LET’S TALK SURROGACY!

It’s been 4 years since I first opened up about the struggles my husband and I were facing in trying to start our family.

At that point, I had undergone a year of IVF treatments: 2 surgeries, 4 retrievals, 2 failed transfers and 269 shots. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would be another 3 years before we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our journey was long, complicated and seemingly met with new challenges at every stage. Our 4 year fertility journey was also marked by other major life traumas: I lost my Mom to terminal cancer, we lived through a global pandemic in isolation from friends, family and loved ones, and we packed up our life and moved across the country to Los Angeles, IVF needles and meds in tow. In writing about what we went through, I hope to provide some authentic transparency into a real person’s story, and to normalize the conversation around different ways of family planning and building.

Now, after 3 surgeries, 8 retrievals, 4 failed transfers, and over 600 total injections of wild hormones that ravaged my mind and body for years, we are in a VERY different place than we envisioned having a baby (babies!) would look like. If someone had told me at the start of this all that our journey would unfold the way it did, there’s no way in hell I would have done it. But knowing we made it here and having learned what we did, I wouldn’t change a thing.

It still seems almost too surreal to say, but over the last 6 months we welcomed 2 brand new babes via 2 different surrogates. James and Mia were born exactly 17 weeks apart to the day — not the path we ever imagined navigating, but one that has had such a profound impact on our lives. Surrogacy is amazing, beautiful, excruciating, complicated, expensive, stressful and so much more than I can even name at the moment. Most notably, it is NOT the quick and straightforward solve that we anticipated it being after so many years of failure and disappointment that led to it.

Our incredibly brave, resilient, and selfless surrogate Tori endured two devastating miscarriages before her third pregnancy successfully brought us our beautiful son James in August. Navigating those additional losses with Tori after having suffered so much loss on our own was complicated. We were each dealing with our own grief, attempting to hold space for each other, and searching for a small sliver of hope that maybe it would work if we just tried one more time. In trying to hedge against further loss and not lose more time, we made quite possibly one of the crazier decisions of our life – to work with a 2nd surrogate, Crystal, at the same time. In a not-so-unexpected turn of events (I kinda knew this would end up happening), both surrogates became pregnant just 6 months apart. Just when I had mastered the ability to be home with my newborn son alone AND take a shower in the same day, Crystal was hospitalized in early November at 29 weeks pregnant with PPROM (Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes), putting her at high risk for early labor. She remained hospitalized for five weeks (every day of which we held our breath, hoping for just one more day that she would stay inside) until delivering our tiny but mighty and sweet daughter Mia at 34 weeks. Then, we became NICU parents. All we wanted was for Mia to graduate from the NICU and get home safely. But now we have to care for 2 infants under 6 months – not a job for the faint of heart.

I’d be lying if I said I was happy about the painful road we’ve traveled to get here, but I do know deep down that it happened the way it was meant to and that it’s given me so much strength and preparation for motherhood that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. It’s also given me the invaluable lived experience of 2 different surrogate journeys, which I can now harness to help other families going through similar struggles. While I have experienced so much deep sadness, grief, loss, jealousy, resentment, and other big complicated feelings, I’ve also had to work so hard on myself: I’ve learned to show myself more grace, surrender to some things and keep fighting in other ways, to let go out of the outcome, to slow down, to take things one step at a time, the list goes on. The stinging pain of hearing my closest friends and loved ones tell me they conceived naturally (or even quickly!) is something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully shed – but I have learned the depths and subtleties of my own feelings and that it’s ok to be incredibly happy for someone while at the same time feel unable to face their joy without your own pain clouding it. I have had big ugly cries and also moments of extreme excitement and relief. I have struggled in some of my relationships while navigating this, and also created new bonds with other women on the “journey” that I feel so blessed to have in my life now.

We stop ourselves frequently to check our privilege and note how unbelievably blessed we are to even have been able to consider these alternative paths to family building that are egregiously, prohibitively expensive. Many people in our shoes would have hit a dead end well before this juncture and the fact that we had options available to us is an unbelievable privilege to say the least. It also makes me really fucking mad that the healthcare system and our society hasn’t figured out a way to make ART and surrogacy more accessible to all folks who need help expanding their families, and instead is incredibly exploitative of people at their most vulnerable moments.

Above all, 4 years of failed baby-making efforts, a pandemic, losing my Mom, and a cross-country move have been a test of our marriage and while it hasn’t been without some blow-out fights and tears, our relationship is so solid and strong, and I feel really, really proud of that. Navigating fertility and surrogacy has forced us to examine how to support one another, offer each other more compassion, and love each other in different ways at different times throughout the process. Not easy stuff.

We will forever be linked to Tori and Crystal and indebted to them for these incredible acts of kindness they have shown us. Yes, I wish we had started our family 3 years ago, yes, it kills me to hear/see my peers go on to have their 2nd and 3rd kids while I have struggled slowly to make 1 embryo, but NO – firmly NO, I would not change anything because we are right where we need to be, coming out on the other side stronger, more loving, more evolved, more thoughtful, and more ready than ever to stand up to the challenges of parenting. Mom, I know you’d be so proud of us! 💪

If you’re out there reading this and are going through it, I see you. Everything is temporary, nothing ever goes as planned, and the road is really fucking hard – but we can all do hard things. Hit me up if you want to talk about it.