Issue 24: A scarily delicate relationship

Saturday November 24 2018

An email! From the fertility doctor!

Subject: “Potential Surrogate.”

Potential? Still? There are several P words that I would like in this scenario; “progress”, “positive”. “proceed”, “pregnant”. Potential is not one of them.

Message: “Pelvic sonogram showed left ovarian cyst. In 4-5 weeks she should repeat another sonogram and the cyst needs to be gone or significantly decreased before we can give her clearance to proceed as a surrogate. Thank you.”

Pause. Try to read between the clinically prescribed lines for some scrap of positive news. I know from my own experience of IVF that cysts are common, even more so in women having fertility treatment. In fact, I had my own “significant left ovarian cyst” that went away after two weeks of medication. We are lucky this happened, otherwise this message would have sent me into a tailspin because it wasn’t particularly explanatory. Or sugar-coated. In my experience, that’s doctors for you.

I suspect it sent Melissa into her own little tailspin because suddenly she went quiet on WhatsApp. Mr B tried to pep her spirits with his failsafe light-hearted humour. A carefully constructed text combo of poop and fingers-crossed emojis. I sense emoji-otional might not be the best approach at this point, so when she doesn’t respond to two or three more, I wade in.

“Just a little note before you go to bed and rest. We wanted to say a huge thank you and we’re both so sorry it was anything less than perfect. You’re our hero. It’s all gonna work out, now relax and don’t worry and go cuddle your family.”

I knew exactly what to write because I wanted so badly for someone to be saying those same words to me. And it worked, as she came back online.

“In a sense I feel like I may have let you down, but I am going to do everything in my power to make this work,” she texted. Phew. She’s back in the room, and our hunch was correct. She clearly feels some kind of pressure to be perfect and carry out this amazing feat without any stumbles. A medical hurdle must feel like a guilt-inducing letdown.

Mr B comes back online. “Dr Y is treating a cyst like you have only one leg. Please don’t worry. *huge smile emoji*

This is the delicate balancing act one of our strange baby-making play. We need to build and maintain a trusting, friendly, three-way relationship for several reasons. First, we want a baby. For various reasons, starting with taking out the horrible “business transaction” connotations, surrogacy is a hugely emotional experience and one that you generally reach at the end of a turbulent emotional ride. There are so many weird and complex feelings involved: jealousy, admiration, jealousy, fear, anxiety, trust, mistrust, jealousy. Having a positive and open relationship with the person helping you to get there can only help to alleviate some of the more difficult feelings.

Then there are the legal logistics. The surrogate can change her mind and “leave” at any time before the embryo is implanted. Even after we’ve signed the contract. In the UK she can change her mind at any time, but in the US, once the embryo is in, we are officially parents-in-waiting. Until then we’re still going on trust.

Even once the deed is done and everything is official, the relationship is still key. Say a difficulty arises, we need a somewhat invasive scan or a long drive to a specialist clinic somewhere else. This person needs to want to help us. Think about the last time you wanted to help someone you didn’t get on with.

Finally, we want to be involved. At every step, with every feeling or concern or appointment or midnight flutters or conversation about cravings or morning sickness or belly skin-itching. All the things that I won’t experience, but at least have a chance to experience vicariously — if, and only if, there is a great rapport.

It shouldn’t be hard; I’m pretty much driven by relationships in every aspect of my life, work included. I love meeting new people, and this new person is already an angel in my eyes. We just need to nurture and protect her and make her feel safe. I can only hope that she and her husband feel the same about me. I would love to feel safe and protected. Right now that feels intangible. I think I need to do some work on my trust issues.

The relationship thing goes for the doctor too. And language is everything. Back to this email, which, taking the time difference into account, I received as I was about to fall asleep — the worst time for rational thought.

I wanted to send a message back with a suggested rewrite: Message: “Hi guys. So, we found a cyst on your potential surrogate’s ovary, but before you panic I’m here in my doctor capacity to tell you it’s common. In fact, it’s just going to take a little medication and it will be significantly reduced or even gone completely so she can proceed. There’s a tiny chance it won’t, but we’ll deal with that if it comes to it. Any questions let me know. With love, Doc.”

Maybe this is dipped in fairy dust, but somewhere in the middle would have been nice. Anything less, anything that sends us reaching for Google is not a good thing. Where anything medical is concerned, Google should be outlawed, prohibited, disconnected, error code 404. We just need the news explained to us so we don’t have to guess. Whose job is it to do that?

I guess the doctor and all his staff are too concerned with the medicine to worry about the manner. But I’m all about a smooth ride. We all want to feel better here. Melissa wants to feel good about helping us, good that her body is co-operating for that to be able to happen. We want to feel better about it all going to plan so we don’t have any regrets about taking this massive financial and emotional gamble. Mr B wants to feel better about the appropriate use of emojis. And who do we go to when we want to feel better? The doctor, that’s who. Plus the agency to translate what the doctor says. Plus Google to translate what the agency says the doctor said.

While we try to untangle this latest set of semantics, a real fear looms. Could this simple cyst be the spanner in the works? Can we deal with another spanner? Poop, poop, fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed, poop. Wave goodbye. Until next week.