By
early August 2010, DH and I had received the all-clear on genetic test for DH
and a written medical opinion from a lovely geneticist at The Crumlin Hospital
that there was no reason why we should not proceed to use our 2 precious
embryos from our disastrous egg donation cycle in NYC. The potential medical conditions we were concerned
about had arisen after we remember the results of an earlier biopsy taken from
DH for an unrelated matter a few years earlier.
Biopsy results which at the time seemed fairly irrelevant, drew sharply
into focus when we started trying to work out why we were having such crappy
results with IVF involving my eggs and DH’s sperm, my cousin’s eggs and DH's
sperm and then our anonymous egg donor's eggs and DH's sperm. The potential genetic issue was related to a
birth defect, which if passed on, could either have completely benign effects
or devastating consequences. Various
chromosome tests were performed on DH’s blood.
Thankfully, he tested negative for the birth defect we had particular
concerns about, however there remain a very small possibility that whilst DH
may not have tested positive for that birth defect based on a blood test, that
he might still pass it on if he carried the rare ‘segmental’ type of the birth
defect. If DH had carried the gene,
there would have been a 50% chance that he would pass it on to a child. If the genetic test had been positive, we
were prepared not to proceed to use our embryos. But we were told we had only an approximately
3-5% chance of having a child with that particular condition if DH had the
birth defect in the segmental form (which we were unable to know in the absence
of very expensive further testing that was not available in Ireland). The experience of meeting with the geneticist
and then waiting for test results gave us a new perspective on how stressful it
must be to face the reality of a conceiving a child with a life diminishing
birth defect and the possibility of something going wrong with our 2 precious
embryos was a fear that never left us. Despite
this, based on an average couple doing IVF having a 2% chance of having a child
with a birth defect, the advice we were given gave us a lot of reassurance and
gave us the green light to proceed with signing on with Circle Surrogacy.
Before
Circle would agree to take us on as Intended Parents (IPs), we had to book a 3
hour Skype session with a Circle social worker.
He was a lovely and very sincere man, named Elliott, who was a gay
single father through both adoption and surrogacy, whom we had met in person
when we attended Circle's Dublin seminar earlier in the year. DH and I both remembered his telling the
seminar in Dublin about his experiences of both adoption and surrogacy. In advance of this, DH and I had completed a
long application form in which we (once again!) had to detail our entire
medical history, miscarriages, failed IVF attempts etc. It reminded us of the copious paperwork
involved with trying to get approved to adopt.
However, unlike the adoption paperwork, Circle did not require copies of
medical reports or contact details of doctors and clinics; happily, they were
prepared to believe that we were telling the truth when we said we had been
trying to conceive for 6 plus years. Why would anyone need or want to lie about
it? It was a pleasant change from how PACT (the adoption agency) had been
treating us. We certainly experienced
Circle as being more compassionate and supportive in their approach to deciding
whether we were suitable Intended Parents (IPs).
Elliott
spent the long session running through our medical history and asked about the
type of relationship we wanted with a surrogate. The application form asked us to indicate
whether we wanted a relationship with regular contact during the pregnancy and
afterwards or one where there was no on-going contact expected after the
birth. Questions also related to
religious beliefs, whether you would be prepared to continue a pregnancy where
Downs Syndrome was diagnosed, where a birth defect incompatible with life was
diagnosed and views on abortion. Circle
explained that they tried to match Intended Parents preferences closely with a
surrogate's preferences. One of my
concerns at the time, and which I voiced to Elliott was whether a surrogate
would expect a lot of emotional support from me as the Intended Mother during
the pregnancy. I was not sure I had the capacity
to counsel or be a pregnancy coach to a surrogate after the disappointment of
our miscarriages. I felt worn out. Elliott reassured me that this was not
usually expected of IPs by surrogates and that Circle employed social workers
to provide emotional support to surrogates.
This was not something to be worried about. Somewhat naively (in hindsight), DH and I
also indicated our preference for (1) an experienced surrogate; (2) that she live
on the East Coast of the USA (or as a compromise, California, because it has such
favourable surrogacy laws), so that she would be just one direct flight from
Dublin away; and (3) that the surrogate
be unmarried (so that there would be no legal presumption of fatherhood in
favour of her husband that would displace DH's legal rights as genetic father). I did not think this was too much of a “wish
list” at the time! Finally, one of our
biggest concerns that we discussed with Elliot was whether Circle, and indeed,
any surrogate would be prepared to work with us when we only had 2 embryos and
could not commit to any further attempts if those 2 embryos did not result in a
successful pregnancy (as we had no more money). Circle were very supportive and confirmed
that if we did not get pregnant with those 2 embryos that we could walk away
and get most of our money back (less fees and the cost of the attempts which
would be the cost of the embryo transfer payments to the surrogate).
By
the end of August, we signed a formal contract with Circle, which involved us
paying an initial deposit of $25,000 to their trust account (which, being
nervous about transferring such a large sum of money, I checked was regulated
and bonded by Massachusetts law, as the trust account was in the name of
Weltman Law, the associated legal practice run by Circle Surrogacy’s founder,
John Weltman). A further $50,000 due to
be transferred at the time that we were matched with a surrogate (which was
hopefully within 6 months of signing on).
Of the total $75K to be paid to Circle, approximately $25K would be paid
directly to a surrogate as her compensation.
The rest of the money was apportioned across legal fees (to cover both
the surrogate’s lawyer and our legal costs), social worker fees, travel and
accommodation, maternity clothes allowance for the surrogate, medical insurance
premiums (including full life cover in the event of death or permanent
disability), reimbursement of lost wages for the carrier and medical costs
associated with IVF. The insurance costs
were quite high, but in a way it was comforting to know that Circle was
ensuring that good cover was in place to make sure all surrogates (and the
babies born in US hospitals) were covered by good medical insurance. Circle also protect surrogates interests by
getting IPs to pay enough money into their trust account to cover any
unforeseen costs, like lost wages where bed rest is ordered for final trimester
etc. So many people have since asked us
about ‘the cost of surrogacy in the USA’
and I think the best summary I can give is that we budgeted roughly 90,000K
euro (which at the time was around 120K in US dollars) and that this was
roughly distributed as one third (1/3) to IVF and other medical costs, one
third (1/3) surrogate compensation and costs (surrogate travel etc.) and one
third (1/3) surrogacy agency and related costs (which include insurances, legal
costs, surrogate screening and social worker fees and matching costs). A big part of the expense of undertaking
surrogacy in the USA is the huge medical cost of the IVF clinics and obstetric
and paediatric fees in US hospitals. By
way of comparison, a frozen embryo transfer procedure in an IVF clinic in
Dublin might have cost 1,800 euro (at the time), but in the USA, the clinic we were to use cost
approximately x 4 times more at 7,000 US dollars for the same procedure.
Despite
the terrifying costs of the entire process, it felt good to be using a
professional and reputable agency that was experienced enough to know how to
manage all the unforeseen risks and events that might arise (there is where I
feel surrogacy in the USA hands down beats surrogacy in developing countries,
like India). Circle assigned to us a
“Journey Co-ordinator” – this cute term still makes DH and I giggle to this day
– who was a lovely woman with social work and psychology degrees. The plan was that we would Skype once a month
with her and she was there to answer all our questions, help us make practical
arrangements when the time came and act as a liaison with our surrogate during
matching and afterwards (if needed). We
Skyped the first month and then the second month but then decided that we did
not want or need to each month unless there was some progress or particular
thing to be discussed. We agreed that we
could "reach out" to Rachel whenever we needed and she would be in
touch as our names moved closer up the "match list".
Although
signing on with Circle meant that there was now a chance that we could become parents
through surrogacy, we felt fairly muted about our prospects of success, knowing
that the reality was that 2 embryos really meant 2 attempts at best and most
surrogacy and IVF agencies recommended at
least 3 attempts before giving up. But I
felt very grateful for the 2 embryos that we did have. I started thinking more and more about Maria,
our egg donor. I wondered what she had
been told about the results of our disastrous cycle and wondered whether she
wondered how things had turned out with us, especially after she and DH had met
on the day of the egg retrieval.
Curiosity and my desire to express my gratitude eventually got the
better of me and late one night, after having a few too many wines at a dinner
party, I sent Maria a private message via her Facebook page (we knew her name
and she knew ours after we had agreed through the egg donation agency to waive
anonymity). I started out by writing
that I hoped she did not mind me messaging her and hoped that I was not
overstepping the line. Just because she
had agreed to waive her anonymity and provide her name did not mean she wanted
any contact from me. I explained that
the cycle had not turned out great but that we still had high hopes for the two
embryos we had frozen with SHER and that we were waiting to be matched with a
surrogate. I felt self-conscious telling
Maria that we were planning to try surrogacy and hoped she did not mind and
would understand but that we thought this would give us our best chance at
success. I thanked her for everything
she had done so far. I felt sick with
nerves after I sent the message but within a few days I received a beautiful
message back from Maria - she was excited to hear from me and wrote that her
donating to us was something that she felt very right about. She had been upset and worried to hear that
the outcome of the cycle had been so bad (the agency we met through had been
quite mean to her and told her she was not suitable to be an egg donor ever again). Maria's warmth and sincerity radiated through
her message and reinforced the sense of connection DH and I felt with her
profile and that DH in particular had felt when he met her in person in New
York City. From that time onwards, Maria and I became online penpals of a sort
– it became a cherished, and I guess, unusual relationship. So many infertile Irish women go to Spain or
the Czech Republic for donor eggs and don’t want to know their egg donor. But I was fascinated with Maria, she being my
chosen genetic substitute. I was
constantly excited and reassured by the fact that her emails reinforced my
sense of her. I worried sometimes that I
idealised her (in a way) in my head, but everything she wrote to me, gelled
with me and made me like her more and more as I got to know her through emails. I felt self-conscious, a little like a high
school girl with a first crush and hoped that she felt similarly justified in
donating to DH and I and that she liked us as much as we liked her. DH joked that I would get 'giddy' when I
received an email from Maria over the months that followed. Over time, she generously shared small
details about her family background and ancestors, which is very precious
information.
Time
rolled on. Another Christmas came around
in December 2010 – the year of our 5th wedding anniversary and still
we seemed no closer to becoming parents.
But (1) at least we had started the adoption process, (2) signed on with
Circle Surrogacy and (3) had two embryos cryopreserved in the USA for the
future. Surely 2011 would see some resolution
to the constant waiting and heartache and inertia? Christmas time was painful as ever for DH and
I, a fact our sweet Circle Journey Co-ordinator acknowledged to us during our
December Skype call. Christmas 2010 was
particularly bittersweet, as my younger sister had delivered twin boys on 17
December at 34 weeks. They were gorgeous
looking and my heart filled with a fierce love for them within seconds of
receiving the email from my father in Australia attaching the photos. I felt flooded with pride that my sister
battled so hard for her genetic sons and had beaten the odds to deliver two
healthy babies. But I also felt a
profound sadness that my mother was not alive to meet her first grandchildren
and that my sister did not have our mother with her to share and celebrate that
life altering moment. A part of me was
also relieved that I was so far away from those tiny little babies (me in
Dublin and them in Brisbane), that I was not expected to go into the hospital
and be part of the big celebrations. I
was genuinely relieved and delighted for my sister but also happy to wait and
see them on our next trip when they would be 6 months old and not so insey,
winsey, tiny and ever so hard to set eyes on without fighting back a wall of
emotion. There is also, I fear, a pretty nasty thing to
confess, (I feel ashamed to type it out, but it is the truth about what was in
my head at the time)….. I found it easier that she had had two little boys
(just as it would have been easier had she had two little girls) – I would have
found it more of a blow if she had the perfect pigeon pair; boy and girl swaddled
in pink and blue baby blankets. I guess
my feelings went with the territory that constant bitterness entailed. I could, usually, also handle any birth announcement
much easier when it was a third boy after two boys already or vice versa. It made me think "Well you can't get always get what you want…..I can’t even get one of
either sex…” Luckily people could
not read my thoughts (although they will know them now if they read this!).
In
January 2011 (4 months after we had signed on as IPs with Circle), PACT were on
to me to advise that as the medical exams that had been completed by our GPs
for DH and myself were now over 12 months old, that we would have to make
appointments for new medicals and get our GPs to complete fresh forms. There was no option to declare that our
medical status had not changed in the previous 12 months - we had to go through
the whole rigmarole all over again - just to receive the green light for PACT
to initiate the next step. Very naively,
whilst I went back to the same clinic that I had been going to for years, I saw
a different doctor to the one who had completed my medical adoption the year
before. She felt it was her duty to
provide as much detail on the form as possible - such that PACT were bound to
raise further queries. Nothing of any
seriousness was noted, other than that I had been treated for depression in
Australia after my mother died after a 3 month battle with cancer when I was 24
years old (which easily beat three miscarriages and repeated IVF failures as
the most devastating event in my life) and that I had seen Dr Anthony McCarthy
at The National Maternity Hospital for a
single out-patient visit after my third miscarriage (which I did not
request but was strongly encouraged to do by the Bereavement Liaison Officer at
Holles St). I am not ashamed of this. I defy any woman to fend off depression in
response to such bitter life-blows.
Little did I know that by taking care of my mental well-being and
speaking to someone about my feelings, that it would be used by PACT in an
attempt to stigmatise me and delay our application to be approved for
inter-country adoption.
Shortly
after PACT received my updated medical, sometime in February 2011, I received a
short letter stating that PACT was still unable to appoint social workers to us as they were yet
to determine “whether I was fit to become
a mother”. The cruelty of the letter
struck me like a physical blow. I was
two steps inside the front door - having torn open the post after arriving home
from work after seeing the PACT envelope - I started heaving with sobs. DH was not home, thankfully. I felt like a loser. I felt I was being told I was unworthy and
not good enough. Aside from the cruelty
of not being able to become a mother - here was a statement in black and white
- printed on paper before my eyes that I may not even be considered worthy of
motherhood by the powers that be. In my
lowest moments, I had cried out – “why me?!!”
“Why can't I be a mother?” and had felt utterly damned and
punished. It felt to me like PACT was saying, “You don’t deserve to be a mother
because you are not fit to be a mother”.
I was devastated. Apparently this
approach was not personal. I subsequently
learnt that the HSE regularly made infertile mothers go through a full
psychiatric assessment where it transpired that women had been treated for
depression – depression caused precisely because they were so desperate to
become mothers. It seemed so illogical
and counter-intuitive. ‘I am depressed because I cannot be a mother
and yet you say I cannot become a mother because I am depressed’. I understand why a child's best interests absolutely
require that it is not placed with an adoptive family that are trying to fill
in some gaping grief stricken hole after the loss of a biological child (which
I know has the potential for tragic consequences for the child). Yet again, the whole situation reinforced to
DH and I that adoption was unlikely to be the path to parenthood for us. Too many needless and unjustifiable obstacles
were being raised and the reality was that you could battle the HSE or PACT for
years and get a declaration approving you to adopt, but there appeared no open
sending countries left for Irish parents to adopt from. Put simply, there were no children to be
adopted. Full stop.
By
March 2011, DH and I were getting increasingly anxious to receive word from
Circle as to when we could expect to be introduced to a prospective surrogate
for “a match”. By the end of February
2011 we had been signed on as IPs with Circle for 6 months, which was the rough
time frame we had been given for a match.
I was now only too keen to revisit my fussy list of "wants" for
a surrogate presented to Circle previously (i.e. experienced surrogate, living
on Eastern seaboard (or California or jurisdiction with surrogacy statute where
we could get a pre-birth court order legally naming us as parents), not legally
married) and would happily have accepted an introduction to a married,
first-time surrogate from Oklahoma, or Alaska, for that matter! Apparently, the surrogacy landscape had
changed somewhat in the USA in the previous few months when the US army's
health insurance had withdrawn medical insurance coverage for women who were
delivering babies via surrogacy arrangements.
This meant the pool of surrogates who had their own full medical
insurance (which overseas/foreign IPs like DH and I needed), was reduced for
the time being (I understand that medical insurance difficulties have largely
been resolved in the last two years, since 2013, as more and more bespoke
surrogacy medical insurance products are offered on the US market). DH and I berated ourselves. Surrogacy too now seemed like a lost
cause. We were so down. What had we done – were we fools? We felt like we could not catch a break. We asked how much longer it would be before
we could expect some news. Our journey co-ordinator
assured us that we were now in the top 20 – which was good news and meant that
we could start thinking about transferring our embryos out of SHER IVF Clinic
in New York State (where surrogacy is illegal) to the IVF Clinic in Connecticut
that Circle partnered with and recommended using for the embryo transfer with
our surrogate, once we were matched. It
was good to have something practical to arrange but it also felt surreal at the
same time. With much trepidation, and a
little prayer, I arranged a medical courier to collect our two precious embryos
from New York to deliver them one state over to Connecticut. With our history of mishaps and bad luck, we
could take nothing for granted and although I had never used live-time courier
package tracking on the internet - I did for the first time the day our embryos
were in transit. I have never been as
relieved as when I received an email from the lovely lab tech at Connecticut
IVF to say they had arrived safely.
April
and May 2011 rolled by and with them, our 6th wedding anniversary
and my birthday too. I was now 36, which
felt a positively ancient age (to me!) to still be trying to become a mother,
considering that we had started trying when I was 29. But finally, in early June, we were asked by
our Journey Co-Ordinator whether we would be interested in Skyping with Brandy,
an experienced surrogate living close to Savannah in the state of Georgia,
USA. Would we what?!!! We were emailed her profile, which included
general information about her location, occupation, her salary and financial
status, her children (all carriers/surrogates that work with Circle must have
completed their own families), her photo and first name only. No identifying information, such as date of
birth or address or last name were provided.
At the same time, Brandy was being sent our profile, including numerous
photos, which I had carefully picked out to ensure that we looked like
wholesome (which we are!) Intended Parents.
It seemed like some kind of serendipity that Brandy was from near
Savannah - a town that I had wanted to visit ever since reading the best-seller
non-fiction book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". I could picture Spanish moss and old Southern
colonial mansions in my mind's eye. I immediately
just assumed that Brandy would
deliver the baby in Florida – which was where she worked and was just 1 hour
away from the border between Florida and Georgia. ‘Florida
has great surrogacy laws!’, I thought to myself. These include pre-birth court orders which mandate
Intended Parents being named on the birth certificate without the need for any
court application after the birth and the issue of an amended birth
certificate. Although I never discussed
this with DH, I was also comforted by seeing what Brandy earnt – I Googled the
minimum wage in Georgia and clearly she was earning above it. She was also paying off her own home. The eternally guilty/anxious part of me
worried about finding a surrogate that was driven by economic circumstances
into being a surrogate - something that I would not feel comfortable with (and
what if truth be told, made me decide against going to India to find a
surrogate). I did not want us to be
matched with a woman who would not have been motivated to carry a baby but for
the payment she would receive. Luckily,
Brandy seemed motivated by altruistic reasons and a genuine love of being
pregnant and nurturing human life. She
was unmarried (divorced) but had a long term partner. And she had been a
surrogate before!! She had delivered a healthy baby boy to a French couple the
year before – and had three children of her own - wow!!!!
I was quickly getting ahead of myself.
The
whole matching process was very similar to how I imagine dating agencies
work. We were given each other’s Skype
IDs and on the Thursday before the Irish June Bank Holiday weekend we “hooked
up” online. No one from Circle was
present – it was just DH and I and Brandy (and her teenage daughter in the
background). It was just a first chat to
see if we liked the sound and look of each other and we were each separately to
let Circle know our impressions after the call.
I was so nervous before the call that I had a glass of white wine to
calm my nerves. DH seemed a lot clearer
headed and calmer than me. I was so
anxious that Brandy would like us and that I would say the right things and not
appear too pushy/controlling or unappealing as Intended Parents.
My
first impression of Brandy was that she was very pretty - quite striking and
young looking (although she was 39 at the time, she looked 29 or younger) and
my next thought was, ‘oh that’s an accent
that I could listen to all day’. She
said “Y’all” and talked with a lovely Southern accent. Our initial chat was pretty superficial. We talked about our accents and cracked a few
jokes. It felt so strange to be video
messaging with a woman who you have never met before in your life and would
like to ask to carry a baby for you. I
felt completely out of my comfort zone, but was prepared to do whatever it
would take to get matched. Before the
Skype session, I had a pre-conceived idea in my head as to what a surrogate
would look and sound like. I had
expected a slightly ditzy, earth-muffin/earth mother/hippie type of character –
kind of silly in hindsight, but I guess I had stereo-typed what I thought a
typical surrogate would be like. Brandy
was none of the things I had imagined; and as a result my expectations jarred a
little with how Brandy presented to me.
She was really smart. That was
one of the first things DH said afterwards.
She was more than smart; she was quick and direct. But, absolutely charming. Her life story reminded me of my mother’s and
that resonated with me. She had been
through a divorce when her 3 children were quite young – she had had them when
she was young and was now in a long term relationship with her life partner. Her three children were now 15 and 18 (she
had twins) and she had worked her way up the ladder of a listed US retail
company. She now worked in their
national head office and was going to college in the evenings to get a college
degree – just like my mother. She was
totally at ease with chatting to DH and I - we spent most of the time talking
through her recent experience of carrying for the French couple. It was very reassuring and put us so much at
ease to hear of their recent experience and the inspiring way in which Brandy
described the whole experience of surrogacy and carrying their son for them. DH
and I also got to chat to Brandy’s 15 year old daughter, which was so lovely. It was important to me that her children were
onside with having their mum carry a baby for another couple. It was on the list of things (stored in my
head) to ask about. When I asked Brandy
how her children felt about her being a surrogate, she got her daughter to
answer for herself! Brandy’s daughter
told me that she thought it was neat and loved her mom being pregnant for the
French couple. As we chatted, I remained
nervous and was not sure that I was saying the right things. I was not sure, or rather I was scared, that
Brandy would not like us enough to want to be matched with us. But Brandy relieved our anxiety when she
signalled the end of the call, by saying, "well I sure hope y'all like me enough to pick me". And here I was thinking that she was deciding
whether to pick us! Within an hour or so
of the Skype call, our Journey Coordinator emailed DH and I directly to say
"Well, that must have gone well,
because you both wrote me at the exact same time to say you would like to proceed
with the other. Congratulations! you are
now provisionally matched!". We
were very lucky. If we had not liked
each other – we would not have gone to the bottom of the match list - but we would have had to wait for the next
suitable surrogate to decide whether she liked us enough for a match.
There
was a small glitch within a few days of being provisionally matched when it was
confirmed by Circle that if Brandy got pregnant with our baby that she intended
to deliver in Georgia and not Florida.
This caused me to have minor heart palpitations as my initial research
on surrogacy law in the state of Georgia had revealed that there was no
existing statute based law. DH and I
arranged (on my part), a panicked call with a really sweet and empathetic
lawyer associated with Circle who reassured us that it was possible to get a
pre-birth order in Georgia, as there was established court precedents in the
state which allowed Intended Parents to petition the court for “declaratory
relief” before a baby was born and this is what had been done successfully with
Brandy’s previous pregnancy as a surrogate in Georgia. I did some more research online and got
comfortable with that – although Florida still looked good as a surrogacy
destination to me, but…. Phew!
Over
the next 3.5 weeks Brandy and I were constantly in email communication as our
draft Carrier Contract was prepared, tweaked and finalised for execution by DH,
myself, Brandy and her partner, Danny, who DH and I had met over further Skype
sessions. Brandy and I were meant to
leave the negotiation and agreement on the contract between us to our
respective lawyers but we found it was quicker to discuss things ourselves and
surprisingly, not the least bit awkward.
Brandy liked that I was a lawyer myself and asked me questions about my
views on certain things and always prefaced any request to consider an issue
with "this is just something for you
to think on...." We had found a
woman who was prepared to carry a baby for us
- there was very little that we were not prepared to agree to and all of
Brandy’s requests were AOK with us.
Mostly they concerned the time of delivery - she wanted, if at all
possible to have her two teenage daughters to be involved in the labour and
delivery and for us to put it in the contract that her daughters be allowed to
attend the birth. She wanted to try for
a natural vaginal delivery after having to have an emergency C-section the
previous year when being a surrogate for a French couple. We agreed to support her in her decision to
pursue VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) where it was medically safe to do
so. She also asked for her compensation
to be increased in the event of having a further caesarean section when
delivering our baby - this seemed only fair to us, as c-section involves such a
significant recovery time and more risk.
Brandy asked that we agree that her labour not be induced for
convenience only and we agreed to inducement only as strictly necessary for
medical purposes. We also agreed to
reimburse her for any annual leave days she had to use where her sick leave
entitlement was exhausted at work – again - more than fair in our eyes. In the months that we had waited to be
matched with a surrogate I had spent a lot of time reading a website with great
community bulletin boards for surrogates called surromomsonline.com It really was invaluable as it gave me
insight to what surrogates considered important in their relationships with
their Intended Parents and what attitudes or things their IPs did which they
loved or hated. I also realised through
surromomsonline, that this was a community of assertive and well-informed women
who were very aware of what they should be entitled to in terms of compensation
and benefits, almost like an unofficial labour union – it really seemed to make
a lie of the tired old ‘surrogacy exploits women’ line. As it was clear in many cases the IPs were
bending over backwards to accommodate the requests made of them to the point
where some surrogates would berate other surrogates online for not being
sensitive enough or being too demanding in their contracts!
The
surrogacy contract entered into with Brandy was very comprehensive and covered
a number of important issues; including that she agreed to medical screening to
confirm that she was fit to carry a pregnancy, agreed to notify any change in
her address and not to move to another state, agreed to follow medical
instructions of her doctor at all times and to change her lifestyle whilst
pregnant as required and to refrain from any risks whilst pregnant, sign
whatever court documents were necessary to establish our legal rights as
parents at any time, refrain from breast-feeding the baby after delivery, agree
to remain celibate during the window in which the IVF embryo transfer were due
to occur (to avoid the awful possibility of her falling pregnant with her own
baby instead of ours, which I had learnt from a Channel 4 documentary called
"Addicted to Surrogacy" had happened to one couple from the UK who
subsequently adopted that baby, despite it having no genetic connection to
them). The contract also stated that
Brandy would agree to our instructions in the event that the baby had a
terminal congenital abnormality, i.e. abortion, although we knew in reality
that a US court could not enforce this provision against a surrogate.
On
our part, we agreed to assume all legal and financial risk for the baby once
born (not matter what), despite there being any problems with extinguishing any
parental rights of Brandy and to discharge all the costs and compensation that
we were liable for. This included making
full payment to the surrogate if the baby died after 28 weeks and being fully
at risk if the surrogate's medical insurance company declined to make a payment
under her insurance. We also had to
agree to have valid wills with alternative guardians appointed to collect the
baby from Brandy in the event that we both died whilst she was pregnant. DH also had to agree to medical screening,
which involved couriering a large number of vials of his blood across the
Atlantic via DHL in a refrigerated medical container, after the vials were specially
calibrated/spun around in some machine to avoid coagulation (achieved thanks to
a special friend who worked at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin).
Part of the matching process involved DH
and I paying for Brandy and her partner, Danny to fly from Jacksonville to
Connecticut to have medical screening to confirm that she was fit to carry
about pregnancy. I wondered why this was
necessary when she had successfully delivered a healthy baby the previous year,
but it was explained that the C-section may have resulted in scar tissue in her
uterus and they wanted to rule that out.
The mounting cost of everything was quite stressful. DH and I were due to make the second and
final payment to Circle of about 50,000K once the contract with Brandy was
signed. We had been madly saving in the
time waiting to be matched, but also benefitted from the amazing generosity of
DH's parents who contributed a chunk of this second payment. In the meantime we put all flights to USA and hotels etc onto our credit cards to be paid off at a later date.
Whilst
all of the legal and medical formalities were being dealt with, Brandy and I
got to know each other more and more through calls, emails and Skype. We got on really well and I got forward to
looking forward to daily contact. My
sister flew to Dublin in July with her 6 month old twin boys and we all Skyped
with Brandy together. Brandy got to see
me holding my little nephews (which was really lovely and exciting and not at all painful with the prospect of
maybe know becoming parents ourselves – for real – within the next 12 months or
so) and Brandy got to know my sister too.
It was like I now had a partner and friend on my side in the
never-ending battle to become a mother.
DH and I had always been a team but now there was additional support and
encouragement and Brandy was as motivated to carry a baby for us as we were to
become parents. Although we executed the
contract in late June without having met face to face, Brandy had indicated
that she would really like us to meet in advance of the embryo transfer in
Connecticut and so, whilst it was not stipulated by Circle or mandated in the
contract, DH and I agreed to fly over to Georgia for a long weekend to meet
Brandy, her partner and her three children.
Whilst DH and I originally thought we were flying over to give Brandy
reassurance by meeting us in person before the embryo transfer, it transpired
that meeting Brandy in person and seeing her home, the town where she lived
(including the local hospital), meeting her kids and her parents was probably
more beneficial and comforting from our perspective. It was stressful and tiring taking two
separate flights to fly to the USA for less than 72 hours. DH and I had a stupid row about sourcing take-out
food in the hotel room when we arrived into Jacksonville late on a Friday
evening in mid-August, but overall the weekend went amazingly well. We met Brandy in the hotel lobby the
following morning. We kissed and hugged
like old friends but it was the first time we were meeting in person. Brandy’s partner Danny was an absolute
Southern gentleman and her children were so bright, polite and charming. Danny was also divorced and had completed his
family with his ex-wife. Between them,
Brandy and Danny had 5 teenage children and laughingly explained that they did
not want any babies together. Brandy was
so sure that she did not want more children that she had her tubes tied many
years ago. This was pretty good to
know! Her daughters called me by my
first name prefaced with the word "Miss…”.
They won me over immediately with their Southern manners. The atmosphere of the town in which she lived
seemed familiar to me, I guess from having grown up in the humidity of
sub-tropical Australia. I could picture
our child being born in Georgia to Brandy.
More than anything, that weekend spent with Brandy cemented our trust in
her. It was apparent to us that she was
incredibly sincere and being able to picture where she lived and meet all her
family simply reinforced everything we already knew. She invited us into her house (which was
immaculate and clearly was always kept this way), although we preferred to stay
in a local motel so that we all had a bit of privacy and down-time over the
weekend. We did not talk too much about
surrogacy or the future or expectations - the whole weekend was more about
having fun, hanging out and getting to know each other. My strongest memory of those 48 plus hours
though is walking along a beach with Brandy, with our sandals in our hand while
we walked bare-foot with the ocean lapping at our feet and her explaining to
me, out of the blue, that whilst she carried baby Marco as a surrogate she felt
love for him whilst he was inside her but that she always knew that he was not
her baby but Paul and Sarah’s. She
explained that she still felt deep affection for Marco but that she did not
feel any loss by him going home to France with his parents. Brandy knew intuitively that this is what
most intended mothers would be concerned about – whether she could hand the baby
over to the mother and the father. My
heart soared at hearing those words – I wanted a surrogate to love my baby
whilst they nurtured and grew him or her but also feel happy for DH and I to
take over from the moment they were born.
Our time in Georgia was wonderful and as we said our good-byes we were
full of excitement, as we had plans to meet in Connecticut in two weeks’ time
for our embryo transfer.
DH and I flew from Dublin to NYC
(JFK) two weeks later, in early September 2011.
As luck would have it, DH had Irish-American cousins that lived in
Connecticut, not too far from the IVF clinic that would do the embryo
transfer. DH had hung out with his
Irish-American cousins frequently when he had lived in the States for a few
years in his early 20s. We had not
planned on asking to stay with his cousins but they had visited Dublin in the
summer months earlier in the year and the subject of our attempt to become
parents via surrogacy just happened to come up.
They were excited to hear that we would be over to the USA soon and
insisted that we stay with them. DH’s
cousins were so supportive and sweet.
They loaned us one of their cars (complete with Satnav) and the fact
that we stayed with them over a long weekend and borrowed their car saved us a
lot of money.
DH and I had arranged to meet
Brandy and Danny at their hotel and we travelled together in their rental car
to the IVF clinic. After our embryos had
been received at Connecticut Fertility Associates from SHER (Sher Institute for
Reproductive Medicine) NYC, we had been told that despite our express
instructions to the contrary, that SHER had frozen our two precious embryos
together, on the one straw. This meant that we were forced to use both embryos
at the same time, as we could not de-frost the straw and use one and then
re-freeze the sole remaining embryo. DH
and I were very upset and angry. We did
not like the idea of asking a surrogate to carry twins for us due to the
increased risks to her health during pregnancy and also, the increased chances
of premature labour and complications with twin babies. DH and I had witnessed first-hand the anxious
weeks my sister had waited for her premature twin baby boys to be released from
hospital after being born at 34 weeks and requiring oxygen and intensive
medical care. Brandy assured us that she
was happy to have a double embryo transfer.
After successfully carrying her own twins, she felt confident about
carrying twins as a surrogate. DH and I
were left with a bad choice; of using the two embryos or using one, and
abandoning the other, in the knowledge that our chances of success would be
lessened (I suspect that IVF clinics freeze embryos together in order to force
couples to undertake double or triple transfer and thus increase their success rates
and put them up the league tables of top IVF clinics). It had also turned out that SHER/SIRM had lied
to us (in writing!) about the quality of the embryos; we had been told that we
had "two perfect blastocyst embryos"
but only one of them was graded A and the second was graded B. I felt bad that I had given incorrect
information to Brandy – she could have chosen to be matched with a couple with a
good number of top grade day 5
(blastocyst) embryos but she had committed to working with DH and I with our
less than impressive chances for success.
We all talked about it and decided to transfer both embryos.
The embryo transfer went
smoothly; it was done by a doctor (who Brandy and I both jokingly called 'the Silver Fox') who positioned the embryo using ultrasound guidance (which showed on a
screen the exact position of the catheter, which was filled with liquid holding
the embryo within the uterine cavity).
All 4 of us, DH, me, Brandy and Danny felt excited and emotional. I was genuinely touched by how emotional
Danny was for DH and I, considering he was there to support Brandy. It turned out he was also supporting us. His eyes got a little teary and he squeezed my
hand and said "You are going to be
parents!”. DH learnt over and kissed
Brady at the top of her forehead and said “Thank you so much Brandy” after the
doctor confirmed the embryo had been successfully positioned. There was little to do now but wait.
We had agreed, after Brandy had
asked me whether there was anything that I would like to ask her to do/what I
would usually do myself after an embryo transfer, that she would go back to her
hotel and do bed rest for the remainder of the day. I had also bought her a ripe pineapple so that
she could eat the core, after reading that the enzymes might aid
"implantation” of the embryo. I
never intended to have a list of requests for Brandy that included asking her
to do bed rest or eat a pineapple core, but she was so sweet and seemed so eager
to make DH and I feel supported in our pursuit of a successful outcome that I
felt comfortable in making those requests.
It seemed no big deal that she would do them, on my behalf, even if a
large part of it was just to humour me and make me feel less anxious and that
everything was going to work!. We agreed
to meet the following night for dinner at a local restaurant.
DH and I then headed to a local
shopping mall in Stamford, CT to get some lunch, after the embyro transfer. All of a sudden, after the initial excitement
and emotion of the embryo transfer, I felt my mood darkening. I told DH I wanted to go look at a Barnes and
Noble bookstore alone. I spent what must
have been at least half an hour walking through book shelves before I realised
what it was that was bothering me; here we were in America, having found an
AMAZING woman who was prepared to carry a baby for us and I still felt this
sense of loss and bitterness; I thought "well….that’s it now, I guess I am never going to get to feel my own
baby kicking inside of me. I really
never will be pregnant - ever again".
I was a little taken a back at my (final) bitter wave of anger and
regret. But within minutes I had pulled
myself together and decided, “well at least
with Brandy we have a chance and could end up with a living baby…we will never
have that with me….” I decided to
‘keep my eye on the prize’ and never told DH about my little dip in emotions,
post-transfer.
That evening, DH and I went out
for some beers with his cousin and we tried our hardest to unwind. It was a surreal experience - to now be
waiting to see whether we may have a chance of parenthood through surrogacy. I
kept reminding myself of the low odds and that even if Brandy were to get a
positive pregnancy result, that would just be the first hurdle and there would
be a long wait to see whether everything would work out. If anyone had ever told me years earlier that
we would be attempting surrogacy, I would never have believed them.
After the transfer I had tried
calling our egg donor, Maria, who I had told of our plans via email for the
weekend. We were also going to try and
meet up, as she was living not too far away from CT at the time. But when I called her cell, I got her voicemail. I left a message telling her that things had
gone well with Brandy and that we had been thinking of her and that we were so
grateful that she had made our chance of a baby possible. I had made a patchwork quilt for Maria after
carefully choosing fabric that I sensed matched her personality and taste and
had bought it with me, carefully wrapped, in my carry-on luggage from Dublin
along with some shamrock earrings. I waited anxiously for the remainder of the
weekend to hear back from her and took it to heart when she did not return my call. I thought maybe I was expecting too much of
her by taking her up on her offer to meet.
Maybe she was having second thoughts about meeting up. She was a lot younger than me and perhaps
felt self-conscious to be meeting an older couple to whom she had donated her
eggs. I hoped that the fact that we
never got to speak or meet up over the weekend did not mean she had any regrets
or doubts about her decision to be an egg donor. I realised much later, that, of course, my anxious
thoughts were completely misguided. She
just happened to work crazy, unsociable hours and it was for no other reason
that a meeting did not work out.
DH and I met Brandy and Danny at
a local Italian restaurant the following night.
We were both due to fly back to
Dublin and Jacksonville the next day. I
remember we had a lot of fun at dinner; we joked alot and enjoyed the meal. It must have prompted two elderly couples
next to us to ask how we all knew each other - we had rather divergent accents,
one Irish, one Australia and two native Georgian accents. All four of us looked at each other and tried
not to laugh and Brandy said, quick as a flash, "oh we are penpals."
Surrogacy is not quick or easy to explain to strangers; that you happen to
be meeting in Connecticut to, hopefully, make a baby! After the meal we hugged goodbye.
Back in Dublin I emailed Brandy
every day and we spent a lot of time discussing whether she “felt pregnant” or
not. She was completely honest and said
she did not think she had any early symptoms.
She could remember what those were like as she had been pregnant as a
surrogate the year before. She agreed,
at our request, to do the old ‘pee on a stick’ test at home the day before she
was due to go into a satellite IVF clinic in Jacksonville for a blood
test. It was a Sunday and we wanted to
be put out of our misery before the working week started. Brandy telephoned me at around 6 am her time/11
am our time on Sunday and from the tone of her voice, I knew instantly the
result was negative. She sounded very
upset and I felt so bad for her. I felt
guilty that the negative result, and our crappy bad luck, was now making her
feel so low. She said sorry to me and I
said sorry to her. Her embryo transfer
for the other couple she carried a baby for had worked the very first
time. She had never experienced
disappointment or an embryo transfer that did not work and I think she was
shocked at the result. Whereas, DH and I
had been there so many times before that I think we may have taken the bad news
a little better than Brandy did. Our
expectations were had been realistic.
Brandy was stuck (for the time being) with a broke couple from Ireland
with no more frozen embryos. It seemed
we had come to the end of the road.
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