Author Archives: Holly Terpening

Tell Me a Little Bit About Yourself

Posted in Adoption Paperchasin' by

Update:  I wrote this original post on Dec.3 but somehow it didn’t get posted!  I’m happy to say that after another week or so of excruciatingly revising and editing my autobiography, I finally deemed it of high enough quality to submit to the adoption agency.  That thing kicked my keister and taught me a lesson about being overly confident when it comes to writing!  Sadly, our background checks have still not been completed!  I don’t think it helped that they most likely sat at DHS vacantly, discarded during much of December as employees took their Christmas vacation days.  

On December 2nd, my husband and I reveled in triumph at the two inch high stack of adoption paperwork we had completed. Our agency, who is lucky to have one heck of a thorough and detailed office manager, provided us a checklist of every single thing we needed to complete or create in terms of documentation, and for this I am tremendously grateful. So off I marched to the post office, clutching my stack of paperwork. I opted to use the self serve machine rather than stand in line. This is something you should not do. YES there is a line winding and curving for a third of a mile inside the post office. NO you will not encounter a line at the self service machine. The reason for this is that the machine expects you to know how much insurance to buy for your package, or whether paying extra for overnight delivery is worth it. If you do not know these things, the machine will not help you, nor will it pity you, and you will hang your head in shame and join the line inside the post office, which became a half mile longer while you were screwing around with the much “quicker” self service machine. Heed my warning.

Anyway, the giant pile of paperwork was completed! This was a huge deal! Once that stack is turned in, and the FBI runs your prints to ensure you aren’t an axe murderer or a tax evader, you are assigned a social worker and join The Pool. The Pool is where you want to be. It takes a lot if work to get there, but once you are in, potential birthmothers can officially view our portfolio and have the choice of picking us, as the family they give their child. As of this writing we aren’t in The Pool yet, but our swimsuits are on and we are ready to go! The reason we aren’t in yet is because I’m an idiot. One of the items we needed to complete was a 2-3 page autobiography about ourselves. John began writing his ahead of time, and commented that it was surprisingly difficult. I scoffed at him. How hard could this actually be? 2-3 pages, I could bang that out in half an hour!  I used to be a writing teacher, after all. Maybe this assignment was difficult for other people, but it would be a piece of cake for me.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, pride cometh before a fall. This autobiography was the hardest assignment of my life, and I once wrote a thirty page thesis on Mabel Walker Willebrandt. I kept writing draft after draft, starting over anew and then picking up again on older drafts, after realizing they were better than the drivel I was currently churning out.  It was the most vicious of the vicious cycles.  Our agency had even given us a decent outline to work with, instructing us to describe:

  • Our childhoods
  • Our marriage
  • Our parenting style
  • Our religious or spiritual beliefs
  • Our lifestyle
  • Our motivation to adopt
  • Our significant life experiences, good and bad

What I found is that nothing causes writers block quite like knowing that the piece you are attempting to write is destined for the hands of the social worker who will decide whether you are ready for The Pool or not.  It strikes terror into the hearts of even the most cheerful writers. How do you discuss significant life events that hurt so bad you didn’t know if you were even going to be happy again, WHILE making sure that you are communicating that the event made you a stronger and more empathetic person after making it through the pain? How do you describe a happy childhood without making it sounds like you grew up with the cast of Family Ties? How do you explain your existing parenting style when you are really supposed to be theorizing what it is like to be a parent for the first time?  How do you convey that yes, we genuinely, truly, from the bottom of our hearts want to grow our family through adoption, and that it isn’t just a “fall back” because the fertility treatments weren’t working?

It took me a good long time to come up with the answers to the above questions.  As someone who considers herself an insightful person, who communicates her feelings honestly and transparently, this particular assignment served me a big ol’ piece of humble pie.  Honestly, I think it’s good to eat some of that once in a while. So, for those of you waiting with great anticipation to know where we are in the process, here it is! 1) All paperwork, every single sheet, has been submitted and approved!  Yee haw!  Next up…

2) We wait for the results of our background check to come back.  They are going to come back clean as whistle, and it sounds like they will be ready as soon a couple days from now!

3) After the background checks come through, we are immediately assigned a social worker who will come into our home and investigate from the bottom to the top to make sure we don’t have any of the following: loaded guns laying around haphazardly, crack pipes sitting out on coffee tables, a pyramid of empty beer cans decorating our front window.

4) A social worker will be visiting, and in addition to checking out the house, she will interview John and I as a couple for about two hours, and then each other, separately, for an additional hour each.  She will observe our son doing his thing, and I really hope that day that his “thing” isn’t exclusively speaking in monkey talk.

We our moving right along and hoping we get to hop in The Pool soon!  I will do a much better job of updating my blog in the future to keep everyone updated on our journey to our new son or daughter (or both–how awesome would that be?)

www.borrowedgenes.com

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The Elf on the Shelf: A Cautionary Tale

Posted in Great Moments in Parenting by
This is him. Look at those remorseless, beady little eyes.

This is him. Look at those remorseless, beady little eyes.

For those of you not familiar with The Elf on the Shelf, it is a book that seeks to explain to children how Santa knows if they are naughty or nice each day.  They are watched by their very own elf (spy), who flies back to the North Pole each night to give Santa the report of the day.  Each book comes with a creepy little elf that the child is supposed to name and trust; meanwhile, the elf has spent the day spying on the child and watching their every move from whatever creepy perch he was placed in during the night, by the well-meaning parent, for the purpose of collecting information he can use to tattle on them to his boss, Santa Claus.

I blame Facebook.

For many years I dreamed of being a mother. Infertility allowed me way too much time to think about all the things I would do to expose my kid to the magic of childhood if I ever got the chance, and many of those ideas centered around Christmas.  You know, Santa Claus, visits to Winter Wonderlands, tree lighting ceremonies, our home decked out Griswold style!  Childhood seems so short these days, and I wanted then what I want now; to make Christmas magical for my son, which, consequently, make Christmas magical for the hubs and I.  Like most parents, we delight in seeing the joy he feels from new experiences.  Decorating the tree this year, little man took charge and hung every decoration.  He chose each spot carefully.  Ornament placement mattered, as did color grouping.  It took about an hour and a half for him to complete the job, with Dada assisting as needed, and Mama on the camera documenting every moment with tears of joy in my eyes.  It was one of those perfect moments that happens oh so rarely in day to day life, but when it does it makes up for all the, ahem, less than perfect moments.  Also, our tree is only decorated on one side, and only decorated 18′ high, but it is totally worth it.

Giving credit where credit is due: The women who came up with this product and decided to market it are geniuses. They have sold millions of these things.  I tip my hat to their business savvy, although I question what the hell they were thinking creatively when they conceived this idea.

This stupid elf is all over Facebook every year right after Thanksgiving and right on through to Christmas. As I waited patiently, year after year, to become a mother, I lived vicariously through those that documented their sneaky placement each night of their own personal family elf.  In the morning, more pictures were posted to reveal the delight on the faces of their children as they found their Elf and saw all the mischief he had created.  The Elf had been playing in the flour canister? That silly Elf!  He turned the magnetic letters on the refrigerator upside down?  Oh, the shenanigans!

Basically, the elf is a snitch. No one likes a snitch.

Basically, the elf is a snitch. No one likes a snitch.

Yes, it’s true.  I coveted this retched elf and vowed to make him mine as soon as I had a kid to enjoy it.  Fast forward a few years, and in December of 2013, my son was two years old. I eagerly broke out the complete Elf on the Shelf kit which included a lovely hard copy book, a registration card so you could name and register your elf with Santa in the North Pole, and one creepy little red felt elf body with a weird, spooky porcelain head that turned 360 degrees a la The Exorcist for reasons blessedly unknown to me.  For the privilege of owning this elf package I paid 29.99, and I paid it gladly.  You can’t put a price on Christmas spirit!  Think of the joy it would bring my son!  Just imagine the laughter and the giggles first thing in the morning when he raced out of his room to search for his elf and see what mayhem that silly fellow had been up to during the night!

No.  This was not the way things went down.  My son, age two, made it clear that this book and this elf bored him.  He already had this really excellent and condescending look mastered at 24 months and he shared it with me whenever I mentioned the elf.  Not wanting to force something upon him  that would surely provide him with many delightful childhood memories later on, I accepted the elf was a no-go for Christmas 2013 and gently put him away to try again the following year.  I picture the elf, biding his time at the very bottom of the plastic Christmas tote.  A full 365 days passed where he had plenty of time to dwell upon the grievous insult he had been subjected to…put back in the box.  Shoved in the attic during Christmas time.  A slight no self-respecting elf could tolerate.

Christmastime 2014: Since decorating the tree was such a big hit, I decided to introduce what I now consider to be demon-spawn masquerading as one of Santa’s helpers.  Shortly after the tearfully joyful Christmas tree decorating experience on Sunday last, my husband and I sat down with Little Man to read the book and introduce E to his elf, his buddy for the next month.  Surely at three years of age, he was ready to embrace the Christmasy goodness that is the Elf on the Shelf!  I began to read aloud, and by page two my husband gave me a sharp elbow nudge and whispered in my ear, “Didn’t we decide this whole thing was creepy as hell last year?  I think this is a bad idea.”

We have a theory that Santa is running an elf child-labor sweatshop and that the elves are not allowed to speak for their own safety.

We have a theory that Santa is running an elf child-labor sweatshop and that the elves are not allowed to speak for their own safety.

“Nonsense!” I declared.  The mothers and children of Facebook relish each morning with their elf!  Why should our family be any different?  The story would go on!  My husband rolled his eyes but participated warily.  My son was much more interested in picking out the different types of food and toys from the pictures in the book than trying to spot the elf.  He seemed to understand something about the elf I refused to see-he wasn’t fun, he was frightening and eerie. His head turned all the way around on his body.  His cheap floppy little legs didn’t support his weight, and his hands were stitched on to his junk for some reason.  To look at him, one didn’t see wonder and Christmas cheer. E certainly did not.

As I read, my husband was not-so-secretly agape with disbelief with the undeniably creepy nature of what I was reading.  I was agape with the undeniably creepy nature of what I was reading.  For some reason, I soldiered on; after all, thousands of moms and dads on Facebook couldn’t be wrong!  And that is my defense in this whole muddled case of questionable parenting: Facebook made me do it.

That night, as I tucked E into bed, we shared our nightly ritual: I lay down in bed with him to cuddle, sing a couple songs, and say our prayers.  It’s a sweet routine that I cherish because nothing lasts forever.  I noticed he seemed rather subdued and did not seem to be experiencing the same silly fun he generally has during “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”  Sensing something was wrong, I wrapped my arms around him and waited.  Finally, he began to speak.  “Mama, he no come in here.  He no come in here, though.  Okay?”

Oh, s*#t.  I knew exactly what he was talking about.  He had been paying attention to the book after all.  My selfish mama heart sank.  I had force-fed tainted Christmas cheer to my boy, the light of my life, and now he was afraid the stupid elf was going to enter his room while he slept and….well, who knows where his imagination would take him regarding that thing?  I should have known better.  I slept on my brother’s top bunk for years after being forced to watch The Incredible Hulk as a small child.  I was positive The Hulk lived in my closet, and that if I slept alone in my room he was going to burst out and pulverize me just like he did to the people on television.

Oh goodie! A toy I'm not allowed to touch! That is my very favorite characteristic in a toy.

Oh goodie! A toy I’m not allowed to touch! That is my very favorite characteristic in a toy.

“No, buddy,” I assured him.  “Not at all.  In fact, he has to stay in the living room.  It’s one of the rules.  He won’t be bothering you.”  As I tried to convince my little boy there was nothing to fear, my mind began to race.  What kind of witchcraft had this elf worked in the short time he was out of his box?  Was he made in a factory that was built on an old Indian burial ground?

“You sleep on couch, Mama.  You sleep on couch tonight, right there.  He no come in here.” The worst part was, the normally silly, sparkling eyes of my little boy were filled with tears that hadn’t spilled out yet.  He was trying to be brave, but his precious little bottom lip was quivering and I recognized the look: fear melded with panic.  If you are a parent who has ever, via good intentions, caused your child to experience this, you probably know what that horrible knot-twisting in the bottom of your stomach feels like.  It’s a bitter cocktail of guilt and failure.

Naturally, I lied to my son and told him I would sleep on the couch (we have a perfectly good baby monitor right next to our comfy bed, thank you very much) and reminded him all he had to do was ask for me, and I would hear him, and I would come.

I wish I could say that is where the madness ended, but sadly I cannot.  The persuasive powers of the Elf were too great, and I’m beginning to think he bewitched me.  Here’s why: inexplicably, the hubs and I decided to place this jackass elf on the lamp, so that when E woke up in the morning, he would spot him and realize the it was merely a toy, a game!   Nothing to be scared of, not really. It’s too bad that E’s parents are slow learners.  E didn’t say anything about the elf all day, but he spent a lot of time looking over his shoulder.  I sort of figured he was just being shy, and would warm up to him eventually. I mean, this was THE ELF ON THE SHELF!  Kids loved waking up to find him in the morning to see what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into after returning from his visit to the North Pole.  I knew this to be an indisputable fact, because every elf picture I ever saw on Facebook proved it to be true.  I felt reasonably confident that the parents of Facebook would present an unbiased and impartial pictorial glimpse into their child’s elf experience.  E just needed a little bit of time to warm up and decide how he really felt about his elf.

I should have known better.  He had decided how he felt about things.  I just chose to overlook them because I was hellbent on believing that this elf was the Yellow Brick Road to Christmas Magic.  And more than anything, I wanted Christmas to be magical for E, the way it was for my brother and I as a kid.  Learn from my mistakes, fellow parents!  If your kid is freaked out, even slightly, by The Elf on the Shelf (and honestly, I think that is a completely healthy and normal reaction), honor their feelings and stuff said elf back in the attic.  Don’t give it “one more day.”  I’m pretty sure “one more day” of elf time equals a whole extra month of therapy in adulthood.

Don't worry about me little boy. I'm just going to cling to this lamp all day and watch your every move. All of them.

Don’t worry about me little boy. I’m just going to cling to this lamp all day and watch your every move. ALL of them.

For the rest of the day, E never mentioned the elf on the lamp.  He seemed unbothered by it, except for the whole “looking over the shoulder” thing.  But then, the nighttime.  That night, after once again cuddling and tucking in my little guy, he suddenly clung to me and wouldn’t let go.  He burst into tears and begged me to sleep in his bed.  I let him cry, and as I stroked his head I let the weight of what I had done wash over me. I could not believe I allowed this to happen two nights in a row.  Actually, I CAUSED it to happen!  In that moment I would have done anything to erase any knowledge he had of this freakish little doll that was haunting his imagination.  Finally, I quietly asked him, “Hey buddy, is this about the elf?  Does he bother you?  Would you like him to leave?”

E nodded vigorously.  “I no like elf.  No like him.  You sleep here in train bed and dada sleep on couch.  Elf no come in here.”

Oh, the weight of knowing you are the cause of your child’s nightmares!  All because I wanted to make Christmas magical.  Facebook had steered me wrong.  I purposefully marched into the living room to get the hubs, to tell him that bastardly Christmas-ruining elf had to go.  Not only that, we had to make a realistic ceremony of his permanent banishment.  The two of us then went back into E’s room, Dada making a big show of restraining the elf.  We sat on E’s bed together and explained that the elf had shared with us that he couldn’t stay; he had important business he had to attend to in the North Pole.  He was awfully sorry, but he was leaving and we would not be seeing him, or any other elves, at our house again.  He wanted to wish E a Merry Christmas before he left.  And then, as quickly as he had arrived, he was gone.  By gone, I of course mean that he was unceremoniously stuffed into the bottom of a Christmas tote in the garage, his next destination being either Goodwill, or my next yard sale.

That was last night.  This evening as I cuddled my boy, he asked me again to sleep on the couch.  I asked him why it was important to him that I sleep there.  E responded, “So he no come in here.”  I gently reminded him that “he” was gone so there was no reason to think about that anymore.  “Oh,” said E.  “You sleep in big bed then.”  Thanks son.  I will sleep in the big bed.  And I hope to God in heaven that you will forget this whole experience and not require lifelong therapy to purge your psyche of your deeply rooted belief that you are being watched by a cheap little elf with his hands sewn to his crotch. Who signed off on this idea, anyway?

*If this blog saved even one parent from unintentionally terrorizing their child this season, it will have been worth it.  Please feel free to share or pass along.

www.borrowedgenes.com

Taking a New Road to the Same Destination

Posted in Adoption Paperchasin' by

There are times in all our lives when we receive a message from God, or the Universe, or wherever you feel your life altering messages come from.  They do not happen often; if I had to compare it to the proverbial “lightbulb” moment, I would say the kind of message I’m talking about is more like someone throwing the flood lights at a baseball stadium after you have been sitting in total darkness.  I received such a message, and the gist of it was this: my body has been through enough, and it is time to let it be still in regards to trying to force it to become pregnant when it obviously does not want to be.  The second part of the message is that the baby my husband and I will add to our family is out there somewhere, probably in utero, and that we will find the baby we are meant to have through adoption.

When I decided to follow the signs and leave the egg donor ivf cycle behind, I felt very free and encouraged in a way that I had not felt for a long time.  Mostly I felt like I was going to regain control of my body and not constantly be in a cycle, preparing for a cycle, or recovering from a cycle.  My three year old son was conceived via IVF and I would not change that for the world.  But I have also experience three more cycles since them, two miscarriages and one that did not take at all.  With donor IVF, we were still running a risk.  If it did not take, that money was gone, and like most folks we do not have an endless supply.  With adoption, eventually we will adopt.  It may take 6 months, or a year, but the money invested in the domestic infant adoption process will result in us adopting and coming home with a new son or daughter.  It is not without it’s risks and heartbreaks but it feels absolutely right for us.

The tone of my blog is now going to focus more on our adoption journey since that is where we are in our lives at this moment.  I also hope to add some “Great Moments in Mom History” as well as thoughts and reflections from my IVF days. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has made a similar decision in their life, and what motivated them to transition from IF treatments to adoption.

While I Was Sleeping

Posted in On Motherhood by

I haven’t been here in a month.  It wasn’t exactly my choice.  You know how sometimes you just get incredibly sick out of the middle of nowhere, and then your life screeches to a grinding halt, but everyone else’s lives continue?  You know, because you aren’t the center of the universe, even though it feels that way when you are a wife and a mom of and you are sick?  Well, that is what happened to me.  Then I got better, and that was great, until realized I had approximately five weeks of “life” that had gone undone while I was sick.  Once that sank in, my first instinct was to climb back into bed and pull the blankets over my head, because everyone knows that the looming, piled up responsibilities of daily life can be easily blocked out by a quilt.

I’m luckier than most.  During my month-long convalescence, I had my mother, father, and my mother-in-law taking turns stepping in to take care of my little guy while the hubs was at work.  At night, my husband was on duty the second he walked in the door from work, and he was a darn good sport about it.  He didn’t have a lot of choice, since I was confined to bed, but he chose to have a good attitude about it and that made the whole situation much more bearable.  I salute you, mom, dad, mom-in-law, and husband, who all pitched in to do the important job of child rearing while I was unwell.  Specifically a salute to my husband, who had to be mama and dada each day after work.

I am unbelievably grateful for the help I received.  It wasn’t even help, it was people doing my job because I could not.  Of course, it is also my husband’s job to raise our kid, so I don’t want to undermine him by making it sound as though he emerged from the shadows like Deep Throat, and heroically stepped up to care for our son while I was sick.  He’s always there, and always involved.  Whether I am sick or well, he is a hands on, very involved and very present father.  But in this situation, it was all him, all night, every night, for a month.  He deserves some credit for that.  Maybe I will write him a nice thank you note.

One day, I was finally better and I had been given the all clear to return to daily life.  I emerged from the bedroom to find a scene similar to what Rick Grimes encountered when he left the hospital in Atlanta, before he knew that the zombie apocalypse occurred while he lay in a coma.  A thick layer of dust covered most of the fixed objects in the house. I say fixed, because there was no dust on the toys, the toys that were scattered and thrown and littered throughout my home as though I had not meticulously placed labeled baskets in EVERY FREAKING ROOM to contain said toys while they were not in use.  The refrigerator contained milk, pickles, jam with mold growing on it, cottage cheese that had expired weeks before, a half empty can of olives, and that one beer someone left here on New Year’s Eve, long before E was born.  It’s in a pretty awesome bottle, and sort of looks like a olde-timey jug the pirates might have swilled mead from on the high seas way back in the day.  I feel pretty convicted that the bottle has earned it’s place and should probably not be disturbed.  It’s  a respect thing.

Every pillow, cushion, and blanket in the house was gathered in one giant pile in the living room.  Apparently as I lay in bed recovering, my boys were shouting, “Pillow pile!” and leaping from the couch into all of our home’s squishy objects.  Even the pillows that go on the couch that nobody likes, because they are too scratchy to lay your head on, but that get to stay because they are pretty and go with the overall decor.  Even they were in the pillow pile, although sort of stuffed near the bottom for support because they are kind of stiff, and also no jumpers would have to actually encounter their scratchiness.  It was a wise architectural move.

Toilets.  They need to be cleaned more than once a month.  This had not happened, and our toilets were growing things.  I don’t know what exactly, but I imagine it would be similar to the experiments you do in biology class junior year where you use petri dishes to try to grow different kinds of mold.  I remember how cool it was when I came in the next day to 4th period advanced bio, and my petri dish had developed mold.  I had made that happen, and it was cool.  Now, twenty years later, my toilets were growing mold, and I had made that happen, too.  At 35, it is considerably less cool to analyze the different hues and fuzz levels that mold can bring. Remember that kids-your peak mold growing years are in your teens.  Use them well.

So, I drank it all in and felt what I would probably describe as mid-level despair welling up inside of me.  But then, charging around the corner and running towards me, right through the middle of the household neglect, was my beaming almost 3 year old.  “Hi Mama!” he shouted excitedly, seemingly thrilled and a little shocked to see me upright.  Looking at him, it was easy to see why spiders had set up webbed colonies in the corners of my living room ceiling and were probably planning total domination at that very minute.  My little dude was happy, healthy, and ready to take on the world.  While I may have missed a month of life being ill and then recovering, the world had continued to turn for my big boy.  And the people I trust most in the world made sure that it did exactly that.  I’m just glad they had their priorities straight, and devoted their time and energy to maintaining normalcy for my son.  For that, I will gladly surrender control of the living room to my new Spider Overlords.

on infertility (with lisa ling).

Posted in Egg Donor Posts by

caramac54's avatarCara Meredith

In case you find yourself free to peruse various blogs or television shows, take the time to read about my friend Holly’s struggle with infertility.  Holly is a friend from high school …who happens to have her story featured tonite on CNN’s “This is Life With Lisa Ling: The Genius Experiment.”  So, read the answers to some questions I asked Holly, and then tune in to the show at 10 pm (PST) – but in the meantime, if you are or know someone who is struggling with infertility, practice kindness.  

photo cred: the portrait place {alecia silva} photo cred: the portrait place {alecia silva}

1.  Holly, tell us about yourself.   I am the lucky stay at home mom of my amazing little boy, who will be three in December.  Before he was born, my jobs were to teach middle school students language arts and try to become pregnant.
 
2.  And, let’s…

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Elective IVF and Gender Selection: A Step Too Far

Posted in IVF Posts by

Flipping through the entertainment news in a moment of downtime this evening, I stumbled upon a story that had my infertility ire up before I was even finished.

 “Joe Francis’ Girlfriend Abbey Wilson Gives Birth to Twin Baby Girls!”

(Joe Francis, for those that don’t know, is the “Girls Gone Wild” guy.)

At this point you may be wondering why I even clicked on this article to begin with…I know I still am.  I think the answer is because at one time I was pregnant with twins, and though I lost them I was told that in all likelihood they were girls.  Consequently, if I see an article about twins, especially girl twins, I usually click on it. If you would like to take a wee gander yourself, I have linked the article here.

To be as forthcoming as possible, I honestly don’t know anything about this gentleman or his girlfriend.  I am not famous and I have never been a Girl Gone Wild.  I haven’t even been to Florida.  I freely admit that I do not personally care for his franchise or what he professionally represents, but he could be a heck of a nice guy for all I know.  It was the part in the article where the new mother is quoted, that hit me with a mega dose of WTF:

 “We both wanted girls and we wanted them to be healthy and free of genetic diseases so we chose to do IVF.”

What?  Whhaaatttt?  What in the cheese and crackers is happening here?  As someone who has traveled this road a time or two or four, I have some strong opinions.  And oh so many questions.  Firstly, why would someone subject themselves to IVF if they could become pregnant naturally?  It’s an altogether unpleasant experience, I assure you.  All kinds of needles in all kinds of places filled with all kinds of hormones designed to make you all kinds of categorically crazy.  For this privilege I paid $25,000.00.  A woman typically ovulates one egg per month-this process is designed to make you ovulate a whole bunch, like 30. Possibly less if you do not respond well, maybe considerably more if you hyperstimulate and produce follicles until your ovaries feel like they are going to burst.  If you are UNABLE to have children naturally, IVF is a godsend.  Every needle stuck in my stomach and each horrifying progesterone injection in the bum cheek was worth it because it gave me my son.  If not for IVF, I would not have the light of my life and I would not be a mother.  I am absolutely in favor of IVF.  I am also absolutely pissed off when someone uses it to make designer babies when they are capable of reproducing without it.

Secondly, it is wrong to choose the gender of your children. True, that is only my opinion, but I feel so strongly about it I will state it as fact.  It is legal, but that doesn’t make it ethical.  Many fertility clinics do not provide this service; others will enthusiastically promote it.  My husband and I were offered the option of doing Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD, to determine gender and rule out any questionably genetically imperfect embryos at one of the clinics where we had a consult. The only thing I could think of in response at the time was, Can we leave one damn thing to chance?  We had a zero percent shot of getting pregnant naturally, and had recently found out that this time around, we couldn’t even use my eggs.  In a reality where my future children will be conceived in a petri dish by injecting my husband’s sperm into another woman’s egg, I truly feel like I am at capacity regarding the level of scientific interference involved in my family planning.  The hubs and I aren’t going through all this to produce genetically cherry-picked super babies.  We are going through all this because more than anything else we have ever loved, we love our son.  We love being parents.  We want more children, and we want our little guy to have siblings.  When those are the goals, things like gender and impeccable health just really don’t matter that much.

Thirdly, PGD is available because for some couples, it is an invaluable life or death test. There are some serious genetic conditions that only occur in a specific gender.  Some couples know ahead of time that one or both partners carry a gene that, if passed on, would prove fatal to the infant.  These are necessary and justifiable uses of gender and genetic testing, and that is the reason the technology exists in the first place.   Some couples use PGD for “family balancing.”  In other words, they may have naturally conceived three sons but they really want that daughter.  For the right price, certain fertility clinics can make that happen.  It should not be offered or available to those of us who are simply infertile but do not have the additional burden of potentially passing along a scary genetic condition.  It is an insult to those who really need it.  Sort of like doing IVF when you don’t need that, either.

I suppose it’s possible that Abbey Wilson is a carrier for a genetic condition she doesn’t want to pass on.  It would be very unfair of me not to at least entertain that idea.  Based on her quote in the article, it doesn’t seem likely.  What does seem likely is that she and Girls Gone Wild Guy really wanted daughters, and they wanted them to be healthy. The truth is, I can’t blame them for wanting healthy children.  That would be crazy; every parent wants their child to be healthy.  I can’t even blame them for leaning towards one gender over another in preference.  Who hasn’t daydreamed during pregnancy about having that little girl/boy they always pictured when they envisioned themselves as a parent?  What I can blame people for is taking those wishes too far and crossing into the dangerous territory of eugenics.  

Does anyone remember the movie Gattaca?  It’s a movie about genetic engineering, and what the results look like a few decades after the concept was first implemented.  When I read this article tonight on Yahoo, I thought about this movie.  It gave me the heebie jeebies.  Science fiction movies set in the future are supposed to look incredibly cheesy when they actually reach that date.  They are not supposed to hold up and accurately resemble the society they portrayed twenty years before.

What do you think?  Were IVF and PGD used inappropriately in this circumstance?  Did it irritate you the way it irritated me?  I’m looking forward to reading/responding to the comments!

P.S.  This may be my favorite part of the article: “I believe people will finally understand my love, respect, and admiration for women.  I love girls.” — Joe Francis

I hope so too, Mr. Francis.  I have a feeling the way you make a living is going to affect you profoundly once you start raising daughters.  Becoming a parent has a way of doing that to you.

www.borrowedgenes.com

P.P.S. The issue of how far is too far when it comes to assisted reproduction will be explored on CNN this Sunday night, October 16, on This is Life With Lisa Ling: The Genius Experiment.  Yours truly will be featured with my husband and son during the last ten minutes of the show, hopefully sounding reasonably articulate and educated about the topic.