Mommies Magazine

Surrogacy: A Gift from the Heart — Times Two

Posted on 27. Feb, 2009 by Susan Heim in Loving & Living with Twins & Multiples

“You can try again,” the doctor told Kim. “This is nature’s way of taking care of something that wasn’t meant to be.”

“Not meant to be? Tell that to my heart,” Kim replied.

After five miscarriages, Kim just couldn’t handle another disappointment.

Later that day, she sobbed out her pain and anguish to her friend Helen. Suddenly, Helen realized she could answer Kim’s prayer for a child.

“Let me carry a baby for you,” she offered.

At first, Kim thought it was a crazy idea. “I can’t ask you to do that,” she told Helen.

“Don’t be silly,” Helen said. “All I have to do is carry the baby for nine months; you have to raise the child. Just think about it.”

Thus began Helen Zanone’s journey into surrogacy.

A surrogate is a woman who agrees to become impregnated via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or intra-uterine insemination (IUI) to carry a child for an intended parent or parents. With traditional surrogacy, the surrogate uses her own eggs and is impregnated through IUI. A gestational surrogate has no biological connection to the child she carries and is impregnated through IVF with the eggs and sperm of the intended parents or donors. No national statistics are kept on surrogacy, but the Organization of Parents through Surrogacy estimates that there have been approximately 10,000 births via surrogates in the United States since the mid-1970s. And it is not uncommon for these pregnancies to result in multiple births as IVF increases the chance that multiples will be conceived.

In the true story above, which appears in its entirety in the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Twins and More, Kim found that using a surrogate was the answer to years of unfulfilled longing for a child. In fact, the pregnancy resulted in twins! It’s not too difficult to comprehend the rewards of surrogacy for the intended parents, but what about the surrogate? Why would a woman put her life (and that of her family’s) on hold for a year, risk her health with up to nine months of pregnancy, only to surrender the baby (or babies) she carried inside her?

For Sharon LaMothe, a two-time gestational surrogate, “Seeing the look on the parents’ faces when their babies are in their arms—happy, healthy and wanted—is a great feeling.” Surrogate Angelina Ramos was thrilled to be carrying twins for a couple “because everything they had ever dreamed of was about to come true.” Stacie Lykins concurs. “Nothing can compare to the experience in the operating room of witnessing the intended parents hear their babies’ first cry…. That I could help them become parents—nothing can compare to that feeling.”

But despite their noble intentions, surrogates sometimes come under attack. People ask: How could you give up a child that you carried and nurtured inside your body? The women interviewed for this article all agreed that it was a matter of mindset. Helen Zanone explained, “Even before I was pregnant, I kept saying ‘their baby’ anytime I talked about it. These babies were not related to me in any way.” Stacie Lykins clarifies, “I made sure it was clear in my mind before I even became pregnant that these were not my babies. I was a gestational carrier, and they were not biologically related to me. My mindset from the beginning was that I was carrying these children for someone else.”

Another criticism that surrogates hear is that they’re “in it for the money.” Stacie Lykins retorts, “No amount of money is worth a 24/7 job for nine months and more. Many surrogates go through multiple attempts to get pregnant. They go through hormone shots, pills, mood swings—there’s so much more involved than with a traditional pregnancy. Women who go through all this for the money are few and far between.” Sharon LaMothe adds, “When you look at what the surrogate actually makes, and how she’s spending about a year’s time ‘on the job,’ she’s making less than minimum wage.”

All four of the surrogates quoted in this article carried twins, sometimes twice! But none of them had any qualms about their decision to become a surrogate in spite of the risks of a multiple birth. Says Sharon LaMothe, who carried two sets of twins, “I was happy for the intended parents each time. Being able to give them twins when the surrogacy process is so expensive in the first place is an added bonus for them.” Helen Zanone admits that she panicked at first when she found she was pregnant with twins, but “now that it is said and done, that was the easiest pregnancy out of all of them. I was excited when I found out I was pregnant with identical twins.”

Building a family, these women insist, is what surrogacy is all about. Sharon LaMothe shares, “It’s also great knowing that you’ve helped shape an entire family by providing grandchildren to grandparents, nieces and nephews to aunts and uncles, and so on. You’ve impacted an entire family, which is a wonderful feeling.” None of the surrogates interviewed have any regrets about their surrogacy experiences. The conclusion of Helen Zanone’s story in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Twins and More sums up the rewards of surrogacy perfectly:

Next thing I knew, Kim was holding her twin boys—the twins she had longed for since her first miscarriage. Kissing the tops of their downy soft heads, the sweet baby smell lingered under her nose. Removing their blankets, she counted all twenty toes and fingers. They were perfect gifts from God.

Tears filled her eyes as she leaned toward my ear. Her voice shaking, she spoke barely more than a whisper, “Thank you. Thank you.”

This article also appears in the March/April 2009 issue of Twins Magazine.