My name is Bernice, and I am one half of an infertile couple, and one third of a miracle making team.
I am 41 (if I whisper it, it doesn’t sound so bad), and have secondary infertility. I had the immense honour of bringing two amazing human beings into the world in my early 20’s, both are now flying the coop. Thank goodness I was an impatient young woman, because if I had waited to become a mother, I would never have had the personal experience of pregnancy and birth due to severe endometriosis with complications.
This condition was finally diagnosed when I turned 30 and after 6+ fairly major surgeries, a hysterectomy soon followed.
I had always felt that my family was not complete. I know I have been blessed more than many, but there is simply nothing that would take that feeling away that I was not finished with my parenting.
After a hysterectomy, and a divorce, you would think that I would have been able to overcome this deep feeling, this knowing that more children were to come. However that was not the case and somehow I just trusted that it would work out somehow.
Enter stage left my darling Husband. We fell in love, and it was a great sadness to me that I could never give him the gift of fatherhood…. At least that is what I thought until we discovered surrogacy.
I still had one ovary left, so there was a chance that my darling and I would still be able to have a much longed for child together. The older children were so supportive of this idea and so we got things underway. At that point we were looking at Gestational Surrogacy where my sister was going to carry our biological child. Because of the complexity of surrogacy it is a lengthy process to have all the medical checks, then to go through the Ethics Committee for approval to proceed as well and having to go through the full adoption process with CYFs as the baby would need to be fully adopted by us, even though it would be biologically ours – go figure, but thems the breaks!
We were a good part of the way through this process when sadly my remaining ovary laid its last egg.
It was a devastating blow and there was a lot of grief around this. We would never be able to have our own biological child. For ever and a day my darling husband and I would never know what we could have made together.
At that point we became an infertile couple, which was an odd place to be - given that I had had children and he was very fertile, but that was that. Nothing to be done about it.
We took some time out to regroup and do some very deep soul searching about what parenting meant to us. It wasn’t about whose nose they had or whether the little mite had inherited Great Aunty Mabel’s weird shaped toes!
We soon came to the realisation that parenting for us was not about seeing ourselves in our baby’s face, it was about all the sleepless nights, nappies, feeding, the smiles, the milestones, the first time they say “mamma and dadda”. It was about making that lifelong commitment to this little scrap of humanity that no matter what, they were yours and you were theirs. It was about that deep knowing that there was nothing you wouldn’t endure for them, and there was nothing you wouldn’t do for them to help them grow into the amazing human beings they had the potential to be.
And so we began the journey to parenthood via Traditional Surrogacy.
This differs from Gestational surrogacy in that the surrogate not only carries the baby, but she also donates her genetics. So the baby is biologically my husband’s and the surrogate’s, but most definitely my much longed for soul baby.
Usually at this point, people have two main questions on their minds.
1) how much do you pay them
2) do they have sex.
They are fair enough questions, and it does make me smile when I see people trying to work out tactful ways of asking…. Or not asking lol
Surrogacy in New Zealand is altruistic. This means that the surrogates do it simply because they wish to. It is illegal to pay for surrogacy or to offer any enticements, so the whole experience is very personal and built purely on the bond that is forged between the parents and the surrogate. It is a lifelong journey, especially in the case of Traditional Surrogacy where there is also the biological link with the surrogate.
The short answer to the other question is: no.
The baby is conceived by artificial insemination usually done privately at home where the father provides the sample in a syringe and the surrogate inseminates herself at the time of ovulation. It is, in fact, one of the most unromantic, non contact ways to make a baby lol.
That’s the boring ‘dry’ version just to provide some background. Obviously the actual process is usually surrounded by a lot more hilarity, some embarrassment, and a great deal of planning.
I will come back to this in future entries *wink*
Alongside this, the intended parents need to go through the process to become prospective adoptive parents as per CYFs rules, so a Social Worker becomes a feature in this complex relationship also.
That, in a nutshell, is how you make a baby when you can’t make a baby.
Our journey to parenthood together via surrogacy has brought us a beautiful little girl who was born in June 2008. We have ongoing close contact with Katherine (our surrogate for our daughter Ysabellah) and her family. It was always our hope that she would have a sibling to grow up with but it was going to take a bit more time, effort and juggling for that to happen. Katherine was heading off to do other things so we had some more thinking to do about finishing our family. After chatting at length with Katherine about this we decided to go into the adoption pool but also to put our hand up within the online surrogacy community (www.nz-surrogacy.com) where we met Katherine and were active community members, to say that we would like to have another child. We knew that the chances of our being chosen by a prospective surrogate or birth mother were slim, given that we had already been so blessed, and so we started preparing ourselves for the fact that the landscape of our family may not change…. and tried to be settled with that.
After 20 years trying to complete my family against the odds, I was beginning to accept that perhaps I had been given more than my quota of miracles.
We set ourselves some mental and emotional time-lines. We said to ourselves that if we had not matched with a surrogate by March 2011 that we would close that door, and if we had not been chosen from the adoption pool by December 2011 then we would close that door and end the quest to have another child.
I can scarcely believe it, even now, but on February 27th 2011 we were chosen by the wonderful Olivia to be her Intended parents and to undertake a surrogacy journey with her. I still remember the moment we got the txt… and the relief, the hopes, the immense emotion that just spilled forth. We had been chosen. We had gone from absolutely 0% chance of having this much longed for baby to having 100% chance to try.
In December 2011 we received another mind-blowing txt…. We were pregnant!!!
The road to this miraculous BFP is a story in itself…… and one that Olivia and I are very much looking forward to sharing with you.
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