Adulting

It's something anyone dealing with infertility knows all too well - the fact that adult life still goes on around you while you're living with it. Everything from showing up at work on time every day to family obligations, to saving for retirement and house-hunting can't be ignored, even if you're in the midst of an IVF cycle and visiting your clinic for monitoring every morning. While our #BabyRosenChung2020 journey hasn't involved any injections, daily clinic visits or cycle-monitoring, it's still a lot to handle when you consider everything else going on at the same time.

For the past three years, Dennis and I have been looking for a larger home. We are lucky to have gotten in on Toronto's insanely overpriced market before things started to heat up. We bought a small condo unit nestled in between the downtown's Distillery District and St. Lawrence Market. It's a cozy one-bed, one-bath unit in an older building that didn't cost us very much back in 2013. We absolutely love the area and it's the perfect neighbourhood in which to raise a child. Considered the most successful mixed-income and mixed-housing neighbourhood in the country, it's safe, friendly, multicultural and is an example of Toronto working and living at its best. No wonder we want our child to grow up here! Sadly, we are now being priced out of the area as three highrise condos spring up around the corner, older and larger buildings become more desirable and the Distillery becomes even trendier. You're easily looking at $900,000 for 900 square feet.

When we casually began examining our options for our next place back in the fall of 2016, we were shocked seeing properties we were potentially interested in going for an easy $200,000 over asking. And since we got serious about our living situation last spring, it has only gotten much worse. We were outbid on what I considered our dream property just a block away, and we were forced into a bidding war - with ourselves - on another two-bedroom unit in the brand-new nearby Canary District (I still don't even understand what happened there). While we still have the luxury of time with the baby not coming until at least next July (as our surrogate can't transfer until October), we're up against a real estate market that continues to skyrocket and a high likelihood that the Bank of Canada will raise its overnight rate at least once or twice this year. Those factors will only result in greater financial stress, and stress is the last thing we need right now. 

But if only it just ended at baby-making and house-hunting. I've been in somewhat of a career transition for the past three years. My day job - or I should say my weekends, evenings and fill-in job - is in radio broadcasting with the occasional TV work. I've been working either freelance or part-time in this industry for the past 12 years, but that industry is in the midst of a massive transition itself. I absolutely love being in radio - there's no way I would have done it for so long if I didn't. But it comes as a surprise to a lot of people when I explain that it's not a high-paying field. Combine that with the instability that arises from working part-time freelance and it's very difficult to make ends meet - especially when you're looking at a cost of $100,000 for your first child before they're even born. I left radio on two occasions over the past three years with the goal of gaining a full-time salary and regular Monday to Friday office hours, but neither opportunity worked out the way I wanted it to. This threw my confidence for a loop, so I went back to the airwaves. I've been looking for side gigs and I am willing to do just about anything except drive for Uber, but it's not easy to find something that balances my current work schedule and earns me an equal or greater profit. 

And that brings up a fourth item, something I'll always be dealing with regardless of how things shape up in our lives. I deal with chronic illness on a daily basis. My life will never be "normal" so to speak. Even once I am a mother, I'll still have to deal with pain, with the knowledge that cardiac surgery could be just around the corner. Yesterday was the 7th anniversary of when my pelvic pain started, all resulting from that bladder infection that went undiagnosed for three weeks because my then-GP failed to call me with the results of a urine test (lesson: no news is not always good news. Always follow up if you haven't heard anything in a week's time). By the time it was caught, I was in the worst agony of my entire life - this coming from someone who went through open heart surgery and had multiple chest tubes yanked from my core. 

While my case is rare, with most women suffering from vulvodynia getting relief from treatments within a few months or a few years, it's not unheard of for it to last 20 years or longer. It was the vulvodynia that basically sealed the deal on our decision to pursue surrogacy: if my bladder already feels like it's loaded up with rocks every single day, my pelvic floor feels like it's been attacked by a cat and I can't go to the bathroom without feeling like I've been burned by hot acid, what will a baby sitting in there feel like? While my cardiac and lung issues are the actual factors that make pregnancy risky for me, it's the vulvodynia that causes persistent burning, aching, stinging and sharp spasms through the entire lower half of my body, pretty much 24/7. 

Because we have so many things going on at once, I find it hard at times to get overly excited about this future miracle that Dennis, our egg donor, Kay and I will be bringing into this world. There's still such a long road ahead of all of us and there's a lot that has to fall into place concurrently in order for us to be the best parents we can possibly be. While we have saved for years to be able to afford an egg donor and surrogate, I still wish I had greater financial stability and was able to pull as much weight as Dennis. I wish it was easier to find the perfect home for our little one so that when the day comes, we have a second bedroom for them and some private outdoor space for all of us to enjoy. And I hope that sometime in the future, doctors will be able to figure out the root cause of vulvodynia and a cure so that other women never have to go through what I have experienced to date.  

But what I will say is that finally getting the ball rolling on this journey has been the one thing that has kept me going through this frigid stormy winter. The day our egg donor gave us her incredible gift this past December was one of the best days of 2018 for me and it helped me to power through the holidays into January with renewed hope. Finding out that we got 11 healthy embryos was an even bigger surprise. And then matching with Kay so quickly and easily was something I did not expect. I had prepared for months - perhaps even a year or longer - before we would speak to someone who wanted to help us. Knowing that not only have we found a surrogate but a new friend as well is what I draw my strength from on days where I'm in pain and mother nature is at her worst. I know regardless of what happens that's beyond our control, we are trying our best and our family always comes first. 

I am so lucky to have Dennis, a large, supportive circle of family and friends, a warm and cozy condo in downtown Toronto even if it is too small, a job that I still enjoy going to and a workplace that treats me and my health issues with respect, and a whole team of individuals who are out there working to help us become parents. And we know we aren't the only set of intended parents experiencing or trying to achieve multiple life-changes at the same time. For older Millennials and young Gen-Xers like ourselves, "adulting" has generally come later in life and has been more difficult than previous generations, but we're all doing it - even if we're not perfect at it. We don't have to be. As long as we eventually get there and the ice pellets and freezing rain finally stop falling outside, we're all good.