Prom Queen

I've been thinking about my life a lot lately. Maybe its the holidays. Maybe its because I'll turn 40 next year. Maybe I've been reading too many O magazines.

What I've realized is that up until the last few years, I've been living on easy street. I wasn't the prom queen, but a lot of things were handed to me on a silver platter: loving parents, a close family, plenty of money, good health, good grades, good friends. I always fit in, made the cheerleading team, had a boyfriend and a date to the prom, and got into a good college. I got good grades, had good times, found my calling, went to graduate school, and landed a job in my field. Of course, at the time I thought I had all sorts of problems; but in retrospect, I had it much easier than many of my peers.

A few years ago I dated a guy who never wanted to see his relatives or friends from the past. He hated the holidays, family gatherings, and most of all --- answering questions. I didn't get it at the time, but looking back I realize that he wasn't happy with himself or his life. This made updating people on his progress thus far pure torture.

Now I kind of get it. Its harder to speak to old friends and acquaintances when the newsflash is that you're parents have separated, Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Wrong, you're trying to have a baby on your own and are even struggling with that.

And so, many of us answer the question, "What's new?" with the much easier and less honest, "Not much."

When I was in high school I thrived on rebellion and irony. I wore hiking boots to school with my cheerleading uniform, ripped the label off my Guess jeans once the brand became popular, and ate lunch at the counter of Woolworth's with my friend in hopes that someone would see us and think it was zany. I need to channel my 17 year old rebel self and find the strength to view the path less traveled as unique and beautiful. I need to be the Prom Queen with a nose ring and a smile.

My Stork

As I've mentioned before, I like a plan. Which means I like to be in control. Which means I like to be the boss whenever possible.

Can you imagine a loss of control greater than asking a complete stranger to carry your tiny embryo in her uterus for you and pop out a baby in 40 weeks? Is it possible to lock this stranger in my basement so I can monitor her input and output, ensure that she is getting enough sleep and exercise, and not using prescription or recreational drugs? The answer my friends is Hell No. And luckily, even I don't feel the need to do this. Why? Because I've actually lucked out in this journey. I've hired a gestational carrier who is just as Type A as I am. Organized, on time, checks her e-mail all of the time --- OMG I think I'm in love.

Let's call my gestational carrier Vanessa. Vanessa is amazing. She has several small children of her own, a husband, and a career. On top of this, she is an experienced gestational carrier and knows the lingo, the meds, and the protocols. She is a pro at 'everything pregnancy'.

A friend of a friend of mine hired a gestational carrier who grew their microscopic embryo into a healthy baby boy. This woman called this carrier 'The Uterus' and spoke of her with obvious disdain -- apparently because this woman could do something she couldn't. The Uterus threatened her femininity and her feelings of womanhood.

Maybe I've got this all wrong, but I feel completely differently --- I've found a woman who is good at pregnancy, has a certified Grade A uterus, and she is willing to go through IVF, morning sickness, weight gain, water retention, hemorrhoids, and labor & delivery for me??? I call this woman My Hero.

Don't get me wrong, I'm disappointed that I apparently cannot carry a pregnancy to term. I've thought about being pregnant all of my life and even considered if I would have natural childbirth (no), be disappointed with a C-section (no), or breastfeed (yes).

But in the long-run, it was never about being pregnant -- it was about being a mother. And Vanessa, my stork, is going to help me achieve that aim. And so, a true Plan B-er, I march forward with what feels like Plan K at this point. Onward and upward (and hopefully outward, soon).

Desperate Housewives

Its not particularly reassuring to realize that your life story has more plot twists and drama than Desperate Housewives.

Okay, now I need a surrogate. Or, as I've been educated, a gestational carrier --- my embryo, her uterus. And I thought it was time-consuming to redo my kitchen.

And so the journey begins. We are no longer on Plan B --- I believe we are now up to Plan G. I researched attorneys, agencies, insurance, and talked to other parents who'd been through the process. What I learned is that you can spend a BUNDLE just trying to find a carrier, and that doesn't cover any of her medical expenses, medications, or costs. I decided at this point, because I didn't have enough to do, to take on some of these duties myself.

Where to begin? That's right, Craig's List.

ISO a healthy, loving surrogate who can hatch my frozen embryos into babies. Healthy, normal babies. Without colic. Who sleep through the night. And rarely throw up. And, oh, can you help me care for them too? And perhaps do some light cleaning while I'm at work?

In the interest of space, I settled for the first line. And I posted this ad on a specialized message board for surrogates. Within days, I had several responses. One from an experienced surrogate who lived in the next town!!!!!!!!!! Surely, she must be a nutball.

We met for coffee before work and I found myself drawn to her. She was not a nutball. She is an intelligent, reliable, professional woman who is also a wife and a mother. My first thought was -- you're juggling all of this and now you want to carry my baby? Damn, I can barely walk and chew gum.

But, she did want this. She likes being pregnant, is really good at it, and wants to help other women become parents. The altruism of the act struck me. Yes, she's being compensated, but I'm not sure there is enough money in the world to make me go through all of these invasive procedures, alter my body's chemistry with injectable medications, and stretch my body to the size of a medicine ball for 9 months. Not to mention labor and delivery. Geez, I thought I was a nice person for telling the cashier at CVS that he'd given me back an extra 25 cents in change.

And so, onward and upward. The next episode of Desperate Housewives has begun. Marcia Cross, move over --- I just took your story plot, your personal fertility story, threw them in a blender and added a dash of Steven Spielberg.

Letting Go

Letting go is perhaps the hardest thing for a card-carrying, hard core, Type A planner to do. We've got a plan and we like to execute that plan efficiently, effectively and on our timeline.

At this point in the game I realized that I was in life's kayak traveling down a whitewater-filled river and somehow I'd lost the paddles. I had no choice but to see where life would take me. Good thing, because the new game plan had just begun.

While dealing (or trying to deal) with my parents separation and the impact on my long-standing, strong relationships with each of them, I became pregnant again. Ironically, I realized I was pregnant while on a business trip to San Diego while the city was on fire in the fall of 2007 and under a state of major crisis. The ultra tender breasts and aversion to many smells and tastes were giveaways. I took the red-eye home with a close colleague/friend and we were awakened by the pilot who informed us that the altimeter was not working and we would need to land at another airport. There was not one complaint as a plane full of terrified passengers hoped for the best.

We landed roughly, but safely, and began the 90-minute drive back to our city where I was to have my blood drawn at 8:30am. However, as luck would have it, we were in the midst of a horrible rainstorm and the highway was closed in several spots. No worries though, because the lab was open until noon -- right? Wrong. The 90-minute drive expanded to 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours. I finally pulled into the parking lot at 11:50am - just under the wire. Phew!

That evening I was out for a late dinner with a friend in a noisy downtown restaurant, and apparently didn't hear my cell phone ring at 10pm. When we left the restaurant I got the message -- I was pregnant, but my hormone levels were falling, and I needed to call the clinic ASAP.

After an emergency trip to the only open pharmacy, several days of estrogen, and a promising blood result that made us all feel that we'd dodged a bullet, I miscarried again. Something was wrong. And a few months later a surgery showed that my uterus was abnormally shaped, wasn't producing an adequate lining, and was likely the cause of these miscarriages.

Seven months, two surgeries, and hundreds of estrogen patches later, I came to the conclusion that my uterus just wasn't up for the challenge. The movie Baby Mama was released at about the same time, which was strangely funny to me. As my sister pointed out, "You've always liked Tina Fey". Good thing, because we were playing the same role.

I made the decision to go through IVF, harvest my eggs, fertilize them, and freeze the embryos. The process was not a lot of fun -- particularly because no one in my workplace knew what I was up to. Good thing the blood lab opened at 7am and my doctor's office saw me at 7:30am. I often wondered what my staff would think if they saw me injecting myself in the stomach through the little window in my office door. Well, I could always tell them I was a heroin addict.

The good news: the procedure was successful, 8 eggs were harvested, 6 fertilized, and 5 made it to the freeze stage.
The bad news: now I've got to find someone with a good uterus to carry them.

Hell, if you're going to rip up the game plan, you might as well burn it and then flush the ashes down the toilet.

The Aftershocks

Perhaps the worst thing about a disaster (natural, or not) is that once you are acutely aware of risk, you start looking for the aftershocks. Many of us experienced this phenomenon after 9-11. Our spoiled, untarnished, naive sense of peace was wiped off the map forever that day and we felt vulnerable.

A few short weeks after returning from vacation, my mother called on a Friday afternoon to tell me that she needed to leave her marriage. She asked if she could stay with me until she could figure out her next move. Of course, the answer was yes.

I had a lot on my mind. Two days before I was surprised and disappointed to get my period --- apparently, I was not pregnant and would need to begin the process again. I went for blood work first thing Saturday morning and then took my usual long, weekend walk into town. Along the way, my cell phone rang and the fertility resident on call told me - rather abruptly - that I was pregnant, but my blood levels indicated that I was having a miscarriage.

Surprise, a fleeting moment of happiness, sadness and fear swept through my body like a chinook wind. Oh, the aftershocks.

My mother arrived a few hours later and we played a game I like to call 'trying to paste together the pieces of your life like you know what you're doing'. It involves me trying to confidently reassure someone that everything is going to be fine, and that we'll get through it together, when I actually have no idea what I'm doing. My sister drove down to be with us and we played that game together for a few days, while I was simultaneously having a miscarriage. I remember thinking that things couldn't get worse. And then I noticed that my mother was feeling a lymph node in her armpit.

My mom is a breast cancer survivor, and the immediate cold, dark fear that coursed through my veins was that her breast cancer was back. We called her surgeon, she went in for a biopsy, and we learned that what she actually had was recurrent lymphoma.

Negotiations with God began in that moment. Its okay if my parents get divorced. Its okay that I'm having a miscarriage. Please just let my mother live. And then a new fear beaded on my brow like sweat --- what's next?

After 9-11 I understood why its called terrorism. Its not just the act itself that gets you -- its the terror that ensues while anticipating the next event.

Landslide

I've never been in a real landslide, but I imagine that first a few pebbles roll out from under your shoe as you're climbing up the path. Then you slip and fall, pushing a few rocks down the trail behind you. Perhaps you reach out and grab a branch to try to steady yourself, and the bush uproots and you and it go rolling downhill. Before you know it, the mountain seems to be eroding underneath you and rolling downhill.

I did, however, experience a virtual landslide of my own life last year. After years of talking about having a baby on my own, and months of planning, and weeks of watching the 'easy' methods (natural, clomid) fail, I underwent weeks of injections and an insemination to begin the journey on my own. The process was emotionally and physically draining --- many invasive procedures, furtive visits to the doctor's office at 7:30am before work, and the painful release of how I always dreamed of starting a family. But I did it. I had arrived. And the day after this monumental insemination, I was traveling to my childhood home to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary and to rest for a week. The promised land was in sight.

I drove 5 hours home the next day and thought about the week ahead: An anniversary party. Time with my high school friends. Time with my family. Rest. What a wonderful way to launch the new life I hoped was growing inside of me. I arrived in the late afternoon to the open arms of my parents. My father, in typical fashion, immediately took my car to the shop to be fitted for new tires. I sat down on the couch with my mother and had a terrible feeling. I asked her what was wrong and she tried to punt. I wasn't going for it. She dodged, she swerved, and finally she told me: it appeared that my parents' marriage was disintegrating.

I immediately doubted her. It couldn't be, shouldn't be, can't be. And then I listened to the facts, as hard as they were to believe. Those were the pebbles.

We held the already planned anniversary party and I looked around at the faces of family and friends. Could this really be the end? I pulled my sister into another room and, ironically, told her at the anniversary celebration that the marriage was crumbling. We were both numb.

I confronted my father during the week while, also ironically, we were hiking. The path disintegrated underneath our feet. Our family was tumbling downhill and picking up speed. I grasped for every branch I could - reminding him what he had, what we had, what we would lose - but the branches uprooted and only added to the downhill trajectory.

A few days later I pulled out of the driveway and waved to my parents, as I always do when leaving home. But this time I wondered if it would be the last time I would leave my home. And it was. My reflections of my life on the drive back were 180 degrees different than they had been just one week before --- how was this possible? I had already given up the dream of falling in love, engagement, wedding, natural pregnancy, happily ever after. Would I now give up grandparents, joint birthdays, and family vacations? Boulders came flying by.

I stopped at a rest station to buy some lunch and started to eat it in the car as I drove; but, quite suddenly I became sickened by the smell of the food. I stopped again to throw everything out -- the smell was overpowering. Little did I know I was pregnant. Or that the biggest boulders were still to come.

Its Not Just All About You.

This is another lesson that I need to learn again and again.

I'm a planner. I like a neat, organized plan and I like to carry it out efficiently and effectively. A straight line between point A and B. This is one of the reasons I liked and admired Obama's campaign.

Unfortunately, life (or at least my life) doesn't always follow the script. And I'm beginning to realize that this is because its not all about me.

Case in point - my cat (excuse the 'single woman with a cat' cliche for a moment and stick with me).

I decided to get a new cat a few years ago after my pet died. This time I would get a short-haired, female kitten with dark hair that didn't show on every pair of black pants I owned. This kitten would be well-mannered, yet playful. Affectionate, yet not needy. Perfect.

Fast forward to three months after my break-up with the guy who was supposed to be my Mr. Right (Ex-Right).
I was depressed, I was lonely, I was hurting. I was desperate to think about anyone other than Ex-Right.

Enter Mr. Wrong.

Mr. Wrong is probably a nice person, but certainly was the wrong person for me; and, in fairness, I knew this from the get-go. But Mr. Wrong was the complete opposite of Ex-Right, and so that made him Mr. Right Now for me.

Mr. Wrong lived on the wrong side of the tracks next door to an unsavory character who had purchased an $800 show cat for his girlfriend. The girlfriend dumped him, and left her show cat behind (LOSER). Her trashy ex took out his aggression on the absent girlfriend by abusing and neglecting the show cat --- what a guy.

Mr. Wrong tried to convince me to rescue - aka steal - the show cat. I don't steal pets. Sorry, not what I do.

And then one night in the middle of December I left Mr. Wrong's house at 3am in the middle of a freezing rainstorm. The show cat was hiding under the car, dripping wet, scared and shivering. I've never seen a cat shiver before. It was then that I realized that I do steal pets. Sorry, its what I do.

The show cat was an adult, not a kitten. Long haired, with white fur that shows on everything, and male (and I was not so hip on males at the time). Not what I'd ordered. The show cat also had adjustment problems to a new home, fearing that I would kick him, yell at him, or neglect him as had his trashy ex-parents; therefore the show cat did not have the behavior resume I had ordered.

But long story short, it wasn't all about me. This cat needed a home and I needed a cat. I thought of bailing --- I even posted an ad on Craig's list. But after a long, involved journey with a cat whisperer (no, not kidding, and I will come back to that another day) and a run away, the show cat and I have decided that we belong to each other and are living happily ever after.

It made me realize that perhaps many things in life that haven't come my way yet --- on my calendar, on my clock --- may be moving toward me on a time schedule that benefits another party. What a novel idea.