Addendum

Thank you all for your comments on “Plans in Pencil.”  I’ve been thinking about what to do with those embryos a lot lately and along with it has come the return of the old anger and bitterness, some of which you can see in both the piece I wrote for Listen to Your Mother and the recent post on grief.

When I returned to work after the LTYM show,  I found a curious email in my work inbox. It was from a friend of someone who had attended the show, and she asked about adopting our embryos because they are undergoing infertility as well. I guess her friend had told her about my piece and my mention of our embryos, but it appeared the gist of the piece had not been conveyed.

The writer’s pain was obvious in her email. Part of me was floored that she had emailed me, a complete stranger, about our embryos and she had to search a bit to find my email.

Seeing this email two days after the show, I could not respond. I didn’t know how to respond. I was exhausted both physically and emotionally and I had no words other than, “no, you may not have them.”

I still haven’t responded, and that’s cruel of me. I know how she feels. I know how desperate she must feel to email a stranger. I need to respond, but what do I say?  Is it possible to let her down gently? Maybe I am dreading her counter reply of asking me why I can’t donate my embryos to her if I’m not going to use them and accusing me of being selfish.  Are we being selfish by keeping them frozen and neither donating them to research nor placing them for adoption?

Many decisions are selfish, though. Our decision to use surrogacy to have a biological child is often deemed selfish (at least in the media and comment sections). Someone else’s decision to adopt could be selfish depending on motivations. A relative’s decision to have three children could be interpreted as selfish by someone concerned about the impact on the environment and overcrowding.

Sometimes in the realm of infertility, it seems you are always making someone unhappy.

Plans in Pencil

This was the post I read for the 2016 Listen to Your Mother: Raleigh-Durham show last week.  Can’t believe the show is over already!

Last week on the way home from school, my son, my sweet 6-year-old, my baby told me he had a girlfriend.  This girlfriend is an older woman, having turned 8.

He broke this news to me by telling me that he and this girl, Rose, were going to get married (what????), they would work as a veterinarian (her) and a doctor (him), and that Rose was afraid of having babies cut out of her. He then asked me if he had been cut out of me.

Deep breaths.

I had no labor and delivery with him myself, vaginal or otherwise.  My son was the result of gestational surrogacy. I was able to sit back and observe calmly while our surrogate delivered him. If you believe that sentence, well, I have a few other things I can sell you.

It was time. It was time to have the talk with him about how he came to be.  We hadn’t intended on keeping it a secret – absolutely not at all – but sometimes there isn’t a simple opening or Hallmark card for this type of conversation.  We had blown it up in our minds to take on epic qualities; how would he react?

Later that evening, we brought up the topic again. I gently told him – trying to use simple language – that he had not been in my belly because it didn’t work and that another, wonderful woman had carried him for us. We waited for his reaction.

“Oh, OK, “ he replied. “Can I have ice cream now?”

I asked him how he felt about this information.  He placed his still baby-soft hand on my stomach. “Mommy, are you still broken?”

Broken.  Yes, I am still broken. My reproductive organs don’t work and never will. My son is our miracle child, made possible by the kindness of a stranger who carried him.

I never wanted only one child. I grew up as an only child. I didn’t have a miserable childhood, but I felt lonely, and I was envious of my friends with siblings. Maybe I would have been more socially competent with a sibling. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone in the world. Maybe I would be a different person. The possibilities of what might have been are endless.

While I have one child, I also have five frozen siblings for him. Siblings isn’t quite the correct word.  We have five frozen embryos, five bits of potential. In the infertility community, we call them frosties, or my personal favorite, “totsicles.” It is amazing to have any embryos to freeze, and I have five after a horrible IVF cycle in which it seemed I’d be fortunate to create any embryos. These are embryos created from barely 31-year-old me and gave us our son. Our only son.

I’m very close to 39 now.

We receive the bill for cryopreservation of our embryos annually. We don’t talk about it but pay it automatically every year. Our other options are to destroy them, to donate or adopt them out to other families or to allow them to be used for research. We can’t do any of that. Yet.

We always wanted more than one child, but circumstances made that difficult.  Having a second child would require a major financial outlay as well as significant changes in our lives. Are we too old for that? Are we too old for bottles and nightly feedings? For daycare costs? For potty training? For all the energy and money infancy and toddlerhood require?  And what about my career and increasing responsibility? What about the child we already have and his needs, his future?

I’d like to say we could swing it, but I FEEL tired. I AM tired. We are in a groove, and our sweet boy is more independent every day.

We know the answer, but we keep kicking the can further down the road.

When I let myself think about it, I get angry. I feel like I was robbed of choices when it came to family building and the choices we did have were difficult and came with heavy implications.  There is a part of me that still simmers with resentment and anger: WHY US? WHY did this have to be our reality?

Very few of us realize the lives we hoped to have. Regardless of what our dreams were, reality slaps us in the face.  We are obligated nothing, and our notion of control is an illusion. I need to bottle my resentment and anger, my caustic bitterness, and put it away.  Yes, we were dealt a shitty hand reproductively, but what can you do? We did what we could. We rolled the dice and won once. Nothing guarantees we would win again.

I have one son, and he is wonderful. He is sweet, bright, energetic, and sentimental. He is exhausting, argumentative, and stubborn. He is everything I wished and hoped for and so much more.

Instead of lingering on what I can’t change, I need to focus on what I do have. My son tells me he and his future wife plan to name my future grandchild “Sprinkle”. I smile. It’s nice to have plans, but I have learned it is wise to plan in pencil.

NIAW: Resolve to Know More About Surrogacy

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week and here I am posting at the end of it (non-conformist!). I struggled with wanting to post but having no topic and then having a topic but no time. The resulting post may seem useful or not. Happy or not. So here are a few thoughts I have about surrogacy.

• You will realize the degree to which our stories about motherhood revolve around the physical: morning sickness, weight gain, stretch marks, contractions, labor, tearing, healing, nursing, leaking, hormones. Despite having a baby, the end result, there will still be times in which you find yourself mute and still unable to participate in conversations.  Articles, stories and conversations about the first few weeks of motherhood almost always revolve around the physical transformation and realities of being a new mother.  I get it – the majority of women who become mothers will experience pregnancy, labor and delivery. But it stings for those of us in the minority – will we always be on the fringes?
• You will need to develop a thick skin as pundits, trolls, ethicists, attorneys, anyone with an Internet connection and half a brain (or less) debate the ethics of the method you chose to build your family and declare that you bought your child, took advantage of an economically disadvantaged woman and are pretty much a human trafficker.  You try to ignore these comments and opinions because they know nothing of your life and what it is like to live this. To actually make these decisions. While these comments rage on, you look at your little boy playing on the floor in the kitchen and feel incredibly blessed for the gift of him.
• You will cringe as articles that could do serious harm to the already complex reality and confusing perception of surrogacy gain wide-spread media attention.  The latest is, of course, the rise of social surrogacy and whether it’s OK for women to choose surrogacy in order to avoid pregnancy or avoid harming their careers or if they are selfish beasts who don’t deserve to parent the children they wish to pursue. I have mixed feelings about social surrogacy, but it makes me wonder if it reinforces a belief some may secretly hold that I and other women who went the surrogacy route are selfish and didn’t try hard enough. At the very least, it hurts surrogacy’s perception and causes tongues to cluck.
• As scientists publish about epigenetics and the role the uterine environment plays in subsequent generations, you will have heartburn and anxiety, wondering if your inability to conceive and carry a genetically-related child will end up changing the genetics of that child and future generations. At the very least, let’s just say guilt over whether you are being a good parent starts very, very early. 8 cells early.
• You feel exhausted thinking about trying to have a second child because that means finding another gestational carrier, starting the process over again and spending a lot of money. You will wonder if going through the process is fair to your first child and if he deserves the resources and time you would spend more. You will again envy people who have second and third children easily, even if it includes popping down to the clinic for embryo transfer. And you aren’t proud of that envy.

But then you realize how your child has pervaded every area of your life. His art is on the refrigerator. You spend more on his clothes than your own. You obsess over his diet and agonize over school choices. You wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without a plan for his nightly routine. His smile & sunny mornings set your day. Frowns & tantrums make you want to hide.

But he is here and he is wonderful. I thank god or whoever for science Every. Single. Day. I am immensely grateful for the technology that allowed me to overcome my severe infertility. I’m forever indebted to the scientists who pioneered and perfected IVF because without them, we would not have our son. And we are forever grateful and humbled by our amazing gestational carrier who went on to carry a 3rd surro baby.

I am in awe of science and stunned, thrilled that it made me a mother. My experience is why, frankly, science can do little wrong IMO.

Surrogacy is unusual. I get that. But you never know what you are willing to do & accept until you are in that position.

I guess my message for NIAW is that surrogacy isn’t easy, but it is worth it.

I wouldn’t have my son otherwise, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Bring on your comments and debates. I welcome them.

Because you don’t know until you are in that position & that is something we would all do well to understand.

Our Surrogacy: Featured on BlogHer and Elsewhere!

I am soooo late in posting about this. Some fun things have happened in the last several days!  A week or so ago, Tracy from Liberating Working Moms and writer for BabyZone asked her tweeps for pictures of what they looked like after giving birth because she wanted to dispel the myth that the perfect pictures we see of celebrities after birth is what every woman looks like after giving birth.  I sent her the link to the post I wrote on BlogHer a couple of years ago about our surrogacy experience because I wanted to make sure less traditional birth stories were highlighted too.

Last week, she published the post and pictures on BabyZone.  Then a few other friends mentioned that they saw me on Yahoo Shine because the article had been cross-posted there (the comments are interesting – maybe the title could have been different, but I think overall they missed the point. And thanks to the people who said I shouldn’t have been included since I didn’t give birth.).

Then, on Tuesday I received an email from BlogHer saying they were going to feature “It Takes a Village,” the post I wrote on the site 2 years ago and the post linked in Tracy’s picture of me in her post!  Did all of that makes sense?  Unfortunately, I have been stuck in meetings, so I’m only now able to post about it.  I appreciate every opportunity to present a positive, non-sensational perspective on surrogacy, so a huge thank you to Tracy and to BlogHer for including me!

If Your Child is Born but You aren’t the One Giving Birth, is it Still Your Birth Story?

PAIL’s Monthly Theme for October is about your birth story. Technically, we have one, but I wasn’t the one giving birth.  I wrote about our surrogacy birth experience a couple of years ago.

I am a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to birth stories because I can’t really participate. Get a group of women together who have children and you can be certain that at some point the topic will come up and the story swapping will begin. What can I offer? “Oh, my surrogate pushed for 5 minutes and almost didn’t have time to get an epidural!” Yeah, that’s a bit of a conversation stopper.

Women bond over their birth stories. It’s the female version of a war story. And I get why they are important. I do. Birth is an amazing, beautiful, terrifying experience and the end result is literally life changing. It’s just that after spending 4 years being mute during discussions of pregnancy symptoms, delicious babies and birth stories as well as dreading baby showers, I was looking forward to being in the club. And I am, sort of. I failed to realize there was another level of membership, of initiation, and I can’t join. I am silent again. You don’t realize how much the discussion of motherhood revolves around the physical aspects until you are unable to participate, to contribute.

Contribute. Maybe that’s what bothers me. I am unable to contribute to the larger narrative of pregnancy and birth that is unique to the female experience. Does that negate my experience? Make me less of a member? Perpetually a junior member of the club Mother?

But then again, 4 years out from my son’s birth, I am wiser. I’ve realized over the passage of time and (sometimes painful) experience that there are always clubs to which we cannot belong. There are new clubs I didn’t realize existed until recently and clubs to which I belong that others may envy.

So ladies, I do not begrudge you your birth stories. You earned them. My story may be a bit more unconventional with me hyperventilating in a chair and wishing for a Valium, but that’s OK. The end result was the same.

Stupid is as Stupid Does: Another Rant on Surrogacy in the News

I generally think that media coverage of infertility and surrogacy is a good thing,  helping to raise awareness of infertility and the process of surrogacy, but sometimes I read something that is so infuriating and just wrong that I can’t let it go.  Usually this reaction is triggered by the comment section, but this time it’s the articles themselves.

Over the weekend, CNN featured a story on James and Natalie Lucich, and James’ sister Tiffany Burke who is carrying their twin boys.  At first blush, the story seems so sweet: a sister generously carrying twins for her brother and sister-in-law after Natalie had an emergency hysterectomy.  Awwww.  But there’s this comment from Tiffany on her reaction to James and Natalie telling her they were considering gestational surrogacy:

“I was pissed!” [Tiffany] Burke recalled. She was worried: What if the surrogate drank or smoked or did something to harm herself? She didn’t want the Luciches to take that chance.

That’s right.  Because every woman who carries a child for another couple is an unstable crack whore motivated only by money.  Tiffany’s comment invokes the stereotypical view of the amazing women who generously disrupt their family’s life in order to give a couple the most priceless gift in the world.  Comments like hers are so frustrating because no matter how much coverage surrogacy gets, the gestational carriers always come off as lower-class, uneducated women of dubious character who must be watched very closely.  This impression is why people think that surrogacy is exploitative; if the gestational carrier is so ignorant and poor that she cannot be trusted to take care of herself and any baby she carries for another, clearly she doesn’t know what she has gotten herself into.

Edited to Add:  I’ve received some comments stating that the above quote was made two years ago and that Tiffany feels differently now and is collaborating on a documentary with her sister-in-law in order to help people understand surrogacy.  I think that’s awesome and that documentary will fill a much-needed void.  However, if I knew nothing else about Tiffany, didn’t read her blog, didn’t dig deeper etc., I would have only that quote to go on to draw conclusions about how she perceived surrogates in general.

And then there is this gem from the Huffington Post’s coverage of the Lucich/Burke story:

Burke is troubled by online speculation that her pregnancy is a form of incest because James is her brother. As Burke explained, the twins are Natalie and James’ 100 percent genetically and were conceived before they were placed in Tiffany Burke’s uterus. It has also been noted that James and sister Tiffany were both adopted and have no biological bond.

Are you serious?  People are so ignorant of biology that they honestly think that Burke’s pregnancy is a form of incest?  OMFG.  I can’t believe Burke has had to clarify that she is not related by blood to James.  When I read shit like that, I really fear for this country and its educational standards.  It’s worse than I thought.

And then there’s the coverage in The Stir that led me to this story in the first place: Woman Pregnant with Her Brother’s Twins Must Make His Wife Feel Guilty. My interest was piqued because I wondered if it was going to be some salacious tale of a horrible gestational carrier (just as with every situation, there can be a few bad apples) who is going out of her way to torment her sister-in-law.  What I read was actually worse.  First of all, it’s poorly written.  Secondly, it’s pure speculation.  Writer Mary Fischer muses that James’ wife Natalie must feel enormous guilt for the disruption in Tiffany’s life and the extreme nausea Tiffany has been experiencing during the pregnancy:

While she’s no doubt eternally grateful to her for being willing to give her and James the gift of more children, I can’t help but wonder if she has days when digging out from under the guilt is almost unbearable. She must feel so indebted to Tiffany for the rest of her life, because there’s just no way you can ever repay something like that.

I cannot speak for all Intended Mothers, but when I think of our gestational surrogate, I feel grateful to her and in awe of her. And no, there is no way we can ever repay her in any meaningful way that matches the significance of what she has given us, but Fischer’s notion of Nicole’s indebtedness seems slavish and overwhelming. As if the twins will be always be a bittersweet reminder of her sister-in-law’s noble sacrifice.

And last but certainly not least, Fischer throws Natalie a bone:

And as much as people will applaud Tiffany for carrying these babies for her brother and sister-in-law, Natalie’s strength should be noted as well. Not many women would be able to handle a journey like this without falling apart.

Excuse me?  Why wouldn’t a woman be able to handle a gestational surrogacy journey without falling apart?  Clearly Fischer knows nothing about infertility because by the time you have decided to pursue surrogacy as a means of family building, it is imperative that you have come to terms with your inability to carry children.  Based on my experience and the women I have talked to and read about, yes, you might feel a pang as you watch another woman’s belly swell with your child, but frankly, you’re kind of over it by that point.  The focus has shifted from pregnancy to parenting.

I also detect a bit of condescension that Fischer believes Natalie is lesser than her sister-in-law because she no longer has the ability to carry children and that not being able to do so must be damaging to her perception of herself as a woman that most women could not handle watching another do it for them.  One of the first reactions to discovering you can’t have children is often to feel like less of a woman: if your body can’t have children, why are you a woman?  One positive (ha ha) from infertility is that I was forced to confront cultural and societal perceptions and expectations of women and work through them.  I am a woman and a woman of worth in spite of my inability to carry a child.  Of course I have days when I struggle with this; I’m not that enlightened, but infertility has broadened my understanding of what it means to be a woman beyond reproductive abilities.

And then we come to NBC’s The New Normal.  I’ve griped about the show in previous posts, but I don’t think I’ve laid out my concerns.  In case you don’t know, it’s a comedy about a gay couple who decide to have a child through surrogacy.  Let me be clear: I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with gay couples having children and/or using surrogacy as their route to parenthood.  I support their ability to do so.  My issue is that I wish that the show were about an infertile couple pursuing surrogacy.

There are differences in the experience of a gay couple pursuing surrogacy versus that of an infertile couple: coming to terms with infertility; the relationship of the mother to the surrogate; the IVF process; stupid comments about who the mother is.  There are some similarities: stupid comments about who the mother is, misconceptions about what a surrogate is like and legal issues.  I’m not saying The New Normal is a bad show; I guess I just wished it told the story of what it’s like for a normal couple to experience infertility and pursue surrogacy, to act as an antidote to the stereotypes perpetuated in most media coverage.  I worry that people who watch the show will think they understand surrogacy and more importantly, what it is like to go through it or really, what it was like for us to go through it.

Rant over, I guess. I just wonder if it’s fruitless to keep railing against articles like these and how surrogacy is portrayed on television in the same way we can’t seem to get reporters to stop using “implant” for “transfer.” I have to keep trying, though, because articles like these and network TV capture the public’s attention and are the ones that color their perception of infertility and surrogacy.  They color their perception of my very personal story and how that little blond boy playing with legos at day care came to be.

What one thing do you wish the media would get right about infertility?

NIAW: What Not to Ignore

It’s National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW), the one week of the year in which it is socially acceptable to allow the infertiles to have their say and to celebrate the infertile in your life although as was pointed out earlier in the week, for infertiles, every week is infertility awareness week.

This year’s theme is “Don’t Ignore Infertility,” and I have a few suggestions:

If you are infertile

• Don’t ignore your intuition.  I suspected we were going to have difficulty after only a few months.  If I hadn’t listened to my intuition, I would have wasted more money and more importantly, time.  I pushed for Clomid after only 6 months of TTC.  I made our first RE appointment before the prescribed 12 month guideline.  If your RE tells you that “maybe pain is normal for you” when you tell him that you hurt so much that you are writhing in the fetal position, crying and fantasizing about ripping out your ovaries with your bare hands because hey, it couldn’t hurt much more, find a new doctor. Six months after starting with our first RE, we moved on to our second who diagnosed me within 5 minutes of our first meeting and told us our only options were IVF-related or adoption whereas the first RE would had had us pursue more useless (though we wouldn’t have known it) IUIs. I’m still a little bitter about that first RE; can you tell?
• Don’t ignore your feelings.  There is a lot of pressure on us to be happy and think positively even when life sucks huge donkey balls.  I call BS.  First of all, philosophically, if you never allow yourself to experience darker, less positive thoughts and emotions, how will you be able to know and fully experience the highs?  And guess what, infertility is mostly about the lows: the physical pain your diagnosis might cause you.  The toll on your self-worth, your body and your relationships.  The hit on your bank account or credit card because many infertiles don’t have insurance that covers treatment; treatment isn’t cheap.  We didn’t, and we had to pay a lot.  Wondering whether your infertility means that you have been deemed unworthy to procreate and that your DNA, the very essence of what you are, is not worth passing on.  Having friends muse that maybe your infertility balances out all the “luck” you’ve had in other aspects of your life such as marriage, school and career.  Dreading the infertility storyline in movies, tv shows and books because they always get it wrong and reinforce stereotypes.   A lot of lows.   So I’m giving you permission to revel in your grief and sorrow.  I’m a firm believer that if you don’t acknowledge feelings, they fester.  Revel in them.  Roll around in them and wrap them around you like a blanket.  Here’s the ugly truth: no one else is going to acknowledge your feelings, your reality.  And once you’ve indulged yourself, it is a lot easier to deal with the feelings, put them back in their box and even experience some happiness.
• Don’t ignore all the family-building options out there.  When we started TTC in 2005, I never in a million, trillion years thought that we would end up having our son through gestational surrogacy. Of course at that point, IVF seemed exotic.  However, by 2007 we had a much clearer picture of our situation and we began thinking more about what we were trying to accomplish (having a family) vs how it happened.  Let yourself explore adoption, surrogacy, donor egg/sperm/embryo, IVF.  What made me willing to consider surrogacy was wanting to make sure we had pursued as many options as possible so that at the end of our lives, we never regretted not taking a certain path.

If you are friends or family with an infertile

• Don’t ignore them.  I know it can be awkward figuring out how to handle the infertile.  I know that talking with us can be a little like approaching a sleeping lion: you never know what innocent, well-meaning comment will set us off, hissing and snarling or sobbing uncontrollably.  The problem is that sometimes, well-intentioned family and friends can decide not to talk about infertility with us and leave that conversational ball in our court.  That’s nice but what it often turns into is no contact or little meaningful contact.  Send us an email every once in a while.  Invite us out.  Ask how things are going.  If you don’t understand something, ask.  Pretend to be interested. Acknowledge our situation.  Because while you think you are doing the right thing by letting us have space, it feels like we are ignored.  Like we’ve become lepers.   Even if you don’t know what to say, a heart-felt, “wow, your situation sucks and I’m really sorry” would go a long way to helping the infertile feel like part of the human race again.  Because infertility does suck.

I hope these suggestions help. I’m infertile and always will be; this is the one week of the year I am allowed to be.  Here are a few other, better perspectives on NIAW:

• Don’t Ignore: The Secret Life of the American Infertile
• What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting
• What If? (this is post in support of NIAW by a supporter.  She gets it!)

 

Healing Salon: Let’s Talk

Bienvenue!  If this were a genuine salon, I would be reclining on a daybed while you all sat around me (rather kinky!), making a salon a very intimate exchange of ideas and debate.  In that spirit, I welcome you to my virtual room, the “room” in which I share my thoughts and musings, ridiculous and profane and even mundane.    I’m excited to be your hostess and salonniere as part of the Healing Salon suggested by Mel as a way to heal the issues from last week (see this post for a summary).  Please let me introduce myself.  I am KeAnne.  I’m 34 and since we started TTC in 2005, I have experienced many of the stops along the ALI road.  In 2007, I was diagnosed with stage 4 endo and a uterine anomaly and told that our options were IVF, surrogacy or adoption.  In addition to our pointless prior Clomid and injectible/IUI cycles, we tried one IVF and one FET, both negative.  As we were weighing our options in late 2007, Jimmy suggested surrogacy while I was ready to move to adoption.  We agreed to give surrogacy a try first, and I met our gestational carrier practically days after our agreement.  We cycled in September of 2008 and had our first positive beta ever.   At our first u/s at 9 weeks, we saw two sacs and two fetuses but only one had a heartbeat. The other fetus had stopped developing about a week before.   The rest of the pregnancy progressed uneventfully (wow!), and our son was born on June 2, 2009.

Yes, I am parenting after infertility, but it might be more accurate to say that I am parenting despite infertility because I am still infertile.  I still have endometriosis and the uterine anomaly.  I’ve always found those couples who “forget” their infertility after having a baby to be disingenuous at best and traitors at worst.

I write all of this to say that I get it.  Obviously I identify with other infertiles who now have children, but I still understand and can easily access the pain and fear and anger and sadness at finding yourself unable to do what so many seem to do without little or any thought.   I volunteered to host one of the salons because I believe that we can find a way to repair last week’s hurts (cue up “Love Can Build a Bridge”).

My role is to facilitate our conversation.  I ask only that you be respectful but honest in your responses.  It will do no good if we can’t have a genuine conversation.  So let’s begin.

Here are my questions:

1. Is the ALI community that has been collected and organized by Mel able to encompass the entire ALI journey or can it only represent those still in the trenches?  Why or why not?
2. While we all have the collective goal of moving to the other side, be that side parenting or living child free, why do so many bloggers who have moved on feel excluded from support and even despised? How can the community help them feel supported and included?
3. Why do you blog about ALI? What is your primary motivation for doing so?
4. Within the ALI community as curated by Mel, who should be responsible for community building  and innovation, creating new blogrolls, etc?  Should it be top-down or is there room for grass-root movements?
5. What was the most frustrating aspect about last week’s brouhaha to you?
6. If you have children now, what one thing would you want those in the trenches to know?  Conversely, if you are still in the trenches, what one thing would you want those parenting to know?
7. You are Empress of the Internet for one day.  How would you fix the division and hurt feelings from last week? Or, is it fixable?
8. Anything else?  Feel free to ask your own questions, say what you are thinking.

I look forward to having this conversation with you!

Surrogacy Lawyer Theresa Erickson Sentenced

On Friday, a judge sentenced Erickson to 5 months in prison, 9 months of home confinement and to pay a $70,000 fine for her role in masterminding a scheme to create babies and sell them (for more than $100,000 each) to couples after falsely telling them that the original parents had backed out for whatever reason.

I’ve written about Erickson and her baby-selling case here and here, and I am still disgusted and dismayed by her behavior.  As one loathsome phrase in the article pointed out, Erickson and her cohorts

used numerous surrogate mothers to create an inventory of unborn babies that they would sell for more than $100,000 each

When I first read about her arrest and the unfolding story, I was shocked and disgusted.  Now, I’m angry.  Surrogacy is defined and treated legally differently in different states.  Case law, as  you can imagine, has not kept up with reproductive law when one can biologically be mother to a child through pregnancy but not be genetically related to that child.  Such a situation becomes even more complicated when neither member of a couple is genetically related to a child they create and carry through a surrogacy arrangement.  What a lot of courts end up falling back on is intent: who intends to parent the resulting child(ren)?  Thinking of the situation in these terms often allows judges to assign legal rights to the parents who intend to parent the child regardless of genetic relationship.

Erickson’s crime, however, perverts this intention for she intentionally created children for no other reason than profit.  The embryos she created and transferred to a gestational carrier have neither mothers nor fathers.  They had no parents who intended for them to be, and for that, Erickson should be punished.  Though those children may be loved purely and fully by their new families, it is painful to imagine their reaction when one day they are told that they were the result of not lust, not love, not intention or desire but profit.

And it is that for which Erickson must be punished and shunned.

First Sentencing in Baby-Selling Case

Hilary Neiman has become the first defendant to be sentenced in the Theresa Erickson/Hilary Neiman baby-selling case.  I wrote about it last summer from the perspective of a former Intended Parent, but here’s a quick refresher: the attorneys (Erickson and Neiman) created embryos from egg and sperm donors, hired gestational carriers to carry the embryos and then told prospective parents that the original surrogacy arrangement had fallen apart and for a large fee, created documents that alleged that the new parents had entered into a pre-pregnancy agreement with the gestational carrier, allowing the parents’ names to be on the birth certificate.

In other words, baby selling.

Neiman has been sentenced to 5 months in prison, to seven months of home detention, to forfeit $133,000 in profits and to set aside $20,000 for restitution.  Erickson and Chambers will be sentenced in 2012.

I have no legal training, so I don’t know if the sentence is appropriate, especially when it comes to baby selling and human trafficking.  I am glad to see that Neiman will receive prison time.  Even though it’s only a few months, the crime seems to warrant incarceration to send a message.

I also wonder if the sentence is enough to make up for all the damage that she and Erickson have caused the surrogacy and infertility community.  Thanks to them, the stereotype of desperate infertiles, hungry for a baby at any cost has been upheld.  Thanks to them, gestational carriers are portrayed as money-hungry.  And thanks to them, the practice of surrogacy again appears far outside the mainstream and of dubious ethics.

Perhaps I’m not giving the public the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their ability to understand the nuances of this case but based on what I read every time an article comes about infertility or surrogacy, I don’t think my assumptions are off track.

Thanks, ladies.  I can’t wait for the inevitable Lifetime movie.