01.24.08
Feeling Discouraged
I’m feeling quite discouraged lately. I tend to go in cycles, so I’m sure I’ll get back to “normal” at some point, but right now I feel like we will NEVER start a journey. There’s no way we’ll ever have enough money. At least, not before I’m too sick to be a mom. 
I talked to my cardiologist Tuesday and we got to talking about surrogacy. I told her it was going to be a very long time before we would have the money to start a journey and when I told her how much it can cost her jaw dropped and she said “I had NO idea it cost THAT much!” I’m getting very discouraged about the $$ issue and wonder if maybe we should just forget it. I hate dealing with money in the first place, and this added stress just plain stinks.
I started looking to see how much it would cost to adopt overseas. It is a LOT cheaper! But we wouldn’t get to be a part of the kid’s creation, be there for appointments, experience the pregnancy vicariously, watch our baby being born, or even MEET our kid before it’s 6 months old (which means we’ll miss the first smile, rolling over, crawling and walking, etc.). It’s not that I feel like the $$ is an unreasonable amount to pay for a surrogacy experience. I think it would be worth every penny. But I just don’t know that we can ever get that much $$ together. At least, not in a time frame that I want. I want to be able to have a baby in my arms before I’m too sick to care for it. Right now I know I’m doing well. I don’t know how my health will be holding up in 3 years (did I mention that the time frame seems to keep extending whenever N talks about it?)! I almost feel like it would be easier on my emotions if we would just say “Never mind. We don’t need kids. We can be perfectly happy just being us.” Unfortunately, I don’t think either of us can honestly say that. We both want to be parents.
I feel like, right now, my life is on hold. I feel like I’m going nowhere and doing nothing. I want to have a purpose. Being a librarian is a career, not a purpose. I want to nurture and care for a little human being. I want to help them to grow up to be the best person they can be. Is that too much to ask? I know I kind of do that at my job, but not the way I want to. I can influence a student a little bit, but not like a parent can. Parents are the ones that shape their children. Others just help to decorate them a little.
I don’t really know what’s going to happen now. In April we’re planning to take W (my nephew) for a week while my sister and BIL are on a trip. We’re hoping to use the opportunity as a trial run to see if I can handle it. Maybe that will either tell us to forget the whole thing, or make N want to speed up the time table. One way or the other, I am looking forward to taking care of him. But if I’m feeling like I am this week (super tired) I think I may wonder what I was thinking.
01.14.08
Propositions
Over the weekend there was a discussion on TOSS about natural childbirth vs. epidurals. A lot of the gals on the list loved their epidurals and would never consider giving birth without them and hated when “crunchy” people tried to push natural childbirth onto them. However, there was one who was the opposite. LD explained that she had no problems with people who wanted to have an epidural. But she hated it when people looked at her like she was crazy when she said she didn’t want one. Especially at the hospital. I chimed in with my sister’s story of the postpartum nurses looking at her like she had three heads when she would tell them she didn’t use drugs. I then propositioned LD. My exact words were “LD, will you have my baby?!?!?” I was half kidding, of course. (For one thing, she’s currently pregnant with P’s baby. And second, she lives in OK.)
She emailed me off list and we talked about how perfect we are for each other, if only she lived closer. Of course, she actually only lives about 3 hours away, which IS doable, but I told her I’m going to try to hold out for a local gal if I can. But I’m not going to settle for a less than perfect match just to get a local person. Since I’ve still got PLENTY of time, I’m not going to worry just yet.
Oh, I also was propositioned by two women from SMO the same day I posted that I will be postponing my match due to N’s need for more time. Good to know that people actually read what I write. :eyeroll:
Off to work.
01.05.08
Making a plan
Yesterday we went to visit N’s aunt so we could see her granddaughter, C, who is 5 years old (N’s cousin’s kid). At first N wasn’t sure if he felt like going, since the last two times we’ve gone to see her she didn’t take to N like he had hoped (of course, being that there was a crowd of people around, she was a bit overwhelmed… It was at a wedding!). Anyway, she seemed to be okay with him this time and even played with him a little. I tried to hang back so that he and his sister (who hadn’t seen C since she was a baby) could play with her (and I wouldn’t seem like I was trying to be “maternal”). But later in the evening she started climbing all over me and using me as a jungle gym. I was EXHAUSTED!
On the way home N says “So you want to impregnate some chick this summer, huh?” (Yes, he has such a way with words, doesn’t he?) I said “Well, yes, but only if you’re ready.” A conversation then ensued (And I didn’t have to start it! Woo Hoo!). So he said lots of things, but these are the things that stick out: “When we’re around kids I think ‘Sure, it would be cool to have one.’ but when I actually think about being ‘pregnant’ in just six months it freaks me the *&^% out.” (I told him I can understand that completely. It is a bit freaky.) “I mean, if we spend our life savings on a kid now, we’ll never get to do all the things we’ve talked about doing.” (He’s referring to taking trips, getting his big TV, and mostly trips.) “I don’t want to feel like I’m holding you back. I want you to be happy.” (I told him I didn’t want to push him into something he’s not ready for and that if waiting is what he wants to do, then that’s okay.) “I’m kind of wishing I’d gotten my *&^% together sooner so we could have had time for just us and two incomes before getting a kid.” “I don’t want our kid to be too far removed from W. I want them to grow up together.” (I fully agreed with this one.) “How about we look at our bank accounts and our bills and figure out a plan
to put money into both a ‘baby fund’ and a ‘fun fund’ so we can still do some of the things we talked about?” I told him that would be fine.
So that’s where we are. I’m going to work on a plan based on what we have in the bank right now (would probably be “good enough” to start a journey, but not if we’re separating some for “fun”) and figure out how much we can add to each “fund” every month. Then we’ll see how long it will be before we can start a journey. Before I do that, though, I have a couple of questions:
1. How much, overall, surrogacy to cost? I figured I needed at least $30K in the bank to get started. We might need more than that, but we’d have 9 months to get the rest together while the baby is incubating.
2. How much do other IMs have saved before they started?
3. How much goes to people other than the SM (lawyers, doctors, etc.)?
4. How much cushion should we have for the “worst case scenario” situations (like bed rest, premie, etc.)
I’ve asked these questions on TOSS and I’m still waiting on responses.
I’m pleased that we are at least heading in a direction. This morning I sat down with our bank statements (online) and did some figuring. Right now we have about $27K in savings. When looking at the money we bring in each month compared to how much goes out for bills, etc. I figure we have about $1K left over to put in savings. Personally, I’d rather not wait more than two years to start “making” a kid. So I’d like to be able to put about 60% in “baby fund” and 40% in “fun fund” (if not more in “baby fund”) so that we can add it up faster. If we put in $600 per month we’d end up with about $7,200 at the end of a year. That’s not much. If we start out with, say $15K, in the baby fund, that makes only $22,200. But add another 6 months of saving (and perhaps “donations” from birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), we could have enough to feel comfortable starting in summer of 2009. That sure sounds an awful long way away…
So let’s look at it another way. Say we start out with $15K in the baby fund, and add $750 each month. That would make $24K at the end of a year. That’s not much more than the $600 scenario.
Any way I look at it, unless I use a bigger chunk of our $27K, we’re looking at waiting at least a year and a half to two years. Well, at least we have a plan (sort of).
Oh! And I just got an email from an IM friend of mine on TOSS. She says that when all is said and done, she’ll probably have spent $65K on surrogacy (they’ve had to try 3 times, but they also had frozen embryos, so they didn’t have to pay for egg retrieval at least). Maybe it will be closer to 3-4 years…
