Ready..Set..Go

January 29, 2012

I’m a few days back from India and have decided to document this crazy journey for all to see. I’m so glad I managed to work the word “journey” into the first sentence; it seems to be a very important word when talking about surrogacy. Everyone I’ve met or talked to so far has wished my partner Mr. Medium (I can’t quite call him Mr. Big—but I’m feeling too Carrie Bradshaw to pass up the reference) and myself good luck on our journey. I don’t know why “journey” is the right word, it doesn’t quite connote the frustration of the process, unless they mean journey into a land where one must walk in waist-deep mud while birds do their business on you. In other words, journey is way too gentle a term.

But, no bitterness here. The end will be worth it. Mr. Medium and I have been trying to conceive a baby (well, actually, a clinic in India has been trying to conceive a baby) for the past 10 months with no luck so far. It’s been rough and I’m pretty anal/neurotic (I’m a New York Jew—you don’t get more neurotic than that) so I thought why not just record it all. So, what you’ll read here is the whole story: from the surrogacy process itself--dealing with a very “Indian” sense of what communication involves and all those other cross-cultural minefields--figuring out how to pay for this whole thing, especially when Mr. Medium does not like to spend money and just all the narishkeit that comes up when two gays try to explain to their families that they are going to India to make a baby (e.g. we heard a lot of “do you know what a big responsibility it is to have a baby?”—I wonder if many straight couples get this as often?). This is our journey to make a gay-bie (or hopefully gay-bies) and I look forward to sharing it.