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June 24, 2005

A Surrogate Mother At 28

In the fall of 1993 I met a lovely woman 8 years older than I. We became friends very easily. We had similar backgrounds growing up in the south. We believed in the same fundamental principles of what children should be in our lives. We had been taught the same religious beliefs. We also believed marriage was forever and divorce wasn't an option. I worked in a little business near where she lived. We would often meet for lunch. She would come into the business and take care of whatever was on her list of errands. We saw one another alot.

Her story was one that made my heart ache. She had lupus. The antibodies she developed attacked her heart and kidneys and also was the cause of many miscarriages. For those who do not know lupus is an autoimmune disease. The body sees many things as an enemy and produces antibodies to fight off what it sees as infection and sickness. The normal ability of our body to mask our pregnancy so that our bodies do not attack the fetus is supressed. Therefore the baby is seen as foreign matter and the body attacks and kills it off.

Just before we met she had undergone another round of infertility drugs and egg harvesting. Her experience with a prior surrogate had used up all the embryos she had stored in a clinic in California. She was willing to try once more. She and her husband where both well trained professionals who had made their semi-fortune, traveled the world and lived a rather exotic life. At this point they wanted a baby, had the money to use the means available by modern science to try. Because the husband was 40 they had been denied adoption.

She was (and still is) open minded and a very loving and giving woman. She has never been selfish and some call her a guardian angel. Many never will know where the miracle of help came from. It is just her nature. She helps those who cannot help themselves and never asks for anything in return.

Surrogacy was something I had read alot about. I even knew it something I would do in the event it was presented to me and the people involved met with my own personal scrutiny. After a lot of praying, thinking and talking, I picked up the phone one day and called her house. I told her if she was willing to take the risk with me I would be willing to be her surrogate. In many ways it was a very easy thing to do. In others it was the most difficult. If things worked out I would be entrusting another woman with the life of a child -her own flesh and blood. This is not something to take lightly. Motherhood is a responsibility like no other. Even though she was older than I it was an area where I had experience and she did not.

After a few months of prayer and thinking herself she called me back. Yes, she was willing to take the risk on me if I was willing to take the risk on her. This was the beginning of the longest friendship of my adult life. We shared the same dreams of what motherhood should be. We were (and still are) so much alike.

I went through more tests than you can imagine. Physically and mentally I was turned inside out, looked at from every angle and needed legal representation to enter into the program for surrogate mothering at the fertility clinic in California. I passed muster.

The doctor once commented how much alike we were biologically. I had many of the same antibodies she had, even the ones that gave her lupus but I did not and do not have lupus. We have the same hair color, eye color, fair skin, blood type, rh factor. It is amazing really. The doctor said that was very rare to be so similar and we had a good chance of a positive outcome because being so similar my body would be less likely to reject her genetic material that was an embryo.

May 1994, all things were a go. We were waiting daily for my period to start at which point the hormone therapy would begin. I started my period on May 4th. That afternoon she came to my house and gave me the first injection of estrodiol valerate -.25cc packed in oil every 3 days. Each week I would be required to go into the doctor's office and have a sonogram to look at the growth of the unterine lining. I went to the lab and had blood drawn to determine if my body was accepting the synthetic hormones and rising steadily.

By the time a week rolled around we were in California at the clinic waiting for the doctor to decide if implantation of the embryos were possible. My blood levels were excellent. The lining of my uterus was four times the required thickness for implant. The doctor agreed I was healthy as a horse. He also encouraged us not to get our hopes up. So many things could go wrong so early.

On day 7 a call came to the hotel we were staying in and the doctor ordered the injection of 2cc progestrone daily. This causes a change in the uterine lining that makes it sticky so that an embryo has a chance to latch on and grow to a viable pregnancy. Essentially we were fooling my body into thinking it was already pregnant. Women do not produce high amounts of progesterone until an actual pregnancy takes place.

The morning of the in-vitro we prayed. We went to the clinic. She stood by my side and held my hand. The doctor came in and gave me the vaginal exam with the 'little pinch' that actually caused the cervix to open a tiny bit. (That is why we sometimes spot after a gyn visit.) A lab technician came in with a syringe and a long but tiny catheter. Gravity is all that was neccesary for 5 living embryos to drain from the syringe and into my body.

The embryos had been frozen for over six months. They were the product of her eggs and her husbands sperm. Of seven that had been thawed, 5 were living at the moment. There is no way I could give away one of my eggs. I believe those types of surrogacy are dangerous. They are also the types that appear in the news when the surrogate mother refuses to give up custody of the baby after birth.

We came home. She came everyday and gave me the shots. The two weeks waiting for the pregnancy test was the longest in the world. They day I got the results I went straight to her house. The minute she opened the door I started crying. Her face dropped thinking the worst. "Hi, Momma," I said through sniffles. I do not think I have ever seen a person more filled with happiness and joy than seeing her at that moment.

For 14 weeks she came to my house and forced 2cc of the progesterone packed in sesame oil into the mucles of my hips. For 14 weeks not only did I have the all day long morning sickness but my body was developing an intolerance for the progesterone. It was chewing it up like wildfire but at the same time it was making me sick. It took nine months AFTER the birth for the deep muscle bruising and the tenderness to leave my hips.

She took care of me the entire time as if I were her child. She brought me food. She cooked supper and dropped it off. She made all the clothes I wore. I guess at this point I should tell you that she was retired as a clothing designer. She made me clothes from the fabrics she had collected from all over the world. I was far more fashionable than any of the young women these days will hope to be. Everything was custom made for me, my body shape and size, my skin coloring, my hair. A shipping package would arrive and I would open it to find maternity bras, jeans, a winter coat I could button even at 9 months. Sometimes I would even get flowers and letters from her mother thanking me for making her daughter so happy.

She went with me to every doctors appointment. She was scared to touch me and knowing how pregnant women hated to be touched she never asked to feel the baby move. I knew she wanted to so I would take her hand and lay it on my stomach and she would laugh and cry at the same time. We shared EVERYTHING that concerned the pregnancy. I wanted to make sure she wasn't left out of the one thing she wanted more than anything in the whole world. The experience of being pregnant was lived through me.

January 27, 1995 I delivered a healthy bouncing baby boy two weeks ahead of my scheduled delivery date. It was a hard day. The labor was induced. It was so slow going. She convinced me to take the epidural and not to be brave. They gave me way too much and I went completely numb from the hips down. I could not even move my toes. This caused labor to slow down. After 12 hours my doctor came in and said, "Let's get this over with. You have suffered long enough." He ordered the putossin to be pumped up then he looked at me and said, "You can push through this and get it over with. Ready?"

God, yes, I was ready. He took one leg and bent it up as far as my knee would go toward my chest, one hand gripping the back of my calf the other gripping the bottom of my foot. He instructed my husband to do the same with my other leg. He told me to use the hand grips and when he gave the word I was to push with everything I had in me. 20 minutes later a baby boy was being cleaned up and he was putting stitches in -3 sets inside and 2 sets outside. Later I would notice the 2 sets of hand prints that shown in bruises on the backs of my calfs.

This baby's shoulders were wider than the circumfirance of his head. We later found out both of his collar bones broke during delivery. I remember hearing a pop that had given me so much relief just before he was completely out. No worries, he healed completely and perfectly. Just maybe I pushed too hard. We don't know for sure.

The physical part was grueling. The emotional part is beyond most people's understanding. I knew from the beginning this baby was not mine. His flesh was not of my flesh and there was no difficulty in going home without a baby. She stayed with me at night at the hospital. I pumped and she bottle fed him. I filled out the paperwork, the lawyers came a couple hours after the delivery with the adoption and custody papers. The legal part in no way took away from the joy of the event.

I was the vessel through which God performed a miracle. It is one of the best experiences of my life. On his birthday I would get flowers. When he was old enough to draw I was sent artwork he had made. We talk on the phone and he knows who I am. We have a wonderful relationship and she has never once tried to keep him from knowing me.

One fall after they had moved to Florida where the father is in private practice she came up for a visit. We sat at my table and had lunch. This beautiful little boy looked at me and said, "I know momma is my mommy. But you are my momma too. You loved me before she held me but she loved me before you ever knew me." All we could do is look at this beautiful boy with tears streaming down our faces. A five year old knew more than any adult ever could.

I know this post is bogged down in details. They are important details to this story. I know this post is long. Please bear with me.

You see, being a mother is so much more than a physical thing. It is spiritual. It is a conscious effort to be responsible for a life other than your own. It is a chance to give a gift, a gift of life and love. It is a chance to step beyond the bounds of everything you know and be somebody better than you ever dreamed you could be. It is also the hardest thing to do.

Colby understood the baby was not ours. She never questioned it. I made sure she understood everything that was happening. I don't think my mother completely understands why or how I did it. She accepts the fact that for me being a mother and childbirth are not the same experience she had. My sister thinks it is the most amazing thing she has ever witnessed. My grandmother never understood. It pulled us apart for a long time.

My grandmother did not understand the advances and the ability of modern medicine. She could never grasp the concept of science that made it possible for me to have another woman's baby. She always believed I gave away my baby with no thought to what I was doing. Eventually time passed and it was pushed back into the far reaches of her mind. She didn't ever talk about it again. But until the day she died she believed I gave away her greatgrandchild. Nothing could change her thinking.

My only regret, and I have very few in this life, is that I could never make her understand it was not my baby. He wasn't my child to keep. He wasn't a baby born in my heart. My body was a vessel and he was not of my flesh. He is her baby. Her flesh. Born of her heart long before he ever came to be born of my body.

Posted by Angie at June 24, 2005 12:00 AM

Comments

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