A good surrogate or not a good surrogate.

I have met a woman on the Surrogacy Australia forum who has offered to surrogate for us.  She lives in Albury which is a bit on the inconvenient side, but when you are planning on entering into something like this, do you really get to be choosy about where your wonderful helping angel comes from?  I think not.  Luckily, I am going to be down in Canberra in mid-August so I am hoping to take a day trip out to meet her.

She has five children and loves being pregnant and loves newborns, which is lovely because she understands how important babies and children are in people’s lives.  Unfortunately she has what sounds like a slightly deranged ex-husband who was ‘abusive to her and her kids’… which is a huge worry.  What if her being pregnant with our child sent him into a tail spin and put her and her children (and our potential child too!) at risk of his habitually violent ways?!  When I asked her about this, she quite dismissed it and said it was none of his business.

It is a bit of a conundrum from where we stand… obviously we desperately want a surrogate to help us in this enormous endeavour, but at the same time we really need that to be the right person – someone who will happily give the baby back to us, the biological parents and stick by the surrogacy agreement should we be fortunate enough to have a positive outcome at the end of the process.  We definitely do not need complications like an interfering or violent ex-partner.   What to do?  What to do?  I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth and say ‘no’, when there is no guarantee that any future offer may come our way.  🙁

Update 10th August:
Well, the more I got to know this lady, the more concerned I became.  Her husband had sexually abused her and her two eldest daughters before she finally managed to kick him out, and was known to local police for being of violent temperament.  Yet she had no restraining order in place to provide her and her family some protection.  This to me indicated that she was not someone who was unlikely to act with good judgement.  In itself, this is bad enough, but we got to talking and she told me she collected ‘baby dolls’, on enquiry, it turns out that after a miscarriage a number of years earlier, she had bought herself an expensive ‘Reborn Doll’, which, it turns out, is a freakishly realistic (but not really) newborn sized and weighted doll.  And now she has collected four in total. O.o

creepy baby doll

Sigh… I am sure she is trying her best to work through her own really crappy circumstances, but I am convinced she is not a good candidate for surrogacy.  The doll collecting thing is just a bit too creepy for my liking… and kinda suggests she would have real trouble handing over a baby that she had been nurturing for nine months.  🙁

IPs in Brisbane – Our Ideal Surrogacy Journey

Posted to the surrogacy Forum this morning:

Hi all,

One of the wonderful surrogates in the FB Group suggested I write out our ‘ideal surrogacy’ journey, as this can be a way for potential gestational surrogates to connect with someone who needs exactly what they feel they have to give!  🙂

Okay, so obviously thinking in ‘ideals’ and perfect scenarios, means that everything is open to negotiation! Because if IVF and infertility teaches us anything, it is that life is rarely fair, and never deals out the ideal! So take this with a grain of salt because we totally know that nothing ever works out the way you want it to.  😛

Ideally, we would enter into a gestational surrogacy arrangement in Australia, and be able to use our own FS in Brisbane whom we know and trust; with a wonderfully generous woman who is willing to help us. Sometimes it seems like it might be ‘easier’ to go the overseas route, but we are not sure about knowingly entering into something that is clearly illegal in our state (Qld) 🙁 … we are keen to do things legally if at all possible.

Ideally, our gestational surrogate would be willing to spent some time getting to know us over the next several months… we would want to maintain a connection with the birth mother (how close that connection ends up being, would need to develop organically), in order that any child might have the opportunity to meet and know the woman who enabled them to come into this world. For example, if we met a wonderful surrogate soon, ideally, we would look at doing a transfer in Dec 2014/Jan 2105…?

Ideally, our surrogate angel will have had a child/children of her own, or through some other means, fully understands the gravity and importance of what it means to go through a pregnancy and give a gift of this magnitude to someone else, and is mentally prepared for handing over a child to the intended parents in waiting in the wings. I think this must be very difficult.

Ideally, our surrogate miracle worker would understand the limitations of the legal framework that surrounds surrogacy in Australia, and would abide by any agreements (as we would). It would be our worst nightmare to enter into a surrogacy agreement only to have that surrogate change her mind and decide to keep our child.  🙁  I think that one scares us all.

Ideally, we would want to be very involved during the pregnancy and offer as much support as we can. At the same time though, I would not want to smother our surrogate angel, so would ideally love to meet someone who is able to help us find a happy balance – someone fond of (and capable of) open, straightforward communications; someone who is able to tell us exactly what they need, and is also capable of telling us to back off if we are too attentive!  🙂

Ideally, our surrogate wonderbug would live close by so that we could offer assistance, and so that the baby could be born in a hospital local to us. Mind you, this seems unlikely somehow. So, if we found an amazing surrogate who lived far away, I’d love to be able to help them figure out their preferred birth plan at their local hospital etc.

And last but by no means least, ideally our surrogacy journey would lead us to forming a long lasting friendship with our surrogate and her partner (if she has one). I often think of my friendships as being as important as my family members and I can’t imagine going through something like this with someone and not coming out the other side with a special bond.

So that’s us thinking out loud in ‘ideals’, last night, and it probably makes not a bad jumping off point. We are not sure if it is of any use to anyone? But we are an open book … so feel free to ask us anything!  🙂

Thanks for reading.

baby_cradled_in_dad_s_hands___bic_ballpoint_pen_by_vianaarts-d4qjng6

Healthy body needed.

Wanted:  One gestational surrogate – aka an angel or a miracle worker.

  • Preferably has had children of their own and has a comprehensive understanding of what surrogacy entails.
  • Must be fairly fit and healthy and preferably had little to no trouble with their own pregnancies/childbirths.
  • Most suitable surrogates are usually between 25-37 years of age (depending on health and personal experiences).
  • Must be a non-smoker, and prepared to give up alcohol and take pre-natal vitamins for the duration.
  • Must be either single, or have the full support of their husband/partner.
  • Beneficial to have a basic understanding of the Queensland Surrogacy Act 2010 and/or ability to rapidly acquire knowledge of said act.
  • Patience, a desire to help others, and a good sense of humour essential!
  • Oh, and must be prepared to go through with this enormous undertaking, entirely out of the goodness of their heart… because any sort of compensation (tangible or perceived) is completely illegal.  🙁

As is advertising for a surrogate or surrogacy service, in any form whatsoever.  In fact, what I just wrote above is probably considered ‘technically’ illegal, or it would be if I wasn’t just thinking out loud, and it was published somewhere more serious than on my inane blog.

Mr K and I are currently looking for a surrogate to help us have another child, using one of the ten little embryos we have sitting in the freezer – the same ones that have been burning a hole in my heart every time I think about them for the last seven years.  The problem is that searching for someone, when you are legally constrained from advertising for them, is quite difficult and fraught with pitfalls.  According to the fertility specialists, you just ‘jump on those surrogacy forums and web pages, there are hundreds of women around who want to surrogate for people like you’… and when you dive into the forums, it’s true.  There are women all around the country who are prepared to be altruistic surrogates for infertile couples… but how do you find someone you can trust?  How do you build that sort of rapport and confidence in someone that you’ve just met?!?  It’s a bit of an impossible ask.

But even bigger than the issue of finding a suitable and willing surrogate who actually has our best interests (and the best interests of any potential children) at heart, is that the legal framework surrounding surrogacy in Australia is inherently flawed.  It neither protects the intended parents (IPs) nor does it protect the surrogate birth mothers.  The central tenement that the law revolves around an idealogical concept that the state will never force a woman to give up a child she has carried and nurtured… that is, if the surrogate mother changes her mind she is under no legal obligation to give the child to the intended parents, even if she has indicated it was her intent to do so, even if she has signed legal contracts to that effect, and even if she has no actual biological link to the child.  As a potential intended parent, that scares the absolute hell out of us.  That you could entrust someone with your precious little embryo, and they could grow and nurture that embryo into a beautiful little child that I never could, and then if they change their mind at any point and keep the child, and use, as the intended parents; have no legal rights over our own genetic child. 🙁

The other side of the coin – the legislation doesn’t protect the surrogate mothers very well either. This is a far less likely scenario and is a bit of a wild, pie in the sky, ‘what if’ – but In the unlikely situation that a child is born with a undetected congenital defect or suffers an extremely rare trauma during birth or any one of the number of unusual complications that can occur during pregnancy and childbirth, the intended parents can at any time refuse to accept responsibility of the child, leaving the surrogate mother, literally holding the baby – because according to the legislation, the child is legally hers until a parentage order and a re-issued birth certificate are sorted at one month of age..  So fucked up on so many levels.  I could never turn my back on my child but it turns out that some people can.  I’ve even heard of situations where childless couples have gone for surrogacy and then refused to accept their own genetic twins back, because apparently they only wanted one little miracle not two!  Yes, that is an extreme example, but there are some unconscionable nutters out there.

Which brings me back to the original topic.  If you are hoping to enter into an altruistic surrogacy arrangement with someone you have literally just met through one of these Families Through Surrogacy forums, how on earth do you ensure that all parties involved have the same goals, the same expectations and the same intentions?  How can you be sure they are going to follow through on the contracts that you’re both required to complete, when the legal framework in place is insufficient to enforce them?  It’s all good and well that clinics make all people involved go through counselling, but ultimately a handful of counselling sessions seem insufficient to ensure that an endeavour of this immensity doesn’t go south.  One counsellor I spoke with said that the best surrogacy arrangements stem from long established friends, or family members, acting as surrogates – because the people involved already have a perhaps longstanding desire to help the infertile couple.  But how do you approach someone to do something like this for you?  It’s just so huge, I think… quite literally the biggest thing you could ever do for another human being.  :/

And I thought IVF was an emotional minefield.

surrogacy legal minefield

Surrogacy, the scary introduction.

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.”

surrogacy gave me a chance at life

Mixed Emotions on Mothers Day

Most days I don’t exactly feel like one of the most fortunate woman on the planet.  I have chronic back pain from four hideous car accidents, I am totally dependent on prescription medication and I feel physically weak and pretty useless a lot of the time.

But worse than all this crap, is the fact that I am infertile.

You know, even fourteen years after that diagnosis, it is still hard for me to state that so absolutely.  “I am infertile.”  I can’t even say it out loud with ease.

But, thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of incredibly intelligent and talented, scientists and doctors, and the wonder that is modern medical science and IVF, and in spite of my five terrible miscarriages, and against all the odds – I have a beautiful son, who is the love of my life and in so many ways has become my raison d’être.   I know I am one of the lucky ones.  There are so many women who suffer from infertility who do not manage to have a child, whether that be because assisted reproductive treatments did not work for them – or even worse – because their situations mean they don’t have access to, or can’t afford to pursue, the assistance that could help them fulfil their dreams of having children of their own.

Mother’s Day has become a day where I mostly prefer to celebrate my own mother, rather than my own motherhood… because my own state of motherhood, while miraculous, is also tinged with so much sadness.  A sadness that quietly grieves the babies that I lost – particularly the first miscarriage when I was only 20, which I was told could have been my son; and the third miscarriage after years of IVF, which pathology relayed would have been my daughter.  It is also a sadness that laments the babies I never managed to nurture – the over 60 embryos that have been transferred back to my traitorous body, but which never successfully implanted and never grew into babies – over six years, of so many failed IVF cycles, as I desperately tried to have a second child… a sibling for my son and another joy for our lives.  So much loss.  So much heartache.  So much sadness.

Mother’s Day also makes me sad when I think about other friends who I know share my pain.  Women who are infertile, too.  Women who have miscarried, too.  Women who have deep biological desires, but who are thwarted by the fates, too.  Women who want to have children, whether their first child or second child or more, but for whatever reason they can’t achieve the families they desire.  It is a uniquely soul crushing sadness that I would not wish on anyone… Mother’s Day probably produces mixed emotions for all these women too.  I love you all and am thinking of you today.

It is on Mother’s Day that I am reminded of the ten little embryos I have cryogenically stored (that and the day the bill for their yearly storage fee arrives), knowing that I will never be able to grow them into the beautiful, much wanted children we desire.  These embryos have become emblems of misguided hope – for they represent my impossible view of the future.  It is a hope I can not bring myself to abandon.  For without it, there is nothing but the prospect of endless sadness and regret.  I feel all this, but at the same time, I know it to largely be an illusion – these ten embryos represent more pain than hope – because they come with the What Ifs. ‘What if I donated them to some one who needs them?  Could I handle my genetic child being raised by strangers?’… ‘What if I somehow end up off all the medication and used the embryos myself?’… ‘What if I’ve left the whole thing, too late and I am too old?” … ‘What if we could find a suitable surrogate?’… “What if I went off to Thailand and hired a surrogate?”  In my head, the scenarios tumble around and around, over and over, year after year.  It never, ever seems to go away, and it follows me around every single day.

I have a twelve year old beautiful son – I AM one of the lucky ones – and he brings us so much joy… and yet I can not stop thinking what life might have been like, had I been able to have more children, and have the family, and the life, that I so desperately wanted to create.  Mother’s Day is both a day to be celebrated in our house as well as a day which prompts a lot of quiet reflection and mixed emotions…

I truly wish, that after all these years, I could be just content with my lot.  And I truly wish my mind could. just. be. still.

sad-mothers-day