The Story of our Match

Sorry this is a very long post.  Wow, I think I am still in shock that we finally have a surrogate! Her name is R, she doesn't need a code name. I really cannot believe it, and honestly I keep thinking something is going to go wrong (or more aptly that Tarzan is going to screw it up).  For now I'm just going to go with the premise that we are matched and will soon be pregnant via surrogate!  After all of the drama with Tarzan regarding A, I was ready to punch him and trade him in for a few acres and a house full of cats and dogs.  I'm not joking - ask my mom because she was the one who listened to me fantasizing about a new life.  Anyway even while we were going through the drama and my heart was broken about A, I did continue to write to respond to new surrogate ads and had re-posted our own ad so we were getting replies as well. I had been emailing probably 4 other surrogates since the middle of January.  R first responded to our ad on Jan. 10th and we began emailing. We skyped with her just 5 days later for the first time.  We both really liked her, but I sure wasn't going to get excited about anyone unless Tarzan did. I continued to email her as well as a few others. 

Then I had a meltdown the weekend of Jan. 22nd - that's when A sent us the email saying she couldn't work with us. I lit into Tarzan, but the good thing is that it seemed to light a fire under him. All of a sudden he was going to do the communicating with the surrogates, he put an advert on a different surrogacy site than we had been using, and I took a back seat.  I still emailed R, and she was a friend on FB, but not as often and I wasn't making much of an effort.  Around early February I started talking to a new surrogate that A had recommended to us. It was a friend of hers in California who was an experienced surrogate and came highly recommended. I liked her immediately just like I did A and we began emailing.  She had a very impressive website and I wanted Tarzan to meet her on skype.  However for some reason I couldn't get Tarzan to pay much attention to it.  I still do not understand that man at all.

On the weekend of Jan. 28th Tarzan  decided he wanted to meet R in person.  I thought wow he's willing to drive to Virgina or Tennessee (where her parents live) to meet her?  We started planning a trip, but I was having Tarzan do all the communicating with her. Well she didn't like it. She told me that he was coming across like this was a business deal and that it was more important for the relationship between the surrogate and the IM (me) to be good.  I wanted to cry - I just couldn't make everyone happy - on one hand Tarzan wanted to run the show, but his email skills are non-existent and he doesn't come across very well. He was making a bad impression on her. I had to step back up to the plate to save the relationship.  I tried to explain to R what had happened with A without telling her too much, but to get the point across that what we had been doing up to now wasn't working.  I told her that this isn't just my decision and Tarzan is very opinionated on who is going to be our surrogate.  However that he is the world's worst email communicator, but that she would like him if she met him in person.  It seemed to work!  Anyway she and I kept in touch via FB and email, and then we skyped on Feb. 6th to finalize our plans for the next weekend.  She is in the process of moving from Virginia to Texas, but would be in Tennessee visiting her parents for a couple of weeks. That worked out perfectly because it's a slightly shorter drive to TN than to VA (it was still 12 hours each way because of the damn snow). 

Tarzan and I drove down to KY last Saturday, spent the night in Bowling Green (got hit up for money by a meth addict with a baby - so sad), and then drove the rest of the way 3 hours to Jackson, TN on Sunday. We met R at Olive Garden and spent 3.5 hours with her. It went awesome. We got along great and never stopped talking. We let Tarzan talk a little bit.  We left there and went back to our hotel to watch the Super Bowl and relax.  On the way to the hotel we talked about how well it went, so I asked him if we could ask her to be our surrogate. He said let's talk about it on the drive home. I yelled "No, we'll lose her!!!!".  I told him that I wanted to ask her the next day.  He said we'd talk about it after the Super Bowl. Well he fell asleep, so I thought "great now we aren't going to talk about it". The next morning we were getting ready to go meet her at Starbucks and I asked him if we could ask her to be our surrogate and he said YES!!  I nearly fell over. I couldn't believe that he didn't need to think about it for another month and talk to 18 more surrogates.  I contained my surprise and remained composed.

We met her at Starbucks in a snowstorm and she brought her youngest son who is 15 months old. He was so calm and sat on Tarzan's lap almost the entire time.  It was so cute.  R and I enjoyed our coffee and were chit chatting and then I just came out and asked her if she would be our surrogate and she said YES right away!  I was so excited I wanted to jump up and down.  We started talking about the next steps and then we went to the mall for a while. Tarzan took the baby and pushed him in the stroller while R and I walked around browsing at stuff.  We had lunch, and then said our goodbyes for now, and headed back to MI with another night in KY to break up the drive. 

So a little bit about R.  She is 29, married, has 3 boys ages 5, 4 and 15 months and had 1 surrobaby in 2008, also a boy.  She is adopted herself  (ok are you astonished that Tarzan went with her not even knowing anything about her ethnicity?  I sure am).  Her parents are missionaries for Wycliffe Bible Translators, so R actually spent most of her childhood from age 7 to 18 in Papua New Guinea which is above Australia.  How cool is that? She met her now husband there in high school as his parents were also missionaries for a different company.  They came back to the US for college. R did 2 years at a college in Rochester, NY, but then transferred to the University of Tennessee to study Social Work. She got married, and her husband joined the Navy, and they started a family. They've been stationed in VA for a few years, and are moving to Dallas next month where her husband will be a Recruiter for his last 3 years in the Navy.  After that he is leaving the Navy and will be getting a civilian job.  She is really cute, and even cuter in person than in pictures. She is 5'3" (yep I got past my desire for a tall surrogate and I'm totally fine with it), has blue eyes, and light brown curly hair (yeah for curly hair).  She's very easy going and I am confident we are going to have a fabulous journey!  If the contracts get written and signed, and she gets moved and settled in Dallas we could start as early as April, although I'm thinking it will be more like May. 

The only thing that I'm worried about is that Tarzan is still on his kick to find 2 surrogates and we haven't discussed that with her yet.  I thought we had agreed to wait at least 6 months, but he brought it up again with me the other day.  I will have to bring it up with her tomorrow, but I won't let it ruin what we have with her. I want Tarzan to give it a rest on finding a second surrogate until we actually make progress with this one - get our contract signed, get a lawyer, and get pregnant. Besides I really don't want 2 babies at once. I'd like them at least 6 months to a year apart. He just keeps saying that I'm in my 40s - well he is too! Ugh! 

Okay to end this on a positive note - yay I really may get to be a mom in 2012!!!