I’ve got five children – aged 22, 19, 16, 11 and nine years old. But in 2024, I gave birth to another couple’s baby. Joy is now eight months old. I never felt maternally connected to her – I know she’s not mine. I’m still in touch with the parents. They send me messages and photos of Joy at least twice a week. We’ve built up a strong friendship; there needs to be a lot of trust with a surrogate.
Under UK law, my husband and I are the ones registered on the baby’s birth certificate, although the embryo was genetically theirs. It’s only when a baby is six weeks old that the “intended parents” can begin the process of applying for a parental order through the courts, and a new birth certificate is produced. Our court date is coming up.
My husband James always knew that one day I’d like to help somebody else have a child. But it felt important in our surrogacy journey that we waited until our family was complete. It meant that we could then concentrate on putting our energy into helping someone else have a family.
I’d always wanted to be a mum, but in the back of my mind I used to worry: What if I have fertility problems? Although I was lucky to conceive easily, I still understand that desperate need to have a family – and I feel empathy for anybody struggling with infertility.
In 2019, when my youngest child was about three years old, I started looking into becoming a surrogate. I put it on hold in 2020 when the pandemic hit. But two years later, I felt that yearning to do it. I was almost 40. I had already exceeded the age of being able to donate my eggs. If I didn’t do it now, I’d be too old to be a surrogate.
I love the feeling of being pregnant. Even though I’ve always felt sick at the start, it’s a beautiful thing to go through. All my labours have been straightforward – so nothing put me off doing it. I contacted My Surrogacy Journey (MSJ), where a surrogacy coordinator held my hand throughout the whole process. We went through the legal advice, had some counselling, and did basic health checks to make sure we were suitable. I’d told my eldest three children what I was going to do and they were all very proud. It was important I was in a good headspace, that I was doing it for the right reasons and that I was well supported. It is an extremely emotional journey.
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We created a profile so we could be matched with people who needed a surrogate. Then we had to pick out the profiles we felt most drawn to. Everybody has their own story and reasons for needing a surrogate – a lot of them are hard-hitting to read. I felt a pull towards the couple we chose because we had so much in common with them. We had similar backgrounds, ages, and sense of humour. When my husband got back from work, I said: “We’re on this journey together. You read through the profiles and tell me who stands out for you.” He picked the same couple. They had been through a very traumatic journey, with many failed attempts at IVF and a late pregnancy loss with twins.
MSJ set up a supported meeting with us all over Zoom. We hit it off. Then we had a period of getting to know them for three months. There is no pressure to move forward: we went out for dinner and had days out, just like you would with friends. We had a group chat we’d message on. I found it important to build a strong friendship. They already had embryos ready when they met us.
In the UK surrogates aren’t allowed to be paid – you just get reasonable expenses for travel costs or maternity clothes. I did suffer with quite a bit of backache towards the end of the pregnancy so I had a couple of pregnancy massages. I don’t want to make money from a baby – that’s not what this is about. This is about helping a couple who desperately wanted their own child and to become parents.
Unfortunately, we had a failed first transfer at the beginning of 2023, which emotionally hit us all quite hard. My husband and I had been so positive that it was going to work, so we were quite taken aback when it didn’t. It was also difficult for our intended parents to go through the process of a negative pregnancy test. We all needed a little bit of space. After a couple of month’s break, we did a second transfer. Both times, the intended parents came to the transfer with us – and the intended mum came into the treatment room with me.
It felt different this time. I couldn’t put my finger on why. Was it the soft lighting? The fact the doctor was a woman? We later found out that the doctor who had done the second transfer was the mother of a surrogate child herself, and she knew exactly how we were feeling. I must have picked up on that. I did a pregnancy test after 14 days on a WhatsApp video call with the intended parents at 7am. We waited for the results together. It was positive. There was a stunned silence. The intended parents were very emotional. By this point, even my youngest children were on board – they understood it wasn’t our baby. As I got noticeably pregnant, people would say “congratulations” – and I’d correct them straight away. “Thank you,” I’d reply. “We are carrying for another couple”.
So many more people are turning to surrogacy now to create their family and it should no longer be such a taboo subject. I also didn’t want anybody to wonder where the baby was after we’d had her.
The intended parents were always in touch. It never felt like they were checking on me, but I often had to reassure them. On the day of the birth, there was a lot of excitement and the normal fears of going into labour. The intended parents came to stay closer to us a few days before the due date. When my waters broke, we called them and then met up at my local hospital. They held my hand throughout the six-hour labour. It was a magical moment when I handed Joy to her parents and watched her with them. After everything they’d been through, knowing that we had created that family for them was an amazing feeling.
Throughout our birth plan, it was decided and agreed between all four of us that the baby would be passed to me first, while the intended parents cut the umbilical cord. Then I would be able to pass the baby over to them. I expressed the colostrum for the baby, so she went home with some of that for her first few feeds. They decided that having my breast milk wasn’t something they wanted, which was fine, so I decided to pump my breast milk and donate it to the hospital for a month. I found that it helped me with that process after pregnancy; it’s quite nice to have something else to concentrate on. I was emotional at different points, not because I felt any loss, but because of my hormones. We visited Joy at five days old and we still see her when we can. It’s lovely watching her grow.
Now I’ve started my second surrogacy journey. Hopefully we’ll have a transfer before the middle of the year. It’s all going smoothly. We are building on the relationship with the new couple just as we did the first time around. As a mother and a preschool teacher, I understand how much trust it takes to allow somebody else to look after your children. The truth is that to carry somebody else’s child is a real honour.
