IP Stories

We thought it would help you get a better feel for Surrogacy UK by asking some of our existing members to tell you a bit about their stories:

Sabreena, Rob and Vanessa’s story

“Being born without a womb slightly scuppered Rob and my plans to have a large family. Knowing this from a very young age meant I had plenty of time to research my options.  We liked Surrogacy UK because of the friendly atmosphere both in cyberspace and in real life.

We were lucky enough to meet the lovely Vanessa and her incredible family (the irreplaceable Kyle, the kids; Sean, Chad, Tali and super-nan and grandad Lucy and Alan).  The whole family worked as a great team to help us complete our family in as smooth a surrogacy journey as you can possibly imagine.  I had the best Mothers Day that year – my card consisted of an email photograph of three positive pregnancy tests (Vanessa wanted to be absolutely sure).

One of the best and worst moments of our surrogacy journey happened very early on.  At ten weeks Vanessa called me to say that she had been bleeding on and off for a while.  She had already made an appointment to go to an early pregnancy unit the next day.  Rob had been working all night and was devastated when he couldn’t come with us.  Vanessa and I sat in the waiting room quiet and anxious (we would not have been recognisable by anyone who knows how noisy we are normally).  The ultrasound scan seemed to take ages.  The technician then announced she could see two heartbeats.  Tears of relief flowed down both our faces followed by looks of incredulity and more tears as we took in her comments that we were actually now expecting two babies!

You cannot believe the joy Rob experienced when I sent him a text explaining we hadn’t lost one baby but rather gained twins!

The pregnancy was very smooth for Vanessa thereafter, much to our relief.  Nadia Vanessa and Yasmin Anastasia were born by caesarean section at 37 weeks.  To this day Rob and I continue to be incredulous at our luck at having a biggish family despite me being born without a womb.

As time has passed our two gorgeous girls have grown into fiercely independent and confident young ladies (three going on forty). We never cease to be grateful to the SUK friendship first ethos.  We see Vanessa and her family regularly and the girls glow with excitement at the thought of a day out with their surroblings.  Conferences and meetings are a great opportunity to discuss how they came to be – ‘mummy’s tummy’s broken and Nadia and Yasmin slept in Aunty Vees tummy’.

We can’t thank Surrogacy UK, and Vanessa and her family, enough for allowing us to rejoin the human race.” (Sabreena)

Mark and Charlie’s story

“We started talking about having children 8 or 9 years ago.  We looked at adoption first of all but it didn’t feel right for us, and after a bit of research we heard about SUK.  The law had only just changed to allow gay couples to apply for Parental Orders, and SUK immediately welcomed us as their first same-sex couple in 2008.

Since then we’ve met the most amazing people: intended parents, surrogates, and all around us the families that have been created through SUK.  We’ve made some incredible friendships, most importantly with Dawn, Sian and Soo, and with their amazing families.  Soo donated her eggs for us in early 2010, and this allowed us to create embryos that we froze.  Sian then made the incredible offer to be our Surrogate Mother but very sadly medical problems got in the way of our plans.  She is now our official “Cheerleader!”

Last year we were lucky enough to meet and become close friends with Dawn, and we went through 4 cycles of IVF with her, using all the embryos that we had created.  Sadly we never got the two little lines on the pregnancy test that we so desperately wanted, but that hasn’t stopped us: Dawn made the offer to try straight surrogacy instead and, incredibly, we got pregnant first time!  At the time we’re writing this, in August 2011, she’s pregnant with our baby, and that is the most amazing feeling in the world.

Throughout all of this we’ve been kept going by our family and friends, and by each other, but it would have been 100 times harder without the support of SUK.  We’d say that, all in all, our experience has not been easy.  We never expected it to take so long, and going through cycle after cycle of IVF was tough.  Many IPs coming to SUK will have been through this already.  What we know now, more than ever, is that surrogacy through friendship is the only way.  I just don’t think we’d have persevered if we didn’t have the genuine, close friendship with Dawn and with her family that we have, and if we’d given up, we wouldn’t be where we are today: planning for the birth of our baby.

(Mark and Charlie)

Fiona and Andy’s story

“When I’d been dating Andy for about 4 months, I finally plucked up courage to tell him that I have MRKH (www.mrkh.org.uk) and therefore can’t carry children and that the only way I could have babies would be if someone else did it for me.  Luckily for me, he didn’t run the other way fast and we started looking into surrogacy a few months later. Like most people these days, I started by googling surrogacy, came across SUK and started by joining the message boards.  Within weeks our evenings were transformed as, instead of watching telly or chatting over dinner, I’d be on the boards learning about how surrogacy works and bantering on msn with the friends I’d made there.  The dramas and gossip were unbeatable (who needs EastEnders) and I was shocked to find that I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

More importantly, at our first SUK conference, we met Kate and Dennis; Andy had a few beers and a bit of a laugh with Dennis when they were in the same quiz team on the Saturday night.  When I logged on after the conference,  I was v. excited to find that Kate wanted to be my friend on msn.  Six months and a thousand hours on msn later, we were all together in a country park just before our wedding and Kate gave us a hand-embroidered picture which she’d been working on for weeks.  It was just typical of her kindness and it’s a treasured symbol of our friendship…… but even that paled into insignificance when they gave us their other gift…. the offer to help us start our family.  As someone who had expected to grow old without becoming a parent, I will never be able to thank them enough for the experience of going through my wedding knowing that I had every chance of being a mum within the first few years of marriage. It was a delicious secret which we kept to ourselves for a long time.

Eight months later, we started treatment and were lucky first time using embryos which we had frozen ahead of time.  Hannah Christie was born eighteen months after we were married and has been hilarious and utterly adored ever since.  I think the moment it hit home that I really was a mum was when she was about 9 weeks old and we were at a baby music class; I found myself singing “the wheels on the bus” in the middle of a church hall with tears streaming down my face because I had just absorbed the wonder of our good luck.

Incredibly, though, that isn’t the end of our story.  Six months after Hannah was born, Kate and Dennis offered to help us have a sibling, IVF was successful first time again and, 11 days after Hannah’s second birthday, we welcomed Fraser George.  Now Hannah’s nearly three and Fraser’s 10 months old and totally desperate to crawl.  He falls flat on his face a hundred times a day and just keeps picking himself up and trying again. He’s just mastered clapping, which gives him untold joy. For me, I think he’s the best looking and little boy in the world, with the kindest nature, but I guess that’s normal maternal bias.  In fact, we’re just a normal family in every way.  And we feel complete.

Both the children just love the time we all spend with Aunty Kate, Uncle Dennis and their children – we are now an extended family and we don’t know whether to be more happy to have them in our lives or to be a family due to their kindness.” (Fiona)