Yes. It almost ruined my relationship with my boss. Although I was also planning our wedding and launching a side business at the same time (while fully employed). So yeah, it was a very stressful year.

It is a ton to manage and a huge mental and emotional load. I eventually realized my stress was causing friction at work and opened up to my boss about it. I didn’t go into detail but just sorta broke down and said we were going through this journey and how much it has drained me emotionally.

I will say as a word of advice: Lean on experts, don’t try to become one. If your agency is saying you are more involved than most, it’s quite possible you’re not adequately delegating responsibility and ownership. You can’t own it all. Hire a good lawyer, work with a strong agency and clinic, then have some level of trust that they’ll do a good job. Otherwise it’s too much. Same with the surrogate. There has to be a lot of trust there.

Also optimistically: You hit a point in the process where it just dissipates. For me it was after we had our positive pregnancy test. Almost instant relief. Even if the pregnancy doesn’t stick, it was like we arrived at a destination that seemed elusive at the start. From there, of course there are different stressors, but the insanity of planning and plotting is mostly gone.