I first became interested in surrogacy in 2001 when my youngest child, my daughter, was about a year old. I had originally started out looking into being an egg donor. When I started researching egg donor websites I came across a lot of surrogacy information. I had briefly heard of surrogacy, but I had never looked into it before. The more research that I did, the more I realized that being an egg donor wouldn't be enough for me. I wanted to have more of an involvement in creating families. At the time, however, I simply did my research and decided that it would have to wait. I had two very young children, I was working full-time and I was still in the process of divorcing my ex-husband.
In 2005 I was living in Portland, Oregon and working as a unit secretary in one of the hospitals there. One of the nurses that I worked with shared her infertility struggles with me. She was an amazing woman, very intelligent and kind and compassionate. I offered to be her surrogate while we were at work one evening. She talked to her husband about it and let me know a couple of weeks later that they had decided against it. I understood their reasons for not wanting to go with surrogacy and moved on with my life. But I couldn't get the idea of surrogacy out of my head or off of my heart.
I continued doing research on surrogacy and looking into it more and more. During the summer of 2006, while Googling "surrogacy" I came across a message board about surrogacy that was full of surrogates. I had never seen anything so great before! This website was Surrogate Mothers Online, also known as SMO to those that are regulars there. I began to learn more about surrogacy than I ever had before. And the best part was that this information was straight from real surrogates! I felt like I had come home and I was more sure than ever that surrogacy was something that I was meant to do with my life.
In August of 2006 I was officially matched with a single IF from California as a Traditional Surrogate. I did my medical testing (at my own considerable expense) in September 2006 and started modifying a TS contract that I had received from another surrogate. I spoke with an attorney and made plans to have my IUD removed in December. And then I waited for the contract changes to come. And I waited. And I waited. Phone calls and emails were not returned, and I still waited. In December 2006 I had my IUD removed via hysteroscopy and under general anesthesia because the string had been cut too short. I still hadn't heard from the IF. At the beginning of March 2007 I finally ended things with the IF. I couldn't move forward with someone who wasn't as committed to the process as I was.
About 3 weeks later I found out that I was pregnant with a child of my own. Knowing that I was done with my own family and not being in a place either mentally or financially to take on parenting another child, I made the choice to find adoptive parents for the baby. I connected with "J", an IM on SMO who was very open about the fact that she and her husband were wanting to adopt. I sent and email asking if she would be interested in adopting the baby, the answer was "Yes!", and we have been fast friends ever since. On April 25, 2007 at 8 weeks and 3 days along in the pregnancy I was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy in my right fallopian tube. I was given a shot of methotrexate, which is a chemotherapy drug that stops rapidly dividing cells from dividing further and it induces miscarriage. 3 days later, on April 28, 2007, I was taken to the ER by ambulance. I was rushed into surgery because I was bleeding internally from the ectopic pregnancy. The methotrexate hadn't worked. My doctor had to remove about two-thirds of my right fallopian tube and sew it shut to keep it from bleeding any further.
The loss of J's baby made me, if anything, even more sure that surrogacy was my path. I was devastated for the loss of her baby and I offered to be her surrogate the day that I got home from the hospital. She declined because she and her husband really did want to adopt.
In August of 2007 I was again matched as a TS with a single IF, this time through an agency. I did my medical screening, my psych eval, the contract was drawn up, and we started on insems. We did 3 rounds of insems for a total of about 15 individual insems using Biotranz and none of them worked. During this time I began to be aware of things that made me very uncomfortable with the match. I contacted my agency coordinator and ended the match in January 2008.
I am taking my time in matching this time around. I want the match to be good, and I don't want to settle for anything less than my "perfect" couple. (For more information on what I'm looking for in a match, please see the page titled "My Ideal IPs")
