Titles

I don't usually get to hung up on titles. But in the surrogacy world titles are very common. Panties get in big wads due to titles.



I know that it is very common for a surrogate to be given the title of "Auntie" after the baby is born. For me though I have never been comfortable with the idea of J being called "Auntie J". It just sits wrong with me. In the first place she will not be the babes aunt. She is the biological mother. Not an aunt. As part of our 100% disclosure policy I don't feel that it is honest to call her Aunt J. I know that there are plenty of people that call family friends Aunt or Uncle so maybe thinking of it that way I could see calling her Aunt. Or if she was a gestational surrogate then maybe. But it is so important to us not to 'muddy the waters'. We have so many people involved in this, the baby, J's child, my children it seems to me that the clearer things are kept the better.



So that has been my thinking on it. However, to tell you the truth I have put off having the 'title conversation' with J. If she told me she wanted to be known as Auntie J then that is what we would do. I finally decided a few days ago that it was time for that chat. Turns out she is not too keen on being called Aunt J either. So what do we call her?



The reality is that because of our wanting to be honest she should probably be given a title of Mommy J or something like that. BUT I CAN'T. I just can't do that. I want to be the mommy. I want to be the only mommy. J knows this and agrees. So our plan is to just call her by her first name. In some ways I feel a little bad about that. I feel like I need to take this honesty thing all the way. That I should be the one called by my first name and J should be called mommy. But then I think that could make even more of a mess of things. I will be the one caring for him day in and day out. I will be the one there to kiss his owies, to take him to his first day of school, to give him the sex talk, it's all on me (with Joe's help, of course).



So I guess our 100% disclosure policy has a small flaw in it. Will our baby get confused by calling J's child his sister but that J isn't called his mom? I admit that I get confused thinking of all this a little bit. We have time though to work it all out. Considering that he isn't even born yet. This is unknown territory for us. I'm not sure that we can do everything exactly right. We can just do the best we can day in and day out.