Just add water

Today I came across an interesting article in the NY Times about a family that came to be through the use of surrogates, written by the happy mom of two babies born 5 days apart from separate surrogates. 

Though the article itself was lovely, I was a little disturbed by the title of the attached media article, "The Futuristic Insta-Family."  I'm not sure who thought they were being clever here, but I personally found it rather stupid and offensive.  There was nothing "Futuristic" or "Insta" about the years of struggle or the amazing strength and compromise discussed in this article, and to suggest some kind of new-age Chia Pet advertisement in the title is to undervalue and otherwise demean the pain, heartache, love, patience, and caring that went into the making of this family.  

Badly done NYT, badly done.

As an aside, I found this amazing quote in the main article and thought I would share:

"Infertility feels like a death, but because it’s not the death of a person but the death of a hope — a fantasy about the children that our dead embryos might have become — that grief vanishes when you first hear the beating of real hearts."

I can only hope that my own grief and the grief of all of us out there in the IF universe, will one day vanish with the sound of the beating of real hearts.  

Happy New Year!