Issue 17: I have scary questions and no one to relate to

Saturday October 6 2018

When I (often) overthink the situation I find myself in, I strike an unusual balance between “pioneering pride” and “discouraging unfamiliarity”. The first is easy to unravel. I’m bloody tough, I realise. I’ve been through some accumulative hard times, now to the point that I’m usually the most interesting person at the dinner party. “You’re doing what? Tell me more etc.” There’s a weird moment of self-respect buried in there somewhere.

The other side, the unknownness, is a direct result of that. My situation is unusual enough to make me that interesting. As such, I can find plenty of people who have done IVF — maybe even with donor eggs — but surrogacy as a straight married woman? Not so easy to stumble across.

It makes me feel a little isolated, if I’m honest. As much as I don’t subscribe to the sisterhood philosophy, where we all congratulate each other on how special we are in a group scenario, I can appreciate that having someone to relate to would be nice. I managed to meet someone unexpectedly, and I’m grateful for it whenever I lie in bed feeling sorry for myself and my uncommonness.

When we were in Miami to meet Dr Y we also met Zoe, the chief executive of our surrogacy agency. It didn’t seem a monumental occasion to start with — kind of admin-y, really — but about halfway through our chat with her it became a highlight.

She went through the pleasantries and the logistics and, as has become characteristic during these kinds of conversations, I got a little more depressed because I feel as if I’m more of a third wheel in the process than a key component. Just for now. When the baby comes, I’m as straight in at No 1 as a Drake song, but in the meantime it feels as though I’m limping into the charts at best.

Mr B is as understanding as anyone could hope their husband to be (let’s not forget that he is experiencing a massive loss too), but it’s also hard to articulate exactly what I’m feeling, mostly because I don’t even know. Like trying to describe a headache to someone who has never had one.

Zoe is a married heterosexual who — she casually threw into the chat about half an hour in — has teenage twins born through surrogacy after an infertility diagnosis due to cancer. Choir of angels, do your thing. How have the stars aligned to allow me to meet this person? And how did she take this many months to slip that gem into the conversation? The second half of the meeting was occupied by me grilling her about all the scenarios I’ve been worried to bring up at home because I suspected my feelings about them were weird.

For instance, what if the baby comes and I don’t like it immediately? Am I supposed to automatically love something that I don’t know from the inside? I know that I fall in love with any animal without knowing it, but human babies? I have neither frame of reference nor experience.

Zoe nodded along knowingly and told me that she felt all of these things and more. It was like a tidal wave of relief. Until she didn’t get a couple of things, and then the needle jumped off the vinyl and I got a bit stuck.

Me, listing my feelings and increasingly excited that they were substantiated: “Yes and for the birth! I don’t want to be there for the birth!”

Zoe: “Really? Yes you do.”

Me: “No, I really don’t.”

Zoe: “Oh, honey, you’ll change your mind. Just wait.”

I really don’t think I will, though, and here is where I can’t seem to find vindication.

My instinct tells me that if I watch another woman give birth — and I am being brutally honest here — I will:

a) struggle to believe that this is my baby and not hers;

b) find the very special experience incredibly gross;

c) feel jealous that this woman is able to do this amazing thing;

d) all of the above.

Instead I want to come at it like an old-fashioned dad: wait in the corridor with my heart in my mouth, fat cigar optional, and let the surrogate have her privacy in dealing with her emotions without worrying about mine. Ideally, I’d like to hold my baby for the first time without associating it with another woman’s vagina. If that rationale makes sense only to me, I think I’m OK with that.

Zoe went on to explain that a friend carried the twins for her, and they all still spend a lot of time together. Furthermore, Zoe’s family call their surrogate “the other mother”.

I still balk slightly at that, but remind myself that everyone is different in their processing and rationalising and emotional preferences, and I fit somewhere down the scale from Zoe and her enlarged alternative family. I understand the complexities around having more than the traditional two parents, but I’m conscious that, when it’s my turn to be a mother, I don’t want any confusion around that. For me, for the child, for its friends and my friends and my husband and anyone and everyone. It’s a different equation, but the sum is essentially the same.

Far from feeling isolated right now, I’m sitting with my friends Kate and Andrew while I write this all down. I’m also reconsidering whether I should be this honest on a national news outlet. “Maybe I should get one of you to read it first and tell me if you think it’s contentious,” I say.

Andrew replies: “Yes. But maybe get Kate to read it because I don’t even know what contentious means.”

And we’re back in the room. Thank God for diversity and options and alternatives and science and medicine and friends who make you laugh in the face of infertility.