What was it Like Being Filmed for a Documentary During your Surrogacy Journey?
During my 1st surrogacy journey, I was part of a documentary about surrogacy and what same-sex male couples, living in France, must go through to grow their family.
At first, it seemed exciting, then once the reality set in that there was going to be a camera on me and a microphone attached, I started the re-think my entire decision. Am I well-spoken enough to do this? What if I make surrogacy look bad? Sometimes I just run my mouth, what if I hurt someone's feelings for the entire world to see? I quickly tried to erase those thoughts and tried to focus on just being myself and not letting the camera have a negative effect on me or my blossoming relationship with my intended fathers.
The very basic first request I think most women would have is, “don’t film my vagina!” am I right? So that was, of course, one of my very first conversations with the filmmaker… and the answer wasn’t as clear-cut as someone in my situation would hope. Basically, the camera is going to catch shots of the vagina, it’s up to the filmmaker and producers to “cut” that stuff out. So, shots of my vagina are on the cutting room floor somewhere…I hope.
Once the first couple of filmings were complete it got much easier. My intended fathers were very comfortable with the camera, as it had been following them for over a year already. So, they helped to ease my anxiety by interacting with me as if the camera was not even there. Soon, I was also able to forget it was there too. In the end, it was a very well done story and I am proud to have been a part of it.