that my child does not have the bleeding disorder that has made my life so difficult. While I know that there are so many other things, like my huge hips or my learning disability, that I could possibly pass on, but this is something that I can prevent. Sometimes, I believe that part of this is just a need to control the one thing that I have control over in this situation. Then on the days that I am able to actually think clearly I know that this is really about a quality of life issue. Just as we plan to provide the best educational opportunities and medical care that we can, we also want to make sure that our child is in the best health that we can make them from the start.

If we are able to find the fault in my DNA that is causing the von Willebrand disease. We will then be able to move onto Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis of our embryos. This is a process that I am still learning about, and there is a lot to learn. I of course will update you all as I begin to know more.

Not Again, Never Again

2009-05-27T20:21:00.002-05:00

As some of you will remember, a very good friend of mine almost lost her daughter Hazel almost six months ago. Hazel swallowed a battery, which lodged in her throat for a number of days. Thankfully, Hazel is now an active little girl and doing just fine. Sadly, Elaina Redding and her family do not have a happy ending to their story. My heart is breaking for the Redding family and all families that are affected by this tragedy.

Please help us get the word out about these batteries. Children are dying. Taking the time to pass this one could save a life. Pass this story along, and hug the children that you love just a little tighter.

Blogging About Surrogacy

2009-05-25T00:15:00.001-05:00

Over the past few weeks, a couple of blogs that I really love have gone private. This is something that I just cannot seem to wrap my head around. Not so much that they would go private, but that they would do so without telling anyone. To tell you the truth, I feel a little hurt that I was not given the opportunity to express my good wishes in the future, or asked to be invited. This feels like a high school clique thing, and I hate that. The world of surrogacy is bigger than most people think, but when it comes to intended parents who are willing to share the world gets much smaller.

Surrogacy is a touchy subject and blogging about it opens you up to a lot of nasty comments, I get that. I keep my personal e-mail address on the side of my blog, so most of the hate comments that I get tend to go through there, so I get these long e-mails about what a horrible person I am and how my child is just going to drain the world of resources and how I am exploiting this poor pitiful woman who has no other options in her life. I write back to every one of these people because I hope that in some small way I can educate them. No matter how bad these comments hurt me, they are going to hurt our child even more. Educating people may just make my child’s life a little easier.

I want to take a moment to answer some of the comments that I have received.

- Adoption, is a wonderful thing and I am a strong advocate for adoption. I am an adopted child, I have worked in the adoption field, and it is something that I believe very strongly in. That said, it is not something that is right for my family. I believe that it is important to know your limits and work within them.

- The world’s resources, yes this is a concern for me. My only question here has always been, what is the difference between having a child that I carry and one that is carried by a surrogate? Does a child carried by another woman use up more resources? No not really. We would still have used IVF resources if I was carrying the child.

- “You will never be the mother of this child.” This one really got to me on so many different levels. First, it came from a woman who has two adopted children. Second, I will always be this child’s mother, I may not have carried them or given birth, but I have literally willed them into being. Third, a mother is not someone who gives birth, yes that can be part of it, but the much larger part is being there for every moment of the child’s life and loving them through all of the good and bad.

When I began this blog my intention was to give myself a place to get all this out because carrying it around was so painful. Over the past year, my goal has shifted, now I want all of this story out there so that one person may not have to feel so alone anymore. When I first started talking about surrogacy to the people in my life it was very difficult. Not because they were unsupportive, but because there were so many questions and so many suspicions. They were trying to protect me, which translates to they love me.

Back when we started this process all I wanted was someone who had been there to tell me that this would work out and that there were people out there who had come through the other side. What I found were horror stories of surrogacy relationships that had gone horribly wrong. I learned from these stories, I read them all and they helped me decide what was and was not right for us. While I was learning from them, I was also being scared away from making our family through surrogacy.

For those of you who have found it necessary to take your blogs private, I will miss you. I am sorry that you feel that you can no longer share your story with the world. For those of you who find the need to berate and be rude to people who are just telling their story, try for a second to put yourself in someone else’s shoes before you say something hurtful.

Where I was, where I am

2009-05-21T23:21:00.002-05:00

As many of you are new here, I thought this would be a good time to give a bit of a re-cap.

At age 12, I was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder, von Willebrands disease. This diagnosis was made after I had my period for over 2 months and 3 birth control pills a day were not helping.

At age 20, I was diagnosed with PCOS.

Combine these two disorders, and you have a recipe for disaster in the menstruation department. For almost 20 years, I battled month's long periods, the longest being 6 months and 3.5 weeks. As you can imagine that gets really old really fast. There is not a hormone made that I have not taken, and not one of them worked for longer than a few months.

At 31, I had decided that I could no longer live like that. There was no way that I would ever be able to raise a child when I was wiped out half the time. I opted for an endometrial ablation, kind of like cauterizing your nose only with your uterus. As bad as I was suffering this was a decision that took me almost four years to make.

As an adopted child, with amazingly wonderful parents (HI MOM!!) I have understood for a long time that biology has nothing to do with making a family. My husband (Joe-Bob, which is not his real name) decided that my comfort and health trumped having a child. After the surgery, I began to research the best way to create our family. My main motivation for surrogacy was that I did not want to deprive my husband the chance to have his biological child, not that he ever said that this was important to him, but because I felt so much guilt about not being able to give him this child. He is the love of my life, we have been through hell and back together and I would walk through fire for him.

For over a year, I researched surrogacy as if someone had a gun to my head. We went to an agency thinking that this would be the best way for us to have a great experience. It turned out that we were very wrong, there were many hurt feelings and we almost just gave up. I began this blog because there was so little information from the prospective of the intended parent. My pain and hurt was so deep that there were days when I was unable to think about children, which meant that I spent a lot of time at home staring at the walls. I have always been prone to depression, and spent all of my teen years in such a deep depression that I forgot what it was like to be happy. Thankfully, I came out of this until I thought that all hope of ever having an infant was gone. All those feelings came back and I was scared out of my mind, this was a road that I had been down before and I knew where all the sinkholes were. I was standing right on the edge when I wrote this post. Little did I know that it would bring an amazing woman into my life, Sabrina has been just amazing. She e-mailed me and brought me into a support group that honestly saved my life, and gave me hope that I would become a mother. Months later, Sabrina agreed to be our surrogate, this amazing woman was going to help us create our family, to this day I only half believe how lucky we are.

Here we are.

Our contracts are signed.
We have our first clinic appointment.
We are waiting on the genetic testing to see if we can do PGD on the embies, so that I can use my own eggs.
Sometime in August or September, we should be transferring.
We are just transferring ONE, because the idea of two at a time makes me want to hide in my closet.

Please feel free to ask me anything that you want. I LOVE questions, almost as much as I love comments. No question is stupid, I understand that this is something that most people do not know a lot about.

WELCOME!!!

Growing By Four

2009-05-21T00:57:00.002-05:00

This post is long overdue because I have just had a hard time getting it to sound right. I am so happy, which is not something that I am entirely used to feeling.

Meeting Sabrina and her family was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. When we first started this adventure, we had every intention of treating our surrogate well, sending some updates, but other than that we really did not want to have a big relationship. Not that we wanted to be cold, but we just felt like we needed to have our family to ourselves and with all the problems we have had there was a need to insulate ourselves. After all the time that I have spent reading stories of relationships like this I knew that this was no longer what we wanted. It was a dishonor to our child and their life-story to have this kind of relationship with the person that played such an important role in bringing them into the world.

This weekend cemented our commitment to make this a lifelong relationship. I must confess that this is for purely selfish reasons on our part. The whole weekend was like being with people that we had known all our lives, and now they are stuck with us. I cannot imagine not having this entire family be apart of our child's life because they will enrich it in so many ways.

As we were on the way back to the hotel, exhausted from spending the day at the zoo Joe-Bob said it perfectly. "You realize that our family just grew by four."

It makes me sad to think that there was a time when I was in a space that would have made this relationship impossible. On an intellectual level, it makes sense to protect yourself, your heart, and your family from everyone when it has been such a long road. In reality, a family can never have too many people who love them and care for them. This world is not always a nice place and the more people you have who love you the better life becomes. We could not have custom ordered better people to share this experience with, and I am so grateful that this worked out so well for us.

So many times we hear the tragic stories of surrogacy, and sadly I think that some people do not pursue this avenue because of these stories. I know that is scared me to death. Over the past few years I have chipped away at a lot of the fear and the mysteries that surround surrogacy. Meeting Sabrina and her family laid any reservation we ever had to rest.

A Match Made in Heaven

2009-05-15T23:53:00.002-05:00

Sabrina and her husband and my husband and I all had dinner together tonight. This is the first time that we have met face-to-face. It was like having a meal with old friends. We laughed, ate way too much, and just had the best time ever.

We are the luckiest people in the world to have found such a wonderful woman and her husband to help us create our family. They are just the most amazing people. It is important for us to all remember that the spouses of our surrogates go through this with us too. I am just so excited about all of this that I really am at a loss for words, so I will leave you with a picture.

A Word of Caution

2009-05-13T18:00:00.002-05:00

Please go read Sabrina's post about her problems with insurance from her first journey. It is important that we are all as educated as possible when it comes to these issues.

A Whirlwind

2009-05-12T22:15:00.002-05:00

I have been super busy and there is no slowing down in sight.

The husband and I went to Denver last Thursday to see The Dead, it was an amazing show and a wonderful graduation gift. This will hopefully be our last show without a baby, yes we plan on taking the baby if we ever get the chance. I think that it is important for children to have these experiences, and let's face it these great bands are not going to be around forever. It was also just nice to get away and have a couple of days without worrying about the surrogacy and genetics. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to take a small mental break.

I graduated with a B.S. in Psychology and a B.S. in Social Work on Saturday!!!! College has been a huge struggle for me, like most things in my life. I was diagnosed with a learning disability in the fourth grade, so graduating from college is something that I did not always believe would be possible for me. I am not used to completing things in my life, most of the time when things get really hard I run. I ran a lot from college, which is why it took me 16 years to finish. I finally feel like things in my life are really coming together. As much as that scares me to death it also feels wonderful. The most wonderful part is that I did not wake up on Sunday morning feeling like some kind of adult, I just woke up and felt like there was one less thing on my plate.

At the end of this week we are going to visit Sabrina and her family!!!! Part of me is super excited. Another part of me is really scared, not because of anything anyone has done, but because until now I have been able to live a bit disconnected from this whole experience. It is safe hanging on the edges of the orbit, and I am comfortable here. I am so excited to get started, but I am also scared that these steps ahead of us are not stable and could be masking a lot of heartache and pain. I know that focusing on this part is not going to so me any good, but I am a prepare for the worst and be happy when the best happens.

I really am excited about finally being able to sit across from Sabrina and meet her family. I know that whatever the future brings that I will be able to handle the situation. The streangth that I have and my amazing support system ensures that there is nothing that I cannot survive.

A Year in Blogland

2009-05-04T23:19:00.002-05:00

A year ago, today I started writing here, in the hopes that this would just be a place where I could vent and chronicle this journey for myself. I never really thought that anyone besides the people that I knew in person, okay my mom, would ever read what I had to say. Over this year though so much has changed, more than I ever imagined. The people that I have met and the stories that I have been privy to are so amazing that I have no words to describe how I feel about them. On the days when I think that there is no more that I can take, when this journey just becomes overwhelming I come here and all of you show up and find healing. The healing comes from every comment, every view, and every other story that all of you allow me into. There are the times when this journey actually goes right, when I cannot wait to come here and share the news, and you all show up and celebrate with me. Infertile is not a title anyone of us wanted, and this is not the club that we want to belong to and this makes the support even greater. The fact that so many people in the world can show up and support each other through something that is often horrendous, will never cease to amaze me. So, I am going to use this post to thank all of you, if I forget anyone it is not because I do not care, it is just my little brain gets overwhelmed.

Amanda, this would have never started without you. It was because of you that I had the courage to come out and tell this story. You are an amazing friend, I could never be able to articulate the ways you have made me a better person.

Mel, all of us infertiles owe you a debt of gratitude that I cannot begin to comprehend, thank you for bringing us all together and making me so much less lonely. I will never be able to put into words what you have done for me.

Sabrina, what can I say? You found me at my lowest, when I was ready to give up. You took a chance and let me into a group that has saved me more times than I can count. That would have been enough, just to have you next to me while I walked this path. The fact that you will be carrying our child still astounds me. Thank you is too minute a word.

Emily, my hopeless Emily, you have given so much hope. You have let me into your life in a way that I could have never imagined. Your strength is infectious, and I could have not gotten through this last year without you.

Amani, you are constantly amazing me and have taught me so much about overcoming what feels like insurmountable problems. The way that you are able to take a situation that would break others and use it to change the world so that others may realize their dreams, is awe-inspiring.

Allison, I could not ask for a better cheerleader. Even when you are working so hard with your own journey, you have always been there to encourage me.

Meredith, your writing takes my breath away, your talent as a photographer inspires me. Sharing your journey over the past year has given me the ability to open up here and learn that fear will get me nowhere.

Momsoon, thank you for making this world of surrogacy feel much less lonely.

Duck, you handle all of this with a grace that I can only hope to have. Thank you for teaching me that surrogacy is truly as beautiful as I imagine.

Daniele, you are always there to comment and support me even when things are not going well for you. Just reading your beautiful writing has given me the ability to heal more than you will ever know.

Cara, you give me the strength to face the days that I feel like will finally cripple me. The Bear and The Comedian keeps reaffirming that I am working towards what I really want.

Mrs. French thank you for the beauty you bring into my darkest days, and all the shopping you make me want to do.

Kristen, your constant comments make me want to keep doing this.

Corine, the humor and beauty you bring into my life is so important. It is also her birthday today (hint, hint, wink, wink)

Yolanda, you are my self-esteem coach. You do not blog nearly enough, I only say this because I miss you. Thank you for the amazing amount of support that you have given me, it mean more than you will ever know.

Lisa, you are my geeky comedian and the person that is never afraid to say what is on her mind. Thank you for the friendship and the smartass comments.

Cyn, you just amaze me.

Anonymous, who commented yesterday. Please feel free to e-mail me anytime.

To all of you, who I may have forgotten, thank you. All of you really mean the world to me. I never thought that this community would give me so much. It is hard to feel like I take so much more than I will ever give, but I am trying. Please go read some of these amazing women, I promise your life will change.

I look forward to being with all of you in the next year. To share all the moments that makes our lives and our world a little better.

An Infertile Life

2009-05-03T00:18:00.002-05:00

As part of National Infertility Awareness Week, I have been reading some new blogs, not commenting as much as I should, but learning new stories and processing the enormity of the issue. It is so easy to for me to let myself get wrapped up in my own little world; this cocoon is safer than out there in the big world. Out there, I live in fear of the questions and having to give answers that make others uncomfortable. It has been my experience that when others become uncomfortable the platitudes begin to fly. All the ones that we have heard at some point or another, those comments that are made to end the conversation and to lock our mouths. Those comments that just scream, "I am incapable of dealing with your pain, so just keep it to yourself."

Relaxing is not going to get me pregnant. Adoption is not that simple. A dog is not a child. My time will not just come, I have to struggle to parenthood. Going on vacation is not a cure for infertility, if it were I would be living in the Caribbean.

No doubt that this is an uncomfortable topic, it is painful, personal, and sad. Therefore, I have decided to let it all out. If you cannot read any further that is fine. If you do, I hope that it helps you understand or gives you somewhere to direct someone who is having a hard time understanding you.

I am just going to list all the ways that this marathon to parenthood has changed my life, the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

Any modesty that I began with is gone. Once you have discussed you sex life, been poked and prodded, had countless internal sonograms, and had everyone in the free world examine all the workings, there is just nothing left. My dignity has gone the same way. Not only has my body failed me but also it has come to define me, what I had of brains and talent no longer mean anything, I am just a broken body.

Over these years, I have walked around like a shell of a person. It is nearly impossible to continue with a real life when all your energy is focused on one event, one moment in time. I would guess that this is what it is like for someone with a substance addiction to function in the world, constantly searching for the next fix. My life has become an endless search for becoming a mother, I read, research, and thrive off this quest. At times, I understand that it is destroying my relationships, my future, and me; I am unable to give up. I cannot let this defeat me, with all the pain it brings; I just have to keep going. All those times that I have not gone to the baby shower, all the times that I have missed the birthday party, all the times that the birth announcements get tossed aside with nothing more than a glance, and all the announcements of pregnancy make me angry, have all stolen pieces of me and ended friendships. I do not want to be this person, I want to feel the joy and excitement, I want to be 100% elated for all these people because that is what they deserve, the pain just stands in the way. This all will bite me one day.

All the times that I have wanted to be with my friends and family, on the holidays and special occasions. Those times when I am there just thinking about next year, the future that will bring a child. I have robbed myself and them of these moments. I smile through these moments, and know that I am not the person that they deserve. No matter how much I want to give them all of me the majority of the time it is just not possible. There are different reasons in different situations but the result is always the same I am not fully there. Dealing with infertility is stealing my moments, my relationships, and major parts of my life. it is also stealing me away from my family and friends.

I feel a constant guilt for my infertility. I blame myself for not being a better person, for not being more deserving of motherhood, and for stealing the chance for my husband to be a father, my parents to have grandchildren, my sister to be an aunt, and my friends to have one more child in their life to love. This is not all about me, yes, I am the one with the problem, but it affects all of us. I know that there are times when they hurt just as bad as I do, because this is there loss as well. Of course, this is something that I have always kept to myself all these years. Seriously, how so you tell anyone that you feel this way about yourself? It is a burden to put that on other people.

Not only have I walked around with all this pain, trying so hard not to put it on others, but I also try so hard to be a whole person. It is hard to measure if I am successful at this because it is almost impossible for me to gauge how others see me. I am almost certain that this is a universal problem, the majority of people have no idea how others perceive them. I guess I could ask, but the truth is I do not really want to know. The feeling that I am not really a woman shadows the feeling of not being a whole person. Frustration and anger accompany the fact that my body refuses to do what the majority of women have no problem doing, just simply having a baby. As a child, I always believed that I would grow up get married and have a baby, sound pretty simple and straight forward. Not for me, no matter what I have done, there was just no way that this was going to happen for me. I am so unhappy with myself all of the time, even now when I have made peace with the fact that motherhood is not going to happen for me the way I dreamed. This anger just will not go away, these feelings of inadequacy sit in the pit of my stomach and in some ways, and they are eating me alive.

Over the years, it has become necessary for me to harden my heart, build walls that deflect all of these feelings, without these defenses I will crumble. The walls that protect me also keep me from living the way that I want. As much as I want people to be close to me, I am afraid that my damage will infect them. What this really means is that those who want to love me have to work that much harder, most people are unwilling to do this and I understand the result is that with each passing year I become more isolated. Just at the time when I should be surrounding myself with support, I am incapable of letting people get that close that easily. It also is not fair to the people who love me because they have to work that much harder to stay near me. I do not want to make them go through this with me and at the same time, I am incapable of surviving without them.

There was a time when this all got so bad, where I had sunk so deep, that living childless was the answer. I had resigned myself to having a life where no one would ever call me mother. It was actually a very liberating moment. I found enough strength in myself to know that I could learn to live without the one thing that I had always wanted. It was during this time that I learned to concentrate on myself; it was also when I learned a lot about healing and what happens to a heart that has been shattered. I was never going to be the same person again. At the time we decided that, we were ready to have a child and that we both were just lying to ourselves when we said that we did not, I learned that healing is not always lasting.

Complete healing may never happen there is a very real possibility that I will be broken forever. For a long time I told myself that once we got to parenthood, once we started the process the healing would begin. Now that we are there, I am learning that there is nothing that will make this all go away; I will forever be an infertile woman. The best that I can hope for is that the pain will fade and my heart will soften, and I am okay with that. More importantly, I know that it is no one else's responsibility to save me, especially the child that we are creating. I am learning to rise above this; I am learning to not allow being an infertile woman be the only thing that I am.

In all the sadness and tragedy to this, some wonderful things come out of infertility. Compassion, just being able to sit in those uncomfortable moments with someone, I am so much better at this than I ever was before. Not that being there is always easy, but after years of platitudes and stupid comments I have learned that there is nothing better than someone just being willing to sit and listen. No one has the power to fix these issues, but they do have the power to help me heal. It is as simple as just being able to listen and care. I am going to live with this forever, my family will live with this forever, and my child will live with this forever.

All these years will become part of my child's story. This makes me so aware of how everyone in this situation is treated because he/she will forever be a child of surrogacy a journey that he/she did not choose. I really overlooked this for a long time. Sure, I knew that one day this would be part of the story that created our child, but for some reason I was just not able to understand that one day this story would wholly belong to them. The best that I can do is making sure that they are created with as much love as I already feel for them.

In Limbo

2009-04-28T13:55:00.003-05:00

We are still waiting on the contracts and my genetic testing. So right now we are just waiting, nothing is happening except angry calls and pacing. I am just so ready for this part to be over. It does not help that I have a whole month off, which just adds to the waiting. I am currently in that space between one thing is about to end and another is about to begin. A month from now I will wish that I had this time back, but at the moment it is a bit overwhelming.

Getting my hopes up is just not something that I can allow myself at the moment. I am afraid that if my expectations are not met that I will just become more numb than I am now. Over the years I have dealt with all the disappointments by just growing a tougher skin. Each scab that has gotten pulled just leaves a thicker skin, and it is now to the point where I am afraid it will turn to stone.

Part of me believed that once we got this process started I might begin to soften, as if moving forward would be like an exfoliate. This has not been the case, it is not getting any worse which is wonderful, but it is also not getting any better. It is not a bad thing, it just is and for right now that is okay. Just being is not something that I have been able to do in a long time. In fact, it has been so long that I find it a bit uncomfortable, almost anxiety provoking in fact.

All these years have changed me. Some of the things have been for the best, but some have not. Maybe that is what this time is for. I need to redefine who I am now, learn where I fit now. Spending years as the inactive infertile has left me complacent. I guess for now it is just growing pains.

wow these are harder than i thought.

2009-04-19T21:29:00.002-05:00

Contracts!! Don't they sound like the most fun you can ever have. They are so much fun I am thinking of having my toenails pulled out next.

This is one of the most important and one of the most uncomfortable parts of surrogacy. This document is to protect all parties involved, legally define the relationship and in the end make it possible to take the baby home. In all the research I have done on surrogacy, I have found very little information on what is normally included in a contract and what others expect out of these contracts. So, I am going to try and give you an example of what we have done, what we feel is important, and what we have had to decide that we did not expect.

This is just the initial basics that you need to think about.

- Get a lawyer who specializes in third party reproduction law. Having someone who is already familiar with the process will save you a lot of time and a lot of money. I would also suggest finding someone who charges a flat rate, because I thought this was going to be cut and dry and it turned out to be anything but. We are currently on our second draft and I am thinking there is a good possibility for a third.

- Be clear about what you want. This is not the time to commit to things that you are unable or unwilling to do.

- Prepare yourself for questions that you never wanted to think about. Trust me they are in there and you are going to be very uncomfortable at moments, but more about that later.

The nitty gritty:

Compensation:
- One what dates are you going to pay your surrogate?
  - Most compensation starts at some point after the first positive blood test, and then in regular intervals thereafter.
- How much are you paying for housekeeping and childcare?
  - Make sure that you and your surrogate have an accurate idea of how much this is really going to cost. In the event that she is on bed rest the amount agreed on needs to cover everything that she will need to take care of her children and her home. The number may look scary, but it is also vital for everyone to know what will be needed in the worst-case scenario.
  - Come up with a limit for bed rest and one for the third trimester. I have never tried to clean a toilet 9 months pregnant, but I imagine it is not an easy task.
  - Remember that this is for the health of your child. I know I was initially not in love with the idea that she would have a house cleaner and I would still be cleaning my own house. Really, this is just to give her a hand when it is not in the best interest of your child for her to be doing all that work. Of course, I had these thoughts pre-Sabrina, post-Sabrina I would hire a cleaning crew for her right now; then again, I would also hire the celebrities of her choice to carry her around.
  - Just so there are not any questions of abuse of these services, put a daily cap on what will be paid out for these services. This helps everyone be clear on what is and is not permissible.
  - As with everything else this will be a personal experience, and what is right for me will not always be right for you.
Insurance
- How much life insurance are you going to purchase for your surrogate for the benefit of her family? Yes, I just said life insurance. Pregnancy and birthing are not risk free activities. While the chances are small, she is putting her life on the line. For us, there is no way that we could live with ourselves if we did not know that her husband and children would have a buffer financially if something were to happen to her. (I told you there were things that you did not want to have to think about.)
- Health Insurance!! Do not assume anything. Get it all in writing, once they have written it down they are legally obligated to fulfill their promises. One issue that we ran into was that our insurance will not cover the child while they are out of state, this is not written anywhere in our books. Thankfully, we found this out by asking and were able to make other arrangements.
Death, the part that we really do not want to talk about.
- What happens if the intended parents die? You need to identify who will take custody of the child if something were to happen.
- What happens if the surrogate dies, but life support could be used until the baby was viable? I warned you that this got nasty. For us, we have no interest in turning Sabrina into a human incubator. Nor do we want her family to have to watch her in that situation just so we can have our child. It is a horrible thing to think about, but it needs to be thought out. This is a situation that we both feel strongly about, and also one that none of us really wants to talk about, but I know we will all sleep better knowing that it is taken care of.
Legal representation
- It is important that everyone has an attorney. For some people this will make having to talk about these uncomfortable situations much easier, just let the lawyers talk to each other.
How much are you going to compensate for invasive and other procedures?
- Having a huge needle in your belly is uncomfortable. Who am I kidding, it is down right painful and terrifying. There are also all other kinds of procedures that hurt. What you are compensating for is pain and suffering, and these things fall under that category. There are additional fees associated with doing these procedures. I would say that it is best to define these procedures to the best of your ability, this helps with any confusion that could lead to a strained relationship later on.
- Along the same line it is preferable that you do some research on these procedures and decide what you may or may not want. This does not have to go in writing, but at least you will know what it means when someone starts spewing abbreviations at you.
Travel
- Where can the surrogate go and when? There are laws that make it impractical for her to travel outside her state after a certain amount of time. Surrogacy contracts are not enforceable in all states, in fact most states do not even recognize them. If you have questions about this ASK.
- If you are doing this without an agency, and with some agencies, you are going to have to work out these arrangements. It is important to define how much she and the person traveling with her will have for food and other incidentals.

The most important thing with these contracts is to be honest. This is the time to speak up. If the person decides not to work with you because of something, then it is a good guess that there would have been trouble when you are dealing with the situation. I understand the feeling of desperation and fear that comes with this relationship. You want to be the perfect person in the beginning because you just want them to like you. Think of it this way, when you first start dating someone how long does it take for you to finally be the real you? If you are like me, not long and defiantly before 9 months. It is better to know that you are not a right fit before your lives are forever entwined. The right person will come along.

For those of you that have been through this I would love to hear the things that worried, surprised, or made you laugh.

Toxic Anger

2009-04-14T11:29:00.001-05:00

Over the years, I have done a lot of research on planning my family, and this research has taken me to some very dark places. No one wants to be in the place where we are having to research alternative family making and there is nothing worse than reading all the stories about people who want to prey on us because of our desperation. Many people approach the business of creating a family from a place of distrust, and this distrust is often a posture that is necessary. Sad as it is, the fact is that there are many people who make a living promising others the sky, only to take what they can and run.
There is another reason for this distrust that I think a lot of people are reluctant to speak about. I know for myself, I have spent a very long time being angry, very angry. None of this is fair; my body is refusing to perform the most basic of biological functions. There are people who judge me every day for the decisions that I have made. There are days when I look at children and think that they were all put here just to remind me of what I will never have. Over the years I have missed events, because I cannot find it in me to be around children. While I love all the children in my life, they have also been the source of a lot of heartache. So on top of all the anger at my body, I am angry that the world can seem to keep turning while I am crushed. I am angry that there are people who do not want their children, who seem to pop them out on after the other, I am angry at all the people who judge me, I am angry at the world some days, and I am angry at all the people who tell me that I should not be angry and that the anger is just making things worse.
Here is where it gets tricky. From my observations there are some people out there who go into their relationship with their surrogate and forget where the anger belongs. My anger is my own and I am the only one who is allowed to play with it. I know this goes against everything that we were taught in preschool, but here it is appropriate. Just as I would never share a snotty rag with someone, because I would not want to give them an illness, I cannot share my anger either because it is just as infectious. I think that many people do not recognize this because it comes out in very odd little passive aggressive ways. The most common is being annoyed about the money that must be spent. Now this is a very fine line, and I would tell anyone that you should never pay out anything that is not spelled out in your contract. This is the whole point of a contract. Sure there are going to be little things that can be forgotten, but this is why you take your time and make sure that you are not forgetting anything. That piece of paper is there for everyone’s protection and should not be rushed, even when it feels like you are never going to get it done.
This is also why I think that is important that intended parents be emotionally ready to enter into a relationship with their surrogate. It is not easy to do this, but it is incredibly important for everyone involved. Why add stress to an already stressful situation? A few more months is really nothing in the scheme of things, and it really is nothing to ensure that you have the healthiest baby possible. I know that I have given up a lot in deciding to use a surrogate. I know that there are going to be times when I am going to sit in the floor and cry because I am missing out on parts of the experience. I also know that I am going to experience something that very few people ever do; a relative stranger (who will forever be a part of my family) is willing to give up at least a good year of her life so that my dream can come true. I do not want any of my own issues to get in the way of having this experience.
The only way to ensure this is a good experience for all of us is to make sure that we are clear about our expectations from the beginning. How would I be any different from all the scammers out there, if I promised things that I had no intention of doing? If you do not want to share pictures or have any contact after the birth, then you need to make that clear from the beginning. You should never promise anything just so someone will work with you. That is unfair to that person, but more importantly it is unfair to your child. This is their history and their beginnings in the world. Do you really want that all to be built on a lie? One day they are going to have to be told, whether you think they will or not, and do you really want to have to tell them about the lie that started their life. Yes, creating a child is all about us right now and our desire to be parents, but one day it will all be about the child and they deserve to be created in a place of honesty and trust.
If this post has offended you, I am not sorry. It is my opinon that things that offend often hold truth.

Spinning Head

2009-04-07T20:15:00.004-05:00

I never thought we would get here. The contracts should be ready for review by Thursday!! I know it blew my mind too. With every step that we take this becomes more real to me. it is not that all this was not real, it is that I never really let myself truly feel like we were ever going to be parents. Sure I always knew that this is where we were heading, but I just never really believed that we were going to get anywhere close.

While I have said this a thousand times, I worry that all these years have obliterated parts of me. The fact that I can let myself get excited about pieces of paper make me feel like I can recover form this. One day these scars will fade, like stretch marks. At the same time I am careful to guard myself, there are still a million things that can go wrong. I am just so grateful to have all these amazing people on my side. In this adventure the most important component, is not the quality of the materials or the experts on the team, it is the people who are willing to walk through the dark forest when you are completely lost. Once you have these people with you, all the dead ends and u-turns are so much easier. Even when some of these people come with snide remarks, often made out of ignorance, they are valuable.

Thus far, the contracts have been the most stressful. You find this amazing person that you want to work with and then you have to dig through all the details of their life. A personal relationship that, to me at least, feels like a marriage turns into what at times feels like a hostile takeover. I know that this will all go away once we get through this, but it is just so uncomfortable. Like medicine that you know is working because it burns, getting the contracts done and getting them done right is painful but important if you want to keep your body parts. No matter how much we want to make this all about the personal relationship, and I think for us it is 99.99% of the time. I also want to make sure that all our butts are covered under the law. Our contract process has been fairly straight forward, and I think that can be attributed to the fact that all of us feel like we can speak our minds about the whole process. That and we try to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing.

LAUGHTER!!! It will save you more than it will ever cost you.

Furbabies!!

2009-04-05T10:03:00.003-05:00

I have said a million times that a pet is in no way a replacement for a child, but they are wonderful to have around. These are my current babies!!

Maggie, the old cranky kitty.

Daisy, our little kitten, who is 9 but still acts like a little kitty.

We have to give them catnip bags to get them to sit this close to each other.

Outside for some supervised play time, that is their dada's problem.

Adventures in Insurance

2009-04-02T15:58:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned how much I hate relying on others to do things for me? This is the control freak in me coming out. I know, not very conducive to the whole surrogacy experience. Good thing that I recognize this and have informed Sabrina that she has my full permission to slap me upside the head if I pull the whole controlling crazy lady act on her. It is also good that most of the insanity I manage to keep to myself, which I think is part of the reason that I never considered myself a control freak. I mean are you really a control freak if you do not make others suffer along with you?
So now we are caught in the most sadistic game of “Mother May I” that anyone has ever played. You know the game, we used to play as kids, where you would make your friends do insane things just so they could boss others around too, the one where if you forgot to say “Mother May I” you had to go back to the start. Really it was just a game to torture the hyper kids, and show everyone who your bestest friend was, or at least make others try to promise you that you could be their best friend if you would only let them win. Well now I am playing the adult version. This time I am waiting on doctors, lawyers, this specialist and that specialist. Nothing that I do is going to make any of this go faster.
Then there is the whole take a tiny step forward and take 6 giant leaps back. We just found out that our insurance is not going to cover the baby while they are out of state. Sabrina is not going to come here to give birth, she has a life you know. So now I have the fun task of trying to figure out how to get the munchkin covered. Easier said than done. The first hurdle is trying to get people to understand that you are calling about a child that has not been conceived. After they quit laughing in your face, you then have to convince them that you are not insane. Some of these insurance people are real pains to deal with.
Here is a sample conversation:
Yes, I know that it seems way too early to be talking about this Mr./Ms. Insurance Person, but you have to understand that I am a newly diagnosed control freak.
NO, there is no code for that, I am not requesting treatment for myself, I just want to find out about covering a child that may or may not be born a year or so from now.
NO, not an elephant, a human child.
YES, I know that it only takes 9 months to make one of those, I refer you back to the start of this conversation, you are dealing with a C-O-N-T-R-O-L F-R-E-A-K.
EXCUSE ME, I do not need everyone in your call center laughing at me, could you please take me off the speaker phone?
YES, I understand that no one is going to believe this one. That is your fault for not being a more credible person.
Somewhere in all this they do manage to pull it together long enough to actually give me some information. Like I said this is just an example, and has been infused with humor. Most of the time I am talking to an idiot who just passes me on to the idiot supervisor after I get them confused enough. I know that we will get this worked out, I just wish I could find one person with half a brain to speak with.

DNA Experiment

2009-03-30T22:37:00.002-05:00

If I seem to be a little detached from the situation, it is because I am. There is nothing that I can do about the whole thing. It is either going to be the bonus or we are going to go back to the way things always were going to be. This is weird, I feel that I should be excited about all this, but I just cannot be. I bit the bullet and went to see the genetics people. It was a surreal experience to say the least. Over the years, I have been in a lot of doctors’ offices, way more than I care to admit, but this one was among the weirdest. First, there was the singing receptionist that was annoying to say the least. I do not even know what she was singing but it was annoying. Here I am sitting there waiting to find out if there is any way that I can possibly be the biological mother of my child so to say that I was nervous is an understatement and she was sitting there singing. Second, the office of the genetic counselor looked like an office of someone who was running a scam. You know how in the movies those offices are always clean and neat but there is nothing in them. There were two chairs, a desk, a computer that was off, and that was it, not a picture, nothing. At first, I thought it might be one of those shared offices, until I realized that her name was on the outside of the door. Okay, so that is fine. Then there was the lady who took my blood. She knew that I was there because we were trying to create a probe to test our embryos with; I know this because the genetic counselor told her so while I was standing there. The whole time we are waiting for the blood to fill the tubes, which took forever, she told me all about her sister who did not have any children. Many of you know that when someone finds out that you are infertile or seeking treatments to be fertile, you hear some strange stories. While I have heard most of them, this was a new one. I heard all about how wonderful her sister’s life was, living in San Diego, sailing on the weekend, and taking vacations at a moments notice. Only problem is, I like living in seasons, I get seasick, and do not have time for vacations. I guess she was trying to make me comfortable, or make herself comfortable. It is always that way; people do not know that it is fine to just not say anything. To tell you the truth I thought I was way past this point. I just sit there and smile, there is nothing that I say; I know that all that talk is just other peoples’ way of handling an uncomfortable situation. I just never thought that I was going to hear it from someone who works with infertile people most of the day. Whatever, it is just part of this whole thing. I go back into the strange office and talk to the doctor, who just happened to be a resident as a pediatrician, and just happened to train under my pediatrician. One of those small world things, but then again I do not live anywhere near where I grew up, so a bit stranger.
It is going to be another 9, long weeks before the results come back. There is nothing more we can do but wait. I guess I should get used to that concept.
While we are waiting, we are getting the contracts out of the way, since it does not matter who the genetic mother is for that purpose. At least this way we are not going to be thrown off schedule too much, if at all.
There are things that you learn along the way in IF, never get your hopes up, because what looks like the best thing in the world will come back to bite you in the butt if you let it.
_______________

Now for the experiment part. The fabulous Sabrina has a little project going over on her blog. Go over and see what it is, and then come back here because I am helping her in this endeavor. If you have any other ideas, please let us know. Think of it as economic stimulus you actually have a say in!!

birther of dreams

2009-03-24T22:36:00.002-05:00

A little over a year ago, we were sitting in the office of a surrogacy agency; the place that we believed would be our salvation. No decision we have ever made about creating our family was ever taken lightly, every turn we have taken has been calculated and thoroughly researched and debated. In truth, this is how we live our lives; we deal with highly emotional situations by taking them to a very cerebral level and working everything out while standing outside the whole ordeal. It is called protection, without this method I would have been nothing more than a bundle of nerves in a padded cell years ago. The agency turned out to be a bitter disappointment, an utter train wreck of a situation. One that almost made us make the decision to live the rest of our lives childless, we just could not deal with that type of pain again. The fact is that we were being taken advantage of because we were in a vulnerable situation, and to me there is nothing lower than those who seek their fortune on the backs of others desperation and misery. That was over a year ago though.

Now life is so incredibly different, we are in a good place, which frankly is even more frightening. I know disappointment and failure, they are very good friends, so good in fact they are on the Christmas card list. We know how to fail, it is success that we are uncomfortable with, and it is just something that we never really learned to excel at because we were always so much better at failing. This is no ones fault but our own, we constructed our lives to ensure that failure was always the outcome.

I wrote a post some time back about how lonely this world of surrogacy can be. We are out on the third rail, in the place where we have given up and are not doing anything that appears to be for the common good of humanity. I understand these feelings, I have had these feelings, but at the end of the day we made our decision. In writing that post, something amazing happened, something that I would have told you was impossible a year ago.

I got an e-mail. Just a simple note from a complete stranger asking me to be part of a support group. She was someone whose blog I had commented on, someone who gave me hope that surrogacy was not as frightening as I once believed. I cannot recall how long it had been between my finding her and her finding me, but I know it could not have been that long. The night that I found her, I read every word she had written. I had found someone who took her job of being a surrogate very seriously and still managed to keep a sense of humor about the whole thing. This is tough on either side, and if you are unable to laugh, you are going to lose your mind. Sabrina did this with such ease that I was in awe. I mean, who tags themselves as "like the tooth fairy only fatter"? This was the kind of person that I needed by my side, and I was prepared to do whatever it took to keep her there.

I joined the group and watched as she grew two beautiful babies for P-Daddy, and at the same time grew their relationship. I was envious I wanted that relationship with my surrogate. After all, this woman and her family are going to forever be a part of my family. When she gave birth to the princesses I cried, P-Daddy was now a daddy and Sabrina was officially the "birther of dreams."

We e-mailed, talked on the group, and became facebook friends. She did not know that I had made the decision that I would wait forever for her to carry my child. I would have walked through fire to have the honor of having her care for my child while I was unable, and at the same time I felt that I would never live up to P-Daddy. Let's face it, I am not a single man, and carrying another woman's child is a whole other ball of wax, than carrying a child of a man who is not your husband. This was something that I have always understood. Us women come with complexities that men do not, there is the obvious jealousy that is bound to show up and then there is the whole micromanaging. Face it, when women get pregnant they TALK and TALK about everything and I have heard more dos and don'ts of pregnancy that I should have at least ten kids following me around. Then again, none of this is me. I started this process knowing where my feelings belonged, they belonged to me and were not anyone else's problem and I have no right to go around throwing these feelings all over someone else.

I was just grateful that Sabrina was going to be there to walk down this road, helping me to navigate our surrogacy adventure.

Wait, what is this, a facebook message with Sabrina's number. What an honor, I was going to speak with Sabrina, the woman who had most likely unknowingly, pulled me out of a hole. I was actually in such a hurry to talk to her that I did not even bother to read the rest of the message. We talked forever on the phone, and while she knew all my crazy to an extent, she really learned just how nutty I really am. We talked about it all and then some. It was one of the best conversations I have ever had with someone, and at the same time one of the strangest, we knew each other and yet this was the first time we had ever heard the others voice.

A week later, I was cleaning out my e-mails, and there is was the words that stopped my heart. Sabrina had offered to be our surrogate. She had chosen to go through another pregnancy so that we could be parents. I had not asked, she had just offered. Now what was I going to do? I had spent hours on the phone with her and not once mentioned that I would love for her to be our surrogate, that it was my dream, that I would have given the world to have her carry our child. There was no one else in the world that I could even imagine doing so. Of course if she had not wanted to that would have been fine and I would have found another wonderful woman. In the end, I would still have Sabrina in my life and at the end of the day that is what mattered. So I called her again, with monster sized butterflies in my stomach, I thought she was going to say no. I mean I cannot even finish reading an e-mail what would make her think that I was going to be a good parent. I told her that I felt like an idiot and that we would be honored to have her carry our baby. I know that she said yes a millisecond later, but it felt like a million years.

So here we are!!! The amazing Sabrina is our surrogate. We are aiming for August to do our transfer. I say aiming because I make no firm plans when it comes to baby making. There is nothing that means more to me than becoming a mother, and no one else that I would rather have to carry our child than Sabrina.

and i thought the week before was crazy

2009-03-07T22:58:00.002-06:00

We found a new RE. As for the other RE, it was not him personally; it is the stupid state of Alabama. It just happens to be something that is not allowed, then again maybe not prohibited, but no one will do the transfer. Which is fine, we are just going to move the show to Texas, where my parents live.

As you can imagine a new RE brings all kinds of new things. I have come to expect this. If you want easy and uneventful do not go through infertility. All the things that have blown me away during this process do not even come close to what happened at 2:05 on March 5^th. It is three days later, and I am still not sure that I have gotten over the shock. In fact, I know that I have not because I am still having a hard time believing this whole situation is real. I am still waiting to wake up with everyone laughing at me.

What is the big news you ask?

First, a little background information so that this all makes a bit more sense. I have a bleeding disorder (von Willebrand's) which is genetic. I have a very mild form, which has still managed to wreak havoc in my life. Potentially, I could pass this on to my child and it is possible that they will have a worse type. It was a no brainer that we would use an egg donor. Never have I had a huge need to be the biological parent of my child. To me, biology is such a small part of being a parent that is just never mattered. You can imagine my shock when I learned that it might be possible to use my own eggs, and we could screen the embryos before we implanted one.

I still cannot believe that I am able to write that sentence, and it is true. My eggs, my genes without the scariest bad part, a child that may have my eyes, someone in my life that is actually genetically related to me. These are all things that I could never imagine and I was fine without. Now that they are a possibility, I am a little freaked out, a lot excited, and completely guarded. I have learned, a thousand times over, not to get my hopes up when it comes to infertility treatments. Many things still need to be figured out, none of which I fully understand. All I know is that I am going to be stuck with a needle a lot and spending a lot of time in the doctor's office. I just never thought that this would ever happen to me, things like this just do not happen to me.

Then I keep coming back to the whole idea that none of this ever mattered to me. So what are all these new feelings? Where did this excitement come from? I know that part of it is not having to tell my child that I am not genetically related to him/her, and having to help him/her work through all the feelings and issues that come along with that revelation. It was something I was prepared to do but certainly not something that I was looking forward to doing. The main reservation had to watch my child wrestle with all the feelings that were so hard for me to reconcile for myself. Personally, there was the fact that I was going to have to do a stepparent adoption, which always just felt so wrong to me. Yes, the child would be mine once he/she was born; there was just something about being called a stepparent that always bugged me. Not that there is anything wrong with being a stepparent, one who I consider my parent plain and simple raised me. It was just in this particular situation. We will have been married for at least nine years by the time the baby arrives, and if it had not been for my hard work the baby would never exist, so being called a stepparent in a legal document just seemed to negate my roll in this whole situation. That is all behind us now, in theory.

I know that one day, like at the birth, I will be able to relax and be happy about this completely new development. Right now, though I am still really freaked out by the idea. Which also makes me feel bad, because I know, there are so many people out there that would love to get this news and most likely never will. I am going to sit with this new development and be as happy as I can about this amazing new experience that we are going to have.

Merrill part 2

2009-03-07T08:39:00.002-06:00

She came home from the hospital on Thursday, and is doing great. The doctors think that she had a delayed reation to her MMR. I am just so happy that she is better.

Miss Merrill

2009-03-02T21:03:00.002-06:00

My cousin's daughter, Merrill, is in the hospital. She is running a high fever that seems to have no known cause. Please keep them in your thoughts. http://thestoryfamily.blogspot.com/

At the speed of light

2009-03-02T03:07:00.002-06:00

Remember when I said there was still A LOT to be done, well I tried to do it all in a week. Suddenly, I have lists of things to do and I never make lists. Most of the time I am flying by the seat of my pants, it is a good day when I get out of the house with matching clean socks and all my junk. I know enough to know that surrogacy cannot be accomplished by doing things on the fly.

My RE, who I loved, told me that he would not do the transfer. I was so angry at him for going back on his word. Then I realized that it was better for everyone to have a doctor who was comfortable with the situation. It is easy to forget just how unique surrogacy is in the world. Being in the middle of the process, which is so all consuming, can make you lose perspective fast. Having others put this fact into perspective makes me want to fight them, until I realize that we are doing something that does not happen everyday. Further, we are doing something that many people do not even begin to understand.

I had to find us a new clinic and fast. Luckily, I have many wonderful people in my corner that helped me do this. I contacted the clinic on Friday and we have our phone consultation on Thursday. There is a ton of paperwork to fill out and most of it is complete. As much as I hate paperwork, this was better and worse all at the same time. I got to the "mother/wife/female partner" section and just started filling it out, I have filled out so many of these forms it was just natural. Then it hit me, they really do not need my information, other than why I cannot carry, all of my medical history is irrelevant. Wow, that was a huge moment. A year ago I would have sobbed for hours over that realization, now I am just happy to move on and that it takes a lot less time. The sting was there for a fleeting moment and then it was nothing but happiness and knowing just how fortunate I am that such wonderful women exist.

Lawyers, my favorite subject. We have the contracts, to write the contracts. These go out tomorrow. This decision was not hard, meeting our attorney was the only good thing to come out of the whole bad agency insanity.

Then one thing I was sure was finished suddenly needed to be redone. We had finally decided on an egg donor, after almost a year. I called the agency to let them know that we had our surrogate. They in turn informed me that our chosen donor had been diagnosed with Hep C. Therefore, it was back to the drawing board. Surprisingly, we have found two strong possibilities and it only took us a day and a half.

I feel like I really got a lot accomplished this week. This is funny because I also know this will look like nothing a month or two from now.

On top of this I turned 33 on Saturday. Helped write adoption policy and procedure where I am interning. Best of all I got accepted to grad school. The program that I am doing will be finished by the time the baby is born, because I got advanced standing. Plus, it will keep me so busy that I will not have time to sit and wait for the baby to be born, you know kind of like watching water while trying to get it to boil.

Standing on the edge of reality

2009-02-24T23:54:00.002-06:00

My hands are shaking, my lips are numb, and there are so many emotions running through me that I am unable to identify a single one. What has been a plan, detailed as it was, and is slowly becoming a reality. There are still a million details, but the biggest obstacle is out of the way. For the past 13 years, I have been focused in one way or another on becoming a mother. I have been through every conceivable possibility besides conception. With every option, I have immersed myself into the research and then made an educated decision, and each of those discarded/failed options have taken chunks of my heart. I am not the same person who started this journey, just as I would not be the same person if I had just been living a typical life for 13 years. With infertility though I have a center square, Infertile Park, and a few side streets College Ave., Wedding Lane, Day to Day Alley, and a few others whose names change off and on. I am comfortable in this little town of mine, filled with dark and rainy days, with a horrible storm that blows through a few times a year, but the temperature is comfortable and I have set down roots. The other day I began to notice that the bushes are overgrown and it is more uncomfortable to sit on the benches.

Someone showed up in town and suddenly I am not so comfortable anymore. This person is unlike many I have or ever will meet, she is the rare person is willing to give so much to a relative stranger. Sure there have been and always will be people in my life that will pick me up after the fall, but she is the one who will walk with me down this path, with a big fat belly. My feelings about this whole situation are so odd, I want to describe every emotion as they come, but they are coming so fast that I cannot catch them. We have talked this over for weeks and I was very cerebral about the whole thing, I learned a long time ago to not let my emotions get too involved too early on in the process. Tonight it all just hit me, we are really going to be intended parents, we are really going to have our surrogate, and she is a real live human who is willing to give us the ultimate gift.

The biggest thing that I was not prepared for, is this feeling of responsibility. I want to do this all perfectly so that she gets everything she deserves, minus the marching band (that might get a bit annoying). Being a mother to an infant who needs me for everything is something that I can handle, and something that I am as prepared for as I can be. Being an Intended Mother is a completely different thing. I feel responsible for someone who is a mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend to many, and my responsibility to her is my responsibility to them.

I am so happy, my whole family is so happy. We are here standing on the edge of reality, right where we want to be.

There are still a thousand things to work out, and I will blog every moment of them. I just need to let this all soak in for a moment.

Thank you all who stood beside me, this has been a long road, and there are still many miles to go. I could not have done this without you.

The fear of weight lifting

2009-02-16T20:46:00.002-06:00

This pass week has found me living in this constant state of mild panic that feeling right before the major panic attacks hit. In my life, I have had one major panic attack, and it was years ago but that feeling memory of that feeling is imprinted in my body. So living in a state where I feel like the next moment I am going to fall apart is SCARY. What is even more frightening is that I have no idea what is causing me to be in this state. I am at a moment in my life where everything is moving along just as it should, in some areas years later than scheduled, but it is still where I want to be. I just feel that I am about to have a massive breakdown.

For the first time in many years, I am not scrambling to make pieces of my life fit into the boxes that I need to feel functional. There are those things that I am going to have to wait for, but that is nothing new. It feels like I have been waiting for something or another all my adult life and I am sure that I will always be waiting for something, that is just life. Maybe, just feeling at peace is what is causing this feeling of panic. Leave it to me to be afraid to of peacefulness.

Then I thought maybe it was working in an adoption agency. Focusing so much of my energy on making it possible for others to be parents on the surface is something that could throw someone in my situation into a full-blown panic. I have found it to in reality be a very different experience. Many days I am with people who are in the place I was years ago. That place where the whole world was spinning, where I questioned everything that I thought I knew, and where I felt so horribly hopeless. I sometimes visit that place, but I have learned that I am so far from that place that I really can only recognize it in others. On those days when I am on the infertility Tilt-a-Whirl it still is not the same ride that I once rode. I see in these couples the pain, anger and frustration that lives right below the surface. I am grateful that I am not where they are, and as cold as that sounds it is because I am not there that I am able to do everything in my power to make them parents.

In some ways, I am afraid that all the years of pain and anger have turned me into a cold person. I want to believe that I have come through those days with only small wounds. I also want to believe that there is a tree in my backyard that blooms hundred dollar bills. I am scarred, and I will never be the same person I was before I knew that my path to parenthood would be a marathon that lasted for years (and I hate running). Infertility changes everything that you believe about yourself and the world. No matter how much I hope and wish that this were not true I know that I am forever changed. Some of these changes are wonderful and some are horrible and really most of them are somewhere in the middle. In some ways, I am more compassionate, understanding and patient. The worst part is that there is an anger that I know will never go away, a rage that I will never be able to rid myself of fully.

Some days I am still enraged about our situation. I walk past a family and SLAP there it is that anger. All the questioning of who I am as a person. It scares me, how quickly the feelings well up. What is good is that it goes just as quickly as it came. I am getting better, I have accepted this process, I am even excited and grateful that I get the opportunity to experience something that so few people ever really have happen.

Wounds heal, wounds heal, and wounds have to heal. Unhealed wounds become infected until the body is no good anymore. As I have said many times before I spent many years miserable, what some people would call "teen angst" only multiplied by a million. I distinctly remember one day saying (and fully believing) that I was miserable because it was comfortable. It was, that place where the whole world was upon me was where I was comfortable, it really was a warm and squishy. I am over that and have been for years, and a long time ago I learned that being happy was so much easier than the misery. Now I am just afraid that I got too comfortable being angry, that the anger snuck in hiding behind the happiness.

Deciding which method to start a family with, dealing with health issues, and all the frustration and pressure that comes with the package puts the weight of the world on your shoulders. You learn to deal with it and one day it just becomes normal. Then something happens and so much of that weight lifts. At that moment you realize what the real cost of infertility has been, or at least you think you do, and then you realize that there are going to be more days to come.

The post that might ensure I am never a mother

2009-02-05T18:59:00.003-06:00

Tag, you’re it: Emily, Amani, Cyn, Duck

If you’re reading along with me, your instructions:
1. Find your sixth picture folder and in that folder, the sixth picture
2. Post it on your blog with some of the background of the picture
3. Tag four others and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been tagged.

This was my cousin's 30th birthday, it was a 70s theme. I have on a Sex Pistols shirt. It was a wild night to say the least. I am proud of the fact that I made the tutu. The thing that I regret is that the test run for my hair was soooo much better.

Wow, you mean I am still a person?

2009-02-04T21:40:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I forget that I am an independent human and not just a mad woman on a quest to become a mother. It took a very painful facial, from the East German judge, to remind me of this fact. For the past two/three (really I have stopped counting) year I have done very little for myself. I said that I was doing things for me, but all those "things" revolved around making our family complete. I don't even have the kid and I have already lost ME.

For my last semester as an undergrad, I have to work in a social service agency, which means for the first time in a long time the majority of my day is not spent at home. It also means that I have very little time to be in the tunnel vision world of becoming a mother. Part of me loves this break, of course now I am just focused on making other women mothers (I am working at an adoption agency). Another me feels that I HAVE to take this break for a moment. I need to remember what life was like before this nonexistent human took over, so that when he/she finally does materialize I can remember that there is life beyond being his/her mother. One day he/she will not need me, so I am going to have to find something else to occupy my time.

I am taking this whole "taking care of myself" thing very seriously. Some of it I really need to do, like lose some weight, and other things I just really like to do, like getting my massages. What I am finding out is that it is hard to put the focus back on me. We are really at a stage in the process where there is nothing more that I can do, so I am not really feeling guilty. I am doing what I can. Being the best person that I can, physically, mentally and spiritually, I hope is going to allow me to be a better mother.

Still, there are times when I miss being in the position where my every move brought us a step closer to parenthood. I have never been good at giving up control, which funnily enough is something that I have only really seen in myself over the past few years. I am also learning that I am uncomfortable just being myself. In fact, I am almost to the point of hating parts of myself, which is not such a bad thing, because those are the things that I know I need to work on changing. On the other hand, there are parts of me that I really admire, parts that I forgot existed.

Right now the surrogacy adventure has become an adventure in introducing myself to myself again. Something that is really uncomfortable and wonderful at the same time.

Still Here

2009-01-21T15:42:00.002-06:00

I am still here. Before you all send out the search party.

This is my final semester as an undergraduate, I am applying to graduate school, I am trying to clean and do laundry, and I am also attempting to rule the world. See I am a very busy lady, and I also know that none of you are going to accept any of these excuses.

Our profile went out 2 weeks ago. I try very hard not to think about this. Somewhere, a woman is reading about us and maybe considering giving us the greatest gift ever. Then again, she could be reading about us and laughing, so hard that she pees her pants, at the thought of us ever being parents. In all honesty, we are not exactly the most normal couple ever, we certainly don't look like normal people. I just hope that she is out there. Then there is the fact that there is someone out there who has stolen my heart.

In good news, we have narrowed down the potential egg donors down to FOUR. I am also happy to report that we did not even have to resort to pulling numbers out of a hat. In the end it really came down to women who we could see ourselves being friends with. Now I just have to keep myself from looking at new applicants, which involves a lot of hand slapping.

Once again, we find ourselves in a holding pattern. In that place where we do everything we can to distract ourselves. In that place where we try not to let ourselves dream too big. In that place where our dreams have taken on their own lives and wander around in our minds. The difference now is that we are getting closer, closer than we ever thought.

It seems like a lifetime ago that we started down this path and now we are really starting. It may only be small steps, and we very well may fall on our butts, but we are walking. Then again we have been here before and the crash was horrifying. I am really trying to keep those memories of the past where they belong, way far away. Those scars are carried with us though. We know that the stove is hot, but we also know that we have to be willing to risk the burns to get the yummies.

It may not be this year, but soon we are going to bring our baby home.

Thank you all for waiting around for me to post. I will try to be better.

All of you mean the world to me. I really do not think that I would have made it through last year without all of you. Just knowing that I am not alone makes the world a sunnier place.

sick

2009-01-07T14:18:00.002-06:00

I meant to write a really long post today. Then this huge truck, with a ton of virus slammed into me, so please be patient. I promise a good post in a few days.

The Making of a Parent

2008-12-10T11:38:00.003-06:00

The NYT's article (no I am not trying to beat a dead horse) brought up a good question, one that all of us in the IF world ask ourselves at some point. "What makes a parent?" On some level, I think that everyone fears that his or her child will look at them one day and use the words of Dr. Seuss, "You are not my mother, you are a Snort!" All children, regardless of how they came to be, will one-day wish that their parents were anybody else. For all of us there will come a day when our sweet, darling, loving child will rip our hearts out and stomp them into the dirt.

I grew up in a very blended family that has prepared me well for dealing with the feelings of not being the biological parent of my child. I am the adopted child from my mother's first marriage, who has been raised by me "step" father since I was two, and my sister is the biological child of my mother and "step" father. My "step" father is my DAD. He has been there ever since I can remember. Over the years, he has mended my boo-boos, suffered through my math homework, dealt with my teen years and loved me through every moment. I am his daughter and I dare you to tell him any differently. My mom has been my mother since I was 12 days old. She loves me just as she loves my sister, who she birthed. We both drive her crazy, make her worry, and we are both the fabric that makes up her heart. My parents are my parents because they love me not because we share genetics. All of us are a family because we share our history, not because we share our DNA.

Birth mothers, surrogates, egg donors, sperm donors, and anyone else I have left out, are very special people who give us the ability to become parents, but they are never the parents of our children. Parents are the people who know more about us than we know about ourselves. They are the people who would rather die than see their child in pain for one moment. For every moment of our lives, they celebrate, cry and feel every emotion a thousand times over. I know this, just as I know that it will be dark when the sun sets.

One day my child will wish that I was not their mother. When that day comes my heart will break because he/she are getting older and are able to imagine a day when he/she will not need me to care for them, it will not break because I believe that maybe I am not their mother. I have been his/her mother for all the years that we have tried to make him/her a reality, and I will be his/her mother forever whether they like it or not. I am his/her mother because I love them so deeply and care about them so much that I could not begin to use words to convey these feelings.

This is the strangest part about IF; we become parents long before we ever have a child. Many of us spend years living our lives around people who do not exist. There are moments when I feel like an insane person living with this being that is very real to only me. For many years now, this being occupies most of my days. At some point, I began to realize that what sometimes feels like insanity is just the world's longest pregnancy.

Over the years, I have watched my friends prepare for the birth of the life that had overtaken their bodies. Not one of them prepared in that same way, but there was always one common denominator. RESEARCH. In their own ways, they reduced their anxiety about becoming parents, by becoming experts in their chosen field of neuroses. I have done the same, only I started a little further back in the process. I went into depth with all our options to become parents, adoption in all its various incarnations, infertility treatments, childlessness and surrogacy. Each subject got my complete attention for months on end. When surrogacy and egg donation became our chosen path to parenthood, my focus of research changed. I now research furniture, safety measures, schooling options and the thousand other things that children bring with them. Many of the conversations that parents have during pregnancy and after birth have already taken place between Joe-Bob and me. In fact, some of our epic fights have revolved around the non-existent being that lives with us.

One day my child may see me as a Snort, and that is okay because I know in my heart that our souls are made of the same matter even if our DNA is not.

Hazel

2008-12-01T14:43:00.002-06:00

A dear friend of ours is having a really horrible time. In short, her daughter swallowed a battery from a remote and is now fighting to recover. Please go over and read the story. Please let everyone know how dangerous those little batteries are when swallowed, remember these batteries are in those cards that talk and sing songs. Most of all please keep Hazel and her parents in your thoughts and prayers.

Her Body, My Baby and another Intended Mother’s Feelings

2008-11-30T23:43:00.001-06:00

"Her Body, My Baby" ran in the New York Times on Sunday. Again, I am reminded of the ignorance that we are up against in educating people about the special way that our child will come into the world. We are by no means wealthy, paying for surrogacy means sacrificing as it does for many others. We are not doing this so that we can have a child that looks like us; we are using an egg donor so the child will not look anything like me. We do not look at our surrogate as a commodity, she will be a very special part of our family. I have no issues with not giving birth to my child, my mother did not give birth to me but she is no less my mother.

We are doing this because it was the best option for us. We want to be mommy and daddy from day one. As an adopted child, I know that I would not be able to deal with an open adoption arrangement. I have thoroughly researched open adoption, not just a few personal stories, I went to the Psychology and Social Work Journals, I talked to professionals who deal with adopted children, and I did a lot of soul searching. In the end, I learned that open adoption is not what I thought it was and that my preconceived notions were wrong, but I also knew that it was not something that was right for my family.

I do not begrudge Alex and her husband their feelings on surrogacy, and I would never want to minimize the pain that someone feels going through this journey. For me it was important to work through the years of pain and heal the wounds left by infertility before I went into this process. Educating myself in every way possible was really important. I want to go into this journey with my eyes, heart and mind open and clear, because everyone involved in this process deserves that from me. Sure there are going to be moments when all this fails, but at least for now I know that I will be able to handle what will come up in this journey. In my opinion, it is something that many women do not do and it can lead to panic and heartache for everyone. My main problem is that she has chosen to word her journey and chosen to show pictures that convey the stereotypes that I am trying so hard to dispel, the same stereotypes that both our children are going to come up against if they ever choose to share how they came into the world. I will be the first to admit that I too thought that most surrogates were women who needed the money, but after a tiny bit of research (and I do not have the power of the New York Times), it was obvious that this was not the case. The altruism in surrogacy, which Alex dismisses, is a real thing there are women who do this for free, the ones who do not are not desperate and they would be offended to hear someone say that their motives were purely financial. Compensation is difficult but the feelings we have about it need to be dealt with before this journey begins.

Reading the comments bothered me more than the actual article, which is usually the case. "Why not adopt a child with special needs?" Parents who have children with special needs are my heroes; it is a job that takes so much commitment and an incredible amount of fortitude. Choosing surrogacy left us open to having a child with special needs in a way that adoption would not have. What bothers me about that comment is that people just assume because we could not conceive on our own that we would be appropriate parents for a special needs child. If we have a special needs child, it is something that we can handle, but not a situation that we find ourselves equipped to handle well enough that we should actively pursue. Maybe it makes us bad people in some peoples' minds, and I am okay with letting them think that. To us it would be worse to take in a child that we were unable to care for.

"Maybe this is the universes way of telling you that you should not be parents." "Darwin's theory dictates that your genetics should not be passed on." "People like you should not have children." It is true that some people are not fit to be parents, but that determination has nothing to do with fertility status. No one asks to be infertile. A person's fertility status has nothing to do with their character or the type of person that they are. These comments are the worst, in my opinion, because they add insult to so much injury. When I found out that I was infertile, it made me question my status as a woman and defining myself as a woman again has taken a lot of work. I am still amazes me how much of our identity as men and women is tied up in our fertility. Our lives are so much more than our ability to produce children.

Overall, I am happy that Alex and her husband have their child. I know that the journey is difficult. I am happy that she was able to write about it for the world. I just wish that she had found a way to express some parts of it differently. Most of all I wish that the pictures had been different, why did they feel the need to use those pictures, so many people are not going to read the words and those pictures tell a very untrue story. I hope that Alex and her family are happy for many years to come. Like I said the part that really bothered me was reading all the comments, which I know hurt her just as deeply as they hurt all of us chasing baby dreams.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T07:49:00.002-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

What I am thankful for:

My family, those I am with and those who are celebrating elsewhere.
My husband, who is my rock.
That we are all healthy.
Everyone in blogland who has given me so much support. I have learned so much from all of you and you have made this journey much easier.

Hope that all of you have a wonderful day with friends and family. Eat up!

Empty

2008-11-20T21:33:00.001-06:00

Empty…. Head, arms, soul, heart. Busy…. Mind, life, schedule.

These are the reasons that I have not been writing. These are also the reasons that I should be writing.

Thanksgiving, Christmas and all associated activities are coming at me like the fast pitch machine at the batting cages. Problem is that I was never good at sports; in fact, I was horrible, that whole hand-eye coordination thing just never worked well for me. For years, I have filled up my time to avoid the hurt that comes with family holidays, not my actual family, the one member we want to add. There was comfort in years past being so busy that I barely had time to think about how soul crushing it can be not to be able to have the one thing you really want.

My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, in years past I rattle off a few things and be done with it or at the very least come up with something in a day or two. This year there was a silent pause filled with tension and pain. We both know what we want, I want to be a mother and she wants to be a grandmother, something that seems so simple and so elusive at the same time. "Next year we will go to the toy store, next year we will have a baby." Was my mantra for the holidays. Only this year that will not work, at most next year we will be expecting our child, but I am too afraid to think that way right now. That way of thinking just makes the next year worse.

I love spending time with my family over the holidays and we have a ton of fun. Still there is emptiness. When we look at the stockings and talk about how hard it will be to find a similar one for the baby, or pretend to savor the extra sleep that we get on Christmas morning, all I am really doing is easing the pain. Yes, being able to set the table the day before with worrying that little hands will break the crystal makes our lives easier. Of course, it is fun to have a relaxed dinner on Christmas Eve, pleasant not to hear, "Can we open the presents yet?" a thousand times, well a thousand more times than my sister, and I ask. All these wonderful things are just ways to comfort myself, because the truth is I will not miss them for a second, nor will they matter when "Thank You" is replaced by giggles, and the boxes are so much more fun than the toy inside.

This year will be exciting and we will have fun, because we always have fun. We will skirt the issue and talk about Christmases in the future when Santa will need cookies and little voices wake us at the crack of dawn. At Christmas, more than the rest of the year, my infertility becomes more than our loss, it becomes my entire family's loss, my parents have no grandchildren, my sister has no niece, and worse my grandmother's have no great-grandchildren. They want this just as much as we do, it makes it so hard, not because of anything they do, but because I want to give them the one thing, I cannot give them. I am so fortunate to have a family who is so supportive, has never once made me feel bad, and most importantly would do anything to make this dream a reality.

Feeling Real Emotions

2008-11-10T08:56:00.005-06:00

My baby sister is getting married!!!!!

I could not be happier she is so incredibly happy. J is an awesome guy and he loves her like she deserves to be loved. They are adorable together, and balance each other perfectly.

They are just so cute and happy and all is just so wonderful in their world.

_____________________________________________________________

We have a small family. In other words, we tend to have few big events. When we are all together you would think it was always a big event, we do have a ton of fun together. Ever since we started the surrogacy process there has been no major events, this journey has been our major event.

Suddenly I find myself in uncharted waters. Last night I was talking to C about her wedding plans and I was making plans that did not involve getting to our child. For me, the weirdest part of the whole surrogacy experience is feeling like a parent to a child that is years away from being born. We make life decisions as if they were here. I have researched baby products, education styles, been educated about all the "Mommy War" debates, and filled my head with enough information that I think it is starting to leak.

Part of me feels guilty for celebrating this happy time in my family's life. Somehow I feel like I am neglecting this future child, it feels like I am being a bad mother. As irrational as that sounds the feeling sits in the pit of my stomach. If someone else said this to me I would tell them that they were being crazy and that they should allow themselves the joy. I am enjoying this, I am happy, but there is a limit to which I feel this happiness and joy.

Infertility has taught me not to get my hopes up, because I will be disappointed. Spending years going from highs to lows, that are not allowed on roller coasters, teaches you to be suspicious of the highs because it is all going to come crashing down. Self preservation dictates this damping down of emotions. If I were to allow myself to feel all these emotions full force I would be living in a padded room by this point.

The downside to all this is that these occasions when I want to feel this incredible joy, I have a ball of anxiety that sits in my stomach. My brain sets off a siren, repeating "Warning, Warning, emotions are not good." Ignoring this warning is okay in this situation, I am going to ignore the anxiety and just be happy. The world may stop spinning, but I am willing to take the risk.

MY BABY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED!!!! This is an amazing time. I am going to ignore the irrational guilt and just be happy for her. She deserves all my happiness. I deserve to live in the moment. It is okay that I am so happy.

Now all I have to do is lose a thousand pounds in 4 months.

It is Part of Friendship

2008-11-04T21:44:00.001-06:00

Our friends and families have supported our quest to have a child, by whatever means necessary, so unconditionally that the hurtful comments that so many others suffer are a small part of the baggage we are carrying. Having this huge cheering section has come with a huge price, one that I was unaware we were paying until the other day. Over the past week this issue has come up a couple of times and each time it breaks my heart just a little more.

Some of my friends who already have children are having a difficult time conceiving again, secondary infertility. While speaking with my best friend the other day I realized that people who already have children are reluctant to talk about having trouble conceiving another child. Out of all my amazing friends that I am so lucky to have, L is the first person I want to call when I am hurting and when I am overjoyed. L is one of those friends who will stand by you no matter what and over the years, she has seen me through some of the worst times of my life. As a mother, L is incredible and if I am able to be half the mother she is, I will consider myself an excellent mother.

When L told me that she had been trying to have her third child for over a year I nearly fell over. I knew that L wanted more children, but I had no idea that she was even trying at this point. Realizing that she had been suffering for over a year and felt that she could not tell me, made me feel awful. Infertility sucks, hurts and is lonely for many people, but for me that pain has been eased by her support and love. Now here L is going through all the same stuff and felt that she could not tell me. Just because she already has two amazing children, she said that it made her feel guilty for complaining to me because we are trying so hard just to have one.

I know that not all people who have infertility problems feel this way, and I very well may be in a small minority. No matter how many children someone already has, not being able to have another is just as painful as not being able to have the first. Yes, they do already have children. Yes, we are trying to have just one. Yes, they already have what we are working so hard to attain. Yes, they do not have to endure the pain of empty arms. Yes, to any of the thousand reasons why they could just be happy with what they have. Only, they want their children to have siblings, they want to have a larger family, they want another child and are suffering with the pain of infertility.

Baby showers, kids' birthday parties, christenings and many other child related activities are difficult to attend and often I avoid them like the plague. Some days I cannot even watch a television show with children or babies in them because it is just too painful. L mitigates so much of this pain for me simply by believing with all her heart that I will be a mother and constantly telling me that I will be a great mother. Better than all of that, she reminds me that no hard days will matter on the day I can hold my child in my arms. I want to give her that same support. I know where she is, facing so many questions and fears that she should not have to endure alone.

L was the first of my friends that I called when I found out that having a child was going to be very difficult for us. She was the first person to tell me that it did not matter if I gave birth, what mattered was being a mother. When I felt like I was not a "real" woman because my body would not do what it was designed to, L was the one who listened to me cry and said she would support me any way that she could.

I know that she is trying to spare my feelings. She is trying to be compassionate. What she forgot is that I have travelled that road and she was by my side the whole time. I need to be there for her, I need to share my experience with her. Yes, there are going to be days when it is painful for me to listen to, just as it has been painful for her to listen to me. This is not a road anyone should ever travel alone, especially when there is someone who has already been there.

L you are my best friend, my best cheerleader, my shoulder to cry on, my foundation, and most importantly you are my sister. I may not always understand what you are going through, I may not always be the best friend, but I will always be here and I will always love you. Your struggles are my struggles.