My Mind's Ink

I performed the wedding ceremony at my youngest sister’s wedding a few years ago. Another sister volunteered to to be a surrogate mother for my wife and I, modern science will let her carry our baby. I was tempted just so I could start a story with the line, “I married my sister, but my other sister had my baby.”

Despite multiple tries my wife and I have failed to have a baby with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Our doctor let us know we might have better success if a surrogate carried our embryos. Two of our sisters volunteered for the job. They offered before being asked, and without reservation, which says a lot about both of them. “If you don’t have reservations, you haven’t thought hard enough about it.” That was my reaction.

So, we all thought about it, a lot. And, if you haven’t thought about your sibling having your baby, which, why would you, I’ll tell you a few things you hadn’t thought about. Here are the Pros and Cons.

First, the Pros. There is one. Our sisters love us a lot. Enough to go through pregnancy and then give us a baby. We all think that would be an amazing result. That’s it though. Not much else in that column. It’s a big one, but still, there are a number of sizeable entries under Cons.

To begin, we have to choose one of our sisters to seriously ask. Two sisters volunteered. Who do we put at the top of the list? The youngest makes the most sense, which is a tough way to start; having to tell the older sister that her uterus is the B team.

People die in childbirth! What happens if something goes wrong? Okay, so dying during childbirth is highly unlikely. I can get my head around that. But, miscarriage is not. It’s just as likely as delivering a baby. The odds of miscarriage are about 50 percent in these circumstances. So, the odds are against my sister getting pregnant, but even if she does, it’s still a coin flip as to whether she will wake up in the middle of the night bleeding, and have to follow that with a doctor’s visit and a phone call to tell us she’s lost the baby. Huge Con.

That joke I told about my sister having my baby, I’d get a kick out of telling it three times, but that would be enough. Well, this isn’t the fifties, you don’t sneak off to have a baby if the circumstances make people uncomfortable. So, my wife and I are going to have to tell that story a lot, but not nearly as much as my sister and brother. This is an intimate personal decision you must get comfortable sharing with the world. If you know four adults that can do that without any awkwardness, you’re not normal. Seriously, good for you, but that’s unusual.

More than one person has advised, “You are not asking, she’s volunteering.” Which is a cop out. Asking someone to do something, and allowing them to volunteer, are the same moral ground. Our sisters have demanding lives of their own. Asking one of them to do all of that, and be pregnant with a baby she doesn’t get to keep, is huge. It’s bigger than that even. It’s a favor large enough to make me sea sick.

I like my brother-in-law. He is an excellent drinking buddy. And in my ranking system for beings, Drinking Buddy is up on the podium with Sister, Dog, and Wife. I know from our tries at IVF that the process is difficult on relationships, and there are a lot of them at stake here. Wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, not to mention a baby, all wrapped up in this decision. It’s a lot at risk.

We decided against surrogacy. It was too much. But, it could have gone the other way. There is a temptation, to both give and accept a gift of that magnitude. I could see how it’s something you might do.

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