It Takes a Village

Happy end of the winter holiday season, folks!  I hope everyone enjoyed some relaxing down time, lots of good food, quality family activities, and general merriment.  But let's cut to the chase.  For us, this winter has been laced with quite a bit of excitement, because...


Tom and I are expecting our first child in July 2016!

Yes, it's true, we will have a Mini Morgan joining our ranks this summer!  We're very excited, but to be quite honest, it really hasn't sunk in for either of us yet, for reasons that I will explain.  However, if you haven't read my last post, I recommend that you do now, because the rest of this one will make a lot more sense.

If you're not really into reading (seriously, why are you here?), here are the crib notes:  I cannot safely be pregnant, so our bundle of joy is happily growing with the help of a very special gestational carrier.  So while it's thrilling (and terrifying) for us to prepare for being parents, our path is rather different than anyone else's we've known.

As mentioned in my last post, gestational carriers can be found by going through an agency.  Agencies play matchmaker for intended parents to find women interested in being carriers.  However, the price tag of using an agency can cost anywhere between $70,000 to $100,000 - covering carrier compensation, agency fees, medical bills, legal fees, etc.  Tom and I were not interested in amassing significant debt in order to have a child, so we started thinking about if anyone we knew might be interested in being a carrier.

Around the time we found out the cost of an agency, we were visiting with our friends Ben and Crystal.  For those of you who don't know them, Ben is a chemist and was Tom's mentor in his first doctoral research group at Penn State, and Crystal works in an elementary school as a speech-language pathologist.  As you might imagine, the four of us get along swimmingly.  By lucky coincidence, our house ended up being just 15 minutes away from where Ben and Crystal live with their kids.  Naturally, we felt quite fortunate to have such awesomely nerdy science and teacher-y friends so close by.

For the past few years the four of us have maintained our Penn State tradition of monthly "Yay for Wednesdays" (thanks, Mark Platt!), which is essentially a pizza (and/or wings) and beer night in the middle of the week.  We would chat about having children, being parents, and the challenges that we faced (we also talked about other stuff and made a lot of inappropriate jokes, but that doesn't really fit into this story).  On this particular evening, Crystal asked how things were going, so I told her about the costs of an agency, and how we were thinking about people we know who might be interested.  She responded immediately: "that would be something I would be interested in doing."  She quickly added "after talking to Ben, of course."

Naturally, our conversation took a turn towards the slightly-more-serious (though not wholly without inappropriate jokes).  Since it was nearing the holidays, the four of us decided to revisit the idea in January so we could all have some time to think.

For our next "Yay for Wednesdays Fridays", the four of us enjoyed a night out.  I was a nervous wreck; it was the most stressful date I've ever been on.  Tom and I almost blew it completely, not wanting to pressure them with our awkward anxiety and excitement.  Seriously, how were we supposed to talk about this?  They don't really cover this type of conversation in the adult handbook (apparently there are a few of those).  Eventually we were able to get ourselves together, and Crystal and Ben formally offered for Crystal to be our carrier.

The following eight months were a whirlwind.  Since Tom and I had already done the first half of the IVF process (creating and freezing embryos) with Brigham and Women's in Boston, we decided to continue working with them.  We began a series of phone calls, medical tests, lawyers, doctors, insurance, more tests, and incredibly personal conversations and situations.

First, Crystal had to be "cleared" to be a carrier, and had a ridiculous number of medical appointments and procedures to do so.  Meanwhile, Tom and I hired lawyers to create a massive legal contract outlining all of our expectations for the process.  Once Crystal was cleared, and our contract was complete (all of which took way longer than this single sentence implies), we began a "transfer cycle", for which Crystal took a plethora of hormones, preparing her body for pregnancy.  After a million and twelve visits to Brigham and Women's, they decided the time was right to do the transfer.  Tom and I got to be present and watch via ultrasound as the chosen single embryo (#7 out of the 7 thawed) was transferred.

Ultrasound of the transfer:
the white line near the middle
is the catheter releasing the embryo

The chosen embryo: #007

After the transfer, we had to wait two weeks to see if Crystal was pregnant.  You might expect those two weeks to never end, but for me, compared to the months of preparation and the years of uncertainty leading up to this point, those two weeks were just more of the same: another box to check, another item to cross off the never-ending list of medical things to accomplish.  Tom and I had gotten so good at taking on each task - big or small - as "just the next thing to do", the excitement at what we were doing was just a glimmer in the distance.  When I got the call from the hospital to tell me Crystal was pregnant (I was in the middle of the road while walking the dog), it still wasn't real.  All I knew was that on the first try, our bundle of cells had taken hold in her womb; how could that possibly end up being a small human someday?

We had one last visit with the folks at Brigham about a month ago to make sure the embryo was growing accordingly.  There, we had our first ultrasound, which showed the singleton's heartbeat (it was still too early to hear it).  It was determined that 007 was a fantastically normal-looking little cashew.

8 week Ultrasound

From now on, Tom and I will join Crystal for appointments at her regular OB/GYN and the hospital where she had her own children.  We've moved on from the totally mind-blowing realm of reproductive science and technology to the more familiar world of pregnant women everywhere.  I feel a little bit like we've graduated to the big leagues, and I realize that despite our non-traditional beginnings, we're still first-time parents, and have absolutely no clue what we're doing, just like everyone else.  And once the baby is here, we will join the ranks of new parents everywhere.  Normalcy is visible just around the bend, something we haven't experienced in awhile.

But let's be honest, our lives will never be normal (wouldn't that be boring?).  Our friendship with Crystal, Ben, and their children has forever changed.  We've found that we all tackle issues in very similar and complementary ways, and Tom and I couldn't have asked for better teammates for this crazy game of "share-the-womb".  When you go through something like this, you can't help but become closer than your average beer and pizza buddies, and our child's understanding of family will be richer and more dynamic because of it.  I may not be able to carry our child myself, but Crystal and Ben are like built-in new-parent tour guides, which no one else has, so how lucky are we?

I've been asked "how can you possibly thank someone for doing this for you?"  I have agonized over this question for months.  I have watched Crystal (and Ben) be poked and prodded, take more time off work than expected, organize last-minute child care, stoically accept an expanding waistline and food aversions, and gracefully suffer through all the other inconveniences of this process and the resulting pregnancy for which I feel personally responsible.  Tom and I have tried to support Crystal and Ben however we can: bringing them meals to stash in the freezer, providing child care whenever possible, driving to appointments, running errands, cooking them all dinner once a week, etc.  Clearly, the last thing we want to do is take advantage of their enormous generosity.  But I have to remind myself that we were friends before all of this began, and all friendships rely on trust.  They trust we would never take advantage of them, just as we trust they would never take advantage of us.  They know that we care about them and we are grateful for everything they're doing, just as we know that they are doing this for us because they care about us, and they saw this as a way they could help us.

So how do we thank them?  The truth is we just say "thank you", and we mean it.  We will continue to thank them by supporting them however we can through this process, and we will keep thanking them by maintaining our friendship even after the baby is born.  Because, we were friends already.  And also, let's be honest, "Yay for Wednesdays" is a pretty sweet idea.

**

Author's Note:  I wrote this post last week, and today we had our second ultrasound - the first one with Crystal's OB.  Our little cashew has graduated to lime-size, was extra squirmy while being photographed, and even waved at us (I swear).  The doctor told us 007 looks normal, and is a "very photogenic baby"... they must get that from me.

12.5 week Ultrasound