Legal is the part of the process I was dreading the most. I knew there would be some uncomfortable conversations, and I really don't like treating this as a business transaction, but in order to go forward we have to deal with it.
That being said, today was our meeting with the lawyer to begin our contract. I learned several things about myself. One of them being, while I can manage a large amount of children at once, I hate having to make life or death decisions, two, I could never ever be a lawyer, three, your morals and views change when you have multiple lives to think about, and four, I rely on B more than I realize, and not having him there with me at the lawyer today was tough. Thankfully, B and I had discussed several of the topics before when we had our psych appointments at NW, and our surrogate and I have a open relationship where most of these have been brought to the table.
I love our lawyer, she thinks a lot like me and I feel comfortable with her. This is important (one of the most important parts of the whole process), as you will discuss several uncomfortable topics while you draft your contracts. She was super understanding of the fact that I need to talk to B about some of this stuff, because we just haven't thought of it.
The contract to me wasn't daunting, it is the topics we have to discuss in order to get the contract drafted. If you ever want to spend a really overwhelming, stressful, and emotional hour, start to draft a surrogacy contract. It's challenging because when you are making these decisions, you have to think about you, your partner, your surrogate, her partner (if applicable), her children, and your child. It's a lot to juggle, and if you are not prepared, many questions will catch you off guard. The lawyer basically asked me a ton of questions off a checklist, and then I got to throw in additional items as well. The questions ranged from "Do you want to run a background check on your surrogate?" to "What will you do if your surrogate dies, will you sustain life support to keep the pregnancy going?" We waived our right to a background check, and I had to go home to discuss the life support issue with B. Along with those topics, you discuss the basics, such as what they have to abstain from during pregnancy, how you will pay their bills, insurance, and visitation rights. Other "fun" topics include:
- Abortion
- Selective Reduction
- If the intended parents die, what happens to the pregnancy?
- Life support
- Wills
- Life Insurance
There are also other miscellaneous items such as confidentiality. For example, we don't want our surrogate to reveal the gender of our baby until after the reveal party. She also can't talk to the media about it (because I've seen Miley Cryus), but she can tell people what she is doing. In addition, she can't tell our child about how they came to be part of this world (that is a conversation B and I want to have). We also have to detail how many embryos to transfer, and how many times, and how long we want to try at this.
Now, the reason I mention the morals changing during something like this is because I'm dealing with her life, not mine. If I had been pregnant, and there was a danger to me, I would be against abortion, however, if her life is on the line, we agreed to abort if medically needed because she has two children, and we would take away their mother. The same goes with life support, we would not choose to sustain her because it's her right to do what she wants with her body. It puts a very different spin on things when you have to take everyone else (all 6 of us) into consideration. At the end of the day, I'm just trying to do what is best and fair for everyone (future baby included). I don't know if I was right, but I am comfortable with the decisions we made today, and think they keep everyones best interest in mind.
After answering emotionally draining questions for an hour, I was on my way home. I was pretty overwhelmed and tapped out, as I had just made some life altering decisions. For some reason this meeting today made it real to me. The decisions I made are going to create a contract that gets my name on a birth certificate as a mother. Illinois is actually awesome with that, because they put both B and my names on the birth certificate from the get go, so no adoption of our own baby. They are the only state that does this (to my knowledge). As I was driving home, letting reality sink in. I asked Siri a simple question....her response blew my mind away
Only 96ish days till we could be hearing about a baby on the way! No wonder it feels real! As always surrogacy is a process that involves much more than meets the eye, and while it is taxing, stressful and complex, you also get to see the benefits. Here's to holding our breath for the next 96 days.
PS: Those of you going through the process, check out Our Misconception, another surrogacy blog that has a list of topics to think about before you go into law land.
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