A Year in Blogland

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.

Toxic Anger

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.

Wow, you mean I am still a person?

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.

The Making of a Parent

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.

asking for help and the stresses of surrogacy

The past week has been a painful one, both physically and emotionally. "Serious Clinical Depression" the three words that defined my adolescence. In adulthood, I have managed to keep these debilitating feelings out of my daily life. Then at a moments notice that old companion creeps back in attempting to stain my world. At these times, I get the interventions that I need and go on with my life and this time was no different.

I do not need a "professional" to tell me what is wrong that much is obvious. I am prone to bouts of depression and my life is stressful at the moment. On top of the surrogacy, I am in my second to last semester in college, and I am seriously loosing the battle to lose weight. At this time I do not think that talking to anyone is going to help, but I have no problem with talk therapy if the medication and working on addressing the weight in a different way. I count my ability to monitor myself this way as the "prize" I earned from struggling for so many years and making it out fairly in tact.

Part of what is not talked about with surrogacy and IF is that you are a parent for years before you have an actual child in your home. As a friend of mine said one day, "Well you are a mother you just do not have the child yet." This is exactly how I feel, every time I feel like I really need a break from all this I immediately feel guilty because I am delaying the birth of my child. It is the most irrational feeling and yet it is one that permeates my life, which is difficult for me because I like it when my life and thoughts make sense (at least to me). Our child is real to me part of this comes from the fact that so much time and energy has been put into getting him/her to really exist this makes every decision to delay the process feel like a betrayal and like I am already a bad parent for being selfish. Before you go running from the insane woman let me assure you that I know this is irrational and walks a razor edge of sanity. Intellectually I understand that these thoughts are not normal and I brush them aside and do what needs to be completed.

Part of the issue that I am dealing with now is that I am almost finished with college. With a degree in Social Work and Psychology, it is imperative that I obtain a Masters degree to work in my area of interest. I have the opportunity to start this summer and cut my time in graduate school down by 6 months this time frame would put my still in school when we had our child. Throughout this process, it has always been my intention to spend at least the first 2 years home with my child. As I am not getting any younger I am not willing to put off the baby making to get my Masters, as it stands now I am firmly committed that if I do not have a baby in my arms by the time I am 36 (3.5 years) then we are finished. Now I have to decide how I am going to work these two very important things together. Women do this every day most women do not always get to plan when they are going to have their children and they are still able to do what I am having so much trouble wrapping my head around. After missing huge parts of the first 9 months, I do not want to miss another second and I do not want someone else being there while him/her is discovering the world for the first time.

Then to put the cherry on the sundae in spite of my decent attempts to lose weight I am just gaining. I am in the gym with my trainer 3 times a week. In the place where I feel so out of place, self conscious and judged, but I go because; I do not want to feel like this anymore. Even though I know that I feel better, that number on the scale keeps going up. It is getting to the point where I do not want to leave the house. My parents were in town yesterday and I was embarrassed to see them, which is crazy because they too have struggled with their weight (They both look amazing and have worked really hard to lose weight and I could not be prouder of them). My desire to put curtains on the mirrors in my bathroom is overwhelming. In the next few weeks I will be seeing a doctor about this situations. This is such a familiar struggle but I am getting scared that I will not be able to get this under control and it will change who I am in a fundamental way. Back to the doctor I go to stumble around in the dark trying to figure out what is wrong with me, figure out where the new cracks are in the body that hates me.

I will start the anti-depressants tomorrow and knowing me it will be a couple of weeks before I am starting to get balanced out again. Yes, I hate it that I could not do this on my own and some part of me feels weak. Stepping back and looking at the big picture, I am surprised it has taken me this long to get to this place and I think I should have asked for help much sooner. Not being able to ask for help will sink someone going through this process. I am so lucky that I am surrounded by people who know how to read me and are not afraid to tell me that I need help, I am so grateful that if I had not been able to get help on my own that they would have made sure that I did. The importance of having great people around you and asking for all the help you need without shame cannot be stressed enough. It is a difficult enough to get through this process with tons of support, trying to go it alone would be treacherous for me.

Decision Making and Surrogacy

After reading Amani and Bob Surrogacy this morning, I began to think about redefining dreams. How through the adventure of having a baby these dreams have been redefined a hundred times. From the first time, the reality of medical intervention steps in to the point that you are going to need the help of more than just a doctor. Going through this process so many times it would be logical to think that this gets easier, that by the time you need to decide between surrogacy and adoption that it should only take a few moments and the pain should be non-existent. No statement can be further from the truth. Each moment is excruciating, because with each decision comes a new reality and with each new reality comes new chances to have your heart broken. Each new decision drips with the dew of self-doubt, rages with the thunderstorm of unknown factors, and culminates in the hurricane of excitement for new possibilities and intense emotional exhaustion.

The worst part about it all is trying to keep emotions out of something that is so intensely emotional. For me this is where having my father to go through all the legalese makes it so much easier. I am not capable of taking out the emotional intensity of needing to hold my child in my arms and dealing with the business side of all this, of making huge economic decisions. This is not to say that he is completely emotionally detached, he is just able to separate it out, ah the wonders of men. If I had to give only one piece of advice to people who were just starting out with surrogacy, get someone in the trenches with you who can keep their emotions out of the proceedings (and this cannot be your lawyer, agency, etc.).

Faced with having to make so many "life decisions" at once can also make having to make other decisions just excessively overwhelming. On more than one occasion, I have left the grocery cart in the middle of the aisle and just walked away, because there were too many choices in bagels. The prospect of having to make one more choice was too much. Funny as this sounds it really happens, at some point the brain just says "I am not going to make another choice" and the body must obey. Thankfully, I did not have to choose which way to turn on my
way home, or I may still be sitting in the parking lot. Truly there are no words to express how overwhelming all of this can really be.

Enter the fact that you are making decisions that affect a child who you love more than life itself, even though it has yet conceived. I know that this sounds weird, trust me it feels weird. It is like trying to live in a fantasy world and making decisions that affect the real world. At moments you feel the need to have a psychologist follow you around to make sure that your brain did not escape and go running down the road screaming in agony. I am almost positive that this cannot happen, but there have been moments when I look behind me just to make sure.

Then there are the moments when you have to make the big decisions that are going to affect a number of people who you care about deeply. For me it came when Joe-bob told me to make the decision that I thought was best for us. WHAT? YOU WANT ME TO MAKE A HUGE LIFE DECISION!, you are the one with the big huge brain and all that knowledge; you should be the one to do this. I make decisions on laundry detergent and dinner choices and I am not very good at those. Okay, I decide that we are going to do nothing, we are going to sit right here for the rest of our lives and not move, because movement will require other decisions. We sat there for a while and then came the moment when sitting a there was more painful than being terrified and making
decision. I got up one morning and taught myself everything that I could about surrogacy. I weighted through all the moral and ethical issues, because I was going into a fight and I was going in armed with as much ammunition as I could gather.

That is right, at the beginning of this whole process I thought that maybe I could not go forward with this because I would not stand for doing something that would put others in a situation where I was taking advantage of them. Obviously, I found this not to be the case. Now this ammunition is used to defend myself against people who look at me like the devil incarnate for wanting to have a child. More specifically that I want an infant whose parentage I can trace and who will be mine from the first moment they breathe air. Those people who try to make me feel guilty about not taking in some sweet orphan who will be condemned to roam the streets in some 3^rd world capital. I myself question whether it is right to create another person rather than taking in one who needs me. In the end I want what I want and if that is selfish then so be it, if it makes me a bad person I will beg forgiveness to the powers that be, but I know that it is not any of these things this is the way things are meant to be for me.

I cannot express the feeling of excitement and terror that accompanies every step in this adventure. All I can say is that coming to this point has been difficult, but actually being here is wonderful. To be in the presence of women who are willing to sacrifice so much to give to a stranger the chance to make a dream a reality. At some point on the road of infertility, I began to have a very pessimistic view of the world then I found this option and something changed. Even with all the fear there was suddenly a light that I have long forgotten existed, I was able to see the light at the end of the cave and I knew that this was where we were meant to be. Finally, I had made a decision that made perfect sense. While this happens to others when they find other alternate methods of reproduction for me, it happened with surrogacy. The other day someone wanted to know how I knew that this was going to work for us, and all I could think of is that you just know, in the same way that you just know when you meet the person you were meant to be with for the rest of your life. I am not saying that this made it any easier it just made is easier to get through the rough spots. In future months, I know that there will more overwhelming decisions but knowing that this is how we are to expand our family makes it a little easier to make those decisions.

the isolation of surrogacy

tonight we went to a department party to welcome all the first year graduate student. let me start by saying that i hate these parties, because i am the spouse and therefore am looked down upon, and who wants to be looked down on by a bunch of people 10 years their junior. i used to think that this was all in my head until another one of the spouses said the same thing and then a student said something about how hard it must be to be "just a spouse".

let me tell you there is no such thing as being "just a spouse" when that spouse happens to be in a PhD. program. in those cases you are the person that keeps said spouse's life in order so that they never have to worry about anything because there is no time for them to worry. in addition to making sure that my life is in order i have to keep his life in order so that his energy can be focused on getting his research, papers and whatever else it is he does done. add to this that i am going to school myself and that makes me one busy person. there are days when i want to tell him to make his own lunch or cook his own dinner, but i can not because there is no time for him to do these things. let me also say that during the time that i was working i never had to worry about doing anything around the house, he made sure that everything ran smoothly.

while at this party people kept asking if we had kids. i guess this is a natural question when people know that you have been married for 7 years. each time we answered no, the immediate response was "oh you don't want children?". not wanting to go into the whole explanation i just said that we were too busy right now to be able to devote our full attention. thankfully these are psychology PhD. candidates who have a basic understanding of the demands of rearing children. at least they do not think that children are pocket pets.

generally people i know well enough to ask the kid question already know the story. these people do not because frankly it is not the kind of relationship that joebob has with these people. it was the first time in a long time that i have been in this situation, and it was painful. more painful than i can explain. after the 5th person asked, i wanted to scream. i wanted the questions to stop and i wanted the assumptions to cease. i wanted to yell, "we want children more than you will ever want anything in your life, and the pain and heartache that we feel right now would shatter you." i know that this is not true, because 5 years ago i would have told you that i would not be able to survive this and somehow i have found the strength.

it was quite an experience to be around people who know better than to talk kids with me. i know that none of them meant any harm, i just forgot what a charmed life i live some days. it also made me worry that maybe we do not get out enough. these past few years have been so difficult that i have isolated myself from being around people who are not in my circle of friends and some family. that is right there are even some people in my own family that i try not to have too much contact with, not because they have done anything, but because i just do not want to have to deal with them.

being so isolated from others is something that i suspect that many others dealing with infertility do to themselves. the truth is that other than that we had a good evening. i met some people that i really like and was able to really enjoy myself once we got past that sticky subject. now i am wondering how many really fun nights have i missed? how many opportunities to step outside of the pain and misery have i missed? the truth is that even those people who are close to us are not around all that often.

this is something that i am going to try and work on over the next couple of months. i can not allow my life to stop.

lessons learned from surrogacy and infertility

While I was writing our profile, I had to go back through our entire history of infertility. Of course this was painful, but it was also a great learning experience. So I thought today I would chronicle what infertility has taught me.



1. Sitting in the floor and crying gets you nowhere.

2. It is better to hug your friend in pain than give them "advice", the hug can help to heal, the "advice" not so helpful.

3. I am sooo much stronger than I ever believed.

4. Wanting something, even deserving something, does not mean that you are going to get that thing.

5. Broken hearts do not stop beating.

6. Making dreams come true, sometimes means redefining the dream.

7. I should have payed much more attention in biology.

8. I know my body better than anyone, and no doctor can ever tell me any differently.

9. Murphy's Law is real and should be respected.

10. The moment you give up, you end all hope.

11. It can always get worse.

12. It will get better.

13. Puppies, while amazing and having wonderful puppy breath, ARE NOT a substitute for children.

14. Deciding to change course is not the same as giving up.

15. Carrying and giving birth to a child does not make you a woman, and not being able to do so does not make you less of a woman.

16. Armadillos have the right idea, grow a tough skin.

17. True happiness is found in the moment, not in those things yet to be attained.

18. Never underestimate the capacity of the human heart.

19. You are the only person who will look out for your own best interest.

20. Life does not stop just because I am running down a dream.

21. Men experience this just as much as women.

22. Modesty and embarrassment go away very quickly.

23. Every bit of happiness is precious.

24. Finding the humor in the situation is essential for dealing with the pain.

25. Laying in bed gets you nowhere.

26. Sometimes just putting your feet on the ground and one in front of the other, is enough.

27. There are times when rolling up the windows and screaming over the radio, really does make you feel better.

28. Stepping outside my own life and doing for others helps more than I ever thought it would.

29. Bring your own book to the doctor's office, they never have anything to read.

30. Fear is an emotion that will stop all progress.

31. Nothing is as scary as I think it will be.

32. My limit is never where I thought it was.

33. There will always be someone who has been through more than me.

34. At times I just need a break and taking that break can make all the difference.

35. Plans rarely work out the way I think they will.

My heart believes in healing

Women who are super model thin should have to work out in their own gym. My big struggling butt should not have to sweat next to the glistening sticks. I am happy they are sticks, great for them, but they should not be allowed to work out in front of me. I am sure that they think that I should have my own sty to work out in, so I do not feel bad for saying this. It is just going to be one of those days. My struggle with the weight is moving forward. I am staying off the scale for now, but my jeans are fitting a bit better. The biggest struggle at this point is not being a raving lunatic b/c I am sick of eating rabbit food. I just keep telling myself I am going to feel better, I am going to feel better.

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I was talking about surrogacy last night to a bunch of people in my social work class, it was a primer course as they had no idea what the word meant. So once again I was answering all the questions that get on my nerves. I am working really hard at just making these answers automatic and not letting it bother me. Though it is starting to get to the point where I just want to keep my mouth shut. This time it was in the context of what I wanted to do with my degree, it had nothing to do with my personal situation. Part of the problem is that most of these "kids" still think that they are going to save the world. I lost that illusion a loooong time ago. At this point I will be happy if I can work in the social work field for ten years before I am completely burned out. We will see what happens. At this point I think I will end up in academia.

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While I was thinking about all this on the treadmill, something else occurred to me. I am making plans that have nothing to do with my personal infertility. I am finally to a point where I can plan other things. This is HUGE, ENORMOUS. Finally this pity party is over, at least for a minute. There are finally times when I can see days when this will not be what consumes me, that there will be a time when all this will be a distant memory.

I have know this intellectually for a long time, but today my heart finally believed that there will not be a day when infertility was my whole world. Today is a day that makes me believe that I will heal from this, that these wounds will not infect my child.

a family through surrogacy

I have been working my way through a lot of blogs over the past few days, it being ILCW and all. A lot of people have been leaving comments here which I LOVE. In leaving comments I have been reading a lot of comments and I noticed something. I am getting a lot of comments about how brave and courageous I am. This is not true. I have written another post about this, but I want to make this really clear.

Surrogacy is the right way for me to make my family, it is the only way that I can have my family. Not that I would not adopt a child in a second. What makes this right for me is that I want my husband to have a chance at having his biological children, not that he says this is important to him. Being the one with the fertility problem makes me feel responsible and makes me want to do all the rest of it the best I can. Surrogacy was the answer. I could have tried to carry our child, but at some point I decided that I wanted to be a mother not a pregnant woman. This was not a brave, courageous, or noble move on my part, it was an answer to a horrible problem.

I started this blog because there was a dearth of straight intended parents' voices in the world of surrogacy. I began to feel like there was some secret hand shake that I did not know. Our journey was becoming very complicated and I needed to know that others had been in my shoes and come out the other side. My insecurity and fear started this blog, and now that some of that has subsided my need to keep others from ever feeling that alone keeps me here.

Surrogacy is the third rail of infertility. Many in the IF world see it as a last resort and the general public have all kinds of weird ideas about what the process. I have had people ask how I could allow my husband to have sex with another woman. Been told that I was exploiting some disadvantaged women who could not possibly know better. Worried myself that I was not really going to be able to be a mother and still have a relationship with our surrogate. I have heard people tell me that anyone who would buy a baby should not be a mother. All of these statements are completely false. In reality none of this is happening, and if I thought for one second that it would I would have quit.

One day my child may have to tell the story about how they came to be and I do not want them ever to be ashamed. Not that I am going to make them wear a shirt saying they were a product of surrogacy, nor am I going to make it a big part of their life. We have decided that we are going to be honest about their beginnings, and yes there was a time we were not sure we wanted them to know. There was a time when I wanted to move to a cabin deep in the woods with my newborn and husband and stay forever, a little family of hermits. I was so angry that all these people were in our reproductive life, so raw from all the comments, and so tiered of feeling the pain. One day it dawned on me that the reason for all this was so that I could be a mother, and if I was just going to runaway I was not going to be a very good mother. A good mother advocates for their child and tries to make the world a better place. So here I am educating a few people about the incredible process that will make my dreams a reality.

Motherhood may still be years away for me and that fact breaks my heart some days. Those are the days that I come here and hope to teach someone a little bit about this process. One of the blessings of infertility is that you have time to research and think about everything. From highchairs to cloth vs. disposable diapers, I have read everything and then some. It was just natural that if I was going to put so much time and effort into those things, I should put at least the same amount of effort into educating as many people about how this whole thing works, so maybe when my child tells someone about surrogacy they do not have to hear a rude and hurtful comment.

There is no courage or bravery here, just a woman white knuckling her way through life.

happy birthday

32 years ago today my husband was born. i have been fortunate enough to have known him for the past 16 of those years. we celebrated tonight with a dinner and just some time together. in these moments of celebration i feel so inadequate, there are all these feelings that i want to express that never leave my head.

he is my heart and soul, without US, i do not make sense. this is not to say that i need him to define me, only that i need him to share with me all that each of us brings to this relationship. over the past year our lives have become masses of nerves and stress. through it all i have been able to depend on him to prop me up when i could not even fathom standing on my own. over this year i have been driven to make our child a reality, to the point that i have pushed him to the side. not once has he yelled and screamed, he simply taps me on the shoulder hugs me tight and lets me know that he is still here.

i could not have custom ordered a better person to go through all this with. in my quest to keep my head through this mess, he has been the one patiently placing back on my shoulders. i can only hope that he knows how much i love, admire, cherish, and adore him. he is the most amazing man in the world and deserves so much more than i give him.

happy birthday hun. all my love now and forever.

surrogacy update and lessons learned

due to my problems with my liver, we are putting the surrogacy thing on pause until we figure out what is wrong. not that it is anything serious, but we want to know what we are dealing with before we have a child. that is one of the privileges we get out of this whole mess, we get to plan more than most people, this is also a curse.

when you have years to think about having your child, and you are forced to plan every minuet detail, eventually you start going way overboard. add in a few class on child and adolescent abnormal psychology, and you have the recipe for disaster. there are a million things that can and do go wrong in pregnancy, and i have thought through every one of them a thousand times. as you can imagine this leads to nothing but absolute terror.

we get one shot at this, and we want it to go perfectly, which makes us a tiny bit psycho about doing everything right. i feel like there is no margin of error, there is no room for failure. the only problem with this, we are making a baby and things go wrong or at least not as planned even if we cross every t and dot every i. the other problem is that not only are we dealing with the baby's schedule, we are dealing with a surrogate who needs to be treated with all the love and respect that we have.

in communicating with surrogates, i have learned a really important lesson, well actually many, but this one is worthy of a post. at some point we are all going to hire lawyers and hash out all the nitty gritty of our contract. this is going to include everything from compensation for bed rest, to life support and other crappy things that no one really wants to discuss. one of the issues that will come up is selective reduction and termination of the pregnancy, this sucks but it must be discussed.

one thing that i have found out listening to surrogates, is that people do not always specify what testing they want done, for example amniocentesis. in a conventional pregnancy these things can be decided when the need arises, in a surrogacy these decisions need to be made before the pregnancy ever happens. it is not fair to the surrogate to say yes we want to terminate if there is something wrong with the fetus, and then not specify how you are going to determine if there is something wrong. there are many different tests that can be done, with various levels of risk to the carrier and the fetus.

i know that i can not be alone in this obsessive quest for information about what is going to happen. part of this education needs to include what tests are available, how precise they are, all the pros and cons, and when they do and do not need to be done. i am not a medical professional, (even though i have spent so much time in doctors offices that i probably could fake it pretty well) but i feel an obligation to my future surrogate, myself and my child to be as educated as possible.

surrogates, like every other person on earth, deserve to be told the truth about your intentions. when i get to the contract table i plan on knowing what i do and do not want, and the reasoning for each of these things. i have had plenty of time to consider everything a thousand times. there are going to be a lot of events in this pregnancy that i will be left out of, and i hate, get angry, and want to scream about that, but i also can not change that fact. what i can do is make sure that everyone goes into this with their eyes open and that no one leaves this feeling deceived or taken advantage of by me.

nothing has made me sadder, than hearing a surrogate say that she felt she was being treated like a commodity, and then having many others confirm that they too felt this way. a commodity is a good that people trade. these women are the farthest thing from a commodity. first, humans are not commodities they are people who deserve respect. second, i will owe one of them a debt that i will never be able to repay. i just do not understand how anyone thinks that this is acceptable. this journey is not only about us, parents, it is about everyone who is coming together to make a dream come true. a woman who does not even know me is willing to give up her body, dignity, time, and possibly her life to make my dream of being a mother a reality. how beautiful i think that is, i have no words for, all i have are tears of joy, awe, and a woefully inadequate thank you.

Hope Notes

surprise, i know i said i was taking the weekend off, but then i came across this on stirrup queen's site.

this a campaign, movement, or whatever you feel inclined to call it, of stepping outside our own lives for a second, to give to a stranger. Hope Notes, are simply little notes left in public places that may bring a smile to someones face, or simply be a nice little surprise.

i love this idea, because it such a simple way to step outside our own lives and give to a stranger. over the years, dealing with infertility, i have heard a thousand times, "Everything happens for a reason." this phrase makes me sick, when it is used about my experience. this is an area where that phrase seems to apply perfectly. it also forces us to focus on others for a moment, which can do wonders. sitting and stewing in my personal problems never did me any good, helping others has always made me feel better, so now i have a simple way to do this.

we all have crappy days, our hearts broken, our dreams shattered, our accomplishments go unnoticed, our efforts thwarted, simply we all face struggles. now think, if on one of those days while picking up toilet paper, you came across a simple little note. it is not going to fix anything, but for a moment it might make you feel a bit better.

even if you are not inclined to take a photo, or even make a card, please smile at those you pass, or acknowledge once a day that you are not the only person on the planet. i promise it will not cost you anything, but it may mean the world to the person on the other end.

I will get off the soapbox, thanks once again for induldging the crazy lady.

Another bonus: You get to break out the crayons, markers, glue, glitter, or whatever artsy stuff floats your boat, and play, which I don't think you can ever do enough.

how surrogacy works

the primary reason that i started this blog was to get some information out there about surrogacy, from the viewpoint of an intended mother. in reading my posts, i realize that i have not done a very good job at meeting this objective. this process is very emotional and brings up issues that you never even thought existed. this post though is going to be about the process. so

fasten your seat belts, this is going to be a bumpy ride:

first, you have to become infertile, this can be voluntary or involuntary, and for the purposes of this discussion, it does not matter. in my situation it was being born with a bleeding disorder (von williband's disease) combined with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

this will give you the magic combination for marathon periods. at the age of 12, was hospitalized because my blood pressure was 60/40, i had my first blood transfusion and my first d&c at this time. i was put on 3 birth control pills a day, which after a couple of months quit working. lucky me got to graduate to estrogen and progesterone. by the time, i was 13 i was on the highest dose of estrogen made. i will not bore you with how terribly awful this is for a child, or anymore boring details. this whole process was repeated over and over, until i had had ENOUGH. i finally got to the point where i had no quality of life. therefore, at the age of 31 i had an endometrial ablation because i could not take another 3-6 month period and the hormones were making me so sick. this was the hardest and best decision i have ever made. this is not to say that there have not been moments when i worried that i had made a mistake. once i came back to reality though, i knew that there was no other option, and my quality of life has greatly improved.

once you have determined that you are unable to carry a child and are prepared to turn this over to someone else, you need to find people to help you navigate this minefield. this is a lot easier said than done, in my experience there is not a ton of information floating around. i am one of those people who trusts about 5 people on the whole planet and none of them could carry a baby for us. we have all heard the horror stories about surrogacy, and there is an element of risk inherent in this process just as there is in any endeavor. i hire people to do my taxes and take care of my lawn, so why would i not hire someone to guide us through this?

we had a false start with our first attempt to find an agency, but that is what happens when you are finding out how this works. the best advise i can give here is to do what feels right to you. emotions have to stay out of this, which i know is much easier said than actually done, but you have to try if you do not want to risk much worse emotional harm later. i would do anything to be a mother, except risking all that i own, or compromise my integrity.

remember you have never done this before so there is going to be a big learning curve. interview people, ask a ton of questions, and wait until you find someone who makes you feel comfortable. these people are going to make your pure will into a baby.

at the agency interview, you will be given a ton of information. i probably only remember about 5% of what we were told in this 4 hour meeting. nervous does not even come close to what i was feeling. take notes, and remember that you can always ask questions later, when you are not scared to death. most of what they go over is procedure, agency history, and a general overview of the process. then there are the questions that none of us really want to answer.

do you want to do amniocentesis?
if the results of the amniocentesis are not good, what actions will be taken?
in the case of high order multiples would you want selective reduction?
for me at this point i wanted to crawl under the table, who wants to think about these issues?

this is the point where you need to put on your big girl panties and be brutally honest. we all want to think that these issues will not affect us, but they do happen. in the perfect world, we would be immune from this and could deal with them only if they arise. here in the real world you are asked these questions so that you are matched with someone who has the same views as you. you should not feel judged by the answers you give. better to get over this part now than when it happens and you find out that you and the surrogate have different feelings.

next, there are all kinds of fertility tests, psychological evaluations, drug tests, and paperwork. the most difficult part of the paperwork for me has been putting together a profile. this is what prospective surrogates first see about you and your partner. i guess it is like putting together something for a dating service. personally, i have never used one of these services, but i imagine that is what it would be like, only about you as a couple. this part of the process is a lot like being in jr. high and liking a boy/girl. you pass notes through your friends (the agency) and a lot of worrying if they (the surrogate) are going to like you back.
this is as far as we have gotten, so the rest of this is what i have been told.

next, it is the big meeting. we will go with our agency representative to meet the surrogate and her partner in person. this is after we have all approved each other’s profiles. at our agency, this woman and her family will have been approved before we meet them. from what i have heard, this is not always the case. if we all agree to working with each other then we start drawing up the contracts. you learn fast that there are soooo many lawyers in this process, which is good b/c everyone needs to be protected as much as possible. there are so many pitfalls that spelling it all out is important.

at some point, she will become pregnant. here there are all kinds of numbers and terms i cannot even begin to understand. at this point, i am not concerned with them. chances are though if you have made it this far you have been through the fertility ringer, so the majority of this will not be unfamiliar; you are just adding another person. the one major difference is that you are going to have to synchronize your cycles so you go on birth control at the same time.

once she is pregnant, you will go to various doctor's appointments together, or at least talk to each other and the ob/gyn if you live far away. in a perfect world she would live down the street, in reality for us at least she will most likely live very far away. thankfully, they can now e-mail you the heartbeat and the sonograms, is not technology nifty.

depending on the laws of the state in which she lives, not where you live, remember this. the custody thing will work one of two ways, with possible variations. if your husband's DNA has been used, he gets to go on the birth certificate automatically. the law has not gotten to the point where they recognize the DNA of the egg, so the mother is going to have to adopt the baby regardless of whose DNA was used. this is a stepparent adoption so it is not the grueling process of a stranger adoption. you are going to have a simple home study, they are much easier when you are married to the father, and the surrogate will sign away her rights. just like any other adoption, you will be the parent with all the rights and responsibilities. this is where the variation comes in, some states will let you do this in the second tri-mester, or you will do this after the birth. the only real difference here is the timing.

at the hospital you will have this all worked out before, but you can be there for the birth. now here is the tricky part, you know those plastic bracelets; well in they come in 3 packs for maternity, 1 for the baby, 1 for the woman giving birth, and 1 for the partner. due to the high security of maternity wards, you will only be able to get the baby from the nursery with the magic bracelet. some facilities will give you and your family their own room provided there is an empty one. they are not going to leave some poor woman out in the hall to give birth just so you can coo over your baby in your own room. in this case it will make it easy, if not though whoever has the bracelet is going to have to be there to get the baby, or the surrogate is going to have to get the baby. all this really means is there will be little rest for the person with the bracelet.
now here is the part that makes many people uncomfortable. this is my opinion only!!! the amazing woman who has just given you the greatest gift in the whole world needs some time to say good-bye to this parasite she has been hosting for nine months. i have read some very sad stories about surrogates who felt pushed aside once the baby was born. i figure i have waited years to take my baby home, another 30 minutes is not going to hurt. some people worry that doing this is going to make her want to keep the baby, and in some cases, it might, but these women go into this knowing they are helping you have a baby. this is not like an adoption; in most cases, she does not have any biological connection. so please give her those moments, it is the least you can do, because there will never be anyway that you can thank her for what she has given you.

most people work out the level of contact they want after the birth. there are some people who go home and send a few pictures and cards and never talk again, and then there are others who become family. this is up to you and your surrogate, and you will know what feels right. chances are though it will not be what you thought you were going to do in the beginning.

who are the amazing women that are willing to lone you their bodies for well over nine months? our agency requires that they have at least one child and encourages them to be finished having children for themselves. women sometimes loose the ability to have more children during the course of pregnancy. you will have to pay extra if she looses her uterus, but no amount of money can replace her ability to have more children for herself. personally, i could not live with myself knowing this had happened, so that i could be given this amazing gift. economically, they have to be sound. i am not going to pretend that the money is not a nice bonus for these women, but it is not the primary reason that they are doing this, fact is they are not being paid that much for what they are doing. from what i have read many of these women have some personal experience with infertility in their family, or are just love their children so much that they can not imagine not helping someone have the same joy they get everyday.

this is what i know for now. it is a lot to take in all at once. this whole process is a lot to digest. remember this is your labor process. the way i see it, i may not be carrying this child in my body, but i have willed him/her/them into being, by my desire to bring them into this world.

lessons learned (2)

don't forget that your life is still happening: hubby and i went to dinner last night and in the course of our conversation he told me that i have become a woman obsessed by this process. it is so easy to make having a baby the center of your universe. the leap to making it all that you are, is more of a tiny hop than a leap. i try to keep a balance in my life, and usually fail. my personality lends itself to becoming consumed by things. you know that person that calls 15 times a day, until you finally pick up? well that is me.

hubby (who will now be referred to as joebob) said that he was feeling pushed aside already. i think that this is his biggest fear, about us, when it comes to having a kid. we have a relationship that is super focused on each other, we have friends, but 90% of the time it is us focused. our lives have been held together by strings at times, but we have always had each other. so how is it that this new life is going to fit? are we going to be those people who wake up one day and realize we no longer have anything in common? not if i have anything to say about it.

so now i have to focus on us and how we are going to make this all work. becoming parents is going to turn our little corner of the world upside down, there is nothing that will change that fact. we get to do this thing together, and there is no one in the world i would rather have this adventure with. i just have to remember that this is an addition to this incredible life we have made for ourselves.

infertility takes over your life, simple fact. i know soooo many people whose relationship fell apart when faced with the reality of infertility or childlessness. to us though, this is only a minor speed bump, we have been way more battered than this little thing. i just have to remember that it is we.

all too often i think that men get lost in this process. we think that b/c they get the "easy" tests that they don't suffer right along with us. fact is that they do, they pick us up when this is overwhelming, endure hours of endless babbling, feel all the disappointment, and are there through every moment. so, i have to learn to not forget that he is there and he deserves all my attention. i couldn't go through this alone, and it just isn't fair not to acknowledge that we are going through this as a couple.

so from now on i am going to remember that there is already this amazing, wonderful person in my life. even though he wants to use the stupid name of joebob, and pulls crazy stunts in target, i wouldn't change a thing; because he is also the man who held my hair while i vomited and he can just wrap his arms around me and reduce my pain. i can't imagine my life without him, craziness and all.

lessons learned

i am planning on making this a regular section. for me this is all new territory. i do not know anyone who has gone through this exact process, i don't even know anyone who knows anyone. in the past three months though, i have learned a few things, and i know that there will be much more to come.

1. You have to be your own advocate.
i find that this applies to life in general, but here it is even more important. no one will look out for your best interest, people will help you, but at the end of the day it is up to you.

2. This is a business.
that sucks, i would love to say that everyone does this out of the kindness of their heart, but that just is not the case. there is a lot of money changing hands here, and there is nothing wrong with that. on average a surrogate is making $3.89 per hour, which is half of minimum wage.

3. Keep your emotions out of it.
this is so much easier said than done. nothing is more emotional than this process. though refer to 2 this is a business and there is no crying in the boardroom. you want a child more than anything, otherwise you wouldn't be doing this, but that by no means gives you the right to leave your brain at home.

4. Be honest.
this goes for everyone you talk with, they can't get you what you want if they don't know. you will change your mind a thousand times about things, it is okay. the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with at 13 isn't the same person you are with now (even if you did marry him/her). this is really like dating, you try it on for a while and see what feels comfortable (that sounds more like buying shoes).

5. Don't worry about being a pest.
i was worried that my first agency would dump us if i made to much noise. now i know that i don't want to work with anyone who thinks that i am a pest because i express my concerns or ask questions. there are going to be issues and if you can't express your feelings this is going to be an even longer journey.

6. There is no one size fits all.
what is right for you will not be right for someone else, and that is fine.

7. People can be down right mean.
this is not limited to surrogacy. it seems like anyone who can't have a child with a bottle of wine and a cheap hotel room (thanks for that Chris), is going to have someone to criticize them. at some point some idiot is going to say something along the lines of "Well maybe it just wasn't meant to be." or "Well you won't really be their mother" . these people are asses and you should ignore them. they have no idea what they are talking about. as an adopted child i know who my mother is, and she didn't give birth to me. she did get up with me in the middle of the night, kissed my
boo-boos, and thought my scribbles (the ones not on her walls) should hang next to the mona lisa.

8. Somehow, someway, this is going to work.
there will be times when it feels like you are going to die childless, and that the pain of this will kill you. there have been moments when my whole body hurt and i thought i was going to collapse under the weight of the pain, both emotionally and physically. so far i am still here. use the pain to get through this. i know that sounds weird, but in those moments, make yourself do something related to this whole experience. there is always some paperwork or some other something to do, so get up off the floor and get it done.

9. It is okay to fall apart sometimes.
there are going to be moments when you just need to cry and feel sorry for yourself. this sucks and it isn't fair. you should be able to forget the birth control on vacation and get a souvenir. just remember that if you spend all your time here you aren't going to get anywhere. so give yourself a few hours and then pick yourself up. even if you have to do this everyday for a little while.

10. Ask for help.
it is not written anywhere that you have to be superwoman. this is rough and there are people to help, so use them. there is no shame in saying that you are having trouble.

that is all i can think of at the moment. i know there is more, and i promise to share it when i think of it.