My first enounter

For her work, she gets $2,000 a month.  I am talking about a young pregnant woman who cut my hair the other day.  "When are you due?" I asked.  In February, but it's not mine, she told me.  Taken aback, I was glad she filled me in before I had to ask what she meant.  She is a surrogate for a gay couple in the US.

How cool!  I took the opportunity to quiz her on how it all worked.  Apparently, not even the egg is hers.  The couple picked an egg donor, fertilized her egg and then froze the embryo(s) until they picked a suitable surrogate.  They chose this young lady.  "There is a two-minute window to implant the embryo after it is thawed," she told me.  "Two days later, I knew it had taken because I started morning sickness."  This couple already has a surrogate-bred boy, so the other male fertilized this baby -- which happens to be a girl. 

"Do you think it will be difficult to part with the baby you've 'cooked' it for nine months?" I asked.  "Not at all because it's not mine.  I have even arranged to be a surrogate for another gay couple in Toronto after this one is born."  Wow!  I was amazed.  Apparently, she went to Toronto for the implantation, but all her other tests are performed in the states, where she travels with a friend and enjoys the weekend.  "They pay for everything, of course, and the couple attends all the appointments with me.  If I were in the US, I would get $5,000 a month, but I'm not really doing it for the money.  Sort of, but not really.  I mean, why not give a couple a baby if I can?"  She has a seven-year-old son of her own, but apart from a little morning sickness, is one of those happily-pregnant women who breeze though it all.

I left with a great haircut and a little more knowledge about how some babies are made.  Being adopted, I began to existentially ponder my own fate, had this procedure been available to my parents.  I would probably have been raised in an orphanage, instead of in the wonderful household and family in which I was.