Reflections on a broken match

It’s been a minute since we added to our website and blog. This is going to be a deeply personal one.

One of the reasons I haven’t blogged in several months was because I became a bit burnt out between the search and a busy semester of grant writing and teaching last fall. This is a common theme you hear with Intended Parents where we put our heart and soul into finding a match and it can feel hopeless after a while when your efforts appear to be in vain. We knew this was par for the course, however, it started to get to me by December. I also put far too much pressure on myself to come up with super creative reel ideas, which doesn’t help.

December

We had a few reels start to gain attention in December thanks to my cheeky nod to the Canada Post strike and we had a couple of prospective surrogates reach out in late December. We were cautiously optimistic and ultimately decided to pursue a journey with one of the women we were talking to. We took things slow, went on a few adventures with her family like tubing, reptile museum, and play centres that we knew her kid would love. She and I spoke daily and got to know each other really well. I kept her updated on our cats and my curly girl journey, and she kept me updated on her kids and friends. It was obvious to me that she was an incredibly kind hearted and selfless person who really just wanted to help. I trusted her to keep our future baby safe when I didn’t know if I would feel that way about anyone.

Unfortunately, she realized recently that this was not the right time for her and her family to pursue surrogacy. While we are heartbroken over this, we totally understand and completely support her decision. I will always maintain that a surrogate’s family HAS to come first.

While this match is broken, we can takeaway a few lessons in our future match.

1) We can trust that there is someone out there who wants to carry our child for us when I cannot. At times it didn’t feel like we would find anyone and we did.

2) That I feel ok with trusting someone else to do this for me. I think this is one of the biggest hurdles Intended Mom’s after loss have. When you are trying yourself and experiencing multiple losses, you start holding on too tight, trying to control every variable (diet, exercise, supplements etc). I was able to feel comfortable letting go of all of that and trusting that someone else’s body can do a better job of this than mine.

3) For the first time in years, I had a dream of holding my baby after birth. This is a huge deal for me because most of my dreams (or nightmares) were about having another miscarriage or loss. I hold on to the hopeful feeling from that dream.

4) There is a special relationship and bond between surrogate and intended mom. I felt a sisterhood in our relationship that I wasn’t expecting. It felt like I was gaining another family member. Based on our conversations, I know she felt a similar bond start to form. (I want to be super clear that I am 100% not saying that this relationship will not form between an intended dad and a surrogate- I have made friends with several couples that are either both men or trans+ and they have described similar relationships with their surros!).

So now we move forward. We continue to hold out hope, and lean on our surrogacy family and our support system in the meantime. Look out for new fun content from us, and some heartfelt stuff too.

If you or anyone you know may be interested in surrogacy, please feel free to check out information on being our surrogate or reach out to us!