Revelations I & II

I'm sorry I've been quiet so long. To be honest, I've been holding out on you. There has been a lot going on and I've needed some time to wrap my arms around it.

Revelation I came last weekend when DH and I had a long baby chat. He talked, I mostly cried. I won't go into all the details, suffice it to say he was as compassionate and loving and forthright as he always is, and I managed to say mostly what I wanted to say despite my emotions. [Read: snot dripping from my nose unattractively -- thankfully we were in the hottub so I was able to wash my face often.] If I thought I was getting to the point where I was OK about being forever childless, I was kidding myself. As soon as I started to talk about how unfair it is that my DH doesn't get to be a Daddy, all the emotions I thought I had in check were RIGHT THERE.

He said he was sad, and frustrated, and disappointed, and worried about me. He also said that adoption may be something he's willing to look at, once we've moved through the grief of not being able to have our own biological child.

WHOA! Back up. What did he say? "...willing to look into adopton?" As far as I knew, adoption was off the table. I guess 3 years of TTC changes your mind about some things. I fell back into his arms in the softly bubbling, green apple scented water and told him how lucky I was to have him in my life, that every day he makes me laugh, shows me and tells me how much he loves me.

I thought I was having a pretty good week, in Infertility World.

Revelation II came after I had lunch with a good friend on Wednesday. She's due in August with her second child, a girl. Her son will be 18 months old when her daughter is born. Even though she's my age (ancient in motherhood terms - 41), she gets pregnant easily and has had two successful, uneventful pregnancies. After a nice lunch during which we both cried a little at my plight, on the way back to her house she cautiously mentions, almost casually, that she would be willing to act as a surrogate for DH and I.

WHOA and WHOA!! Back. Way. Up. She didn't think we would want to use both my (bad) eggs and DH's sperm, since we had ruled out IVF for ourselves, but she would be willing to sync up our cycles and do it that way, or she would do an IUI with her (good) eggs and my DH's (good) sperm. I was speechless. I didn't know what to say, except thank you. And that I would talk to DH about it.

I wrangled with the idea for several days. Was this the easy way out? Did I care that the child would not be mine biologically? I came to the conclusion that if I was willing and able to love an adopted child as my own, then I sure as hell would be willing and able to love a child that had my husband as a father and someone I loved dearly as a biological mother.

I gently broached the subject with DH today. He was interested and did not give me any impression that he was thinking negatively about it at all. Of course, we all have questions and concerns, and there will be a lot of googling going on around here in the near future.

Oh, and my friend wants us to tell her for sure if we want to do this before she gives birth in August, since she was planning on having her tubes tied at the time of her scheduled C-section, and she would have to cancel that. Tick tock. Stay tuned.