In Which Our Brains Explode

I realize that it has been a while since I've written about our hopes and plans for parenthood.

And while I haven't been writing, I certainly have been thinking.

There is actually so much to think about that it's hard to know what to write about.

Simply said, surrogacy is an overwhelming proposition. In addition to the significant emotional and psychological aspects, there are legal, financial, and even logistical complexities that on their own could confound even the most intrepid intended parents.

And that's what we are: intended parents, or sometimes Intended Parents, in the parlance.

And I do think that we are fairly intrepid, generally speaking. Intelligent, too, if I do say. Educated for sure.

But our five collective degrees haven't made the process any easier.

We are in California, where surrogacy is legal. Our two frozen embryos are in New York, where it is not.

The reproductive endocrinologist we worked with in New York has moved twice, first to a new practice and then to Westchester. And the doctors at his old practice will not transfer our embryos to a surrogate. So whatever happens, we will have to move the embryos, either to our doctor's clinic in the suburbs, or to one here in California, or to a third state somewhere in between.

Then there is the matter of finding a surrogate, which can happen in a variety of ways. We could advertise on our own, and arrange for the necessary medical and psychological screening ourselves. But since none of our five degrees is in medicine or psychology, we won't be doing that.

Some fertility clinics seek surrogates on behalf of intended parents. So do some attorneys. And there are a plethora of agencies that do nothing but. But which route to take? And once we choose the route, to which particular clinic or attorney or agency do we entrust with finding the person who will change our lives?

Once we find a surrogate—one we love and who loves us, who passes the aforementioned battery of medical and psychological tests—there is the very delicate matter of trying to impregnate her with one or both of the only embryos that we will ever make.

Those embryos have been frozen for three years and nearly five months.

Our doctor has told us that there is a significant chance that one or both will not thaw.

And if they do thaw, there is an even more significant chance that they will not develop.

Our doctor told us that given my age—39—when we went through our modified version of IVF, we could expect at best a 40% chance of one of our embryos resulting in a pregnancy. "At best" means "if you hadn't already had lots of chemo," which I did during Breast Cancer 1.0.

Chemo that damaged my ovaries and put me into temporary menopause and threatened our chances of ever becoming parents—all this in its spare time, off the clock, while it infiltrated my bloodstream, looking for any rogue cancer cells and threatening their chances of ever becoming parents.

So those two miraculous embryos, those longed-for long shots, now face even longer odds.

And that means we need to consider, very seriously, what we will do if this exceedingly complex process does not work: if the embryos do not survive the freezing process, or if they survive but are not actually viable, or if they are viable but do not implant, or if the three of us—Zach and I and our surrogate—suffer a miscarriage at some point in the pregnancy.

And those options—chiefly egg donation and adoption—are themselves complex processes.

Which is why we have had so very much to think about these past few months.