Meeting Our Surrogate: The Morning After

I have a big long blog post in the works about what it is like to meet the woman who will carry your baby. For anyone who doesn't know, I am a man, and my husband and I are unsurprisingly unable to carry our own children. Earlier this week in a quiet office on the edge of Madison, Wisconsin, we met an angel of a woman and her equally angelic husband. It was a tectonic shift in our lives, though on the surface it felt simply like meeting new, amazing friends. More on that later.Let me tell you what it's like the day after you meet your surrogate - a veil lifts and things shine. Every part of your house is different. Before meeting your surrogate, the dream of your family manifests itself in piles of papers, emails with people you may never meet, medical appointments where people you don't know share their concerns about your sperm. Psychologists ask you questions, accountants ask you questions, doctors ask you questions. You feel in your gut this push to move forward, but when you think about a baby, your own baby, you just see papers and phone calls ahead.The day after you meet your Surrogate, suddenly you have this amazing clarity. First, the worries you had about meeting her all but disappear. You will get to know your new friends, your surrogate and her beautiful family, over many weeks and months to come. But she is real, and the agents of the Surrogacy Center who told you they knew amazing, wonderful, purpose driven women who want to help you, their promises come true.But the change I noticed most the morning after was that my imagination shifted. I can see our baby now. Right now, I'm sitting at my dining room table, and I can imagine her high chair, her giggles, the creamed spinach on her cheeks. I can look from here out the window to the lawn and imagine the leaves raked back and the blanket laid out and the animal sounds I make just to see her smile. Last night, laying on the couch with my husband after a long day, I imagined her lying on my chest, watching her whole tiny self move up and down while I breathed.Every room in the house is different. It was an unconscious shift. Yet I walk through each room, and each one is already transformed in my mind with toys and blankets. I can see her photos on the fridge, and I can see the chair in the corner of our bedroom where I'll try to rock her back to sleep.We've been texting with our Surrogate already, just a few days into this journey. We've been using the hashtag #projectbabylove. I still am shocked by this gift, but all of the sudden I feel like we have a new teammate, a new woman in our corner climbing this mountain with us.We are on our way to a family now, with an amazing team along with us. Because of that, without even trying, the rooms are filling fast with visions of our baby. And let me tell you, this is one beautiful, beautiful babe.