A Very Special Sizzler Dinner

The embryos did not implant. Claire was not pregnant.

Everyone involved felt a great sense of disappointment, especially Giancarlo, especially Claire. We had no more embryos, and there was no more money for continued treatments. Everyone had done their best, but it just didn’t happen. I’m not one who is fond of saying, “It just wasn’t meant to be,” but in this case, I feel it wasn’t. At the time I didn’t, of course, but events played out in the future that brought me to this conclusion.

For a time we put the thoughts of having another child aside. The following year, 2003, turned out to be one of the most intensely difficult ones for our family, and it is fortunate that we all made it out the other side. It was the hardest year of my life. Some day I may tell that story, but for now it must remain untold. Suffice it to say that all of our time, efforts, and emotional energies were consumed that year; there was no place for a baby then. I felt certain that I would not be able to handle the emotional and physical responsibilities of a little child.

Giancarlo felt much the same way during that period of time, but then in February of 2004 he started talking about adoption. We discussed all of the options and scenarios, and spent a great deal of time looking at countless photographs online of older children that needed homes and families. Heartbreaking. Our hearts hurt for these children, and I felt selfish in concluding that so many of these kids came with so much baggage--health problems, severe emotional issues, birth defects due to drug and alcohol abuse during gestation, and so on and so on. We were not in a position to be able to care for such needy children, and we wanted a baby.

One afternoon Giancarlo called an adoption attorney with whom we had come in contact during our surrogacy quest, in hopes of finding somebody to assist us in starting the adoption process. After some discussion, Giancarlo began saying things like, "She's seven months along?" and "A boy?" and "You think she'd want to meet us?" My eyebrows raised and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Giancarlo scribbled down a phone number, thanked him, and hung up. The next thing I knew, we were both on the phone with a young woman named Kristina. We chatted for a while and after a few minutes she agreed that we should meet.

A week later we nervously sat across the table at a Sizzler in Eagle Rock from a reserved, attractive young latina who hardly looked pregnant at all, let alone seven months. Kristina had been doing her best to hide the pregnancy from her family by wearing baggy clothes and big jackets. Very well spoken, she asked us intelligent, probing questions. And she emphatically insisted that her baby to go to a male couple. Having seen first hand in her life how difficult it can be for same-sex couples to have children, she wanted to help, and she felt that a gay couple would make excellent parents. Besides that, she liked us for us!

In a matter of one incredibly short week, we had smoothly gone from merely thinking about the adoption process to having an immediate match with a birth mother. It seemed as if it were meant to be.