The Meeting

My partner, children, and I met the intended parents (IPs) and their four year old son this past weekend. It felt like the most important interview I've been on yet. I was a bit nervous leading up to it, starting silly fights with Jen about things like who would pack the picnic lunch and what time we should leave to head over to the park. We all met at our son's favorite park in Berkeley, hoping he'd be having enough fun that we'd actually be able to talk a bit. It worked. But then it was awkward. The Intended Mom and I had been emailing back and forth all week, very intimate emails sharing very personal stories and details about our lives. Meeting in person felt strange...as if we knew all of these complicated stories about the other but were supposed to be freshly acquainted. What was fair game to talk about? Did we discuss postpartum depression, abortions, strained family dynamics, as we had been in our emails, or did we keep it light? We opted to keep it light, but there were definitely periods of awkward silence. Our boys played very well together. Thankfully, they were kind to each other and shared fairly decently (imagine the awkwardness if one had knocked the other one over the head or some such nonsense). We all hugged as we were leaving and promised to be in touch. 

Then I got weird and angsty. I didn't hear from the Intended Mother for the rest of the weekend, which was strange considering we'd been exchanging several emails a day. I began to think that maybe the meeting didn't go as well as I had thought... maybe something I said or did turned them off...or maybe I chose the wrong snacks to bring to the picnic. As it turns out, they were just busy. I received a lovely email from them this morning about how excited they are to move forward. Oh the inner workings of my brain!

We had a friend over for dinner the other night. She asked my partner how she felt about my moving forward. Jen responded by saying that she feels it makes a lot of sense. She knows I didn't just enjoy pregnancy, but that it was actually a spiritual experience for me. It also feels karmically linked, as we needed someone else's help and body to make our family.  It was the first time I'd heard her talk about this process to someone else. I didn't realize how tentative I'd been about her take on all of this. I knew she supported me, but to hear her explain it all to someone else, it became clear how completely onboard she is with the process. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath or walking on eggshells until that moment. What a relief! 

At this point, I'm anxious for next steps. I need to have a uterine assessment by their fertility doctor, as well as a psych assessment. The above neuroses aside, I'm pretty confident about the psych assessment.  I am feeling worried about the uterine assessment, though. What if something happened since my last pregnancy that I don't know about? What if I have ovarian cysts or fibroids? It all has been too good to be true so far! I just want to have the physical assessment out of the way so that I can let myself believe this might actually be happening.