The Next Best Thing: Our Journey to Surrogacy pt. 1

Hearing the doctors tell me I will never be able to carry my own child was harder to hear than the fact that I have cancer. For years, I have wanted to be pregnant, I have wanted to feel the growth of my baby in my belly, share weird cravings, have morning sickness, know my baby is safe. Probably more than being a mother, I wanted to be pregnant. To have that connection with my own flesh in blood, that I grew. I wanted to be God’s carrier for our future children.

This dream has been torn from me, thanks to my cancer diagnosis. Because I have a hormone receptive cancer, having a baby could cause my cancer to grow more rapidly and kill me. So, what do I do?

Since, October 2019, I have grieved my past life. A lot has changed. I have come to terms with my new normal. I am tired constantly, I see doctors more than friends/family, I hear “I am so sorry” on a daily basis, I know all of my friends who had friends who have friends who died of cancer (as always, thank you for sharing), and I hear regularly that I am an “inspiration.” This has become normal and I have come to accept all of this. What I have not come to accept is my inability to be pregnant.

In October, we went through one round of IVF to harvest eggs to turn into embryos. With that one round, I was able to produce 25 eggs (almost unheard of), 14 were able to be fertilized, and five became viable for implantation. At this time, I was unaware of the fact that those five eggs would not be transferred to my womb. (Apparently everyone else knew but me.)

In March 2020, we went to MD Anderson to get a second opinion and learn about my options for after active treatment. We learned that I would be a cocktail of Herceptin and Perjeta for the rest of my life. These two drugs help to keep my cancer dormant. I would also need to keep my ovaries shut down forever, whether that is chemically through Lupron or with surgery later on, we are still undetermined. All of the above inhibits me to carry a baby. I started to feel my future slip through my fingers.

I started to question why I even wanted kids, was this a good idea to try and push forward, am I being selfish for wanting to raise a child while I have cancer? Sam and I talked, and we decided that growing our family for us was important, and we have no idea what the future holds. God has a larger plan for us, and all signs point to surrogacy.

We spent one full weekend researching surrogacy and we had a few questions:

Could we afford the $100K to bring one child in the world?

Cancer has not been cheap. We started to look into grants to help pay for the surrogate, but we did not qualify for the grants or we would have to pay $500 to just apply. That is $500 we could use towards the actual surrogacy. We decided that $100K is a small fee to raise the next generation of leaders. We would be moving forward; we will figure out a way to pay.

Would I be okay to have someone grow my baby?

This was the hardest question for me. I am a huge control freak and panic over someone doing something wrong and hurting my child. I am not sure if I am going to be able to keep it together while someone else is growing my baby. This is a huge responsibility. But this is our only option and I will pray for patience and security during this time. We will be pushing forward.

Do we use an agency or try to find family or friends to bake our baby?

We would have loved to use a family member or friend, but this is a lot to ask someone. After a bunch of research, we landed on an agency here in Austin. This agency handles everything from the match to lawyers to the actual birth. We know we are going to need all the help we can get, and we felt comfortable with this agency to shepherd us through this difficult time.

What the hell are we doing?

Short answer: we have no clue. We are praying frequently, researching and asking every question we have. But we have put our faith in God and people much smarter than us for this next step. We have filled out our intended parent questionnaire and now wait for the agency to find us a match. I have no clue what the next steps will look like, but I am anxious to get there. What I do know is we want to be very involved in the pregnancy. We would want to be at doctor’s appointments, getting updates frequently, being able to feel the baby move or see the surrogate and talk about what is happening.

I will never get to carry our child and will be living through the surrogate in these moments. I want the baby to know our voices, my heartbeat, I don’t want us to be strangers to our baby when we first meet outside the womb. Our surrogate will have the unique opportunity to come into our family in a special way, and we are really looking forward to meeting her.