Difference Between Being and IM and Being Pregnant

Several of you mentioned being curious about this so I wanted to do a post on my thoughts so far about pregnancy versus being and "intended mom" (I still hate that term - you are ALWAYS the mom whether pregnant or not...not just intended!). As time goes on, I'm sure there will be other differences but I can reflect so far on the first trimester (plus change...I'm 15 weeks now).

I think the number one thing that you wonder about as an IM (or wonder about missing out on) is bonding with the baby while pregnant. You wonder if you would feel differently if the baby were actually inside you. Well, I can honestly say that I felt more bonded to Nathan and Kenna by this point than I do to this baby. There is absolutely nothing - for me - about having the baby physically inside me that has made me have more feelings for him/her than I did for the twins. I truly believe now that bonding is a state of mind. There are two reasons I think that in my case I was MORE bonded to the twins at this point:

1) They were our first kids. NOTHING can match the ultimate excitement and relief of knowing that after all we went through we really were going to have the kids we wanted so badly. I mean nothing. I cried tears of happiness all the time. Whether we ever had another child or not, we had the twins, and that is what mattered. That's not to say that we weren't/aren't excited to add to our family - of course we are! It's just that there is something far more EMOTIONAL about the first child when you've been through infertility (and possibly when you haven't - but I can't speak to that). I thought about what it would be like to have them constantly...but I'm so busy with them now that I really don't think about the new baby that much! So having a baby inside you has nothing to do with how you bond with him/her in my experience.

2) We had ultrasounds all the time with N & K. This makes a huge difference too. When you see the baby all the time you bond with him/her. You think about it more. Since this is a totally "normal" pregnancy, we get like two ultrasounds the whole pregnancy. It's bizarre. I could be growing an alien and they wouldn't know. I got used to seeing N & K all the time and that was a bonding experience!

So, I have to say that bonding, in my experience, has nothing to do with physically carrying a baby. I have not thought for one second "wow, I wish I carried Nathan and Kenna so I could have bonded more before they were born".

I guess I should add that I have never had any romantic notions of pregnancy. So this may all be very different for someone who really wanted to experience the physical part of pregnancy. As I've said in the past, I honestly never felt strongly about it. Because of that, I don't think I'm handling this next difference very well.

Next difference: When you are an IM, you obviously don't experience all the physical challenges with being pregnant. If you are someone who really dreamed of being pregnant and "feeling life inside you", you probably think more about rubbing your growing belly and feeling kicks. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but for me, it has been ALL negative physically. I know a lot of people who went through IF say that they just wanted to enjoy every second of their pregnancy - the good AND the bad - because it had eluded them for so long. But I find it impossible to embrace being sick (I know, I know, call me the bad attitude bear!). I am 15 weeks pregnant and still throw up every single day. Often more than once still. I generally feel nauseated. All the time. I constantly feel hungry even when nothing sounds good and have to eat. My immune system is down due to being pregnant and I've had four colds in two months. I can't take much medicine since I'm pregnant, but what I do take makes me feel guilty and wonder if I've hurt the baby. I generally can't sleep between 1 and 4 am. I've never had sleeping problems in my life. I wake up so early in the morning because of being sick that I'm ready for bed by 8 every night. Because of that I never have time to myself (it used to be at night) and rarely get to spend time with Bryan. I feel hormones in full force and am completely short tempered with everyone around me. I generally have felt horrible every day for 3 months and, to be honest, see each week as counting down to not being sick rather than counting down to a baby. I want to feel like a real person again.

I've been fortunate in that I haven't had any problems thus far with the pregnancy itself. If that added to it, I can't even imagine. I do know that not everyone has the physical symptoms so bad and in general I'm probably worse since every book says "you will almost certainly feel great by 14 weeks!" If I weren't so miserable physically I think I would probably be "bonding" more too. I guess that's a third reason. I really don't feel much like getting excited about the baby when I'm hovering over a toilet, sink, or plastic bag. I had a couple of days where I suddenly felt well last week and I have to say that it made all the difference in the world. I very suddenly started thinking about the baby and got excited about our new addition. It was literally that much of a switch over, just being able to feel well for two days. I really envy people who just walk around being pregnant and feeling great!

So physically thus far, you really aren't missing out being an IM. :)

One of the things I wondered about when I was an IM was how it FELT to be pregnant. I always thought I was missing out on some universal mystery of pregnancy. Like every woman who had been pregnant had felt something crazy that I hadn't. Honestly, if I weren't sick, I wouldn't know I'm pregnant. You don't feel anything. Your belly grows and that is a weird thing because you really have no other way of knowing anything is inside of you. There is no mysterious feeling, no fireworks going off in your belly, no little tugs from a little hand. It feels the same as it does for you sitting right there reading this if you aren't pregnant. I know that will change with the baby getting bigger, as you feel the baby moving around. And I'll let you know how I feel at that point. :) But aside from physically feeling the baby later in pregnancy, there is no feeling physically to being pregnant before that. When people say they just love being pregnant, that isn't some mysterious state of being...it's some combination of a state of mind ("growing a life inside of me") and I'm guessing enjoying the feelings that come later of the baby moving around inside.

From all of the post so far, you can probably tell I don't feel at this point that IMs miss out on much by not physically carrying. But there are some things that have been good.

First, it is SO much easier logistically when you are pregnant "alone". Even though we were a pretty smooth sailing ship with appointments, etc., between Bryan, myself and J, was still a feat to get three people everywhere. J has two kids and she always had to arrange with her mom or husband to babysit. I always felt really guilty when we had appointments, especially since we had a lot. I never wanted to put her out more than we already were! It was always weird at appointments when the doctor would ask us to leave after a while so she could have private conversations with J. I felt like an intruder even though I understood, of course. Bryan felt weird a lot of times in the room because he didn't want J to be uncomfortable with his presence (pregnancy is a personal thing!). At the birth there were all kinds of complicated logistics due to the situation. Being pregnant yourself is just much less complicated logistically.

Second, it is much less mentally stressful, as far as being concerned about someone else. The number one hardest thing for me about being an IM was constantly being worried about what J was thinking and feeling. I felt guilty all the time that someone was doing this for me. I obsessed about whether she felt appreciated, whether she regretted what she was doing, whether I said something wrong, etc. It was hard not being able to just casually enjoy everything because I wanted desperately to be sure it was a good experience for J. I felt horrible when she was down in any way, on bedrest, with morning sickness (and I didn't even know the extent at the time), etc. I feel stressed even typing this right now...in retrospect I realize I was stressed constantly even though she is the most laid back person imaginable! She made it all seem like a breeze, even though of course it wasn't! So, I would say it has been much less stressful in one way than when I was an IM. You know you can never adequately thank your surro for the massive sacrifice she made, and I think most of us feel the same in that it sometimes feels like a giant debt you can never repay. It's very hard to accept a gift you can't return in any comparable way - even though you know your surro doesn't see it that way.

Lastly, and this is the big one for me, I have to admit this has been healing for me in some ways. Even though I never cared about being physically pregnant, I have always been bothered by not knowing what was wrong with me. I hated the mystery. I have spent way too much time observing random pregnant women I see at the store, etc., and wondering how on earth I have such a mysterious issue that doctors can't figure out why my body can't do the most basic of functions. It's funny because I STILL don't know why all the IVFs didn't work, but I now feel like the mystery is gone. I know I CAN get pregnant - naturally even! I don't really have to wonder anymore now about what the heck is wrong with me. I'll never know about the IVFs but I know that it's just really hard for me to get pregnant (most likely due to endometriosis), not impossible. I no longer feel so bizarre. "Really, really difficult to get pregnant but possible" is a good enough answer for me. What was so crazy before in my mind is that it just wasn't possible at all. I always understood why endometriosis makes it much harder but it should never have made it impossible. Now I know it isn't.

I also am really enjoying feeling "normal" for the first time in this area of life. I've always embraced our surrogacy story and love to share it. In fact, I tell people all the time even when it's not necessary at all given the conversation. But no matter how much I embraced it, part of me still wanted to be "normal". At times I just wanted to blend in with other pregnant women and couldn't - like at the hospital tour, or baby care classes, or doing a registry, etc. (I did our registry online because I felt too weird going in the store without a belly!). I like my mundane OB appointments where we talk about all the standard stuff and not infertility. They don't care about my past at all. I'm just like everyone else there. I actually enjoy sitting in the waiting room, one pregnant woman amongst many. I like telling people I'm pregnant when it comes up in casual conversation with strangers (like at the store or something when people come to talk to N & K). It's fun to say something so casually ("yes, and I'm pregnant with their little sibling...") that only I know is SO crazy!

I have to clarify that there is absolutely nothing abnormal about surrogacy that anyone SHOULD feel isolated for - it's just that *I personally* felt abnormal, so being pregnant is healing for me on this issue that *I* had. I know a lot of other IMs probably feel/felt that way too, but I just didn't want anyone reading to think I was suggesting that surrogacy is something you SHOULD feel abnormal about, KWIM? That was just my own issue.

As my belly grows I find myself looking at my profile in the mirror every morning in awe - and confusion! It's all really hard to grasp. Even though I don't love being pregnant, I'm seeing more and more that it is healing some emotional scars that run deep from the whole IF experience. And most of all it means that we are having the opportunity to add to our family, which I never thought was going to be possible. At the end of the day, though, whether you are an IM or you are pregnant yourself, what really matters is that you are going to be a mom and the pregnancy is a blip on the map of the hopefully many years you'll have with your little one.