Totally Mental Me
Besides the two weddings I will be attending on subsequent weekends here in LA, and visiting friends, and finding an excuse to get out of my routine at home, I am exploring a crazy thing which I alluded to a little while ago, a thing I've been discussing with a couple of close friends of mine and with my husband for several months…
I am considering being a surrogate.
Before we get into the Totally Mental aspect of it, the background: I have 2 gay friends here in LA, they're finally getting married now that DOMA has been tossed, I've known them forever. D since college (20 years??), & B since they got together here in LA (14 years?? - I may be wrong about that but regardless, forever.) Anyhow, they're good friends, we have a lot of history, I'm not sure I know of a better couple by a whole series of measurements, smart, funny, committed, talented, giving, yatta yatta.
B's sister had been their potential surrogate. She's got a family of her own but she's had some miscarriages trying to help them have a child of their own and she just can't keep trying, it's too much, understandably so. So we started talking about whether I might be able to help out. this was months ago.
It might be incredibly stupid of me to try, I'm not exactly young, I've got my missing thyroid. But I've had two successful pregnancies as a mature woman. they weren't awesome but physically I seem reasonably good at it. I carried twins and it went pretty well.
The emotional side of it is pretty compelling for me.
I'm kind of scared about what hang-ups - the freudian shit - might be driving part of this. Without going into tons of bs, I wonder if this is an esteem thing, I've failed at a lot in life and even though I feel out of my depth with my own kids, part of me is all "you're doing this mothering thing better than you ever would have guessed." And having not wanted children for most of my life, or ruling it out as something I thought I could do much less want to do - the sense of reward I get out of being a mother…it makes me want to help my friends who want it more than I ever did, and no doubt will be kick ass parents.
I'm deeply suspicious of the ego thing, some desire to be someone's hero or seeking approval for doing something which is obviously crazily generous. I don't feel like any of that is at the root of this, but having my friends be grateful to me…that's ugly. Am I afraid of doing it for fear of gratitude or fear of wanting gratitiude, or both?
It's also just a plain huge undertaking.
This is an endless topic, and I have 70 or 80 thoughts about it. If I typed up every aspect I've thought about that is stupid or inspiring my fingers would be bloody stumps. But I'm writing this here, now, because J and I have come thru our discussions and I am past the point of violent wavering - and while I'm not committed, I also feel like I'm solid enough not to be jerking my friends chains by going at the investigation of it seriously with them.
Anyhow. B and his sister went thru all sorts of legal thinking and research and paperwork. So we went over some of that stuff today, legal and medical logistics. Since B's sister has half his genes, D was the donor. Duh, obviously. I'm probably out on IVF as is B's sister (we could take her eggs and D's sperm and keep it in the family, but it's logistically far more complex and she is already pretty drained, emotionally)
I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm tired. All of this, should we proceed, is probably months out. I still have a ton of research and soul-searching to do before we even get to the biological details.
Part of me thinks it's ludicrous and part of me is afraid I'll back out just to avoid looking like a lunatic or out of various fears. But a lot of me feels like I committed to this already. We'll see.