It's a Match!!!!!

WooHoo! Amen! Yipee! Yay! Awesome! Cool! IT'S A MATCH!!!!!! Not that I'm excited or anything.

Traveling down to Portland last weekend was full of anticipation. Would we like them? Would they like us? Most importantly, would she want to carry our baby and would we want her to?

I didn't sleep hardly at all the night before, which is very unusual for me. With the amount of neuro-acting medications I'm on I could probably have fallen asleep during the middle of the The Blitz. But I was up most of the night tossing questions around in my head. And suddenly, when it seemed like I had been asleep for 5 minutes, my alarm was going off and we were headed to Portland on the train. (A little aside here-train travel is THE way to go. It's spacious, relaxing, no fighting traffic, or trying to follow crazy directions. Totally fabulous. But anyhow...) We arrived early, checked into our hotel, and went to meet our surrogate and her husband.

To our surprise, they had brought their children. At first I thought this was a bad thing, I mean, how are you supposed to have a meaningful, adult conversation with a 4 year old and a 1 1/2 year old sitting at the table? But actually, this ended up to be a blessing. The kids were amazingly well behaved. We were at the restaurant for 3 hours and they only started getting antsy in about the last 1/2 hour. Also, it was quite revealing to see how they interacted with their kiddos. They are amazing parents, and if they are willing to care for and shepard our baby in utero with half the care, love, and discipline that they raise their children then our baby is going to be amazingly blessed. And, conversation wasn't too difficult. Since the kiddos were so young, when we needed to talk about more difficult or intimate matters the conversation was really over their heads.

Almost from the minute we sat down and started chatting we knew this would work. The surro-matchmaker was only at the meeting for about 1/2 an hour before we were off and chatting on our own, and she was out the door. I'll call our surrogate "Lisa." Lisa's main motivation for being a surrogate was watching a friend of hers go through the pain and struggle of infertility. She was at an appointment with the kiddos when she saw something about surrogacy in a magazine. She thought it would be an amazing thing since her pregnancies were all "easy, with little morning sickness and easy births." She kept talking to her husband about it and when he understood that it wouldn't be her egg, but a fetus with no genetic relation he got on board. When she received our application she started reading it out loud to her husband who was wrestling with their 4 yo boy. Finally he said to the kiddo, "Hold on, I have to listen to mommy," because Lisa was so excited and sharing fun details from our application.

And, as it turned out, the difficult details weren't all that difficult to discuss. Both Lisa and her husband (we'll call him "Liam") are dedicated to making this an amazing experience for Aaron and I. At one point Liam was talking to Aaron about how cool it was for him to cut the umbilical cord for both of his kids and that Aaron had to do it. Aaron slightly paled at the idea, but gamely smiled and nodded. For Lisa's first pregnancy Liam was overseas in the military. They talked about how he would call home and she would place the phone on her belly so that Liam could talk to the baby, and that we would have to do that for our baby.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. With the comfort and security and love I felt from them I know that the hand of God reached down and chose this couple for us. I think the cutest part was at the very end, as we were walking out, Liam was carrying their young daughter. Their son was holding his mom's hand and looked up at his mom with a curious glance. Lisa replied, "you can ask him." The little boy walked up to Aaron and asked, "Can I hold you hand?" And with that, he slipped his little hand in Aaron's and the two walked hand in hand from the restaurant to the car. It was the most precious sight. And so our journey together begins.