So the journey begins.
I’m Lou. After nearly 4 years of trying for a baby, getting the tests done for IVF we are here, at surrogacy. Rick my husband, suggested we write a blog to document our journey and also to maybe help other couples to try and navigate the process. We will share our mistakes, our learnings and the path we chose and how we got to the finish line step by step. I say that as, right now, I only see us with a healthy baby.
I do not see failure as an option.
I never imagined I would be at this point. I always thought I would have the picture perfect baby journey. The positive pregnancy test, the tears, the growing bump, the ultrasound scan, the emotional reveal to our family and friends and finally the birth which I secretly was looking forward to. We are nearly 4 years married and I have navigated the question of are we trying for a family more times than I can count. I continuously smiled on the outside, passed it off with a joke about travelling whilst on the inside the pang of longing hit me like a train.
Being a teacher, I was always the one who cooed over babies and was the called upon babysitter, not having children was not an option. I always said “by any means necessary” but never actually imagined the reality of it, or considered the reality of it. I have done all the right things, the pre-natal vitamins, the cutting out my beloved caffeine and alcohol, religiously doing ovulation kits and tracking my cycles and finally seeing the best fertility doctors in London.
To be clear we do have fertility issues, Rick is only suitable for ICSI and I have low AMH levels. I also have epilepsy, controlled, but I am on polytherapy and one of those making pregnancy quite dangerous and the chance of having seizures whilst pregnant and my life turning upside down can’t be ignored.
The only person I had ever known or heard of doing surrogacy was Kim Kardashian, hardly someone I could call on for advice. It is just so far removed from my reality. I found myself in a very lonely place.
I also felt very sad, deeply deeply sad. That I wouldn’t get the experiences listed above, that if we chose this path someone else would feel the kicks, feel my baby grow and birth my baby. I felt a deep sense of loss whilst I knew I would be gaining something amazing. We were also going to be going with the avenue of an egg donor so I was also dealing with the fact that biologically my baby would never be mine. As we had discussed adoption this was not a huge deal for me. Maybe it will be in the next few weeks, but as it will be biologically Rick’s I’m pretty confident it will be ok. And I truly believe this baby will be made with love, even if it wasn’t made by us in the traditional way.
Surrogacy poses a huge legal problem that we hadn’t envisaged and something that will be my biggest compromise in this whole journey. It also added extra complexity to our journey. I am Irish and Rick is British. I wanted my child to have an Irish passport, especially with Brexit looming. But Ireland does not recognise the Intended Parents (IP) as parents, even if the birth country did. In the UK you can apply for a parental order which will do this if one of the parents is British that will give them citizenship by descent. This means that we would need to live in the UK at least initially. Ireland would not recognise me as the mother of my child. I would be able to apply for guardianship of my child when they are two years old but if we wanted to live in Ireland I would not be able to register him/her at a doctors surgery, school trips, travel, and a myriad of other things. It is a minefield.
My country, that I deeply love is sticking the knife in and twisting it. I would need to start seeing the UK as my home for the long term if I wanted to be recognised as the legal mother of my child. We needed to find out if Ireland would recognise their citizenship as a British citizen, which they would be entitled to due to my husband’s genetic connection, after the parental order process was completed . The original birth cert would apparently be sealed in some countries or in others the IPs go straight on the birth certificate. Would the new birth cert meet the criteria of proof of birth or would DNA testing be required and my heart would break into tiny little pieces? So many questions and we knew we needed to speak to a lawyer that had experience with surrogacy but also UK & Irish law.
I didn’t choose to be in this position, this is not my desired path. But I certainly will be the mother of my child and let the journey begin.
