Surrogate zombies

A while ago I joined a message board for surrogates. It was really helpful and I got a lot of great answers and advice. I'm starting to notice something strange about it though. Nearly every single person in the forum (except for me) has these HUGE "signatures" at the end of each of their posts. They list how many kids they have, how many times they've been a surrogate, when they gave birth, what they gave birth to, the list goes on and on. It's like it's a competition. (Don't even get me started on how everyone there uses an average of 12 animates smilies per post.) Ever stranger is that many of the women there have screen names like "BigHeart" and "AngelMaker" and "GiftGiver". It all seems very self-congratulatory.

I'm also starting to notice a not-so-nice tone that some of the women have when someone new comes around asking questions about surrogacy. One woman actually told me that since I had such bad morning sickness no IP (intended parents) were going to want towork with me because morning sickness was just such a hassle. Bitch, please. It's not like I'm going to have them come over to my house and hold my hair back while I'm puking. I would think that if morning sickness was a problem then maybe my agency would have told me that! But stuff like that gets said all the time. I suspect that some of these women see surrogacy as such an awesome thing that they've done that they think they themselves are awesome and no one else can ever be awesome enough to do what they did. They've bought into the hype.

And there is hype. Every person I've talked to about this surrogacy idea says how great it is and how wonderful I am to do it and all that good stuff. And it's nice to hear that, it really is. I think it is a good thing that I'm doing. But do I think that it makes me the be all, end all Earth Mother, life giver? No, I think it makes me a person who wants to help someone have a family and gain something for my own family at the same time.

I don't want to become one of those surrogate zombies. I don't want my whole life to be about this. I've been talking a lot about it lately because there have been some significant developments with the agency. I'm sure I'll talk about it a lot more too as it gets closer. I just don't want it to be what I'm all about. I don't want to start calling myself "FamilyCreator". I don't want to give out virtual hugs to strangers via animated smilies. I don't want to be bitchy and territorial about the whole process. I never want to call my surrogacy a "journey". I really don't want to be a zombie.