Canada, my old friend, you've let me down....

I love living in Canada for many many reasons (including the fact that I am legally married to my partner). It is an incredible country with such diversity and - at least in my city - a place full of very accepting people.

But this sucks. It is illegal to buy eggs (and sperm???) in Canada, so many are resorting to going overseas to basically buy underprivileged women's uteri to carry babies. And it sucks not only for the ethical reasons, but because for a country that prides itself on freedom, democracy, and liberalism (despite our conservative leader, Stephen Harper), we should be able to get the help we need to reproduce, if we can't do it the old-fashioned way.


Quebec just announced that they would pay for fertility treatments for residents living in the province. All the other provinces and territories are miles behind the times, with this archaic notion that we need to make alternate methods of fertility illegal.


For someone who is not versed in U.S. law, do any U.S. states have the same legal issues? Or can you buy sperm without repercussions and a ten-year stint in jail?

The true north strong and free, my ass...

Flash Forward

I’m exhausted. My partner is exhausted. We’re both just drained, and all from one conversation. 

After the appointment at Repro Psych, I admit I totally shut down and wasn’t really communicating all that well. I took my partner’s earlier request that “baby talk” didn’t take over our lives to heart and instead, said nothing. Plus, it was my birthday and I didn’t want to think about pregnancy, medication, surrogacy, adoption, or childlessness. But in the back of my mind, it never went away. It never does.

My partner… let’s call her “D” for simplicities sake… wanted answers. Is being pregnant and carrying my own child more important that parenting a child? I threw around an answer in my head, but never verbalized it until last night.
I see pregnancy and actually “obtaining” a child as two very separate things (obtaining is such a horrible word, but I guess “having” a child may suggest actually birthing one). My hormones are crazy; the intensity of these urges that seem to jump out of my empty womb are ridiculously hard to ignore. Biology is of course part of that… D has never in her life had an urge anywhere close to that, and I don’t expect her to understand. I just wish she could sometimes.
I want contact with my unborn child. I want it to be completely dependent on me. I want to make an attachment with something that is growing inside of me. I want to hold out the baby when it is born and say “look what I made.”
 
When surrogacy was brought up as an option, at first I thought it would be my second choice (if we had the money). But now that I’ve been thinking of it – it’s not the genetics. I don’t actually care – at this moment at least – about whether I’m genetically linked to my child. I don’t want someone else to grow my child inside of them. I fear if we go that route, my need (and I really do think of it as a NEED) to carry a baby will not be fulfilled. 

Maybe it will be option #3.

And then there is adoption. If we were to adopt, I would want a newborn. D told me that she is sad that we don’t agree on adoption. She would be happy to raise an older child – give a child a chance after adversities that he or she has had to face, and welcome them into a healthy, happy home. I would love to say that I’m that woman who could and would do that. But I’m not.
This isn’t altruistic, this is selfish. 

And all I can think about is how shitty it is that I can’t get all I’ve ever wanted, because a) I’m a lesbian, b) I’m crazy, c) I have chronic pain issues, and d) D and I can’t agree on what our lives are going to look like.

She ended the conversation with “Maybe I don’t even want a kid.” I looked at the floor, I imagined us in our 50s and 60s without child, and I realized that that life may be exactly the life we’re heading for…

"Life For Sale"

I came home to my subscription to "The Walrus" - Canada's best magazine, in my books... literally. Usually I'm thrilled to read it, but I couldn't help but think that the cover story was a sign:


"Life for Sale: Canada's Underground Trade in Human Eggs" by Alison Motluk, which, brilliantly written, goes into how Canada's fertility laws fail donors, doctors, and parents.


At lunch today, I was searching Adoption Canada and websites on surrogacy, trying to be discrete, as my three male coworkers share the office space. (It's really awkward when one of them walks by and I've got a page up with a "crazylesbianmom" login or something). Everything is so confusing... I didn't open all the hundreds of PDFs of information, but with all that I read, through the odd laws, the money, the illegalities, the list of 30,000 children waiting to be adopted, I got totally overwhelmed. And then my lunch hour was up and I went into a meeting, dazed.


So what's going to be easier? Coming off a few meds and risking my health to the point where I may lose myself and my partner, and potentially get pregnant and have a baby, hoping to dear god it'll be healthy and I'll be able to enjoy the little thing without postpartum depression OR flying through loopholes and laws extracting eggs, paying tens of thousands of dollars using some stranger's uterus to grow my own baby, and suddenly have it delivered to us at our doorstep?


Money is money, and we won't worry about that until we have to - we're okay for now. And I find it really awkward to put the words "money" and "baby" in the same sentence. So, I won't.


I'm just so confused. And my partner is feeling a bit "off" and said that maybe yesterday was too stressful. And we're not even doing anything yet.


Awesome.