Emotional Restraint vs. Hope

Every nurse faces the same challenge at some point in their career. I faced it last semester during a clinical rotation for my nursing program. I was part of a cardiac code team; pounding on a woman’s chest as the rest of the team provided her with oxygen and various meds in an effort to resuscitate her. But we failed, and just like that she was gone.

When the physician told me to stop compressions, I stepped back, took a few deep breaths as he called the time of death…and I felt numb. This was part of my training. As nurses we are taught to care for our patients like we would want our loved ones to be treated. We are also taught to distance ourselves emotionally. For a good ten or fifteen minutes, I achieved that goal. I had given all I had to give, while still trying to protect my own emotions. It was while we were preparing her body for the family to view that it hit me. I saw one of the techs remove her wedding ring to give to her husband, and with that, the numbness cleared. I promptly excused myself, went to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall and cried until the burning in my eyes forced me to stop.

It remains a mystery to me how we are supposed to care for someone in such a deep way and then not feel broken inside when our best attempts to save them fail. The good news? I cried a little less the next time this happened.

I have tried to approach this surrogacy journey with the same caution. I try to hope for the best…but only in an emotionally restrained way. I can nurture the idea of having a child, but I have to stay emotionally distanced to protect myself. But every once in a while I can feel myself slipping, and today I allowed myself to do something dangerous.

We got a report from our agency telling us that our Egg Donor had a preliminary scan that showed 20 follicles developing. I became really excited. This was the first news that we’ve gotten that makes me feel like it’s all actually coming together and that’s when it happened: I let myself really hope that this will all work out. I threw away my restraint, and let myself really hope.

The problem with that is, the further you get your hopes up, the further they have to fall.

I know when it comes to IVF and surrogacy, there are no guarantees. But despite my best efforts, I’ve already managed to: mentally design a nursery, wander down the baby aisle at Target, start thinking about names I like, start eliminating names I don’t like, and start making up new and inventive names like “Ragdoll Curtain-rod” …you know, in case I take off as a celebrity. This is all very well… but it’s also a game of emotional roulette. What if this doesn’t work out, and all I’m left with is the image of a nursery that my little Justin Case will never exist to use? (Hey, if Kim and Kanye can have a kid named North West, I can have a kid named Justin Case…but really, celebrities need to stop with the cruel names.)

Financially, this process isn’t cheap. We’re extremely fortunate to be able to try this even once, as we fully realize there are others who don’t have that luxury. However, we can only afford a certain number of tries until we would be forced to take a hiatus in order to reestablish our funds. I think some people assume that because Frankie is a physician, we’re rolling in money; when in reality we’ve only done that once and it was after a very odd night in Vegas that we choose not to speak of… (Because you know what they say, “What happens in Vegas, makes you feel like you need a shower and antibiotics”… What’s that? That isn’t Vegas’s motto? Huh.)  In all seriousness, we’re not struggling, but we’re not thriving just yet either. Medical school isn’t cheap, and we have a combined student loan debt that exceeds the cost of the average home here in the US and last month Frankie’s loans came out of deferment, so it's time to pay the piper.  If we ever want to have a mortgage or perhaps a college fund for any children we might be fortunate enough to have, we need to work on paying down our own debts. To sum it up, when it comes to more attempts from scratch: Our spirits are willing, but our pocket books are weak. 

So, I try desperately to keep myself in a state of restraint, but hope is a powerful emotion. I’ve allowed myself to get too close to patients, and that’s left me in tears. I can’t allow myself to become too close to the idea of a child that might never come in to existence because I’m afraid of what that might do to me inside.

 But what I can do is cautiously wish for one of those 20 follicles to develop, be fertilized and become something that will make our lives complete. I can cautiously wish, and leave the rest to fate. 

Clinic vs. agency vs. facilitator vs. going insane because of too many choices

Every surrogacy journey has to start somewhere, and unfortunately most of the time is starts with a very difficult decision: Who will you trust to facilitate and oversee the process of bringing your baby into the world?

For Frankie and I, this whole process actually started in July of 2012 when we first contacted several clinics in India. We asked questions ad nauseam and eventually zeroed in on the clinic that was right for us. I developed a great relationship with the facilitator of the clinic and began to trust her to help us handle this delicate process. As many of you probably know, this all turned out to be in vain as several months later India shut their doors to singles, which was essentially their way of giving the finger to gays. After seeing months of research go down the tubes we resigned ourselves to the fact that Willow would have to remain an only child for a while longer. But there’s always a silver lining; that night while figuring out whether or not I could coerce Willow into playing dress-up, I discovered that they make wigs for cats!

(I think Willow would look dashing in one of these, but Frankie vetoed the idea…)

Down but not out, we regrouped and started looking for alternatives. There was Ukraine, but they don’t allow singles or gays. On a good note, there was an agency claiming they had ways to get around the whole issue of gays not being able to legally enter into a surrogacy contract. Because that’s not at all dodgy…   There was also Mexico, and this was certainly appealing given that the surrogate would be a lot closer to us physically since we are in the US. But upon further investigation, we only found two agencies facilitating surrogacy there at that time, and for various reasons neither were an option as far as we were concerned. And then it happened; I heard Frankie yell from the other room, “Husband! We can go to Thailand!”

My first thought was one of disbelief. How could it be that I had done so much research into India and never once came across a website or blog concerning surrogacy in Thailand? As I mentioned previously, I have a very special connection to Thailand, and I immediately loved the idea of going through surrogacy there, but it seemed to good to be true. I wasn’t sure what exactly Frankie was smoking, but clearly he had to be in some sort of delusional state as things never work out for us that easily in reality. But, I surmised that at least we could try selling his magical elixir to raise money for surrogacy here in the US.  It worked for that lady in “Weeds” right? We started looking over the website for New Life Thailand, and that quickly snowballed into us sending out emails to all of the major clinics and agencies in Thailand. Not all of the clinics responded, but the ones that did seemed to be creditable at first glance…and so it started to become real. We decided to let ourselves become cautiously optimistic and begin researching again.

Fortunately, around that same time, I received an email from my contact at the Indian clinic offering to put me in touch with one of her friends who facilitates surrogacy in other parts of the world. Because I had developed such a good relationship with her while looking into India, I felt confident in her guidance and I was incredibly grateful. I came into contact with my current facilitator in February, and the courtship began again. As it turned out, she contracts with New Life Thailand which was great given that they were already the agency we were most interested in. Even more importantly, our personalities meshed well, I got honest answers, and I began to really trust her.  About 1,000 questions later, we signed the contract with New Life Thailand and we will be transferring embryos next month. It seems like we just started the process yesterday and yet we've actually been working on this for over a year.

For those of you who might be just starting out in this process, I wish I could give you a magical map that would guide you to the perfect solution for your situation, but such a thing doesn’t exist. Instead, I invite you to consider these helpful hints as you begin your journey.

You must first accept that much of this process is going to be beyond your control. If you cannot deal with that, international surrogacy is not for you.

That said, there is one thing that you can always control: your level of education. Research IVF. Research the egg donation process. Research citizenship options. Research Thai culture. Research until you can’t bear to research any more…and then grab some coffee and keep going.  A good facility or facilitator worth their weight in salt will answer any questions you can throw at them, and then invite you to ask more. (If they don’t, I suggest you move on. Good questions deserve good upfront answers.) But if you don’t do your job asking the right questions, you can’t get mad later when things don’t go the way you expect them to.  Because of the current climate regarding surrogacy in Thailand, I wouldn’t take as long as we did to get going…but that doesn’t mean you should rush in to anything without doing your due diligence.

And last but not least: take my advice, take the advice of others who have gone down this road, take it all in, and then throw it out and go with your gut. If your heart tells you that something isn’t right, listen to it. There is no one successful path. Was New Life the right choice for Frankie and me? Definitely. Is it the right choice for you? That’s a question only you can answer. Remember, you’re going to lose a lot of control during this process, so if you don’t trust your choices and have faith, you will go insane faster than Amanda Bynes.

P.S. I want to offer a huge congratulations to Brooklyn Couple on the birth of their twins!! I couldn't be happier for them! :-D

Practical Vs. Shallow

There are times in my life where I have found myself making practical choices: Buying groceries instead of buying video games; Going for a jog instead of using the ab trimmer as seen on TV; Shaving my cat to stop her from shedding instead of just brushing her every day…

And admittedly, there are times where I have made shallow choices: Getting the black car with a higher insurance rate instead of the white car with a lower rate, because the black one was better looking; Buying the Guess button down shirt instead of the Target button down that looked almost as good, because…well, it was Guess; Gluing fur back onto my cat, because sadly for her, bald is not beautiful.*

But I had never been put into a situation anything like what I had to face on this surrogacy journey: Picking out an egg donor.

It’s been about a week since meeting our egg donor, and Frankie and I still feel great about our choice. But you might be wondering, “Out of all the profiles, how did you pick hers?” You might also be wondering, “How many licks DOES it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?”, but since I’ve never made it without biting, I can’t help you there.

Obviously, this wasn’t a decision to take lightly; in fact it’s quite possibly one of the most important decisions we’ve ever made or will ever make as a couple. I found myself wondering: Is this a practical decision? After all we want our children to be clear of medical calamities and have a good family health history. Or, is this a shallow decision? Because, quite frankly, you also want to pick an attractive egg donor.

Well of course, I don’t like to think of myself as a shallow person, and generally I don’t feel that I am. So, I found myself trying to eliminate donors because of practical reasons:

“Well, she doesn’t have the best teeth, and straight teeth are genetic. I really don’t want to have to pay for braces down the line….so maybe not her.”

“She’s only 5ft. tall? Well, Frankie is just over 6ft, and I’m about 6 ft myself, so I wouldn’t want our child to develop an inferiority complex because he or she is significantly shorter than both of us….so maybe not her.”

“I can’t help but notice she’s a little overweight. Type II diabetes does run in my family…well, okay, it doesn’t actually run in my family, but it could. So, I wouldn’t want my children to be even more predisposed….so maybe not her”

“Are those cut-off jean shorts?  No...”

I was unprepared to admit that physical features had to play a role in this decision, and not for practical reasons; but purely because I wanted someone physically attractive. For a guy who used to look like Jared from Subway before he discovered Subway, it’s really hard to feel like you have the right to judge people based on their looks.  But in this case, I had to give myself that right.

We decided that the process was not entirely practical, nor could it be entirely shallow. We started by narrowing the pool to donors who had a good family medical history, had a college education, had previously donated eggs successfully and shared similar interests to us (although, strangely none of the egg donors listed RuPaul’s Drag Race as one of their favorite TV shows, which we found slightly disappointing). After the playing field was narrowed by practical factors, we then turned our attention to physical features; as like it or not, those had to play a part in our decision.

Frankie and I decided we would both pick out our top choices from the remaining profiles, then compare to see if we had picked any of the same ones. So, I went off to my corner to ponder which egg donor was best suited to us…and also whether or not decent Mexican food exists on the East coast, because I’ve failed to find any thus far.

We compared notes, and came up with our top five. In the end, cut-off jean shorts made the cut. As my surrogacy coordinator and friend put it, “better to go with the fashion challenged as style can be taught.”  Truer words have never been spoken. There was also a Caucasian donor living in Thailand, a girl with an impressive family history of good health, a donor almost as tall as my husband and me, and the donor we ended up picking.

There were several reasons we picked her. There was her medical history, height, looks, educational achievement and answers on her questionnaire. My favorite part of the questionnaire was her response to “have you told your family about your decision to donate eggs?”. She responded with “I make my own decisions.”  She seemed strong, independent, intelligent, and attractive. All qualities I would be happy with any potential children possessing.

But in the end, it just came down to one thing. It just felt right.

*Just to clarify, no Willows were ever shaved or harmed for this blog. She's way too cute with all her fur...plus those bald cats freak me out.