Longest post ever?

This week I'm doing much better than last week, in which I was pretty much a wreck. My mom came home from the hospital yesterday and is doing as well as can be expected so that is good.

I'll admit, it occurred to me last week that if I had been pregnant, I don't know what would have happened with my mom going in for surgery on Tuesday and me giving birth on Weds. Part of me wonders if that was all in God's plan, and then the other part of me thinks God has given up on me and that's a silly thing to even ponder.

So...an update. You know there will be months and months of nothing going on and then all of a sudden a bunch of things happen on one day? Yea, today feels like that. After being in a bah humbug spirit most of this season, I finally got Christmas cards printed out at CVS (express pick up last night) and I will be mailing them out tomorrow. I guess they should reach everyone by Christmas Eve so I won't be on the naughty list. we've gotten Christmas cards from everyone and all along I've been like, "Ugh, I don't want to do them!" But we took some really cute pictures of my dog last night all wrapped up in ribbon (really it bordered on animal abuse, lol. We made her lie down as I wrapped ribbon all over her body to make it look like she got into it "by accident" and then made funny noises so she would cock her head to one side so we could get the cutest picture. i'll have to post it later. She was covered in sparkles from the ribbon by the time we were done.)

We're moving ahead with surrogacy, as we continue with adoption. Or rather, we've been trying to move ahead with surrogacy. We hashed it all out with my inlaws a couple months ago and we started looking at profiles with one agency. Originally, we got two profiles to look at. One I didn't like at all. I thought I would be pretty open minded about surrogates (as long as they were healthy, didn't do drugs, etc.) but boy did I turn out to be pretty judgmental!

S#1 was about 28, had had one kid only about 5 months before she signed up to be a surrogate but the baby was 10 mos. old by the time we saw her profile). I thought it was odd that she wanted to be a surrogate so soon after having her own baby, but hey maybe she loved being pregnant. She said she didn't take any medications, but had asthma, which I found a little ingenuine. L has mild asthma but still takes an inhaler occasionally and when we filled out our own profile we made sure to write it down.

Here's where the judgmental part really comes in: they are a deeply religious family, apparently. And S#1 refuses to be a surrogate for a homosexual couple. It is fine if it's a single heterosexual woman or man she is carrying for, but a committed homosexual couple is apparently not ok. That really really annoyed me. I'm not homosexual so it doesn't affect us in the least, but the S#1 wrote that she really wanted to be a surrogate to give a loving couple what they wanted most, a child (and I snarkily thought, unless their homosexual, then I guess you don't care). Oh yea, judgy mcjudgerson, that's me. She said that her church wouldn't approve of her carrying for a homosexual and that's why she wouldn't do it.

She also said she wouldn't terminate a pregnancy for any reason. We don't want to terminate for any reason other than no quality of life (i.e. baby couldn't live on its own outside the womb), but get this. She had an abortion in 2004. Was her church ok with that? See the weird thing is that I am very pro-choice. I don't believe in abortion for myself, but I don't believe I have the right to tell others what to do with their body (I certainly don't want anyone telling me what I should do with mine!). So you would think it wouldn't bother me, but it did. BIG TIME. Maybe because she claimed to be so religious. Now, I recognize she could have "found God" after that, but she wrote that she had been religious ever since she was a child.

the other thing that didn't sit well with me in my Judgy Chair was that she had a boob job in 2009. Why am I so judgy about that? I don't know. I think her profile came across as someone who really only wanted to do surrogacy for the money (which lets admit it, that's really the reason why women would do surrogacy for the most part), but combined with her religious beliefs and stuff, maybe she shouldn't have spent money on a boob job then.

Ok, ugh, I know. I never would have guessed in a million years I would have been so judgmental.

S#2 we really loved. My age, has 3 kids, is done with having kids (her youngest is 17 months (closer to 20 mos. now) is a PEDIATRIC NURSE (how awesome is that?). Would carry for anyone, homosexual or not. No meds, very into exercise. And awesomely, gives birth at the hospital I was planning on giving birth at in Boston. How perfect is that? She needed to schedule being induced for her last two kids because she gives birth SO QUICKLY. What an awesome "problem" to have! She is only willing to terminate when there is no quality of life (i.e. not for down syndrome or anything that still has quality of life- which is totally what we want too). Just we match up so well together. We had expressed our interest in her and she looked at our profile and said she was interested, but had a vacation and couldn't do a transfer until April. We were willing to wait until then because we liked her so much (and at this point, geez, it doesn't even matter that much when). Then a week later, the agency came back to us and said she now had ANOTHER vacation and couldn't do it until July.

To us, it sounded like she got cold feet (she's a first time surrogate) because we picked her literally just a few weeks after she applied. So we were disappointed but didn't want someone who was flaky anyway.

So last week we got sent S#3's profile. She was an experienced surrogate - had twins for another couple a few years back - so she's charging $10K more than the other's rates. Geez. But we looked at her anyway. She had two issues: no termination no matter what (even no quality of life), and while she was willing to travel for doctor appts., she wanted to give birth at her local hospital. We were willing to compromise on the first, but given my heart condition, there's a small percentage a baby of ours could have one as well so we wanted her to give birth at a big hospital. We asked if she would compromise - if there was a known issue before birth, she would go to the big hospital, but if there was no issues known we would go to her local hospital.

I thought it was a good compromise, but apparently she didn't, because she flat out said no. I guess we're not a good fit for each other.

So I was just about to give up until January when we got an email from our surrogate agency yesterday saying S#2's vacation was cancelled and she was wondering if we were still interested. (It would be back to transferring in April, which we were originally fine with). Yes! We want to get her locked in before she changes her mind again though (if that's what happened before, which I don't know for sure)...I think once she signs a contract, everything will be fine. We told the agency yes and today got an email saying she and her husband were so excited and want to have a call with us next week. So we will see how that goes - and all of a sudden that seems to be moving. But once that phone call takes place, money will start changing hands so we need to be careful.

AND THEN...
I call up the adoption agency today because it's been yet another month and we still haven't seen our homestudy. Of course, when I call I am told, we just mailed it to you on Friday, so you should have it today! (of course, on the DAY I call). Then I am also told that just yesterday they sent out our profile to someone (I'm not sure who, my mind was going crazy) ...there was a baby born a few weeks ago...it was early- a preemie, but no health issues and is doing great. I didn't even ask what gender! I think it was a referral from another agency because she said time was limited so they sent over our profile without asking us and she was about to call and let us know) and they haven't heard back yet. But she will let us know what the outcome is.

Holy cow. How awesome would that be. Adopt this month/early next AND have another baby around next January? That would just be too perfect.

I don't know how many profiles were sent over. Or the details. I didn't really want to ask because I didn't want to get my hopes up. You know, the more details, the more you start imagining. This is only our first profiling, I'm sure it won't work out. But holy cow!!