A mention of surrogacy

A little mention can go a long way. Just a short blip about surrogacy in Sex and the City 2 was kind of satisfying. Sarah Jessica Parker's character is talking with a fan who claims she has lived the exact same life as her [Carrie Bradshaw]. The woman announces she is pregnant via a surrogate and can give her the name of an agency. Carrie politely declines saying children are not for her. The woman is disappointed and slightly judgy (which I didn't like but beggars can't be choosers). In that one short conversation you see the stage set between the women who design their lives to be childless and the woman who design their lives to be mothers. She is juxtaposed against a mother via surrogacy. My guess is that Sarah Jessica Parker's real life surrogacy story is behind that script choice. I suppose choosing to not have kids and choosing to use a surrogate are sort of similar alternative camps - just on the opposite sides of the spectrum. But this conversation begins Carrie's journey in the film navigating her confusing expectations of a satisfying childless life.

What I like about the brief highlight of surrogacy is that perhaps it can plant the seeds in audiences that a woman can define her life however she wants. If she wants to use a surrogate to have a baby, so be it. If she wants to live her life just with her loving husband, more power to her. It's just two different paths. Sex and the City 2 reaches many many women. I hope that short exchange between the two women just reinforced that reproductive choices are exactly that- choices.

I know there is much criticism and poo pooing of the movie as a whole for other reasons. But expecting it to have some sort of cultural sensitivity or depth I think is a bit far fetched. You have to take it for what it is, which is candy. I totally was entertained. It was pure girl porn. The shoes, the clothes, the drama, the objectification of male bodies - I don't think you can expect more. But I give a nod to Sarah Jessica Parker as a fellow mother via surrogacy that at least she put it out there.

Lazy days of summer

As the oppressive humidity of New York City seems to be imminent, I have fallen into a summer slumber of mommy time. We have the feedings going every 5 hours. We are sleep training. Neck and legs are strengthening. Tummy time is our middle name. I danced around like a fool in my first baby development class. Our baby at 4 months is a linebacker. Rolls and rolls of fat have puffed out like a cheese soufflé making her a pudgy delectable treat.

I seem to be getting the hang of this. It's almost, dare I say, as if I can forget a little bit about the dark past. But every once in a while I am reminded of my unusual closeted infertile self. Just recently a sales lady asked, "How long was your labor?" Faced with this question for the first time I was a deer caught in headlights. I looked helplessly at my sister-in-law for help as I kept thinking in a panic, "How long did it take A. to deliver? Why am I blanking!!" I looked up into the air for a moment and say, "Ugh, about 8, or maybe 12 or, um...yeah 12 hours." My hope is that maybe women sometimes block out this very trying physical feat of labor so that my perplexing behavior might be assumed to be an aftershock? But what do I really care. So the sales lady thinks I am crazy, whatever.

But just like the questions about the pregnancy use to catch me off guard, eventually my scripted answers regarding labor/delivery melt off my tongue like second nature. I have mastered dodging questions like a high speed cheetah. But if they arise, it's best to keep it simple. A woman asked me on an airplane "How was the pregnancy?" I shrug, "Great." A woman says, "Wow, you just had a baby. You look great." I say,"Thanks." Someone says, "How did you manage to delivery that big baby!?" I say, "I managed."

It's the straight forward nature of life right now that I am thoroughly enjoying. Life used to be all about maybes, what ifs, and gray zones. But these lazy summer days feel very absolute. It's very freeing. I go from one day to the next learning more and more about my baby. It's amazing to me how much I know of her tiniest moods and needs. I know the pitch of her squeal when she is getting tired. I know the drool is a sign she wants her pacifier. I know how to get her into a bath without it being a three ring circus. I've figure out all her skin rashes - finally! I know that her concerned pissed off look means she is pooping. Again, just keeping it simple these days.

A mother on Mother's Day

My very first Mother's Day card came to me that blissful Sunday morning after my husband gave me a morning to sleep in. We spent the weekend at my parent's house for various family events and almost forgot it was a day to celebrate my own motherhood and not just my own mother, as per usual. For my whole life up until now Mother's Day was about my mother and nothing else. But what an amazing shift to share the day with her.

For the past three years I have been so focused on clawing my way to motherhood, I hadn't set my mind to what kind of mom I wanted to be. It is interesting these days to look at my own mother finally with a shared perspective. At my best, I hope to do her work justice. If I can be a mom like her, I will have reached my hopes for Mommydom. The amount of love and attention she gave me as a child and as an adult is immeasurable.

As she grows old and now in her 70s, I see how frail she is getting. I still rely on her help, her love, her support, and her wisdom even as a 38 year old. I see that she strains now to prepare meals for all of us when we visit, but forces herself to feed us as she always has done. I see how tired she is after a family event where she has organized and prepared and worried about the details. I see how tired she is taking care of my father. I see how excited she is to see Mira but that her stamina is slowing.

All this makes me quite sad and worried that as I become a mother that my own mother is waning. Her years devoted to us as kids is catching up with her. No one wants to think of that inevitable day when we lose a parent, but more and more as my parents face ailments I can't help but want to cherish every moment with them. I am torn between the child I am to my mother and the mother I am to my child. I find myself still needing to be both even though in some ways I should be graduating from my mother's care as I care for my own child.

It's hard to see my mother weakening when she is the one person I always can count on. I know that she put every cell of her body into raising us kids and I can only hope that someday when I am a little old lady Mira will feel the same way about me. The years ahead that I will devote to her will certainly drain me, but I know from my own mother that her drive remains intact. It completes your heart. I know my mother is tired these days but her love never gets tired. So I hope someday when I am a veteran of many Mother's Days my daughter will see that my tired old body still has a beating heart ripe with joy and love for her.

Life through stroller eyes

Never before walking the streets of my beloved city did I notice the frenzy. I always felt invigorated and stimulated by the hustle and bustle and rush of energy out on the streets. The noises, tastes, smells and people are the life blood of Manhattan.

Now strolling around with a baby you notice a whole new world of dangers. Will we make it over those pot holes and cracks? Does everyone really need to smoke on the streets? Do you really have to scream on your cell phone? Can you not blast your horn right next to me?

Perhaps a little over protective of my 2 month old, but I am navigating the world with this tiny baby that I have to keep alive and not damage. I am sure my heightened ear capacity has something to do with my over sensitized brain right now. I hear every peep, cry, eek, gurgle this baby makes, even when I am deep in slumber. But that's what seems to be happening as you become a unit with your kid. They are an extension of you.They go everywhere you go. They are your side kick until they don't want to be anymore. I am certainly a test study that genetics have nothing to do with this.

So I have become that mother with the stroller who is stopping up traffic on the sidewalk, bumping through chairs and tables at restaurants, crowding a bathroom to change a diaper, and scowling at those predators who threaten her young. This was a person I once despised. The amount of rage I had seeing a stroller is immeasurable. As I might have suspected, have I joined "the club?" I now smile knowingly at other parents. I chuckle at other crying babies and rambunctious toddlers. I exchange ages, names, and stroller preference with women in bathrooms. Jesus.

When I think about what I can write these days, it's precisely things I was never interested in reading. So my apologies to fellow infertiles still in the trenches trying. I hope you still visit me. For other mothers, I hope that we learn to love our mothering experience despite all our infertility baggage. It's a challenge but I try to remember I had to dig really deep into my soul to invite this baby into my life. My choices were hard and I still sometimes yearn for the biological child I tried so hard to have. But this doesn't make me less of a mother. Already my world is changing in the most subtle of ways, even down to how I walk the streets of my home.

To work or not to work.

I have heard it all before. Can you have it all? The age old dilemma for women after having children is that internal debate to either stay at home or be out in the work force. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you do. But either way, it's not easy.

For years infertility stole any impulse for my career. I would turn down jobs because of IVF. I would take a project but wished I didn't have to work and could just have a family. I put off taking a heavy stressful full-time job thinking I can't get maternity leave after just starting a new job. In the midst of all the shots, doctor appointments, and pregnancy losses, I lost sight of what my career was going to be. It wasn't my priority.

Now after 2 weeks of working on a freelance project, I am beginning to think about how I can balance motherhood and work. I keep hearing how there is this divide among mothers - those who work and those who do not. There are judgements and insecurities about both decisions. I hear complaints about women who can't imagine not staying at home and providing made-from-scratch everything for their child. Others take offense to working mothers who condescend to stay-at-home-moms.

I have decided to remain Switzerland on this subject. I have yet to enter into the larger mommy world because we are still staying at my parent's house and our baby is so young for it to be relevant. Isn't it just important to do what makes you happy? Maybe there is too much gray in that idea, which is ultimately why maybe women never quite feel satisfied with these options. It's not just about my happiness now, it's about my daughter and my husband too. Before it was expected that women stay at home. Then it was expected that you work too. Now it seems really up to you which way to go. The judgements and subtle jabs that women give each other only really come from a feeling of not being able to do it all. When you are at home all the time you might feel like your career is slipping away. When you are working you might feel you are missing precious moments with your baby. No win situation.

My plan is to find as many cool parents who are chilled out and open-minded. There are parents who judge or compete or preach or brag or compare children. These types of people just make you feel bad, so I plan to stay away from these parents as best I can. The last thing I want is to question myself, especially with all my infertility baggage. With so many levels of concerns about your baby - a) keeping them alive b) making sure they develop healthy and strong c) nurturing them for the person they will grow to become, you just have to do what feels right to you.

So my newest challenge is riding the roller coaster of making decisions about my career while trying to be the best mom I can. Again, better than the roller coaster ride of IVF. Luckily, part of what infertility has taught me is to tune out the noise. It has taught me well that the definition of motherhood is an infinite amount of things.

My tribe is all around me

Like I have said before, I wish there was a secret handshake for infertiles. Just some way of knowing we belong to the same tribe. But funnily, as I dawn the cap of donor egg mother via gestational carrier (quite a mouthful), I have unexpectedly run into tribe members all around me.

The day that A. had her final OBGYN checkup that sparked her delivery, one of the nurses in the office came up to me and said, "I was a surrogate for twins." We shared experiences and she wished us luck.

At the hospital where we delivered, the nurse who checked me in and did all the administrative paper work welcomed me and immediately told me she had done several IVFs and then adopted. It was an immediate comfort zone in the midst of this crazy anticipation for delivery. An angel in disguise, she stayed with me, shared her story, showed me a picture of her son, and even the next day brought Mira a present. She said to me, "I know how long this journey is and what this means so I wanted to give you a present." Unbelievable kindness.

When we took Mira to her first pediatrician appointment, the nurse who took all her vitals and did the PKU test told me she used traditional surrogacy for both of her children. "I am the adopted mother and the birth mother is called 'Poo.'" Once again, blown away that someone so random could understand our experience.

Finally, a last minute work project came up and I needed to get a baby sitter quick. We found a great young woman who just graduated from college. As I sat with her one day, she out of no where told me she was adopted and her parents brought her home when she was 5 days old. I shared with her that our baby was carried by a surrogate.

So maybe there is some crazy energy we all put out there that draws us together. Our tribe is unknown most of the time, often criticized and judged, sometimes pitied, all of which makes us very private. But I love, despite all that, that we find each other.

One month of motherhood

Today Mira is one month old and I see now why everyone says it's all a blur in the beginning. In some ways it seems like eons since she was born and other ways it feels like it just happened last week. Time is moving in its usual stealth way. I suppose that's what it's always going to be like as we watch our kids grow.

The one thing I can say for sure is all the horror stories of infant care are just "horror" in the fictional sense. As I suspected, infertility is way more of a horror show than any crying, pooping, and lack of sleep. Not to say this is all so easy but in no way is it as bad or as crazy as I was warned. Perhaps I will feel differently in a few months, but for now I keep feeling like the luckiest person.

When I think of how many steps and how many people it took to make our baby, I feel more certain that she should be very proud of her birth story. When your child is born via surrogacy or donor, we as parents ponder a lot about if, when, and how we will tell them. I have had my share of panic attacks about how am I going to tell her. How many "nice ladies" do I have to explain to her for Christ's sake? But as I see her thriving and growing, I think more than ever that her birth story will instill strength, not shame or alienation. I hope as a young adult and eventually as a grown woman she will carry that with her. We can truly tell her she was a miracle and that sometimes the more complicated the recipe the more delicious the result.