The Game is also a good picture of manic depression, at least, from what I've read. Especially since the author doesn't seem to know anything about it - he uses the words "manic" and "depression", but seems to have no experience or knowledge, and so his descriptions of the bipolar character are genuine, not influenced by any preconceptions. Constant grandiose plans that never materialize during the highs, staying in a room for days during the lows...

I hope that guy got on meds eventually, because in the book his parents mention the lows have been getting worse and worse.

We are no longer expecting.

We are seriously considering using an Indian surrogate mother for the next attempt. The main reason is that Shannon has two major health problems which make pregnancy problematic:

1) Tovar was 3 months premature. He recovered fine, but the survival rate at that age is only 80%-85% or so, and many babies born that early have substantial permanent problems. And having him in the NICU for 3 months sucked. There are things we can do to decrease the risk in future pregnancies, but it is still substantial.

2) There seems to be a definite relationship between Shannon's bipolar and hormones/pregnancy. Her first manic episode happened when Tovar was weaned, due to those hormone changes. She has been mildly hypomanic/agitated for the past week, since conceiving - and that's just at the beginning! It would be dangerous and unpleasant for her to be manic while pregnant. And she thinks that the 2 episodes between might have also been caused by ephemeral pregnancies (say, a quick implantation and abortion before hcg levels were detectable by a pregnancy test). It's just a theory, but in both cases we were trying to get pregnant, she got manic, and we stopped, so it's certainly possible. Which means at least 2, possibly 4 out of the 4 episodes so far have been motherhood-hormone-induced!

There are some additional benefits (less worry about diet & nutrition, less weight gain, less stress on her body/mind, we can gender-select[1], we may be able to get twins[2], we can freeze eggs/embryos for future use and/or donation), and some significant costs ($25K or so, travel to India for at least 2 weeks, dealing with the hormones of IVF, the risks of medicine in a third-world country), but to us, all of those are small compared to these two health issues. (As Shannon says: way better to be torn from your birth mother once than to spend 3 months in an incubator!).

[1] For a girl, of course.

[2] Don't worry, we'll do an LJ poll to see if y'all think it's a good idea before doing anything so rash as trying for twins :).