A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

I'll get to the back story at some point, but first I want to talk about names. Not names for the baby we hope to have, those were chosen long ago. We've been trying to have a baby for years. The names I'm talking about are the three parties involved in making this one tiny human we dream of. The lawyers have names for all of us. Nicole Kidman used one of these names when she announced the birth of her beautiful daughter. She was criticized for using the name the lawyers had picked- gestational carrier or "GC". I hurt for her. It's an incredibly difficult thing to have to resort to depending on another woman to carry your baby for you. The last thing Nicole needs when she is trying to celebrate this miracle is people bickering over the name she used to thank the angel who turned her little embryo into a living breathing baby. It was clear to me that she felt love and gratitude for this woman. While I agree that gestational carrier is terribly clinical, it's not as horrific as people made it out to be. From my point of view the name the lawyers use for me and my husband is just as terrible. He is the intended father.  I am the intended mother. Together we are the intended parents. Are you going to tell me that's any better than GC? Some people would call her a gestational surrogate "GS", but the word surrogate is a painful one for me. To me surrogate means replacement. A replacement for me, the broken defective woman who can't carry her own baby. It is a hurtful reminder that I am broken in the most basic sense of being a woman. We are supposed to be able to give life. No, I don't need to be reminded of that any more than necessary. Since GS doesn't work for me and GC doesn't seem to work for others I have come up with a term of my own. I have started calling the woman who will carry our baby our "GN" -gestational nurturer. I don't want to think of her as a replacement for me nor do I think she just carries the baby. If you knew this woman you would agree. She is going to nurture our baby day and night for its entire gestational period.

One name down, two to go. My husband is the kindest most loving man imaginable, but he is also much more private than I am. For this reason I won't use his name. I tend to call him "my love" at home so I will call him that here. He really is. I may complain about him at times. There may be times I want to kill him. I always love him though.

Now for the final name. Mine. Hmmmm. What do I call myself? For now I will call myself Dizzy. That's how I feel most of the time these days. I'll talk about that in my next post.