Not The Surrogate

I will never forget when the thought crossed my mind. It was shortly following my coming out; the one that existed only between me and myself. The time in which I finally knew that I was ready to share with the outside world what I knew to be true in my heart. With this realization that was more real than it had ever been came a plethora of emotions and fast paced considerations.

Would I ever find someone to spend my life with like so many of the straight couples that I admired?

Would my life be more difficult than that of my siblings?

Would I find the joy and wonder that I had always dreamed of for my life?

And then it showed up like an unexpected house guest. And not the kind that you welcome in for coffee and are surprisingly happy to see. The kind that appears when you are just about to step in the hot shower, or when you just sat down for the first time all day with your sacred glass of red wine. It’s the only thought that ever made me feel anything but joy and and freedom at the realization of my sexuality.

Babies. More specifically, how I would one day have children. Even more specifically, the realization that I would not be able to make a baby in the way I had always imagined. I became acutely aware of the fact that two women cannot create a human life together. Or so I thought.

Of course I KNEW this scientific fact prior to coming out. I was not living under a rock, people. But I never had a reason to truly consider this reality until it became incredibly relevant to me and the life that I now knew I was meant to live; one with a woman.

I always knew that I wanted children, even prior to realizing my sexuality, which led to an adjustment period when I came to this incredibly difficult conclusion; I would not be having babies in the way that I had always thought I would. For as long as I can remember, I romanticized the idea of having children (likely to my detriment). The entire idea of it. I have always been in awe of both the magic that is pregnancy as well as the beauty of motherhood. And in this parenthood romance novel that I had allowed my subconscious to write, I had never considered how this would look if my life partner was of the same gender. Of course these thoughts were both silly and juvenile, as I now know that no matter what kind of relationship you are in or how you identify, the road to having a baby is not always paved with flowers and perfect concrete. For so many couples, there are too many cracks and weeds to count. But in my youth, this was not yet a reality that I had reason to be educated about. So at the time, it was unrealistic expectations and over romanticizing.

Little did I know, in all of my disappointment and worry, that two things would become increasingly true as I fell more and more in love with the woman who would become my wife:

1. Raising babies with her, no matter how they came to be, would be one of the greatest honors of my life.
2. That whole “how” became less and less important as I became more and more detached from the societal assumption that all babies are born from two straight people making sweet love with the intention of creating a baby.

So how DID our sweet baby come to be? Turns out, in a way that allowed me to reconnect with those juvenile desires about making a little one, together, with the person that I love.

Laine and I conceived our baby through a process called Reciprocal IVF. You may hear people reference this method as “Her Bun, My Oven”. Laine and I chose to go with “Her Eggs, My Basket”. If you are not familiar at all with the IVF process, here is a VERY top level view of what all is involved. The patient is pumped with a number of hormones to stimulate the ovaries so that they will grow lots and lots of follicles. Follicles are fluid filled sacs in the ovaries that contain one egg. Normally, a patient produces 1-2 mature follicles per cycle. With the medications being injected to stimulate the ovaries, the hope is that many follicles will grow and mature. Anywhere between 8 – 15 is considered a great number, while some patients will produce less and some, a lot more. After around 12-15 days of injecting these medications and countless “follicle checks” at the fertility clinic, a retrieval is scheduled. Essentially the retrieval procedure is where the fertility doctor extracts all of the follicles that are present from the stimulated ovaries. These follicles are then fertilized by sperm (for us, a donor’s sperm) and will then be on their way to hopefully becoming embryos. In short, those embryos, however many there may be, are then graded on the fifth day after extraction (called the “blastocyst stage”) and one (or multiple!) is chosen to be transferred directly into the uterus that is intended to carry the pregnancy in hopes that it sticks and becomes a baby. If the patient is lucky enough to have more than one embryo after their initial transfer, the ones that are not used that round are then frozen, stored and available for future transfers.

Although there is A LOT more involved and that is just scratching the surface, I feel confident in saying that sheds light on the basic process. So what is Reciprocal IVF? It is the exact same process as above with one small change. In traditional IVF, one patient undergoes both the retrieval and the transfer to carry the baby. With Reciprocal IVF, two patients are involved! One goes through the egg retrieval process and the other is inseminated with the transfer embryo to become the carrier of what they hope will be a viable pregnancy. So what does this mean in layman’s terms?

For us in our journey, it means: Laine’s egg, my uterus!

Making a baby. Together. Both with vital roles in the creation of our rainbow boy. Her egg to start the process of his life, my uterus to house him and grow him until he is in our arms.

MAGIC.

Now let’s get to the part that I am sure you are all immediately wondering about now that you know how we conceived. Is there any part of me that has thoughts about him not being biologically created from me? Without hesitation, my answer is not one. Let me be very clear on this and say it one more time for the people in the back.

Not a single, solitary part of me even thinks about biology. This child? He is mine. In every sense of the word. He is growing inside of me. He is living because of my body that provides him that ability. He is safe because I keep him so. I feel his kicks and I feel his movements. Every four weeks, I hear his heart beating inside me. With every ultra sound, flutter in my stomach, and side effect that is due to the life I am growing, the thought of biology is the farthest thing from my mind.

But most importantly, and quite possibly what holds the most magic of all, is this: he is made up of the woman who stole every bit my heart. The greatest person I know. How can he not be part me when he is part her? I feel more connected to him knowing he is made up of the same stuff she is than I do knowing my own body is providing him life. He was created from her, and she is undoubtedly a part of me. Therefore not only is he mine, he is beautifully and wonderfully ours.

Without her egg, he does not exist. Without my body to carry him, he does not continue to exist. He has life because of both of us, and that is something that I never thought I would have the chance to say when it came to me and my female spouse. It is sacred beyond what I can convey with words on a page.

Now you may be wondering, “why the title?”. I named this piece Not The Surrogate because this very notion is the reason I wanted to write this entry. It’s what inspired me to share our conception story. As magical and profound as this process of conceiving a baby with my wife has been, there have of course been challenges. Mostly, we have experienced nothing but complete and total joy from friends, family, and strangers alike. But just as we are continually forced to do as a lesbian couple, we have had to confront some tough questions or comments surrounding our pregnancy that strike a nerve. The majority of those comments will be left for another day and another post. But with this piece, I want to shed light on what has been the hardest comment I have endured since sharing our news about expecting. And that has been when someone compares my role in this pregnancy to being a surrogate.

Let me start by saying, for anyone who has ever said this to me, I know that it is not from a place of ill-will. I am acutely aware that it is simply a scientific comparison to understand how our pregnancy came to be. However, I write about it in hopes to educate, as I am sure if it has happened to me, it has happened to many other reciprocal IVF mamas. And if it hurt my heart as much as it did, I am sure it has hurt others too.

According to the Mariam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of surrogacy is “the practice by which a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby in order to give it to someone who cannot have children”. The act of being a surrogate is one I have deep and genuine respect for. I think it is one of the most incredible things that a woman can do for anyone yearning to have children. Without surrogacy, so many parents would go childless and I cannot say enough about how much I admire surrogate carriers. However, I am not one of them. When this comparison has been drawn, I want to scream through tears, “I am this boy’s mother”. I am carrying MY baby, not a baby that I carried for anyone else. A baby that I will give birth to while his other mom holds my hand. A baby that I will breastfeed, universe willing. A baby that my wife and I will bring home and adore for the rest of our lives. I am carrying the child that I will watch grow over the course of his life. The baby that I will one day yearn for when he is too big to sit in my lap. I am giving life to the little boy who will run to me when he falls and look to me when he needs reassurance. I will share in his joys and I will catch his tears. I am carrying our baby that will become an adult; one that I will go to all lengths to ensure knows he is limitlessly loved. I am handing this child over to no one but the incredible woman whom who I get the honor of raising him with.

And so you see, I am not a surrogate. I am a mother carrying our child. No questions asked. No comparison needed. It is as simple as that.

Laine and I realize how insanely lucky we are to have the chance to conceive in this remarkable way. Although we suffered the path of a loss with our ectopic pregnancy through IUI, we now truly believe that it was nature’s way of guiding us towards the reciprocal IVF journey that we had always longed for. There are so many factors that demand our thanks. The fact that Laine’s eggs were healthy enough to produce a beautiful embryo (with siblings on ice!). The fact that my body has so far offered us a healthy pregnancy to carry our boy. And just as importantly, the tribe of people who rallied around us and purchased our campaign t-shirts to help us foot the bill for this process that at one point was only a dream. It is not lost on us just how incredible it all is and we will continue to practice gratitude for what we truly believe is a miracle. With a little science and a lot of unrelenting love, we created this little life. Soon there will be three of us, but I hope we never forget these days, when it’s just us two, reminiscing on the magic of how he came to be. The little miracle we made. Together.