Lady In Waiting

I am obviously not pregnant. Bleeding, like I woke up to this morning, is not a sign of pregnancy. It's a sign that I'll be taking it very easy today. It immediately made me think of part of a spoken word poem of Ani Difranco's called "My I.Q." :

...when I was 13 years old  

I woke up one morning  

thighs covered in blood  

like a war  

like a warning  

that I live in a breakable takeable body  

an ever increasingly valuable body 

that a woman had come 

in the night to replace me  

deface me...

 

Fortunately I am kid free today, so I was able to get acupuncture and a much needed adjustment at the chiropractor. My C1 was out. No wonder I had been feeling off-balance. Now I sip on Lady In Waiting from Wonderland Tea , my favorite local tea shop. It's got tasty and healing herbs for mama's-to-be, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers. And the title of it is perfect for what I'm doing...waiting. Now is not the time for me to be pregnant apparently, so I will wait until it is the right time.

It's interesting to note all of the emotions and thoughts that come and go surrounding this "getting pregnant for someone else" thing. I found myself this morning wondering if I'm allowed to be sad that last months round of IUI's didn't work. And of course the answer is yes, it's allowed. I'm a person with feelings too, even if the end result won't be a baby for me to raise. As I went deeper into those thoughts though I thought, maybe I should become more detached about the whole process and not really care either way. But I can't do that. I'm not built to suppress my reality or anyone else's. And how would that be good for the baby to inhabit a birth mother who is denying her experience or the existence of the child? No, these thoughts don't go further, because these are all things I am not at the core of my being. I believe that all things happen for a purpose and that I am on this surrogacy journey for my friends because I love them and want to create a family with and for them. I can provide them with a baby. I trust this will happen, not in our timing, but eventually. Maybe even this month or next?