Scenes From My Surrogacies: A Memoir in the Making

I’ve always wondered if there’s something significant about my compulsion to send handmade gifts to the families I’ve carried babies for. And not just any handmade gifts, they have to be things that I’ve made myself. Perhaps there’s some kind of subconscious message I’m trying to convey – “Hey - I created everything that is most precious to you – your child – and although that project has long since passed, look! I will still keep creating for you!”

The earliest memory I have of making something surrogacy-related is a handmade card for my first intended mother. I was mostly into paper arts at the time – card making and scrapbooking – because my kids were still very young and it was easy to manage in tiny scraps of free time.

I made many other things for her during my pregnancy with her twins, cards mostly, hoping that by acknowledging the significance of the events we shared together it would help her come around to they way I viewed the surrogacy – as something I wanted to share with her rather than do for her.

Though it never really did work out that way.