Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions and rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told, and some choose to believe it. I know they’re wrong, wait and see.
Some day we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.
In this episode, we share sad news about our first attempt to create embryos through egg donation and IVF.
Since recording this, we have learned that our fertility clinic, Oregon Reproductive Medicine, is fully committed to helping us to become parents and will be supporting us through a second round of egg donation and IVF.
Special thanks to Ivy Ross Ricci for allowing us to use her song "Density Change" from her forthcoming album It's Hard to Know, which will be released later this year. The song is performed by Ivy and was written by Dan Kubick.
To hear more of Ivy's music, visit https://ivyrossricci.bandcamp.com/
“This feels like online dating in a really weird way,” Kirk said the first time we logged onto the egg donor database in late December 2016.
We were confronted with a search screen and a number of different options to search for height, weight, hair color, eye color, and a number of other physical characteristics. As we scrolled through the list, we noticed quickly that we were less concerned about specific physical characteristics.
Dear Future Grown Child,
By the time you’re old enough to read this and appreciate it, I’m sure that you’ll know that life isn’t always easy. I’m sure you’ll be bored of me telling stories about the past and urging you to read more history books. I’m sure that this particular moment will seem, even in the retrospect of your short life, ancient history. But for us right now living through the early days of the Trump presidency, it’s hard to imagine what that future will look like.
While we continue crunching numbers and looking at spreadsheets with line items that say things like "Carrier Contract: Legal Representation for IP's", "Transfer Fee", "GC compensation", and "Egg Donor Cycle Fee", the world moves madly on. Political meltdowns, terror after terror, record global temperatures, and unarmed black people being murdered all while the world watches on Facebook and TV. I think about how I'd rather be blogging about good news like a healthy pregnancy or a baby birth. I want to share my thoughts on optimism and happiness. But I must write about the chaos and sadness of current events because this too is part of the story.
I discovered Men Having Babies in the winter of 2014. I had been doing some research on financing a surrogacy journey and their website came up. Men Having Babies is a non-profit organization that began in 2005 as a peer support group for biological gay fathers and fathers to be.
It's not easy to be a parent-in-waiting. We spend every day thinking about something we want so much, to add children to our family through surrogacy. But we're at a point in our journey that there's no measurable progress most days. It can be difficult sometimes even just seeing a random family on the street and wishing that it were us.
We have no doubt that we'll be fathers some day, but it sometimes feels like Christmas Eve used to, back when we were 7 years old, only this is the longest Dec. 24th ever.
In conversations with friends and strangers who are already parents, we've noticed some trends. People who are already parents sometimes suggest that maybe this whole parent thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. We know it's not going to be easy—it's already taken us much more work than most families—but it can sometimes be disheartening to hear the following phrases from folks who are already parents.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/24327-three-things-parents-say-parents-waiting/
"Is that table sticky at all?" the barista asked as she walked over with my pot of tea.
"Yeah," I told her. " But only a little. I wiped it down. I knew what I was getting into coming here. You guys are super kid friendly."
That was a bit of an understatement this Saturday afternoon. When I'd walked in, almost every table in the place was taken over by families with small children. There was the banging of toys and at least one high chair surrounded by pieces of sweet potato that had been turned into air-to-surface projectiles.
This wasn't quite the atmosphere that I was looking for when I decided to head out for some tea and writing. But here I was. I might as well make the most of it.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/24114-kids-everywhere-except-our-home/
It's officially autumn here in the Pacific Northwest. Each night the sun drops behind the West Hills of Portland a little earlier than the night before. Every October, I am reminded that this is actually my favorite season. Our CSA is filled with all kinds and shades of squash. The air is crisp, but it's still warm enough to be in a T-shirt.
My attention shifts to fantasies about future Octobers with our kids. Images of corn mazes, harvest moons and Halloween costumes rush through me, as if they are memories of a life that I have yet to live. My heart is filled with so much love for this dream that I am all at once joyful with hope and terrified that it may never happen.
There are so many steps and decisions to make before we even begin trying to get pregnant. The biggest one right now: we need to choose an egg donor.
Read the rest of this post over at Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/23863-choosing-egg-donor/
When we were married, it solidified our relationship in the way that all wedding ceremonies do. Anybody who knew us well also knew about our hope to become dads.
Many of our friends and family began to assume the most obvious path for us to start a family was through adoption. As each year passed, and more of our friends continued getting pregnant and having babies, I started to feel my own innate desire to procreate. I began to feel a physical yearning in my gut and chest anytime a baby was nearby. As a man, it felt strange to admit being "baby crazy."
But I was. Totally baby crazy.
Read the rest of this post over on Mom.me: http://mom.me/blog/22960-choosing-gestational-surrogacy/
Both of us grew up on the east coast and most of our families are still there, so any time we have the chance to see them, it’s a special occasion. The last time we’d seen both of our families was at our wedding two summers ago. So, it was definitely time to plan a trip back east to visit them.
We decided to go to North Carolina, where Kirk’s grandmother and a couple of his uncles live. Once we let the rest of his family know, the trip turned into a small family reunion.
Well, we took a bit longer of a summer break from blogging than we had intended, but we're back now and will be posting regularly again. We'll still be blogging about our journey towards fatherhood, but also a bit more about our lives in general so that you can learn a bit more about who we are.
We're also excited that we've been invited to share our story with the awesome community over at Mom.me. Our first post went up on Monday and you can check it out here: http://mom.me/blog/22515-our-next-adventure/
Stay tuned for updates on what we did for summer vacation, where we're at in our surrogacy journey, and more!
There was an energy shift and a collective gasp when we revealed our Indiegogo campaign page at our Father’s Day launch party last month. Everyone was super supportive, but there was an essence of doubt in the air. There were several moments throughout the course of our crowdfunding campaign where we each looked at each other and asked “Can we actually do this? Are we really trying to crowdfund $75,000? How did we end up here?”
Posted by Anthony.
Dealing with a clogged drain is never fun. It’s less fun at 6:30 am and that drain is in your shower and you’re standing there, half awake, ankle deep in water. But, this was the situation that I found myself in last Thursday morning. Not an ideal start to the day, but, I reasoned with myself, it could always be worse.
A good friend, Rachel Parker, wrote a letter of support for us and sent it to her family. She shared it with us and agreed to let us share it with our blog readers as well.
Dear Readers,
You may have noticed some Facebook posts about my friends' crowdfunding campaign to raise money to have a baby through surrogacy. Generally, anything involving fundraising and compelling people to part with their hard-earned money is way out of my comfort zone, even though, theoretically, it is a beautiful thing. It's pretty clear that their story must be shared and noticed by more than immediate friends and family in order to reach the amount required by the end of the month.
