Into the West

While waiting for the shuttle to work this morning I ended up in one of the most fascinating conversations about surrogacy that I have had in a long time. One of my co-workers was talking about when his husband was going to be flying in, and so we started talking about their life together. Of course, when I say "we" I really mean the other six people that were there with us. Turns out that he and his husband want to have about six kids (according to him he's living my cute mormon boy life for me). Their goal is to have 3 kids physically related to each parent. Because surrogacy is so expensive in the United States, they are flying to India to donate the eggs and sperm, and the baby will be carried to term there as well (their egg donor is an Australian, and the surrogate lives in India.)

All of the details about surrogacy were certainly fascinating, but I was even more interested in the different responses from other people who were asking questions throughout the conversation. The first question that came up (almost several people asked this at the same time) was why couldn't he just have sex with his surrogate - wouldn't that be cheaper? Of course, he said that would literally be impossible for him. While his answer dealt mostly with physical attraction, my own feelings (and his unspoken ones as well, I'm sure) were more about not being comfortable doing something like that with someone other than your spouse.

Oddly enough, one of the females in the room didn't seem to understand how the babies could be genetically related to them. He literally had to spell it out, "Well, I go and do my thing, and then they give the women some medication to release a large number of eggs. They then combine the sperm and the egg to create an embryo, which is implanted in the surrogate." At this point she said, "Wait Women release eggs?" Everyone gave her the most confused look. "You know... once a month....." It was like being back sex education all over again.

My co-worker was incredibly gracious and patient throughout the conversation, despite the fact that some of the questions really could have been considered to be quite rude. Still, it was a fascinating experience for me to learn a little bit from a real gay (future) parent. Hopefully it was also a little glimpse of my future life.