This is Skylar's journey.
I have to start out by saying that Skylar is not real, at least not yet. He/she will only come to be with a whole lot of luck and some prayers that are begging to be answered. You see, I cannot have any children. I want them, have tried for them but can't have them. My body has gone through some changes and as I get older, it gets harder and harder to even imagine it's possible to be blessed with a baby. I have a few conditions that I've been told by 3 different docotrs that my best bet at having a baby is through a surrogate. I told them " Great, sign me up, lets get this started as soon as possible " not so fast they told me. HA, not so fast, I may as well been a snail at the pace I am able to go. You see, it's very difficult to find a surrogate let alone come up with the money to pay for the treatments and compensation for the surrogates time. I have come to terms with a number, this is a number that 3 different IVF doctors have told me to range in. This number is 60-80 thousand dollars. Yep, that right, 60-80 thousand. I've cried, I've pleaded and now I have come to terms with, that unless a bag of money falls from the sky, I will not get to be a mother.
I know what a lot of you are saying, why not look into adoption? I have a sad truth to tell you ( and all my friends when they ask this question ) it is VERY expensive to adopt also. This is a sad truth. The plight that SO many children go through. Not being able to find a home. Coming into this world with nobody to love them, protect them or care for them and my husband and I are sitting here, childless and so much love to give and it all comes down to money. Well, money and the system. I can't say I know much about the system but what I've been told is that it takes a VERY long time, they search through everything in your life ( that I'm not worried about ) and even when it's all said and done, you have to have a great deal of money. Sadly we don't have a lot of money. We do have good jobs and we live very comfortably but sad to say, we don't have 30 thousand dollars in our savings accounts.
I guess I could tel you a little bit about my small but loving family. My husband and I have been married for over 10 years. We are both 35, though I will be turning 36 in a few weeks here, and we have 2 dogs that fill us with a lot of joy. They make things a little easier. They make us laugh, make us cry and give us a sense of meaning. We do an animal donation drive at our jobs every year ( several times a year when times are good ) to try and make the animals at the shelters feel a little more comfortable during their stay there. We are not unaware of the sadness that fills the animal shelters and if we can make the dogs and cats a little happier while they are scared, and lonely awaiting adoption or well....sometimes just waiting till the end, then I guess I will continue to do that until I am no longer here on this earth. I do wish, everytime we visit a shelter that we had a Son or Daughter that we could teach them compassion and the love we feel for others. Especially those who cannot help themselves. I think every time we do anything, there is always a longing in our hearts to share it with someone. A child to love.
I actually have a lot of people ask me why I don't do more for children's drives and homeless shelters. I have given this a lot of thought. I think it's because I always see donations and drives for different organizations. I just NEVER see them for animals, not at a local level and I hope to somehow make a small difference.
Well, that's a little bit about me and my husband. I guess I could tell you our names. My name is Michelle and my husbands name is Dylan. I am going to try and write in here 3-4 times a week. If I don't get to share a life with my Skylar, then I will pretend here. I would like to talk about the whole journey as though it was happening. I may go off course once in awhile but I will always stay true to my heart. And my heart belongs to Skylar.
OK, I'm back. I've been going through some medical things with family for a few days. After I started writing this story, I thought maybe I felt hope, I felt like I could make this happen, Make Skylar happen. I was actually thinking about ways to come up with the money for the surrogate. I even was thinking about putting an ad out ( almost Juno style ) and giving that a try again. And then 2 family members got sick and it kind of set me back. I'm going to do my best with all of this though. I'm going to bring Skylar home one day.
I guess I should maybe start my revisiting why I decided against trying to put an ad out again. You see, about 2 years ago, I wrote a letter kind of like this and put it in all the local papers. I lived in Beaumont,CA at the time and had put it in the Palm Springs newspaper The Desert Sun. I wrote about wanting a baby, how my husband and I had been married almost 10 years, how much we loved each other and how much love we had to give. I also always write about loving animals and the animal shelter drive we hold every year. I was so excited about this process and hope hope in my heart. After all, this was right after the movie Juno came out and was a huge success. I had my head in the clouds but my feet on the ground. I actually thought I would never get an answer to my letters but then one day I got an email.
Wow, it really hit me too. I kept reading the letter over and over again. It seemed like it might be a cruel joke, that someone was just trying to fool me. But they weren't. I had a young lady write to me and tell me that she was pregnant and was thinking about giving the baby for adoption. She almost got an abortion and then saw the movie Juno and it made her start looking in newspapers. What a crazy thing, huh? I wrote the letter and put it in papers because of Juno and here this young brave girl decided not to abort her baby because of the same movie. Well, this brave, young lady and I started talking. First through emails and then on the phone. She had decided she wanted to give us her baby. She was very happy that she found someone who would love her baby and that could give it a nice home. She wanted it to be a closed adoption and we were absolutely fine with that. We emailed and talked all the time. She is a very sweet girl and sounded like she had a good head on her shoulders. Then we had set a date to meet and discussed contacting our lawyer after the meeting. About 3 days before we were going to meet her she stopped answering her phone. She didn't return our email and didn't show up at our meeting. I was frantic. I didn't know where she lived or who her parents were. We were going to meet them after we met in person and when we were going to talk to our lawyer. This constant worry never left me. I tried getting a hold of her everyday for 3 weeks. Finally I got an email from her. She had fallen down a flight of stairs and she lost the baby. She said she couldn't write too much because she was still in pain. She wouldn't answer my questions on how it happened, if I could do anything for her or where she was staying. She didn't give me any answers at all. She just said she was sorry and she wished me luck in the future. I wrote her for about 3 months after that and only got one response. She said to please stop writing her. It had nothing to do with me but her boyfriend and her parents thought it was better if we didn't talk any longer. I told her that she was a beautiful person and she will always be in my thoughts. Then I respected her wishes and stopped writing her. I hope I did the right thing. I hope that her boyfriend didn't hurt her. I hope she is living a happy and healthy life out there. But I always wonder.
I think I really needed to revisit this portion of my life and go over all of what happened. This is pretty much it, in a nutshell. I thought we really were going to bring Skylar home that year but we didn't. We will though because I've decided to try this again. I want to give a child the love and care he/she deserves. Whether it be through a surrogate or a private adoption, I think we will have an addition to our family soon. I hope and believe this in my heart. I guess I'd better get going, for now. I will come back to this wonderful outlet soon and continue to share my feeling and thoughts.
So, my computer has been down for weeks now. I am using a back up and it's not getting the job done. It turns off frequently and that really gets to me. Especially when I'm really in writing mode. So I will say a short and sweet little prayer. I pray that I will someday in the near future get to bring home my little one Skylar. I hope he or she will remember every day of thier life that I wanted them more than anything in this world. And lastly, I pray that we will be able to live a long and healthy life together as a family. That we all can grow,learn, be safe and happy. This would be Shangrila.
