We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

I haven't done a lot of writing about the process and details of things, but now I feel like it's important; not so that you all know what we did and didn't do, but so that people know how it works (for us) so that they are informed and can talk about our situation accurately. Also, I would LOVE it if someone reading this stuff became inspired to be a gestational carrier for someone else. That would be AMAZING.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. I was going to structure this as FAQs, but it was boring. So let's just do this conversationally. The official term for M is a gestational carrier; she is not related at all to the embryo/fetus/baby. The embryo that was put in her by the doctor is made up of my egg and J's sperm (why is the word 'sperm' awkward? Makes no sense); it is our biological child. Sometimes I use the word surrogate to refer to M, as this is a word that is a) shorter and b) most people understand more readily than 'gestational c...

I still can't believe that I am sitting here at my computer, typing (yet another) draft of this post. I've been writing it in my head for a long time - over 4 years. Sometimes with potential excitement, other times more as gallows humor, and there have been long dark stretches where I pushed it down and away because I never thought it would get written. But here we finally are. Jake and I are going to be parents. Oh my word, even typing that out loud feels like temping fate, like I'm inviting more grief upon ourselves. But that is the last 4 years of waiting, despairing, praying, hoping, crying and trying talking. We are both re-learning how to be excited and trust this good news.  So how did we get here, you are probably wondering. I am not pregnant, and never will be. We are parents-to-be due to the incredible gift of a dear friend, who is carrying our child for us. I'll do another post with surrogacy FAQs and answers, but for now, let me make a clumsy att...