And, as messy as those disagreements can be, now add in the fact that no state really enforces the surrogacy contracts and that paid surrogacy is illegal in many states. That means that, contract or no, parents can refuse to take custody of a "defective" baby under the "you birthed it, you bought it" statute, so you might end up going home with someone you didn't intend to, which rarely works out well. There have also been problems with surrogates who decided they wanted to keep the baby after it was born, and there's no legal way of stopping them. To prevent any of that awfulness from happening, they do the DNA test right there in the hospital to legally declare that it is the couple's genetic child.

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"For the last time, Mr. Povich, we're not hiring."

All of this is why surrogacy involves a shitload of preparation beforehand. For instance ...

They even ask for pictures -- not just of you but your whole family (most surrogates have their own children already). The pictures are basically to prove that you are who you say you are, but I suspect they wanna preview the factory's output, because you also have to include every little detail about your history of birthin' babies. They need to make sure the equipment they're renting is in good working condition, after all.

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Near-mint condition, only opened twice, slight tear in the corner.

The difference for the surrogate is you don't get to browse for couples. You don't get to know anything about anyone until someone chooses you, at which point you find out basic information like their age and location, and if you agree to consider working with them, they send you a full profile. That profile is still much less extensive, including only a few photos, a letter from each partner about why they want to use a surrogate, and a joint letter about what they expect from their "carrier" (yes, that's the word they use, and yes, it did make me feel a little like Catherine McCormack in 28 Weeks Later).

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I didn't kiss anyone for months, just in case.

Then you have a phone conference, then you meet with them, and then begins the endless back-and-forth with the contract. This is where you learn that ...

Is there more contract talk in all this than you expected? Hey, just look at what's at stake; there's a lot of paperwork involved in building a house, too, and this is a freaking human being we're making here.

So, for instance, the parents are paying for everything during the pregnancy, which means that I, as the surrogate, am expensing it all. I would turn in receipts for my prenatal massages, turn in maps to show the exact amount of miles I was driving so I could get reimbursed for gas money, etc. Between all of that accounting and the endless back-and-forth with the contract (we had drafts of contracts going back three or four times before we signed it), it was so much paperwork that it was mentally exhausting. You have to get every single document from your OB every time you go, and then you print out the maps when you get home. I had to get all of the records from my previous pregnancies. You're constantly filling out paperwork for release forms. It was so much paperwork going back and forth that the UPS lady knew me by name. She would be like, "Hey, what's up? You're like 28 weeks now, right?"

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"Yes. Don't kiss me."

And every little thing that the parents decide you are and aren't allowed or required to do during your pregnancy goes in the contract. Sometimes it gets oddly specific. I'm in the middle of my second surrogate pregnancy now, and they insist that I have to eat strawberries and peanuts three days a week, supposedly because it reduces the risk of allergies to those things for the child.

I know, I know -- poor me, I'm forced to eat delicious snacks. But parents can get so frantic about every little thing. The last couple was like, "We really want you to not drink soda." You might as well tell me I can't drink water. I had headaches, so we decided that I could have one soda a day, because I was like, "I have to have some kind of caffeine."

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Seriously, "baby kicks or caffeine shakes" is not a game I need to be playing.

That's all pretty reasonable -- it's their baby, after all -- but it does suck for the incubator. Sometimes, it's more serious things that you might not have anticipated and been able to agree upon beforehand. Toward the end, when I was pregnant with the twins, my blood pressure was starting to rise, and one of the babies kept flipping butt-down. We were discussing vaginal delivery options, but the mom just said, "Let's just do a C-section," which you'll recognize as major fucking surgery. That shit is not fun to recover from. But that's my problem, after all, not theirs.