Right person, wrong time: our almost perfect match

As Baden mentioned in her recent post, we’re terribly sorry for not keeping our readers up to date on our surrogacy journey throughout the summer. We’ve been busy! We moved into our new home, began renovations, and I recently had a significant job change. Life has been moving pretty fast.

We also met someone special. An incredible woman reached out to us through our Facebook page. She said she’d been fascinated with surrogacy for a while, and we look like the perfect family to help. We were elated!

After chatting with her further, she blew us away. She is smart and funny, kind and warm, and has a loving, sweet family. I posted previously about how we put our family values first, and she checked every box. We could totally see her as an extension of our own family, someone we could look to for mom advice, and most importantly, the kind of person we could bring home to our parents and say, ‘mom, dad, she’s pregnant, and we’re pretty sure it’s ours.’ Needless to say we were smitten.

As it happens, a curveball was thrown our way after a few weeks of chatting quite seriously. Perhaps all three of us fell a bit too hard, too fast. It seems she had loved ones that were uncomfortable with formalizing the match. She did what any good mother, wife, sister, and daughter would do, and agreed to take a step back, in order to put her family first. It was incredibly difficult news to hear, especially after we had begun to create such a strong bond, but we both understood and respected her decision. Surrogacy has to feel rewarding, fulfilling, and right to everyone involved – including a potential surrogate’s entire family.

No agency, Facebook group, counsellor or former IP prepared us for this. Right person, wrong time doesn’t come around often in surrogacy. In fact, the opposite is often the case. Most people who decide to become surrogates typically want to get started right away. I don’t really have advice on how to process it, as we are still coming to terms with things ourselves. I suppose it is just another word of caution in the world of surrogacy: anything can happen.

Last week I was giving some unsolicited dating advice to Baden’s sister, Trinity. Even though the advice was about romantic relationships, I feel the wisdom applies here too. I told her, “People always say relationships are hard. I disagree, when you have found your soul mate, your relationship will take work, but it won’t be a challenge. The hardest part of the relationship, is the courtship.”

Courting isn’t fun. You’re building something deep and special with someone from scratch. You’re learning how to communicate verbally and physically. Everything feels very high-stakes. More and more we are learning that matching in the surrogacy world has been no different. We’re doing our best to be patient and trying to remind ourselves that everything happens for a reason. We have a lot to keep us busy until that right person comes along.

To that special almost-surrogate: we will be here when you’re ready. If it’s meant to be, it will be, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for us together. As for right now, we continue to be positive, optimistic, and eager to find our match. We know she’s right around the corner.

Zane