Whose Baby is it Anyway?

Another very common question I get after I release the big news is some variation of..."won't you have a hard time giving up the baby?" The simple answer? No. Of course there is some natural emotional "voice" that says "hey, you've been pregnant for 9 months...where's baby?" but as a creature of logic I'm not especially worried about it being a problem....but just in case, there is a paragraph in my contract which allows 2 hours of "good-byes" for my emotional health. The more complex answerer involves many pieces, so I'll start here.

There are two tyoes of surrogates, traditional and gestational. Traditional means one basically undergos artificial insemination, waits to concieve, and go's half and half on the DNA of the baby they're carrying. This, for me would completely change the lackadaisical attitude I have about relinquishing baby. The most common and my type, gestational surrogacy, involves two outside parties, a sperm donor and an egg donor (in most cases these are the intended parents). The egg is fertilized, monitored in a petri dish (no more test tube babies), and then voila...inserted into my uterus. No waiting for conception, however you do have to wait to see if the embryo attatches to the uterine wall and successfully begins to grow there. If not, start from scratch. So you see, I don't feel at all as though I'm "giving up" any baby. It wasn't mine to begin with, wont be mine to end with. He or she will have none of my DNA, and will have no ties to me legally or physically once outside the womb.

Of course I am hoping to minimally be a part of the childs life and the intended parents that I'm working with do plan to tell the child about me, and how they got here, in due time. Another part of the contract mandates that they keep me updated with photographs, e-mails, phone calls, etc every so often which I really like because although I understand that the child does not belong to me...I am in a sense responsible for he or she being in the world and a part of me would like to know that they're alright.