Blood Ties

The Sacred Thread: A True Story of Becoming a Mother and Finding a Family—Half a World Away

Adrienne Arieff
Memoir

I’m not a mother yet (I hope to be one someday), but I’m still interested in books about adoption and surrogacy. What if I can’t get pregnant? I’ll definitely want to look into my options. The Sacred Thread is a story about options and the lengths we go to for those options.

Adrienne and her husband Alex go through three heart-breaking miscarriages before she finally realizes she will never be able to carry a baby to term. So they decide to go the surrogacy route. A small village in India has become the hot-spot for women around the world unable to deliver their own babies. After going through IVF and egg-removal, her husband’s sperm is mixed with the author’s eggs then inserted into the surrogate. Ms. Arieff goes into great and painful details about this whole process. Not only did I appreciate her honesty, but it made me pray I will never have to go through it! Good lord. Even thinking about it now gives me the heebie-jeebies. The process works and their surrogate becomes pregnant. But going about her daily life in San Francisco while the woman carrying her children stays in India does not sit well with Ms. Arieff. She decides to fly back over and stay until the babies are born. By the end of the book, Adrienne, Alex, and their two healthy daughters return home to California and all is well with the world.

While Arieff is a good writer and crafts a powerful story, all throughout the novel I kept wondering: what’s so wrong with adoption? Did I skim the part where she mentions why they never consider it? If I did, I apologize and feel free to ignore my upcoming rant. I was just slighty offended by the end because of all the money and heartache and upheaval they went through to have children with their DNA. I mean, there are millions of kids out there with no parents, waiting for a family. Why couldn't they have adopted a child who desperately needs a home? :climbs off soapbox: Anyway, this was a short, interesting read and anyone who is considering surrogacy or wants to read a touching story about family should like it.