I’ve recently joined a surrogacy forum that explores the various options of altruistic surrogacy in Australia, as well as commercial surrogacy overseas, in countries like Thailand and India (most common), Georgia and the US and Canada. One of the things they do is encourage new members to share their own stories with the group, so people will know what brings them to joining the forum… and also gives some background for surrogates who use these forums to find IPs (intended parents) for whom they want to act as gestational surrogates. Not an easy thing to sit down and write as I have such a long and drawn out history with infertility… but with ten little embryos burning a hole in the freezer, it is option we want to explore. So here goes:
“It’s hard to find a starting point when writing about our journey to have a family. So I’ll try to attack it chronologically…
When I was 19, I was in a car accident – a taxi driver didn’t see me and t-boned right into my car. I suffered a bad whiplash to my cervical spine, but was lucky to not be more seriously injured. Four months later I was driving on a country road and was in a head on collision with someone who was driving on the wrong side of the road as I came over a hill. I suffered a really horrific whiplash (lipstick ended up on my chest) and my neck/back was never the same after that. The doctors, the pain, the drugs, the physio –yuk. Three years after that I was driving with a friend in Tasmania, and he lost control of the car and rolled us into a ditch. I came to, hanging upside down in the car in a panic with a massive boulder right in front of my head, and it was off to hospital in an ambulance yet again. These horrid accidents left me with a chronic back problem and daily pain. Over time, I got used to it, it was still bad but mostly manageable. In the middle of this, I had my first miscarriage when I was 20, but at the time I just thought it was not meant to be… so young, so naive.
Convinced I had been through the ‘bad things happen in threes’ thing, life was looking up. I met a wonderful man named Mr K, who three weeks after we met declared he was going to marry me! I didn’t believe him then – we were so young – but now I can’t believe my good fortune – he is the most wonderful, supportive, caring person I have ever known. We got married in 1999 and at the end of that year I found myself at the OB/GYN with a positive pregnancy test in my hand, thinking we were getting ready for the next chapter of our lives. Instead, I found out I had miscarried again, and was diagnosed with severe PCOS and also endometriosis. We started off down the IVF path, slowly at first – four IUI cycles, then a laparoscopy, then a proper IVF cycle. I was 28 and Keith was only 24. Our first couple of transfers, were unsuccessful, and then… what I have now come to think of as a miracle – a positive and a beautiful son for us. Angus was born in 2001 and he has quite simply, become my raison d’etre. My chronic back pain did not handle pregnancy well at all, and by the beginning of the second trimester, I was in so much pain I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move well and was unable (and unwilling!) to take much medication, lest it harm my precious little cargo. When my son was born by c-section, my back pain settled back to it’s normal ‘dull roar’ almost overnight, and my OB was shocked when I described the c-section pain as a ‘mild abdominal discomfort’, compared to the pain and pressure bub had been placing on my spine.
When Angus was about 18 months old, we returned to the IVF clinic with our 8 embryos in the freezer, convinced that we knew what we were doing. Out of those 8 embryos I was confident we would have another child, (or even twins!), to complete our little family. I have never been so wrong about anything in my entire life – not before, or since. Those 8 embryos were implanted over the next four months with no success. Over the following five years, we had 8 or 9 more egg collections, and nearly 60 embryos transferred back to my traitorous body. We tried different hormone support protocols, all the ICSI, all the hatching and all the embryo glue etc. We tried everything. Each pick up we would get at least 14-15 good eggs, and had a 95% fertilization rate, and got told we had young, good looking embryos that always developed well to blastocyst., but they never ‘took’. My Fertility Specialist kept saying that, because I was young, it would work eventually… though I began to think it was the ‘eventually’ bit that would kill me. I did finally have a (+)ve in May of 2006, but that resulted a the most traumatic and soul destroying experience – after so much effort to get pregnant, the foetus failed to develop and I had a D&C on the saddest day ever. I still remember rattling off my name, DOB and FS’s name to everyone who came near me that day, as I lay in my outpatient bed, in a zombie-like state of emotional numbness. Our baby girl had a chromosomal abnormality – a trisomy 23 – she would never have survived.
I have never put so much time or energy or resources or research or money, into anything only to discover that it didn’t matter what we did – it was all out of our control. Each cycle felt like gambling. Turn up, do what you’re told, hand over your money and cross your fingers. And I never was the gambling type…
Our FS was less upbeat as time went by, one day telling me that I was his one patient that kept him awake at night – a distinction I really didn’t want. There was no medical reason that these embryos weren’t taking. I would sit in the post-transfer recovery room and look at all the other women and watch the other husbands bringing in teddy bears for their wives… My husband of course was across town at work, long since having given up coming with me, as he couldn’t get the time off work and we had become quite complacent about all the appointments. Over time I became uncharacteristically cynical too, I didn’t want to talk to the other women, and a horrible uncharitable part of me that I never knew existed, fervently wished and hoped that statistically speaking it would be ME with the successful transfer that month, and not them. Being a frequent flyer at the IVF clinic is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy – it changes you. We did a couple more cycles before we had to hit the “pause” button for a while. This was for a few reasons – primarily because my father had been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and we knew he only had a few months left to live, and I really wanted to spend his remaining months making sure he got to spend as much time with Angus as possible. That and I had been obsessing about IVF for so many years, that our finances were in ruin. So we put it aside, with ten little embryos still stored in the freezer. I was 34/35 by then.
My father passed away in January 2007 and I went back to work desperately attempting to get on top of the financial havoc I had allowed pile up in the wake of my relentlessly pursing IVF. The plan was to work for a year and then return to IVF and my ten little embryos. Unfortunately that never came to pass, thanks to yet another nasty car accident – this time on the way home from work. I was stopped in a line of traffic, and a lady in an RX8 on her mobile phone, rammed my car from behind at full speed, lifting my Rav4 up on two wheels and nearly rolling me into the oncoming cars, before I teetered for what felt like forever, eventually crashing down into the vehicle in front of us. And so began the rounds of orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons and physiotherapists of my youth, all over again. This time, a neurosurgeon finally diagnosed a chronic neuropathic pain condition, and a plethora of medication was prescribed to attempt to manage it. But there ended my plans to go back to IVF too.
In 2008, I had a natural conception – miracle of miracles! But that too, ended in miscarriage. So, here we are six years later, I still have incredibly high levels of daily pain, and am still on way too much medication to contemplate, and we still have those ten little embryos in frozen storage. Ten little embryos that represent so much hope, and yet, so much loss and pain too. Mr K now works for the public service and I have been studying for the last few years to stop me from losing my mind, as I am physically unable to work since the last accident. I am now part way through my PhD – I am researching medieval political philosophy (Yeah I know… it’s not everyone’s cup of tea).
Through it all, we have never given up on our dream to have more children. Lord knows, I have tried to give up. I have many times wished that this desire to have more children would just go away, and take with it the unwanted bitterness and jealousy of watching so many friends and family have their children so easily. But after so many years, I know it won’t. It never goes away. At the moment, Mr K is going through the process of donating sperm, because, well… we would do anything humanly possibly to help others to have the families they want, because we of all people know exactly what it feels like when you can’t.
Oh dear… half a dozen tissues later. Sorry this has turned into a huge wall of text, and I totally forgive anyone who gave up on reading it. I have joined this forum because surrogacy may well be the last chance we have, to attempt to fill the enormous hole in our lives, that we have been carrying around now, for about a decade. I have seen some of the posts from the extraordinary women who offer to surrogate for couples like us, and want to say – the generosity of spirit demonstrated here is nothing short of miraculous. As overwhelmed as I am, to be contemplating embarking on a surrogacy journey, it is extraordinary to think there are amazing people out there who genuinely want to help. From the stories you have shared, and through your incredibly selfless deeds, all you truly generous and beautiful women on this forum and on the Facebook group, have fast become an inspiration to me. I am somewhat awestruck by the sincerity and generosity that I have seen in these pages.
Anyway, thanks for reading my saga.”
