A few resources for Intended Moms looking for extra reading material

As an intended mom, I've found that I have become a voracious online reader of anything to do with surrogacy, especially stories of other people's journeys.  There are definitely some great blogs out there, but I also wanted to point out something a bit more traditional - the book "Surrogacy was the Way."

I recently read Zara Griswold's compilation of twenty mothers' stories, and it really helped give a total overview of lots of different experiences from start to finish...especially as it related to the feelings of lack of control, the endless waiting, the reasons why we're infertile in the first place, and of course the complicated feelings around the relationship with our surrogate mothers...

I'm very thankful to have a great relationship with my surrogate mother, but we are also at the beginning stages of this journey and I wanted to get a sense of all the different experiences that other women had gone through....all the way to the end.  How did their relationship change (if at all) once the baby was born?  How did they deal with the stress of simply waiting and not being in control of anything?  What were their frustrations along the way.  The book is written very candidly, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to do surrogacy or in the beginning to middle stages of your journey.  I even made my husband read it.  Ha!!

The one thing I didn't find in this book was my particular reason for infertility, but she does have a variety of issues in general...so I think most people will find someone to identify with on a very personal level.

Besides this book, I've found a couple of other favorites that I think are worth pointing out:

1. Intended Mom Gingerelle's series of Youtube videos giving her account of her twins' transfer and birth.  I found these to be particularly great, and she's very entertaining to boot.  Her surrogate mother also has a great corresponding set of videos too.  Overall, these two might win the world's cutest surro/IM award!!
2. Bernadette's Journey at her blog Rasta Less Traveled.  I constantly look forward to her updates, and even though she's still in the middle of her journey, it's been great to follow along.  

There are certainly lots of other blogs out there (and you can find them over there...to the right!), but these are my two favorites.  (No disrespect to anyone else out there!!)  Plus most of the other experiences I'm finding on blogs are taking place with SCI in India.  (It seems like everyone on the Internet is going to India these days!)  Since we ended up going with an agency here in the states, I'm constantly on the prowl for more Intended Mom blogs based here....so if anyone knows of any, please let me know in the comments!   My blog reader isn't getting updated frequently enough with posts from other Intended Moms!  (All I do all the time is hit refresh on my blog reader and on my email inbox!!!!  You other intended moms will know what I mean!  And to think that we haven't even gotten to our first transfer yet!!)

Introduction

Hello blog world!  My name is Michelle, and I'm an intended mom living in Brooklyn.  My husband and I are in the process of trying to have a baby...the hard way.  Via an egg donor and surrogate.

(My mom always told me that I tend to do things the hard way.  I guess she was right. Ha!)

So far we're about 6 months into this process, and after following a bunch of other surrogacy blogs....I decided to start my own.  Partially as a way to document our own process (and to help fill up all the time...waiting), but also because I still feel there are a lot of women out there who just need to feel like someone is going through this process too, and that they're not alone.

At this stage of the journey, we have a surrogate (based here in the U.S.), an egg donor (we're on our second), and we're headed for our very FIRST transfer....hopefully....in a month or so.  I'll go into the reasons why we're on our second egg donor, and yet no transfer another time.  Also, I'll elaborate on my infertility story in another post, but for now I wanted to say hi and get something up here.  :-)