Oh surrogate, surrogate, wherefore art thou surrogate?

I am perched on my balcony looking out into the world hoping for her arrival. It's going to be a love story like no other. Who will you be? Where will you live? When will you appear through the trees bringing your light into this shadowed room? I am waiting again.

In our search for true love, there are always the false starts that are disappointing. We came close. A lovely woman from Iowa seemed like a great possibility but with further research we found out that Iowa would most likely require a step parent adoption. After everything I have been through I just don't think I can deal with the hassle of adopting my own child after I finally have the baby in my arms. Aren't I entitled to an end to this madness once I take a baby home? Do I really need to be subjected to a court hearing and a social worker home visit to allow me to adopt my own child when any maniac out there is allowed to have a kid naturally with no approval system? It's just absurd. So we are waiting to work with a surrogate from a state that our names can be put on the birth certificate without having to do any more legal crap to be officially "mother." 

It's hitting me these days how strange this whole thing is. This is truly online fertility dating. I study profiles of women with my requirements in my head but ultimately it comes down to a connection. Of course we want her to be healthy and fertile and honest, but there also has to be that je ne sais quoi about her that will win my complete trust. Everything can look great on paper but until you meet someone face to face you can't feel that chemistry. So as my mind runs away with dreams of Princess Charming, I know that anything and everything can happen with this new relationship. My heart beats a little faster every time I think that soon I will meet her. 

Good-Bye Family Tree

As I walked down my apartment hallway last week trying to keep the pain of this recent loss from spilling over my entire body and collapsing, I noticed the walls covered by family photos. One side of the hallway is dedicated to my family history and the opposite wall is a portrait of my husband's family. I had made this collage of family photos so long ago because I had this sense of pride about my family and wanted them all close by me. It's like a gallery of darling candid shots of my nieces and nephews, old pictures of my parents as dashing lovebirds, and me and my siblings as cute toddlers. I particularly love the old photos of my grandparents. I never even met my paternal grandparents but I like to look at that old black and white dusty photo of them and imagine who they were in a country so far away. What were they thinking when they stood there staring blankly at the camera? Did those two fresh faces ever expect to die young and have their children eventually immigrate to America to spawn us spoiled brats stuffing our faces with cheetos and watching Brady Bunch? A rush of sadness came over me as a flash of this family history spun out of control in front of me. It all stops here. My husband and I may not continue this family tree. We could be that branch on the genealogy chart that's the dead end. 

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to have a biological child. I've already given up the idea of carrying a child myself and now I've been trying to rethink what my own family could mean. I've been so locked into my past, my own childhood, and my own blood. To top it off my husband is the last male of his family so if we don't have a child, let alone a son, it's the true end of his family name. We all know that in earlier times I would have already been shown the door and 2nd or 3rd wife would be taking over the procreating. So I know why it pains my husband when I mention adoption. I know he doesn't want to really face that he may not be able to continue his blood lines or his great smile. It pains me too. 

It may seem premature for me to give up hope of a genetic child since maybe the surrogacy road will work for us. But I can't help feel that something is probably wrong with my eggs. I've had 4 pregnancies and none of them survived. They don't really know if it's my uterus or my eggs. But I'm not willing to spend another two years trying with bad eggs. I've thought about if I could really handle donor eggs. At least if our child is part of my husband then can I be happy? I think I can. I need this journey to end. I can't do this much longer. 

I've thought about all these options a billion times through the years. But now they are quite real. They aren't in that space in my brain called "last resort." These are my options now. I know it's pointless to keep asking why bad things are happening to me. Every time I get pregnant and I am faced with the limbo of "it could be good or it could be awful," I manage to find an online buddy whose in the same boat. It's always a brief encounter where we find each other in our moment of desperation with similar threats and then sure enough things go well for her and my pregnancy tanks. These women are just blinks. For a split second we have the same prospects of good things and then we quickly diverge. It's weird. Could I really be that cursed? But when I get into the space of feeling like I am being denied, victimized, and deprived of what others get immediately (or eventually) then I fall into deep down basement darkness.

So take the photos off the walls! Reinvent what your future will be. Give up this notion of what family is suppose to be. I'm not going to have a conventional family, period. I won't be able to get pregnant with IVF and then practically be like everyone else (at least from the outside). I am going to have a baby with either surrogacy, egg donor, or adoption. I'll have a couple extra people in the mix who helped give my child life. I know I have a higher chance now of not having a biological child. I will have to get special books and join support parenting groups to make sure my kid doesn't grow up scarred or emotionally freaked out by their birth story. This is more real to me now than ever. I close my eyes and see a couple cute kids running around the apartment that pretty much look like me and my husband. I am trying to get use to them not being biologically connected to me. I am trying to understand the greater love that goes beyond narcissistic pleasure. 

So I painted the hallway walls a light gray. A true blank slate. 

Under Cover IVF

I thought about keeping this one completely under wraps. Somehow if I told no one then it would cease to exist. But as much as I would like to keep my mouth shut, I decided I should at least acknowledge the try. After all my flip flopping on this blog, I ended up trying a fourth IVF this month. The idea was that while I wait for my surrogate match I could squeeze in one last try and by some miracle I could make this nightmare end with a healthy pregnancy. Sadly, this is not my story.

Today I officially have a chemical pregnancy. The cycle itself was a total bust to begin with. We only got 4 eggs and only 1 fertilized and so we transfered a mediocre 5 cell embryo. The day I transfer my lone embryo I caught a nasty ass cold/flu and ended up sick for my entire two week wait. I was assured this would not effect anything, but I knew it was another sign that this cycle was a dud one. Also, that same week of retrieval and transfer we got a call from our agency saying they had some surrogate candidates for us. The last thing I wanted was all of this to converge the same week. We had to decide in a matter of hours between canceling the cycle or losing our surrogate candidates. But luckily our agency was so understanding and said we could finish out this cycle and then decide. Surrogacy was pushing its way back into my life and I had a feeling it was foreshadowing an IVF failure. But some lessons have to be learned the hard way. The story ends with, against all these odds, a positive beta (albeit very low which we all know means trouble). It all happened so fast. The cycle zoomed by in its own disastrous way just as quickly as my one day of pregnancy slipped by. As much as a chemical pregnancy is no picnic in the park, it beats an ectopic any day. So when you've gone through so much loss, it comes down to what type of loss is less painful and you take what you can get. Isn't there some trophy or ribbon for being "Semi-Pregnant" all the time? Who says "No pain, no gain?"My life is all about "pain and no gain."

So I feel this is like some confessional blog posting as I've been keeping this a secret and finally get to tell the truth. I didn't tell anyone but my sister and parents about this attempt. We all know what it's like living with this secret. I can now admit freely that I caved in and fell victim once again to the lure of IVF. I knew the risks and I still did it. But have I become so jaded that this loss means nothing? I don't feel like crying. I don't really even count this one, so have I lost part of my heart already? I don't know what this means but I find that it's unbearable to think about it any other way besides the-IVF-cycle-that-didn't-really-happen. It's like the bastard child kept in hiding. It was just so bad and pointless that I'd like to pretend I never did it. But as much as I would like to sweep this one under the rug, I feel I should honor this brief and somewhat ridiculously short-lived pregnancy.

So after so much bullshit and IVF fiascos, how can I view the universe without total bitterness and hatred? I don't want to be that dismal person who keeps waving a fist up at the heavens with steam coming out her ears. So throwing myself back into surrogacy is the best way to cope. I have to believe that the universe brought these possible gestational carriers to my attention for a reason and that my path, no matter how much I want to fight it, is going to go down this surrogacy road. Instead of picking out names and preparing for a May due date, I am going through profiles of women who will try to carry my baby. Will this ever end?

When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best

I'm not sure what to think about this. Hallmark has a series called "Cards with real words for real life." If you go on their website one of the options is "Help Cope with trying to get pregnant, having a miscarriage or an aging parent." The above card is Hallmark's answer to showing support for an infertile friend or family member. 

Now on the one hand, I see this as a breakthrough in mainstream media to include a card about infertility. It is getting the topic out of the shame closet and showing how prevalent this problem is and that it's okay to say something to an infertile person instead of running for the hills because you are too uncomfortable with it. So I do applaud this. But my first reaction to the card was a big giggle at how cheesy this seemed. Saying it with a hallmark card has never really been my style anyway, but I tried to think hard and honestly about how I would feel if I got this in the mail from a friend. Would I be really happy that a friend thought of me or would I feel like this was a lame way of avoiding talking with me about it?

I'm probably being too harsh because in the end I have a hard time figuring out what I want from people. I really don't want packaged responses from people about my losses or infertility because it makes me want to strangle them. I despise when I sense a person is so uncomfortable with the topic or feel they are walking on egg shells around me. Sometimes I don't want to feel like a freak and don't want people to talk in a pitied tone to me. But then sometimes I get so angry when people just ignore my losses and pretend nothing bad has happened. So what do I want from people? A hallmark card? In the end my mood plays a huge part in all this. I guess my preferred interaction is when a person can just be real with me. They can frankly say this sucks so bad and is angry along with me that this is happening and doesn't show awkwardness. Maybe I am just asking too much. But the people who haven't been afraid to talk frankly with me about this (hubby, mom, dad, sister and sister in-laws, and 2 close friends) are the people who continue to make me feel the most comfortable sharing my experience. 

So Hallmark is making the right step. But of course it got me thinking of some infertility cards I would like to submit to Hallmark for consideration. If they want to get to real words for real life, I got some doozies in my pocket that I can throw out there. What about some of these?

THE SURROGATE SERIES - When you want to avoid awkward questions, send the very best. 

For Intended Parent to Friend:



For Friend to Intended Parent:


THE NOSEY NEIGHBOR SERIES - When you can't hold your tongue, send the very best.

THE COMPLETELY UNHELPFUL SERIES: When you want to make light of an insanely complicated situation, send the very best.

I kid you not, I actually received this message from a friend in an email (word for word transcription!):


THE DREAM SERIES: When you have real insight into the infertility struggle, send the very best. 

I can dream can't I?



Can you think of any more for Hallmark?

Funny New Yorker Cartoon

From the New Yorker Magazine

"Are you sure you're ovulating now?"

I was flipping through an old New Yorker from June and in the cartoon caption contest they had this line submitted as one of the entries for this cartoon. Pretty hilarious! I wonder if the submitter is going through fertility treatments, but God bless her for a funny line. Unfortunately it didn't win the contest even though in my mind it far beat the others. I suppose most readers (and most New Yorker editors) can't appreciate the great lengths it takes to get pregnant. I don't know about you, but it seems that all business trips, family visits, pre-planned vacations fall at the same time as ovulation. So I know I would love to strap a parachute on my hubby, and on myself for that matter.

Co...cour...courage!

Sheeeeeeee's Baaaaack! Yes, dusted off and primped up, Little Miss Positive is out of the closet. Thanks to peesticksandstones for kicking her out of her hiding. There are a lot of reasons right now that Little Miss Positive is needed, but one very obvious reason is that I am scared. I'm scared of a lot of bad things happening and I'm scared because I've made a decision that puts everything at risk again. I've been accepted into a shared risk program at my new clinic and we've decided to try one last time on me as we wait for things to fall into place with a surrogate. So this means I'm on birth control now waiting to see if IVF#4 will actually happen in September. 

In the midst of this scary place, it's good to meet my old friend Little Miss Positive. We've been through a lot together. She was on my shit list for awhile after my recent ectopic disaster, but I've come to forgive and forget. Plus, I really need her now. I can see that fear is strangling me on a regular basis. It's taken hold of my controls and put me on autopilot. I fear I'm not doing my job right. I fear I'm losing my friends because of this isolation. I fear that my husband is going to get so fed up with my negativity. I fear all over again the IVF nightmares of another loss, especially another ectopic. I fear I will never get a surrogate match or worse it will fail in a surrogate. I am not able to stop these thoughts. So clearly I am in need of courage and in my recent search for it I couldn't seem to find that yellow brick road.

But I reached a turning point last week. I had a frenzied crazy hysterical conversation with my husband about my fears. I cornered him for yet another discussion on our next steps. I found myself over and over again trying to beat down his positivity by playing devil's advocate- What if I get another ectopic? What if the pregnancy gets complicated and my life is in danger? What if it's a waste of time? Blah, blah, blah. He got really upset with me and asked why I was trying to take away his hope. As you can imagine, I felt awful at that point. I explained that this is the fear talking and it's taken control of me. He responded with a very simple yet effective answer.

He said, "Courage is a decision."

"Oh..."[ long pause] "You're right," I said. 

Is it really that simple? I think for right now it is that simple. That seemed to burst the fear bubble, perhaps with the idea that even though I can't control outcomes I can control my decisions. I have a choice to go down so many scary roads and yet I have decided to have courage. I have decided to be positive again. I have to decide that I can handle more bad things happening. So that's what I am doing now. Courage isn't going to be handed to me by someone else. I'm the cowardly lion, that's for sure, but I guess I have to look for that Emerald City of Oz somewhere inside me. 

An Outlaw called "Intended Parent"

I never quite thought baby making for me would enter this new terrain of law, morality, and intention. Who knew I would have to add lawyer to my long list of reproductive attendants. Isn't doctor, nurse, IVF coordinator, embryologist, pharmacist, blood technician, early morning cab drivers, fertility yoga instructor, acupuncturist, insurance representative, and surrogacy agency enough?

I, as an "Intended Parent," have every intention of having a baby. Is that so wrong? Did I ever think I'd have to be on the run, like some bandit outlaw? For those who haven't had the pleasure of cracking the shell of surrogacy, every state of our United States has a particular opinion on surrogacy that dictates how and whether it can be done. (Click here to see a breakdown of state surrogacy laws) Unfortunately, my state of New York may accept all sorts of characters within its borders but it does not allow for surrogacy. So the story goes that in July of 1993, the legislature passed Article 8, Section 122 of the Domestic Relations Laws of New York. This law states that surrogate parenting agreements in New York are void, unenforceable and against public policy.

So now that I've been long barred from the natural mommy club, and slowly not qualifying for the IVF-on-my-own body club, I'm not only barred from my own body, I'm now barred from reproducing in my own state. My marginalized status seems to be becoming more and more remote. I'm not sure where I will be at the end of this - Siberia? My days are filled with waiting for a surrogate match and contemplating one last IVF on myself. I've felt lonely these days as I used to be a bulletin board whore - joining every type of buddy group from immune issues, to tubal infertility, to pregnancy loss, to repeat pregnancy loss, to lining issues, to ectopic survivors, and now surrogacy. But I'm not sure where I fit in on the bulletin boards anymore. If there was a group called "outlaws" or "road less traveled" or simply "Siberia" then I might join. 

But in my banishment, I realize this is where "intention" has the most profound meaning. As I feel in so many ways already labeled, I need to get used to my newest title of intended parent. Intention involves stretching, bending of the mind toward a goal, determination, purpose, and design. I'm running with my ball and chain out to sweeter and freer states that will let me put my embryos into another dear lady's uterus. Intent is pretty darn significant in a court of law. So if I face a jury of my fertile peers, they must remember that foresight and recklessness shouldn't be equated with intent. Don't condemn me if I don't have the foresight to see what pain lies ahead of me. Don't handcuff me if my choice to use a surrogate seems reckless. But if my crime is the intention to be a mother, intention to raise a child with love, intention to build a family, then I'm ready for my sentencing.