Operation Baby

Unlike most mothers-to-be that must devise a game plan for the birth of their baby, an intended mother embarks on an entire mission. The idea of going to your local hospital, give birth, and go home is laughable. Like a secret agent given a complicated, urgent, and death-defying assignment, I must execute like a finely tuned machine - synchronized and masterminded with design.

At so many points of the last 3 years, this moment could only appear to be "Mission IMPOSSIBLE." Huffing and puffing on the hamster wheel of infertility, the concept of "Mission Accomplished" seemed like it could never be. But now as I am about to step on a plane today to close out Operation Baby, I see myself as the seasoned agent, not the rookie. I know how to jump through hoops, dodge bullets, sniff out liars, strategize next steps, outsmart enemies, wield my weapons, and stay on target.

So as I begin the final 10 day countdown to our due date (Jan.29th), I have had to orchestrate quite a lot in these final weeks before the grand finale. Here is my checklist:

Decide the exact right amount of time to a book a flight to destination before delivery - A delicate balance between not being too early, but not too late so that you miss the entire delivery.

Book a hotel with a kitchen- going to be our baby's first home.

Make sure all your Pre-Birth Order legal paper work is done. When using a surrogate, a lot of states let intended parents fill out a pre-birth orders so that their names will be on the birth certificate as soon as the baby is born.

Make a list of important contact numbers and name it "Operation Baby."

Find a place near surrogate to rent a breast pump.

Take infant care and  CPR class.

Register for and pack Cord Blood kit.

Ship all baby clothes, gear and supplies to A. ahead of time so you don't have to lug it on the plane.

Pack your own bag of clothes so that at any moment if your surrogate calls and says she is in labor you can jump on a plane.

Find a meaningful gift for your surrogate.

In our case, delays in renovations to our apartment has forced us to go with an emergency back up plan after birth. Live with my parents until apartment is done. Then drive back to New York City. This means I pack for two different places I will live before I bring our baby home. Not easy, not ideal, but once again, better than infertility.

Find three pediatricians. One at home in New York City. One near A. and one near my parents.

Pack up apartment before construction begins.

Wrap up all loose administrative ends in your life.

See as many friends as you can before you get so absorbed and sleep deprived.

Go to a museum. Go hear live music. Go to a movie theater. Go to a great restaurant.


I know that change is disruptive, bumpy, and disorienting. And though nothing can truly make you fully prepared, we as humans try our best to try to think of everything we can to divert disaster. Especially if disaster has already knocked on your door two, three, four times already. It even has made me think through what I might be losing as I step into parenthood. I have over thought so much of why I want a baby, I also want to be mentally prepared to lose other things in my life because of it. In wanting a baby so much, I keep reassuring myself that I have accepted all that comes with it. It's funny to think about the life you are leaving behind when all I could ever think about before was the life I felt I couldn't have. It feels a little like we are shipping out to war as we say our good-byes and do our last hurrahs before life changes as we know it. Of course there are certain freedoms, certain luxuries, certain impulses when you are childless that I might never have again, but life is taking me in a new direction. We are literally walking out of our apartment and when we return it will be a completely new place.

I cannot thank all of you enough for staying with me through this journey. Please join me for my ten day countdown. Like all countdowns, our hearts pump a little faster with every descending number, knowing that whatever is about to launch will change our lives forever.

Okay, I think I can do this...

Everyone knows that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know how to take care of a baby. It does generally fall under the common sense category of your brain. But perhaps all this infertility has made me a little insecure about my care taking ability - like since I am missing the fertile gene, maybe I am missing the baby care gene. So I signed up for an infant care class to boost some confidence.

My husband couldn't make it to class so I invited another intended mother to come along for the ride. Safety always in numbers. Who wants to be in a class full of huge pregnant women and not only be alone, but on top of that, not even pregnant. I could only imagine the guessing games in people's minds when looking at me - "Maybe she is training to be a nanny?" "Maybe she is adopting?" "Maybe she is a single women going to use donor sperm?" "Maybe she is in the wrong class?"

It felt much more fun to have another intended mother with me to up the ante. "Maybe they are lesbians adopting?" But once the class began and we all got our dolls, the jig was up. We had to ask for another baby doll for my friend, explaining we are both expecting and our husbands couldn't make it. "Oh!" I heard whispered under breaths. No one asked further about why neither of us are pregnant. We'll assume they don't care, or they settled on the adoption conclusion.

The nurse then slid in a DVD which began talking about post mother care. Obviously this was a snooze-fest for me. I don't need to know what oozes out of you after a baby is born. That's not something I will ever experience. So my mind wandered, waiting for more relevant information to present itself on the TV screen.

I focused on my doll. He/She is suppose to be newborn size so I was taken aback by the size. The doll seemed quite large, or at least larger than I thought. I stared at her for a while. I moved her arms and legs. I started playing with her rubbery toes and fingers. I looked into the doll's slightly creepy eyes. I stuck the thumb in the mouth. I held her in my arms. All in all, my doll and I bonded.

It then started to get fun. It started to feel not so scary. I covered her with a towel. I sponged bathed her eyes, face, chest, legs, arms. I changed the diaper and put a fresh one on. I put the onsie on correctly and then added the stretchie PJs. I picked her up and cradled her. I burped her. There wasn't much hesitation in doing any of these tasks. Granted this is not a live baby crying, squirming, or pooping. But there was something a little hard-wired about what I was physically doing to this doll.

I was never a kid who played with dolls all that much. My thing was stuffed animals. I never saw myself as a woman who from day one dreamed of being a mom. I believed I was a late bloomer on this front, not wanting this until in my 30s. But in this short period of time with the baby doll, I remembered moments as a child pretending to be a mom. I can remember a plastic baby bottle that had fake milk in it that bubbled when turned toward the mouth. I remember even dressing my teddy bear in baby clothes. There was indeed an early piece of me that had this desire. Like every little girl, I was told that this would be part of my future.

The Great Surrogacy Quilt of 2010

As I ended 2009 amidst all the recent noise in the world over surrogacy, I quietly settled into one of the greatest craft traditions of quilting. Imagine me in a log cabin with a peaceful blanket of winter snow outside the window. A fire is burning. The skeletal trees sway  against the gray sky as speckles of snowflakes glisten and dance. The sound of my nieces and nephews laughter hum from the basement below. A mug of hot tea sits next to my sewing machine, steam swirling above it. My sister and sister-in-law pick up a thread and needle to pitch in. A picturesque scene. A framed memory that you want to extend as long as you can because in that moment you are in the blissful state of knowing something good is coming.

What I love about quilting is how it becomes another form of story-telling. Either the quilt squares narrate something or the fabrics come from a long history of clothing and scraps and family woven together to make something new.

This is precisely how I am living my life. I have to take all the scraps of the pass 3 years of infertility and make them into something new. I need to start 2010 with only one voice in my head, my own. Despite all the public debate, criticisms, and concerns about what my husband and I have embarked upon, I know that what is happening is a beautiful thing- I am finally making my family. I have pieced together a certain clarity and hope through the mess of loss and pain. Now more than ever I know that the thread that held this all together was surrogacy.

As I thought about gifts I would like to give A. after she delivers our baby girl, it dawned on me that a quilt telling her history of surrogacy would be the perfect project. Being able to document the babies she has brought to life felt absolutely right.

All the News That's Fit to Print?

Well, they did it again. Good old New York Times pleasured us with yet another surrogacy article that sets us all behind a giant step. The same day as my baby shower, December 12th, they printed an article "Building a Baby, With Few Ground Rules." Just from the title alone you already can see where it's going. Believe me, I used to write headlines during my experience in journalism and I know what they are all about. You keep them punchy and provocative enough so readers will salivate. Already we know the angle of the article. No doubt it is going to portray babies as commodities in the unregulated, dangerous, immoral wild west of surrogacy.

But I read on. Despite my stomach turning, knowing full well it would be biased and end with a slew of nasty online comments from fire breathing know-it-alls, I needed to know how bad the damage was. Furious doesn't come close to describe my utter disappointment and anger (once again) at the New York Times. 

The story opens with "Unable to have a baby of her own, Amy Kehoe became her own general contractor to manufacture one." The couple used donor egg and sperm as well as a surrogate. The article proceeds to tell the story of the Kehoes and their surrogate, Laschell Baker, who filed for custody of their twins after finding out "Ms. Kehoe was being treated for mental illness." Once again we see the same tiresome stereotypes - crazy desperate infertile woman spends gobs of money to buy a baby.What's her punishment? Concerned surrogate feels she must keep the baby because she can be a better mother. Because why? For the public, it's obvious, she carried the baby. Second, anybody with mental illness of any level should not be a mother. Great logic. So I guess we should start having all women get approval from a psychiatrist that they are fit to parent? So glad that it's going to be 2010 and we are still pandering to the prejudices again mental illness and fears of new reproductive technology.

The writer, Stephanie Saul, doesn't even try to hide her own opinion in the article. She devotes just one line in the article stating the fact that most cases of surrogacy are not as complicated as Ms.Kehoe's case. But she then follows that up with the thesis statement of the article:

The lax atmosphere means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions.

So if most cases of surrogacy are not this complicated and messy, why is she claiming that suddenly we are now plagued with vexing ethical questions? Okay, journalism 101  - this very opinionated tone needs to come from an interviewed source, NOT the writers voice. Look at the language she uses - "order up a baby," "commercial market for surrogate babies, "vexing ethical questions."Um, this is objective writing? This isn't the Op-Ed section lady. A better journalist would have set the issue up like this:

"Though surrogacy and donors has given opportunities for couples struggling with infertility to find alternative methods for starting a family, the complexity of surrogacy laws, financial costs, and relationships with surrogates has opened the door for cases like the Kehoes to raise debate about what's best for the child."

So we already know where the writer stands and it's not an objective journalistic voice. It's quite obviously suspicious and obsessed with the monetary aspect of surrogacy. As the article continues on we hear about other poor babies being created by maniac infertile couples who are putting the children at jeopardy. Saul then sets up her defining punch of the story with the perfect crazy story of a single man who uses a surrogate to have a baby and brings his pet bird to the hospital. Among other evidence she lays out that this man is unfit to parent, she is able to create the obvious metaphor that people using third party reproduction are essentially seeing their babies as pets. She quotes George J. Annas, a bioethicist who says “This is the main problem with commercialization, seeing children as a consumer product...This is especially true when there is no genetic connection with the child,” he said. “It really does treat children like commodities. Like pets.”

Okay, so according to this statement, intended parents like myself must see our babies as that cute dog we have always wanted? I guess that goes for adopted parents too who also have no genetic connection. You mean after years of infertility and miscarriages and IVFs, all I really wanted was a dog? Gee wiz, I've always wanted a cat or guinea pig, hey, why not a baby?

Jesus New York Times, can you be a little more simplistic and judgmental? Can you see beyond the dollar signs and the manufacturing process? Can you see that there are humans making decisions to love a baby and start a family? Do you jump on every bad apple to base your entire lens on surrogacy? Is there no further explanation you can give of what Ms. Kehoe went through with infertility? Is there consideration that mental illness is treatable and that an enormous amount of people suffer with depression and other disorders and are not barred from parenting? No, I guess not. I guess Ms. Saul couldn't resist keeping the thread of the story focused on the absurd claim that babies are being bought and sold like commodities. She showed no informed debate about the needs of the intended mother and the needs of the surrogate. Nope- dollar signs rule. It's much sexier. Just read how she concludes the article:

"Ms. Kehoe still has hope, though. It is stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen at IVF Michigan. The tank contains 20 frozen embryos made from the eggs and sperm she bought."

Are you kidding me? Um, do you hear the snide use of "hope"? Oh, she's hopeful that she can just buy another baby. If it wasn't bad enough that Saul portrays this whole scenario as if crazy people are building babies without thought or responsibility, now she implies that Ms.Kehoe didn't care that much about those twins to begin with because look at how many embryos she bought and so she can just make another one. Like she bought her supply of high-end designer shoes so she can always have back-up if a pair goes out of style. A nice frivolous ending. Is there no understanding of what loss these intended parents must be going through? Is there no understanding that this is the same feeling as having a stillborn or a miscarriage? So are we suppose to think that people who have frozen embryos just look at them as commodities and not the greatest gift of potentially expanding their family?

Frankly, this is just bad journalism, bad story-telling, and an oversimplification of why people turn to third party parenting. I completely agree with Kerry Howley's blog post, "It's 2010. Can We Stop Talking About 'Designer Babies' Now?" who writes,

Part of the impetus to describe these relationships as new and frighteningly alienated comes, I think, from the misperception that until recently the process of having a baby has been entirely separate from the market economy. And there is undeniably something new about the buying and selling of ova among former strangers. But for as long as childbirth has involved medical professionals, the “creation” of a child has been a group endeavor including parties both paid and unpaid. New technologies create the possibility of new relationships. As those relationships—egg donor and intended mother, sperm donor and surrogate mother—become normalized, the pattern I see is less one of alienation than adaptation.

Again, there is something about infertility treatments that people love to see as excessive, selfish, and most of all, vain. There is a tendency to put it in a box and label it anything but normal. It turns woman against woman, parent against parent, and media love to feed off this.

Ironically, as this completely negative portrayal of third party reproduction hit the stands in my beloved city of New York, I wish, just wish the world could know what was happening simultaneously. That very same day just blocks from the New York Times building, my family and friends were gathering for my baby shower, celebrating and honoring the coming of my baby via A. Instead of some legal battle and commercial baby market that the rest of the world was reading about, my wonderful surrogate A. video skyped in to my shower so everyone could meet her. Instead of fears that she would announce she is keeping the baby, screams of joy and applauses rang out from friends and family as A. stood up and showed her big belly carrying my 33 week old daughter. In that moment, was anyone thinking about how much this cost? Were my friends and family tearing up because of our financial loss? Was everyone wondering whether I was mentally fit to have this child? Were we all wondering when my commodity will be born? I think I make my point loud and clear New York Times, that you chose the low road. Tell me who is commodifying babies? Intended parents who seek help to start a family or journalists who chose to exploit and sensationalize a legal tangle and a tragic misunderstanding between two women just to sell some newspapers?

'Tis the season for giving

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Upon returning from sunny paradise to the miserable cold of New York City, it dawned on me that it's already Christmas season. The lights and festive cheer are draped all over the city and it feels like a time warp. We sort of skipped Thanksgiving mentally by being away and now suddenly it's jingle bells all over the place. Suddenly time is closing in on our due date at lightening speed and I am dumbfounded by how fickle time is. Once my torturer, the clock let the minutes drip painfully slow - one drop at a time on my forehead, burrowing a hole in my scull. It was the same thing during every 2 week wait, every beta check, every scheduling of the next IVF. Now I can't seem to blink without chunks of time passing before I can even mentally digest them.

Unfair? Yes. Perspective is everything and your reality will always fall victim to it. What is naughty and what is nice? It all depends. The line is so slight sometimes between good and bad, joy and grief, loss and gain, clarity and confusion. They seem so vastly different in meaning, but then just one little event or emotion can trigger one to the other, making them seem so closely related.

So as I look upon all this holiday cheer around me, I can still acknowledge that 2009 brought the greatest loss of my life thus far- a definitive NO regarding a genetic child. But at the same time, I can see that once that big "NO" came crashing down on me, it forced me to move on to donor egg and surrogacy. I got the double deal special this holiday season - a new egg and a new uterus, totaling up to my new baby on the way. Santa is no longer peddling the IVF drugs to me. That carrot stick dangling in my face has finally been cut off it's rope and thrown in the toilet. I have tried for three years to be nice. I was never naughty, except maybe my outbursts of rage, but I tried, and I tried, and I tried to be good. I did everything I was told to do - vitamins, bed rest, yoga, protocols, no caffeine - never once slipped. I tried to wish upon every star for this damn infertility to go away. But it didn't. Until this year I didn't know when to give up on my own body. How could I have known that I should have been wishing for completely new parts - shiny new parts of my body that two incredible women would give to me?

It's overwhelming to truly think about the meaning of these gifts. 'Tis the season for giving is no laughing matter in this situation. Just like the depths of grief I have felt these years, the depths of my awe and wonder over how this baby came to be is almost too much. How am I actually going to feel watching our baby come out of A.'s body? My biggest fear is that I won't feel anything. Maybe I will be too stunned. Maybe I won't feel as much because we used donor egg? Will it be so separate and foreign and bloody that the meaning of it all won't resonate? Sometimes I think I won't even cry, like it's almost too much to express. Maybe I won't crumble to the floor singing Hallelujah. Or maybe, just maybe, I will finally feel parts of my heart growing back, just in time to give to this baby.

Baby Moon

We are jetting off this week to an undisclosed location for a 10 day last-hurrah-vacation, just the two of us, before the baby arrives. Instead of heading to the usual thanksgiving with family, we are ditching both sides of the family and heading to a tropical paradise. I was told by someone that this is our "babymoon," which I suppose is the honeymoon before the baby arrives. It's one of those terms that would have irritated the hell out of me if some pregnant lady ever chirped to me "We're going on our babymoon!" But like so many other circumstances right now, my usual abrasive reactions are watering down. I can see the sweetness of the term.

In 2007, I spent thanksgiving miscarrying while eating turkey. In 2008, I was thankful that I was not miscarrying over turkey dinner. And in 2009, obviously I am thankful for this baby, but frankly I am also just thankful that none of this killed me. I mean how many holidays have I spent miserable and in despair? I always dreamed of being able to spend thanksgiving sitting at the table with my family, piling my plate with the harvest of foods, looking down at my pregnant belly, or another scenario - I am stuffing my face with mash potatoes and I raise my glass at the table and say, "We have an announcement to make, we are pregnant!" Well, that never came true, and it never will. So instead of trying to create this fantasy thanksgiving I have been waiting to have, we are reinventing it by getting the hell out of here. We will begin a new kind of thanksgiving next year when we can celebrate with our own child sitting right next to us at the table.

Happy thanksgiving to all of you. Peace and good eating!

Media Watch

Besides people who are completely boring, most people have something that makes them an outsider. Some just hide it better than others. Any story has it's greatest impact when telling the arc of a character who must face some kind of challenge, idiosyncrasy, or exile. Television is no exception. Even in the toilet of reality TV, there is this same fundamental principle. But for television that actually requires good writing, there are always eyes out in the audience who can verify whether these challenges, idiosyncrasies, or exile are ringing true.

I'm pretty sensitive to media representations of gender, race, and sexuality. In all these categories historically there are countless gruesome moments of stereotyping. But certainly over time it has been improving, there is hope. I had long given up on television ever portraying infertility with any real craft. Particularly with surrogacy, they have tended to turn to comedic set ups -- (Desperate Housewives) "Oops, they put the wrong sperm in and, oh no, our baby is black!" On top of the fact that the husband ends up sleeping with the surrogate- nice. Or, (Baby Mama) "Oh my god my surrogate is a maniac!" or (Jezebel) short-lived sitcoms where Parker Posey asks her sister to be her surrogate- "How nutty!" On Friends Chandler and Monica couldn't conceive so they adopt. Phoebe helps her brother and carries their twins. They got it a little better, about a B+ in terms of storytelling.

In terms of general infertility, there is a wider spectrum of attempts. Most TV shows play this storyline for a couple episodes and then POOF, wow, they get pregnant, or POOF, wow, they will adopt. No one really wants to see the storyline go much further than that. There was a series on HBO called Tell me you love me featuring a couple trying to conceive. They were trying to get it real in term of relationships, so they tried to tackle infertility. But the infertile couple constantly bickered and ultimately the woman seemed out of her mind. Good try but no cigar.

But let's face it, surrogacy and donor egg on paper are ripe for comedy. Three or four people trying to make a baby and all the potential delicious mishaps could score some laughs. It does scream soap opera. But when writers dig a little deeper, or actors who have faced infertility chime in, there is potential for more. The reason I bring all of this up is that I am happy to see on ABC's Brothers and Sisters many fertility plot lines. First we find out that among the Walker family, Tommy is infertile and has to use one of his brothers as a sperm donor. Then his sister Kitty can't get pregnant and low and behold we actually get to see them go through an IVF cycle- shots and everything. We even see Kitty miscarry. They ultimately adopt, but they even dabbled a little in surrogacy talk. In a later episode after both Kitty and Tommy have their children, they have a moment of understanding- infertile to infertile. Wow, too good to be true? You mean, they actual keep the infertility as part of their characters? They don't just write it out like most TV shows once the problem is miraculously solved?

For this new season, Kevin and his husband Scotty have now decided to have a child through donor egg and surrogacy. Am I looking in the mirror? I have said before that on paper I am equal to a gay man trying to conceive a child. I love a man, and I don't have a good egg or uterus to use. So when watching this plot unfold on Brothers and Sisters, I was happy to see they were getting is right- at least in terms of the surrogacy process. I've read on some TV blogs some criticism that this surrogacy plot desexualizes Kevin and Scotty by making them less a gay couple and keeps them in a safe heterosexual plot of love, marriage, baby. I can't speak to that, obviously, but I can speak to seeing a surrogacy and egg donor plot line that doesn't involve slap stick humor. For instance, last episode Kevin and Scotty are trying to search online for their egg donor. Kevin was obsessing over the profiles, trying to find the perfect woman. It was good to see it wasn't the butt of a cheap sitcom joke. It showed him really struggling with the choice. I had to do the exact same thing pouring over online profiles. It's not easy. It's one of the weirdest processes I have ever gone through.

The timing couldn't have been better for me. I had been starting to obsess a little about what our baby girl is going to look like. Will she look like the egg donor and will that make me feel bad? Will she feel bad that she doesn't look like her mother? Then as I settled into bed I found comfort where I least expected, the television. I turned on Brothers and Sisters and saw Kevin obsessing over the same things- physical traits, academic traits, etc. His uncle tells him that like wine, you don't know what you are going to get based on the grape. He says there is a world of surprises depending on how you cultivate that grape, so the taste is unpredictable. So Kevin walks away feeling like no matter what traits the donor has, the child will be a product of their parenting and that will be full of unexpected and joyous surprises.

I know this is not an earth shattering revelation, as I have been preaching that for a long time to myself, but it was somehow good to see it on TV. It's one thing if I say this in my head, but it's another thing for this sentiment to be portrayed on a box that sits in millions of people's homes. It rang true and that's good writing, and good writing can move mountains. Good writing can possibly sway prejudices. Good writing can move a woman to feel more okay about donor egg and surrogacy. That's progress for me and more surprisingly...for television. Kudos ABC.