It’s Almost June and You Know What That Means . . .PRIDE!

By: Kelly Rummelhart

Specifically for me: San Francisco Pride. Last year a few surrogates met up in San Francisco and we had a blast. My best friend Stacie and I drove up and met our online surro friend Heather from Chicago. All three of us had finished our first surrogacy journeys with Growing Generations and were moving forward with the second. I was 22 weeks along with my wonder twins, Stacie was a week post-transfer, and Heather was heading into a second transfer. (Since last year’s Pride, I gave birth to twins in October, Stacie gave birth to a baby girl in March, and Heather had her surro-twins (weeks early) in April. I have to mention that Heather’s early delivery was in no way associated with how close her due date was to Pride. I made a joke about how cool it would be if she delivered on the parade route.)

We ate at great places around the city, saw a production of Wicked, attended the NOH8 Photo shoot, had fun in the Castro, and of course, enjoyed the parade. Although my favorite part of the trip was finding a drug store so Stacie could take a pregnancy test. It was perfect: finding out she was pregnant at Pride, with us . . . especially because surrogates have this almost innate ability to see the lightest positive test result. It was such a great time and we decided it would be something we’d do every year –and try to get other surrogates to join too. Even though several said they’d love to come, we’ll be only one person up this year. Our friend, Katie, delivered surro twin boys to two dads in Florida in 2009.

Last year, when our NOH8 photos arrived we were so excited. I sent in a “Why I Posed with my Uterus” email and they put it on their Be Heard page! You can see it HERE. We aren’t sure if the NOH8 Campaign will be back at Pride this year, since they were just in San Francisco a month ago, but if they are, you can bet the four of us will be there.

Last year, Stacie’s husband designed our shirts from my slogan, “My Uterus is an ALLY”. They turned out great and we received lots of comments and questions about them. We are still trying to design our shirts for Pride 2011. I’ll let you know what we decide. So far some ideas are based off the bumper stickers a few of us own:

or maybe this (but without my personal blog’s address)…

or maybe even this…

We are going to have such a great time. We love seeing each other and celebrating surrogacy and the men we helped make fathers . . . men who just happen to be gay.