Surrogacy - A beginning

As a woman, I always felt that it was my fundamental right to bear children. Even as a small child I knew that being a mother was something I was born to do. It called to me. It was part of who I was.

I was one of the lucky ones, who was able to have children. At 21 I was privileged to feel the stirrings of life within my womb. Mentally I had a lot to learn about being a mother, but emotionally and physically, and most definitely spiritually, I was ready. I remember the moment I found out I was pregnant. I had suspected for some weeks already, but because my father was in the final stages of terminal cancer, and my husband at the time was not fully prepared for fatherhood, it was a private knowing. When I returned to Waiouru, where we were posted, I had the test done, and the practice nurse looked at me and said "An angel in heaven has just chosen you to be it's mummy".

I was incredibly blessed to have been able to tell my dad that I was going to be a mummy. He died in the arms of my sisters and I days later.

That story has been passed on to my daughter, now nearly 18. That really set the tone for my approach to motherhood. What an honour, what a privilege to be the vessel for an angel.

I was then blessed, a couple of years later with a son. A traumatic pregnancy and an induced birth. Vastly different from my previous experience. I was alone, in another country with a toddler, a difficult pregnancy, a fractured pelvis where my ligaments had given out completely, and a troubled new born. My husband had gone to Bosnia when our son was 5 days old. It would take me years and years to recover emotionally and physically from that time.

What never strayed was my determination and my absolute belief that I was born to be a mother. I was born to care take the next generation. Everything else was secondary.

So now we must fast-forward a few more years. There was always another child with me, in the ether. I had suffered 2 miscarriages, one before my first daughter was born, and another after my son was born. I mourned those two babies privately. The only thing I had to remind me of them was the pain, which I carried very deeply. When I sought to have another child, the child that had been calling to me for so many years, I was denied that chance. It didn't fit into my husband's plan for our lives. We were military, we moved a lot and two children was enough for him. I begged, pleaded, I even wrote a document to him to point out the benefits of bringing this child into the world. A pregnancy would have been risky, I would have been wheelchair bound for the duration due to my pelvis, but I had worked it all out. I knew I could do it, if only given the chance. I even asked if adoption was an option, perhaps a child from overseas who needed a loving home?

Each time the answer was no.

It was never that the two live children I had weren't enough, far from it, they were my world. It was that this child continued to call to me. She was coming, I just didn't know how.

How was it possible that I could mourn for two lives that never came to be, and equally for a child that had never been?

I went on with my life. I continued to be the dutiful wife and mother, but always carrying this ache inside. I kept hoping, wishing, pleading with the universe that something would change.

Life has a funny way of making sure we listen eventually, even when we don't want to.

My husband had a vasectomy. I agreed to it, once I realised that I was not going to be allowed to have this child that I yearned for. Then came the real blows. I was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. Over the course of a couple of years, I had my reproductive organs removed bit by bit. First my uterus was taken. It was riddled with endo right through the walls. There was no way it would have been able to hold another pregnancy. My time had truly run out.

I grieved. I grieved so deeply. Was I still a woman? I buried my uterus in a large pot, shared a box of chocolates and glass of brandy with her, then planted a beautiful Daphne on top.

A year later I lost an ovary. No, silly me, I didn't lose it. That makes it sound like I was careless or something ... oops, now where did I put that ovary?? The endo had continued to eat away my organs. The ovary was completely plastered to the wall of my abdominal cavity. I was riddled with scar tissue from an appendectomy when I was 13, and the cavity was full of the chocolate-brown enemy... endometriosis.

Slowly I felt that my womanhood was being taken, one painful bit at a time.

Soon after this my marriage ended. So, thus far, my awareness that impossibly, there was a child still waiting to come had survived a vasectomy, a hysterectomy and a divorce.

Pushing the fast-forward button again, we come closer to the present day. Enter stage left, my life partner. My equivalent soul. Within an incredibly short time of being together, we knew that our respective journeys had converged for something magical. He took me on, knowing I would never be able to carry his child. He loved me just as I was. Broken. Barren.

It was then that we discovered that there were still options open to us. It felt so incredibly important to me that he was not denied the chance to be a father just because he had chosen me to be his wife. He had already displayed such a beautiful way with my children and added to their lives in such a positive way, that I would move heaven and earth to make it possible for him to experience the miracle of a child for himself.

The little voice I had been hearing for over 13 years now began to sing.

I found a surrogacy community online here in NZ and joined. And then I read and read and read. There was such an overwhelming amount of information to digest. This was the start of the story I am now telling in paint......