Intended Parent Perspective: Bonding with our surrogate

It has been almost nine months since that unforgettable night at a Colorado hospital where our baby daughter was born.

As they say, time flies, and these past few months really have been a whirlwind of the most wonderful kind.

But let’s start at the beginning: As a male same-sex couple we always wanted children but also always knew that it might never happen. When we finally made the decision to pursue our family dream with the aid of Northwest Surrogacy Center surrogate, just over two years ago. It all seemed rather surreal when we signed the forms; that quickly changed. We met our surrogate for the first time just over half a year later and we felt an instant connection. Of course, as with all new relationship, or friendships for that matter, it took a while to get to know one another. Text messages and emails helped a lot and when the time came for transfer day, it felt we had known each other much longer than just those six months since our initial meeting.

We are lucky to live only about an hour drive from our surrogate, so we were able to attend not only the embryo transfer but also all subsequent doctor visits. During the pregnancy we also got to know our surrogate’s friends and family. Exchanging regular updates on how our surrogate and her family were doing as well as for her to know how we and our family were getting more and more excited was really important to all of us. So much better than checking our app to see what fruit-size equivalent our little embryo had grown to that week- though we did that, too.

Nothing can really describe the day of the birth, or rather the night. The due date was another few weeks out when we received a call from our surrogate’s daughter at 11pm on a Friday evening, that her mum’s water had broken and she was on the way to the hospital. Needless to say, we were in the hospital just over an hour later, finding ourselves in some emotional limbo between utter joy, concern for the health of our surrogate and our baby, and excitement that our life was about to change forever. And for the better.

It took just over six hours of labor for our little baby to make her entrance to this world and words can still not describe how immensely grateful we were for our surrogate to carry and birth our little baby girl and for us to be able to be in the room when it happened. Following the birth, we had adjacent rooms in the hospital and our surrogate and her entire family came and visited us in our room at some point in the afternoon. It was just a wonderful, happy family reunion of a slightly different kind.

After we got released from hospital, our surrogate pumped breast milk for three months, something that was also just an amazing gift. And it meant that every weekend we would do a ‘milk run’ to pick up the week’s supply. More often than not we would take our baby with us and so we got to see our surrogate recuperating from the pregnancy and the birth and she got to see our little baby, who she had carried for almost nine months, grow every week. We continue to this day to exchange text messages and emails with plenty of photos going back and forth. And in fact, we were lucky enough that she agreed to also carry our second baby- and we hope to start that process later this year.

It is difficult to describe the emotional connection and the feeling of gratitude that we have towards our surrogate. It is obviously more than just a turn of phrase when we say we could not have done this without her. And we feel very fortunate that we got matched with her and were able to live through this wonderful experience together. She really gave us the most amazing gift, who at this moment, requires some pushing on her outdoor swing, so I better run …