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Strong Enough
One Woman's Brush with Surrogacy
By Marie Groves
"Would you have Steve's baby for $50,000?" my brother asked me one Sunday morning.
I laughed. I mean, what kind of question was that? I didn't love Steve and he didn't love me. We weren't in any sort of relationship. Besides, I was already married with two kids of my own.
"He's serious," my brother continued. And in my heart, I knew he was.
Steve and Dan are my brother's best friends. They have been "married" for six years and want a baby. They also want that baby to be a biological part of one of them. What they needed most in the world was a woman to provide an egg and her uterus to make their dream come true.
"Why me?" I prodded, more curious than serious about this proposal.
"Because you get pregnant easily and have such healthy babies. They love your kids and think you are a great mother. They can't imagine picking a better person," he explained. And they knew how much we needed the $50,000.
"Think about it," my brother said.
It's a crazy thing -- to want a baby so badly and not be able to have one. On some level, I wanted to help them out -- to hand them a baby and see sheer joy jump across their faces. But could it be my baby?
I thought about it some more. Could I carry a child, feel it move inside of me, see it flash across the ultrasound screen, only to give it away? Could I keep their pain and potential joy strong enough in my mind to endure the trial of childbirth and go home empty-handed?
I couldn't. Steve's baby couldn't be my baby. Because for the rest of my life, I would wonder if she looked like me or if he acted like me; I would know that somewhere a part of me would be wandering the earth.
"I can't do it," I told my brother.
"Then who can?" he asked. "They don't know where else to turn."
My heart broke for them. I thought about adoption and surrogacy through an agency. We talked for hours about all their alternatives. And at the end of our conversation, a part of me felt guilty.