It Takes a Village to HAVE a Child

This post below is an excerpt of a lovely blog by KeAnne called "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child and Sometimes it Takes a Village to Have One" and you can read it in its entirety here:

http://www.blogher.com/it-took-village?from=pop

She describes her experience of becoming a mother with the help of a gestational surrogate.
 

 

The bones of my birth story and becoming a mother are like everyone else's: a woman in labor in the hospital; the hum of the equipment monitoring the woman and the baby; the nurses moving in and out; moans as the contractions intensified and soothing words.

The details are different.

I was not the woman in labor although the baby being born was my biological child.

The woman in labor was our gestational carrier. My husband and I sat in chairs against the wall a little removed from the bed. My anxiety was so intense that I thought I would vomit and I couldn't say a word. I wanted to make myself as small as possible. I was terrified.

When we started this journey with F, our gestational carrier in 2008, I never spent much time thinking about what the birth would be like. I knew some information about the stages of labor, pain, etc., but I never thought about what it would be like to sit in that room while she labored.

I was not prepared for the reality. I thought we would have hours to become prepared and accustomed as F’s labor progressed. I pictured us chatting and laughing, enjoying the excitement. In reality, she went into labor suddenly one day before our due date and when we arrived at the hospital an hour after receiving the call from her husband, she was almost fully dilated. It was almost too late for her to receive an epidural.