(IN)FERTILITY (IN)SECURITY
🌷This week, as we have begun to share our happy news with those closest to us (and even some random strangers), I have been experiencing immense insecurity surrounding the perception, or rather, the misperception of gestational surrogacy and to whom this babe is biologically related. Despite undergoing two rounds of IVF, creating eggs – and then embryos with my husband - some people still think our gestational carrier is the “real mom” or “biological mom” of our baby. SHE. IS. NOT. Our baby is 100% biologically Phil and mine! Am I allowed to say that again? OUR BABY IS 100% OUR BABY!!!!
If I sound upset in this commentary, it is because this week has brought feelings of hurt AND feelings of insecurity. Comments such as “Is Kimmy REALLY going to be able to give up her baby?” “Whose baby is it REALLY?” “Who will the baby look like?” …. suggest that this baby is not really mine and Phil’s. If you are a parent, try to imagine what that would feel like. Even if your baby was adopted or even if you did use donor egg, donor sperm, or donor embryos, any suggestion that your baby is not REALLY yours cuts to the core.
I’m certain my emotional reaction to this week has exasperated by my own insecurities. I also understand people do not mean to be insensitive when comments like this are made. But for someone, like me, who has never had to fight so fucking hard for anything in her life, I have really struggled with them. My ability to carry my own [biological] babies was stolen from me. I still grieve this loss. It took a long while for me to accept and trust that someone else could care for my children for nine months, I came to peace with this reality, but I was not prepared to then explain to people that this baby growing - I created him/her. My egg. Phil’s sperm. 100% biologically ours. To further this, for those who ARE going through adoption, or are using a donation, they are fighting just as hard, (and likely went through IVF, embryo creation, etc.) For those of us that our fighting to have our children (whether biological or not,) these are 100% our babies, and any commentary that suggest otherwise must be taken off the table.
Most women can carry their own children, so it is a no brainer who the baby “belongs to.” For those of us that cannot carry our own babies, we have this intense need for people to understand that our babies are just as much ours, as those that are carried by their biological mothers, are theirs. Furthermore, if an egg/sperm/embryo donor is part of someone’s journey to parenthood, comments about who the baby belongs to or how someone is going to “give up” the baby need to stop.
Infertility is hard enough, let’s please stop making it more difficult with these remarks.
As I am finishing this post, I realize it is coming off a bit more aggressive than I would like, so let me conclude by saying this. I understand gestational surrogacy – along with traditional surrogacy, IVF, adoption, and infertility in general – is not talked about much, and thus, it is easy to say the wrong thing when you don’t have a firsthand (or secondhand) experience with it. In writing these posts, I am hoping to bring a personal light to what an infertility experience is like and encourage healthy conversations in this space because, as I have said before, whether you know it or not, you know someone experiencing infertility. For those of us going through infertility/adoption/IVF, we don’t expect people to NOT ask questions, but we just want questions that are founded in compassion and care. So if you are lucky enough to not have experience with infertility, but you know someone who is, my suggestion is to ask questions that open a conversation, not limit it, such as “tell me about your gestational carrier…” “what is a gestational carrier?”… “what was IVF like for you?” “how did you decide on adoption”. In my personal experience, my infertility journey became my entire life, and I was more than happy to talk about it with anyone that genuinely cared enough to ask. 🌷
