Moments in time

It goes without saying that A LOT has happened since our last post, which was on March 9, and feels like it belongs to another time altogether. Since then, for so many, plans have been turned upside down and certainty has become completely elusive.

It’s funny how perspectives can shift so quickly. When we wrote our last post and excitedly informed everyone who’s following our bumpy road that we had an egg donor and surrogate in place via a Canadian agency, we were in the midst of arranging next steps and moving through the many behind the scenes processes that are involved. Once it became clear that COVID-19 wasn’t going to be something that would just pass, we became extremely grateful that we weren’t further down the road. Had we been in the early or late stages of a pregnancy, our level of concern for not only the health of our surrogate and future baby, but also our ability to move across borders, would have been overwhelming. We saw many stories posted in some of the surrogacy circles we’re part of of couples stranded and unable to access their newborns; an awful predicament that we were thankful not to have been in.

All that said, we have not wavered in our determination, and things are starting to move again (some parts quite quickly, in fact) as clinics reopen, with our end goal feeling closer than ever. These past few months have gotten us thinking more and more about the concept of time, which is an ongoing struggle. An earlier post we entitled ‘It’s a marathon not a sprint’, which we tell ourselves frequently. These recent disruptions have us again singing similar tunes. There are so many time-related phrases that always seem to come up in this context… it’s just a matter of time, time flies, good things come to those who wait, take it one step at a time etc. Whilst rationalising delays and changes in plans in this way helps us to a degree, there’s an unavoidable emotional toll every time the goal posts shift. These hoped-for family plans of ours started over 18 months ago now, and who knows where the end point is. It’s worth acknowledging here that long waits for it to ‘happen’ are so common – no one knows what their experience with fertility will be; a good reason why casual chat about having a family is often laden with assumptions and can be insensitive given most people don’t widely share their fertility battles.

Ultimately, what is for certain is that nothing is certain. We continue to live through this moment in time as wary as everyone else and cling on to our optimism that this isn’t an if, it’s a when…we just don’t quite know when that when may be.