A Second Chance

 

Candace: Hear that? Yep, that’s silence being broken folks. Over the past month or so we’ve been a bit quiet lately.  Not for lack of life’s events, trust me life has been flying bananas crazy.  Mainly because we have been in the process of untangling the knotted up string of what our next steps should be. It was a tough year for me personally. Which took every bit of that year to finally grab my big girl panties, put them back on, and deal with the wave of emotions that had come with the type of blow we received when our last surrogacy failed.

I’m about to get real for a moment. So if you want warm and fluffy, just skip to Chris’s part. His section of this post has the good stuff.  What I have to say is just the tiniest bit dark and twisty, but it’s real.

Over the past decade of living with infertility I have had some epic fails. 7 IVFs, failed adoption pursuits, and then staring down the barrel of cancer.  After Jellybean was born via our Wonder-surro we were blessed. Beyond blessed really. No way in hell could something that miraculous ever happen again. We were a party of 3, sans uterus, and I knew I would never have another chance at growing our family. I was balancing that fact on a fine line of acceptance and the familiar feels of grief for what you want but cannot tangibly have. Flashback to earlier last year, someone came to us and offered to carry a second child for us. As amazing as that offer was, a year investing into that and full of hope … it failed. I took it harder than I had taken all of my other fails. Weird right?

When you have a small child it is hard to mourn and fully move through the stages of grief. You want to hide all of the dark and twisty stuff that life throws at you and shine nothing but a joyous rainbow of love and happiness all over your mini human. Sadly, that’s not how dealing with life works. I had never experienced depression before. I think because each situation prior offered some hope for another option. When a surrogacy fails, options are hard to come by. I cried in the small moments that I could. In the shower, after I dropped off my daughter to her school. I was a mom first, a busy wife, and I had a business to run. There was simply no time to grieve or process what happened so I pushed back my feels and went through the motions of life. The result, the pressure built and the levy broke. Chris said something to me that I never expected to hear, “Candace, I think you are depressed.”  That was November 2017.

I heard him and immediately started making changes to address it. My plate was full, so I made room for the things in life that mattered the most to me. Every day got a little better. I changed my counselor for a fresh insight on things.  I also realized my cup was empty from pouring into others and never into myself, so I made an effort to make time every day to try to fill it back up. We also decided that if we did not have an option for a second chance at surrogacy by the end of the summer, that we would both agree to step off of the decade long ride on the stroller coaster of infertility.  

 

God, fate, and that dang-ly frayed thread of hope is interesting though…

 

Chris:  I had just finished another awesome workout with my F3 folks. Aside, seriously dudes, F3 (f3nation.com) has been great for working on losing my infertility 30 and a great support outlet for men as well.  Another guy came up to me and this is my interpretation of our conversation:

Dude: Hey, I think you dropped this (hopes for a family of 4).

Me: Huh.  Oh thanks.  Yep, that was our dreams.

Dude: I think my wife and I can give you and your family your dream back.

OK, so that is not actually how the convo went, but if you read a bit between the lines, you may glean the BOMB Candace and I are getting ready to drop.  Sit down.  Make sure you have on soft socks so that when they are blown off you don’t break that ancient Ming dynasty vase that you bought at the Sotheby’s auction (‘cause that’s how us folks in the infertility world roll), and prepare your retentive muscles.  Candace and I were approached by a couple that was willing to be a gestational carrier for us! 

(Nooooooo… not the Ming dynasty vase!)

The way the actual conversation went really is a testament to the power that God has in each of our lives.  To summarize though (still reeling from losing the vase I’m sure), this couple has 4 of their own amazing kids.  The potential, incredible gestational carrier (hopefully) enjoyed being pregnant and was going to do surrogacy for some family members.  Well, the family decided to give IVF one last try and … it worked!  She (we are calling her our Wondrous Womb-mate) still had that burn in her heart to do for others what seems to be an ability that God gave her, to be pregnant, comfortable while being pregnant, and capable to literally introduce life into our world.  Coupling that with a giving heart is truly a blessing. 

She mentioned this to another lady (who happens to be married to the guy that introduced me to F3) and that lady, we can consider her our Knightess in shining armor, said, “If you are looking for a deserving couple, I know just the people.”  Beyond Candace and I being honored to be considered in such high esteem, we were further blown away that, though all of these connections, I got propositioned at the end of a workout to consider this incredible gift.  In a world where men are often restrained at the fringes of consideration and often overlooked, this opportunity, although initiated by women talking, ultimately was brought to light by one dude talking to another dude.

In typical dude fashion, we kept conversation minimal.  Even though the gravity of the conversation could not have been greater … think super black-hole, no light escaping kind of gravity … we were able to navigate the waters all the way from potential surrogacy to how it came about to me excitedly calling Candace (6:30 AM BTW) in 200 words or less.  Man card intact … whew!  Candace however, would not be constrained to Man Code (she is a double X chromosomer) and proceeded to barrage me with questions about this interaction.  Once she had extracted all of the verbal exchange I had, we moved on to my interpretation of body language, the number of birds that seemed engaged in the convo, and exactly how much water he (let’s call him Mr. Wonderous Womb-mate) drank.  Fully expunged of all information, my cellphone, electronically malnourished, was finally allowed to exhale. 

Clearly there are exactly 1 billion 276 million 984 thousand 657 hoops to jump though and we haven’t even driven to the start line (which could be on Mars for all we know), but even so, Candace and I are truly feeling blessed and have a renewed up-welling of hope and what may be joy from this opportunity.

So that said, we have a second chance at surrogacy and we are beyond grateful to our Wonderous Womb-mate… and Mr. Wombmate to hop back on the stroller coaster with us!

For those who want to keep insta-tabs on our surrogacy journey, for hash-tagy purposes check out @ourmisconception #Womb4aWohl.  If you have comments, witty quips to share or need some encouragement feels, drop by our Facebook page.