The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

I've known I wanted to be a father, to know what it is like to look into the face of my own baby Bret, since I was a boy myself.   In fact, back in the day before I came out to my peers, friends and family, I desperately wanted to be a young dad so that I would have the energy to keep up with my kids, to engage them in activities, to show them the world through travel.   For twenty nigh on years since going to college at the University of Michigan, and law school at SMU, I have meandered through relationships, jobs, and five states with the desire to have my own offspring tucked away as a concept to face on another day.  What was I waiting for?  Financial stability?  Relationship stability?   Emotional stability?   My own maturity?  Funny how I have had all of these things at given times, but never all at the same time.  At some point along the way, I finally found myself in my early forties and suddenly realizing that I could no longer -- would no longer -- allow boyfriends or finances or other life factors to deter me from the goal any longer.   The "perfect" right time had not presented itself -- at least, not in the way I had envisioned.   

So there I was....A single, gay, forty-something attorney/photographer in Los Angeles.   Not exactly the scenario for having a baby I pictured when I was ten, but then again, why not?

Trope and Trope family lawyers in Los Angeles

Bret Hunter Beverly Hills Photography

I've been a family law attorney for the last decade, and I've seen every possible definition of "family."  There are plenty of single parents out there who raise fantastic children.   Somehow, they make it work.  Somehow, they carve out the time.   Somehow, they get enough sleep to function.  

I've never been one to shy away from a challenge, or from facing daunting obstacles on the way to an ultimate goal.  I know myself well enough to know that I am internally strong, and that I will always be okay at the end of the day no matter what I endeavor to do.

That said, I admit I have moments where I question or doubt.  Who doesn't, right?  In those moments, I find myself relying on friends, or more specifically, their words.   For whatever reason -- whether its because I am gay and we gay boys instinctively gravitate toward female friends generally -- I've had some really powerful teachers and motivators who just so happened to be women.  

For example, I keep a picture of my best friend from high school, Karen Bowers, in my office at my firm.  In the picture, Karen is probably 18 or 19 and giving her Sheltie, Peaches, a bath.  Karen died of cancer more than a decade ago in her early thirties.  At our 5th year reunion for the Class of 1986 from Dearborn High School in Michigan, I told Karen I was gay.  Okay, probably not the big surprise us former closet dwellers THINK we are springing on our friends and family, and such was the case with Karen.  What Karen said in response to the news, however, has always remained with me.  She said, "The most attractive thing about any man is when he knows exactly who he is."  

When I face a tough situation at work, or when I feel like I need to buck up to face a tough situation in my personal life, that picture of Karen and Peaches does the trick.  Karen thought I was strong -- why prove her wrong?

In the more recent past, when I faced the prospect of starting my own law practice in Beverly Hills and felt like I was completely jumping off a cliff without a net, one of my best friends from my early 20's in Washington, DC sent me a book that was purportedly to help me face my doubts and walk through the fire of my own fears.  Cesni Gulen Ennis sent me a book entitled, "Feel the fear, and do it anyway."   I never opened the first page -- the title on the cover was all I have ever needed.   I've been referring to that mantra a lot lately again, and Cesni and her amazing mom have been like rocks during this process.  

Susan Wiesner, my former boss and mentor, is the lawyer in Los Angeles to whom I attribute my skills as a lawyer, and has been one of the few seriously motivating forces in my working life -- just because of who I know her to be.  Susan is also an example of someone who has approximated a balance between work and family despite being single.  She not only has her own successful law practice on Sunset Boulevard, she also has adopted two gorgeous girls.   The fact that Susan has forged a path I am hopefully about to take is incredibly comforting to me.

Susan Wiesner's Law Firm in Los Angeles

So...I guess this brings me to the end of this rather long preface, and to the beginning of my current reality.  

Facing the fear, and doing it anyway, I was referred to a surrogate agency in Indiana by a single gay father (also an attorney) here in LA who had three children as a result of using Surrogate Mothers, Inc.   Last May (2010), I flew to meet with the lawyer who runs the agency, and retained them.  I have to say that while it has been 8 months since I initially made the first grand step toward parenthood on my own, it suddenly feels like things are potentially moving very quickly, and frankly, knock on wood, I have thus far encountered very few hurdles.

Surrogate Mothers, Inc.

Southern California Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills

I will get into the hurdles and humiliations in another post -- mostly because I think they are funny and its about time I lightened up in this blog and started saying SOMETHING funny.  

I mean, providing a "sample" for my initial sperm count in a small closet of a room at Southern California Reproductive Center on the way to work with the center's entire heat-generating computer system in the very next room (which was unknown to me) is definitely something I can laugh about (NOW anyway).   After some serious "focusing" to sexy up the situation and produce a '"result," I emerged into a packed waiting room looking like I had worked myself up into quite a frenzy, sweaty and disheveled from what I later learned from Dr. Ghadir was the heat being generated by the computer system next door.   Trust me -- everyone looks at you like they KNOW what goes on in that little room, and I had to keep reminding myself as I pulled out my AmEx to pay for the humiliation (with sweat now dripping down my face in front of a reception desk full of nurses and a waiting room of suddenly uncomfortable-looking patients) that I definitely do not have the hard part in the process.  Suck it up, Hunter. 

Needless to say, the next time I needed to produce a sample for cryogenic freezing, I found out I could run it in from the comfort (and air conditioning) of my own home as long as I got it to the clinic within an hour.  

Even THAT ended up being humiliating, but  I'll save the story for another post.  

The entire point of this blog is to memorialize the quest -- the ups and the downs, the realities, the things relied upon -- for Baby Bret.   As I write this, we are approximately 3-4 weeks from what I hope will be the one and only embryo transfer (I am using an egg donor -- an amazing friend who will be described if not by name but by fabulousness later -- and a surrogate).  I have decided that I want my fertility doctor to perform the PGD test to identify the sex of the embryos on day five in the petri dish because I want both a boy and a girl.  I'll share my reasons and thought processes for how I came to this decision in another post. 

Suddenly, in the last ten days, what seemed like a very lengthy process has picked up maniacal speed, and in these remaining weeks before the embryos are created, and transfered to the surrogate, my mental arms are coming to grips with the fact that I may very well be an expectant father in the very near future.   Last week, I think I slept a total of 5 minutes worrying about every conceivable thing under the sun (what if i die when the kids are young???  when do they start eating real food?  How will I ever travel on a plane if I end up with two little ones? )   This week, I've hit a sort of zen interlude -- or for all of you Lord of the Rings nutbags, I consider this the breath before the plunge....   

LOTR: The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

In picturing myself in this new role after 42 years of "ME," I find myself needing to talk about it more with more people.  Its funny -- when people find out that you want to have children, or that you are going to have children, their faces light up and they suddenly want to help you or chat you up -- whatever the situation.  Its almost like you have been immediately accepted into a secret group that is among all of us just by saying the secret password "I'm having a kid."  The "paternalati"???

Above all, I am absolutely excited (and anxious) to meet my own son and/or daughter.  How bizarre and surreal to see a little bit of me in some other creature's face.  I hope that by recounting the story as it progresses, someone else will be motivated to face the fear and do it anyway.   I'm officially ready to take the plunge....