Issue 41: Argh! Drugs!
Saturday March 23 2019
Having formed an exclusive mutual appreciation society (members comprising me, Mr B, our new surrogate, Lydia — WHOOP! — and her husband, Jesse), we are receiving instructions from our agency on what happens next. Yeah, yeah, we know what happens next, thanks. This ain’t our first rodeo pardner. We know it so well that we feel quite relaxed about letting it all happen in the background.
Lydia’s impeccable medical records are with Dr Fernando as we speak, the agency is booking in the medical and hooking us up with another new lawyer (we need a new one because Lydia is in a different US state to the previous surrogate) and we feel good. The high from discovering how serendipitous our ending up with Lydia and Jesse still has me skipping down the street, skipping to the cinema with my friend Lisa, skipping to the popcorn counter to — hang on a second, let’s not get carried away. Mr B has forwarded me an email from the clinic that — you’re never going to believe this — puts a potential spanner in the works. Again. I am so attuned to bad news that I jump straight to misery, without passing go.
I shout expletives and Lisa steers me away from the popcorn queue, and I melt down over WhatsApp messages from Mr B. It seems the doctor is being super, extra ultra-cautious and questioning Lydia’s history of drug use. DRUGS! We were thinking: “Argh! Crystal meth? Fentanyl?” Um, well, no. It was a low-level anti-anxiety medication to help her through some post-natal depression after the birth of her third child two years ago. She tells us on WhatsApp, because we’re pretty much legitimately close friends by this point.
“I took them after my third baby, but it was only due to not sleeping, since my husband worked.”
Ever resourceful, Mr B chimes in: “Do they work? Cos I need some!”
Hang on a second. If we are saying that we — the most anxious generation in history — can expect a short period of medication to blight our records for ever more, we’re doomed.
The past few years of ups and downs and round and rounds is making me super-anxious. So much so that I am taking my own low-level anti-anxiety medication.
Does that make me a questionable candidate for motherhood? Does it mean I should face further scrutiny, to pass a drugs test before I can do this thing that women do every day without scrutiny? Do I sound as if I’m overreacting in the cinema foyer while Lisa defers her choice between sweet and salty? Maybe I am, but I have two reasons. One, Lydia has done a psychological screening and she passed. The assessment is designed to protect her, to make sure she is absolutely doing this with her full heart and her head in exactly the right place. That she knows what to expect and can handle the entire process. She put her hand up for this thing, and she has been “passed” as a wonderful candidate for surrogacy. Her history of mild medicating should not be an issue, and she shouldn’t have to feel as if she has done something wrong or even just obstructive. Or what hope is there for the rest of us? The approximately one in four people who will experience a mental health problem each year? The millions of us who have resorted to chemical mood-balancing sabbaticals during a tough period?
The second is that this duty of care doesn’t seem to extend both ways. Because, Doc, if you disallow our fourth surrogate because of a retrospective normal blip that has been addressed, I’m going to need some Xanax. So, who’s it going to be?
The outcome makes me feel bad. The doctor has requested she do a drugs test to make sure what she told anyone who would listen — that she benefited more from natural remedies and exercising — was true. Essentially he is calling Lydia’s word into question. And still she stays positive, if apologetic.
She tells us she wanted better news than this, for there not to be any doubt surrounding her commitment, and then, heartbreakingly: “I guess I’m not perfect.”
Mr B: “Well, bloody hell, Lydia, neither are we!”
And this is my point, I guess. Forget perfect, what even is normal any more? Our generation is living in a never-ending cycle of higher and higher expectations, sleep deprivation and economic, political and environmental terror. In fact, it might all arguably have something to do with the reason infertility is on the rise.
For myself, my name is Sophie Beresiner and I am clinically anxious. I have suffered from panic attacks since my early twenties. This will surprise some people who know me. Sometimes I have opted out of whole weeks of my social and professional life for fear of, well, fear. I’m delighted that more and more people are talking about their mental health issues because it normalises it. I’m delighted that I have benefited from cognitive behavioural therapy and occasionally from medication, and I’m just about kind of proud to put it out there. At the very least to make Lydia feel better about her experience and the way she had to awkwardly revisit it, for us.
A few days later she messages to say: “I passed the drugs test!”
Well, of course she did. “Well of course you did!” we type, and we never doubted her for a second. And so we’re good to go! The medical will go ahead (that’s going to bring some anticipatory anxiety!), but we’re progressing. And faster than before too.
We chose mixed, by the way, at the popcorn counter. Because everyone knows the sweetness is made even better by the salt. Otherwise, knowing what you’re getting in every mouthful is plain boring, right?