Although I'm not exactly "borrowing" them, because I only plan to keep them for, oh, nine months or so and spruce them up a bit, then, well not exactly give them back, but you know, share the finished product for, oh, the rest of our lives, the first thing(s) that came to mind for this topic are Shrike's eggs, that we'll be using to make our baby.
I don't have words to express how much it means to me that by using her eggs, we will be able to actually make a baby together.
Of course, no matter how we might eventually come to be parents - whether our original plans had worked out, or if IVF works, or if we end up adopting - of course, our child will be, completely, ours - both of ours - but still, this is different, this idea that we will both be actually, physically making a baby together.
Not just planning it together, and raising it together and loving it together, but making it together.
Granted, it's not quite the old fashioned way, and we'll need some help from good ol' Popeye and a half-dozen or so doctors, and it won't actually be a genetic amalgam of the two of us, but both of our bodies will be intimately involved in creating this new life.
Shrike will be contributing the raw materials, and I'll be, well for lack of a better term, putting in the labor.
She'll be making the dough, and I'll be baking the bun.
She'll be writing the instruction manual, and I'll be . . . .
Ok, perhaps my analogies are getting away from me a bit here .
My point is that, although I can't deny that I am still disappointed that I wasn't able to "get the job done" myself, and I am still getting used to the idea that our baby won't have my eyes or my dimple or my whatever, that is all outweighed by the fact that I am going to be able to have her baby.
And yet, it will also be my baby.
It may have her blue eyes (if we're lucky), her "cheeseburgers" (don't ask), her cute little ears, and her prehensile toes, but it will grow inside me, I will nurture it for nine months (and beyond) and I will bring it into the world.
When I watch the "baby shows" almost every couple goes on and on about how amazing it is that "we made this person together, from our love," and, until we decided to do IVF, that's something that I was kind of sad that we would not be able to say; that we would not be physically making the baby together, but now we will.
Which brings me back to my original point (as though I had one): Some/Thing Borrowed.
When we started this project, I think Shrike expected to be more of an observer of the process.
Holding my hand, cheering me on, running out for ice cream in the middle of the night, sure, she signed on for all that, but she never expected to actually be physically involved, never expected to be having blood drawn, peeing in cups, visiting the dildo-cam, taking pills, getting shots, and having "procedures" that require anesthesia.
This morning, for the third day in a row, I woke her up and gave her a shot of Lupron in her belly. As I removed the needle and put a little kiss on the injection site, she mumbled "Thank you," and prepared to go back to sleep.
"You gotta be kidding," I thought. "Thank me?"
Everything she's doing, everything she's putting - and about to be putting - her body through because a> I want to have a baby (yes, she wants this to, but if I didn't want it, she wouldn't have come up with the idea on her own) and b> It's too late now to do it with my own ovaries, and she's thanking me?
No, honey, thank you. More than I could ever say.
And, I love you more than I could ever say.
And, Happy Valentine's Day.
Check out the rest of The Other Mother's Some/Thing Meme.
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This wooden bowl is made from the remains of a tree that grew at my summer camp.
