A Very Interesting Evening

Last night, we had dinner with Shrike's sister and her partner, and two other couples from their church, one straight, one lesbians. (It's a Unitarian church, if you're wondering.)

Early in the evening, we found out that the lesbian couple had used IVF to make their son (now 10 or 11?) and that the wife of the straight couple is a surrogate, who's currently in a "two week wait."

Technically, she's a gestational carrier, which means is someone who carries a baby for another couple, using their egg/sperm. (In this case, they are using an anonymous donor egg, as well, since the intended mother had ovarian cancer about ten years ago, requiring a complete hysterectomy.)

A surrogate, on the other hand, uses her egg to make the baby, carries it, and then gives it to the intended parents.

They have an eight-year-old daughter of their own, she carried one baby who's now fifteen months old, and she's currently working on a second.

So, the vast majority of the evening was spent talking about IVF stuff, and comparing notes about the fertility clinic and its staff (she's working with the same clinic we go to).

The kids were in and out through the evening, so this conversation, which happened as we were reading to our niece (7) and nephew (10) before bed, was rather inevitable:

Shrike ("hypothetically," to me): You know, if we have a little boy, I want him to be just like GodzillaBoy, and if we have a little girl, I want her to be just like Niece. Hmm, she needs a blogonym, doesn't she?)

Niece: Are you going to have a baby?

Whozat: Oh, maybe some day.

Shrike: (Something equally non-committal)

Niece: Are you trying?

What the hell? She's seven! Well, shit. I guess there's no point in lying about it.

Whozat: Well, actually, we are. But it might take a while.

Niece (not particularly confused, just curious): How are you going to do that?

Whozat: The same way that Cousin and Cousin-if-there-was-a-law made Baby R.

Niece: How did they do that?

Oh, darn. I was hoping that had already been covered. Oh well, I'd better get used to this.

Whozat: Well, you know about how babies are made usually, right?

Niece: Yeah, by having sex.

Oh. Right. I'd forgotten about that option.

Whozat: Okay, so you know about how women make eggs and men make sperm?

Niece: Yeah.

Whozat: Well, they are going to take some eggs out of Aunt Shrike, and put them in a dish together with some sperm from a very nice man, who is helping us, and they'll get together and make embryos, which are very tiny, and might grow into babies. Then they'll put a couple of the embryos in me, and we'll hope that one of them grows into a baby.

Niece: Well, if you have a girl, I think you should name her (name that we like, but it rhymes with PerfectPup's real name, so we can't use it). Or (some other name) or (her name) II. You could call me Big Name and call her Little Name. Or (and proceeds to list the names of like every little girl that she knows).

So much for not saying anything to the kids just yet, but I think that went quite well.