A former coworker of mine, who came and went within a span of 4 months, announced during her 2nd week of employment that she was expecting a baby. Congratulations were offered to the glowing, petite mother who could not have been more than a few days pregnant, given her size 0 figure.

Surprise, surprise. She tells us, she’s not 2 weeks pregnant, she expecting in 2 weeks! Apparently, her and her husband hired a surrogate to carry their biological child and being the intrusive, nosy-nelly I am, I said to her, “Isn’t that wonderful that there are options for loving people to have children when they aren’t able to?”

Okay, so pretty presumptuous of me, I know. Then she says that getting pregnant wasn’t their problem, but that she has a pinched nerve in her neck that sometimes requires pain killers and she didn’t think it was safe to carry a baby. “Plus,” she said, “I have a weight restriction of 15 pounds, because of my pinched nerve, so I couldn’t carry a baby to term, unless I wanted to be bed ridden and who wants that?” (I dunno know, someone who wants a baby perhaps?)

Since she’s being so free with the info, I say, “Huh. Your surrogate must be a really good person.”

“No, she’s not,” she replies. “We had to pay her and we paid her really well.”

I couldn’t resist. “Tell me if this question is too personal, but what does something like that cost?”

“Enough to send her 3 boys to college.”

So, two weeks later she is out on maternity leave. Apparently, she likes the number two, since she also took two weeks off for her maternity leave. (Yep, two whole weeks.)

Then, she comes back, hair perfect, clothes ironed but emotionally distraught and she proceeds to lose it. Every day, she comes in crying. She complains incessantly about how much her nanny costs and that she is paying her nanny more than she makes. I suggest that perhaps she quit? She says she can’t, her husband’s company is laying people off. It starts to annoy me. She cries all day. She claims she’s going through post-partum depression. (Is that possible, if you haven’t actually given birth?)

And then she ups and quits.

Weird.

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I recently happened upon a thread whose original argument was about the gay marriage debate. I wasn’t interested in weighing in the gay marriage part, as I’m pretty ambivalent about gay marriage in general.

The real issue for me, and which was barely mentioned, were the comments of a poster who mentioned that her four gay friends, a female couple and a male couple, were having twins and splitting them between themselves. One of the women was artificially inseminated by one of the gay male’s sperm, and they had decided that each of the couples would take one of the twins after birth.

Now, I respect their right to have children. Gay couples are as capable of being loving and nurturing parents as any straight parent, however…splitting up the twins? I know that the commenter said that they have a close relationship and the twins would see each other often, but doesn’t that seem like it could cause undue trauma? And I think we all have had close friendships that suddenly turned sour. This just seems incredibly selfish to me, and it wouldn’t matter if the couples were straight, I would still feel the same way.

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