It has taken some time for me to be able to write the following words down without getting hugely upset. However, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade and all that.
Around a month ago I was contacted by the surrogacy agency for my 'phone interview' which was supposed to come prior to the official meeting. I had gathered from the discussion boards that I was the only user who was hoping to enter into a surrogacy arrangement for the purpose of controlling my bipolar. To the best of my knowledge, I am capable of getting pregnant, however, it is incredibly risking both to come of the medication and also the process of childbirth itself for someone with ultra-rapid cycling bipolar affective disorder. I was expecting the 'executive committee' to have questions, this was unchartered territory.
What I was not expecting within the first 30 seconds was this:
"Thank you for your application (bare in mind, it took 6 months to gather all the paperwork, have all the blood tests, etc etc and the agency knew exactly why I wanted to pursue a surrogacy arrangement - I had been completely honest from the start). We felt that it was only fair to let you know that we feel unable to accept your application and registration fee - you see, we don't feel confident that a surrogate would feel comfortable working with someone like you."
She then went on to patronise me in a million ways that I can't even bare to detail whilst still giving the impression that maybe they could help me somewhere along the line (obviously, we don't want to appear to discriminate do we?) I was sick of her 'woolly' cliches and responses to my questions, so demanded, "Look, we have our appointment with the fertility clinic the first week of December to have my fiances sperm frozen. What are you saying?" To which she replied, "I wouldn't bother if I were you."
So there we have it from the horses mouth "I wouldn't bother." How to shatter one young couples dreams and hopes in just 5 syllables. Fantastic! My favourite quote from the conversation goes along these lines. (Note that for the 6 months leading up to this, I had been building friendships on a daily basis through the use of the discussion boards) "We know that you are very open about your illness and that's FANTASTIC. Pause. However, we would ask you not to mention or discuss it again on the discussion boards. We would hate for any of our members to feel uncomfortable. Help us to help you"
Imagine my delight when I received an invite to a surrogacy social event the other day - it seems the 'decision-makers' hadn't actually gotten around to telling others that our application had been rejected, and more importantly why. Nice.
"Another helping of salt to rub in your wounds madam?"
