A nagging feeling

Life has a way of getting in the way of the best made plans, doesn’t it? 

Remember I am still covering the last almost two years, and I am not nearly caught up. 

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Late summer and fall 2016, baby boy’s genetic family and I worked towards surrogacy. Consulting with attorneys. Doing necessary testing. Therapy session. Just the standard checklist for this process. 

Because this isn’t just my story to share, I’ll just give a brief overview of what came next. 

Baby boy’s genetic family had second thoughts. Not about us or them, but just about practical logistics. A large brood of kids and work stress and other dynamics. 

In vulnerable honesty, we talked candidly about this. Because this isn’t a decision to be made lightly, I agreed to pause the process and let them spend some time making sure a decision they could live with would be made. It’s something so weighty and permanent. 

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Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Our contact was nearly daily, about baby boy or their kids or life. We’d periodically touched base about the embryos, but mostly I let that space just be. 

At about the one year mark of putting things on hold, I began feeling really weighed down. It was not something that I noticed one day but gradually, over time. Conviction. Guilt. Pressure. Sadness. 

As baby boy grows, it becomes even more unbelievable that he was suspended in a frozen state for almost six years. 

What if another vial was chosen, by random, and he was still frozen? 

He is so perfect and full of zest and life. 

My chest tightens up just thinking of it. 

It is a sadness unlike one I have ever felt. And how do you explain that to someone else? 

If these embryos are meant to result in children, they are frozen. Helpless. Dependent on us. 

I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. I think I am depressed. No, I am not hopeless or helpless or feel life is not worth living. I am a therapist. That’s depression. It’s not me. 

But I am tired, to my bones. I have no motivation. Driving home seems like an impossible task. I’m sad. I feel responsible for lives but am doing nothing for them. 

A tiny nagging feeling said that if baby boy’s genetic parents couldn’t parent the embryos/possible resulting children (how is that for something to conceptualize?), I would need to make it work.