Pursuing Surrogacy

Craig and I have prayed a lot, talked to our families, and have decided to pursue having another child through surrogacy. When I first found out I lost my uterus, I was absolutely devastated. I knew that I still had my ovaries and surrogacy was an option, but this whole surrogacy thing was all really new to me and brought a roller coaster of emotions. I really struggled with this idea at first! Since I was able to carry our first child and do things the way I wanted, the thought of someone carrying our second child that wasn't me was very scary. I would have to trust her and let go of control... and if you know me, I like to be in control. It took me a few months but I eventually warmed up to the idea, as having a bigger family is always something Craig and I dreamed of.

We were referred to the Regional Fertility Clinic in Calgary, where we met with a doctor who explained the whole process of surrogacy and what it would look like for us. She had told us that we needed to get some initial testing done to see how everything looked since my surgery, and to do a checkup. Once we found someone to be our surrogate, she said it would take about 4 months to do a mock cycle and get myself and the surrogate onto the same 'schedule'. Craig and I left feeling really hopeful and excited.

Craig and I begun the process with some initial testing in June 2017, along with 6 weeks of blood work for me. We went back to the fertility clinic at the end of August for our results. The doctor told us that unfortunately with the lack of blood flow to my ovaries, my eggs were aging quite a bit, my FSH levels were high and that my follicle count in my ovary was very low for someone my age. The reason I say ovary is because they can only find one of my ovaries at this point - the other one is floating somewhere. So she told us that we either needed to find a surrogate as soon as possible or we needed to freeze my eggs. We left the clinic and I started to bawl - I felt like all of this was my fault and I was just devastated. I guess I was just so hopeful from our initial meeting, and then we had yet another set back.

So Craig and I again prayed about this a lot and decided that we would send a letter to all our family and friends. We had a few people ask questions about what was involved for being a surrogate but nothing really came of it. I started to look into several agencies and talked to some women who had experience in going this route. This made me (and I think Craig) very anxious as we wouldn't know the woman and that there are several horror stories (and amazing stories, I might add) out there. We re-evaluated and decided together that this is something we both really wanted. So we created a profile together and sent it to one agency.

I feel like God has been watching over us throughout this whole process because that same day I sent in our profile to the agency, I was as a women's group at our church and something pretty amazing happened. I was talking to a small group of women, when my story came up. The ladies had mentioned that I should go talk to another woman there who was a Doula and might have some insight for me...

Who would have known that this woman I was about to share my story with would be the woman who was going to carry a child for us.