What about the Surrogate?

Emotions are running high this week as our pending 12 week ultra sound on Thursday and although we are excited about this we are still a bit nervous. We still haven’t had any updates on how our surrogate is doing, but we assume all is well and if anything abnormal happened they would let us know immediately.

We were able to pick up the new “baby mobile” over the weekend and this will kick off some of our planning of having a new baby. Hopefully after this week we can plan slowly for everything else that we will need to do before we bring a new baby home.

I have been thinking about the surrogate lately and how she is feeling. I know it must be strange for her to carry a child that is not her own and doing this purely for another couple and for monetary reasons.  We know so little about this women and no clue what she looks like. The hospital told us the odd bits and pieces, we know that she has three children of her own and she has had easy pregnancies and deliveries. We know that she is healthy, takes care of herself and leads a healthy lifestyle (non-smoker). As well we know that she is at a great age to carry a child, not yet 30. We do know that hospital has done its due diligence regarding proper screening, medically and psychologically and assures us that she is doing all of this for the right reasons. Our doctor Sindy had also mentioned to us that she herself chose her to carry our baby.

There are a lot of people in Panama that don’t have a lot of money, we have been told stories of women who do this so they can get enough money to provide for their families, fix plumbing, a leaky roof,  or even just makes a better life for themselves. In our case, this is the third surrogate we tried before being successful and at each failure the doctors let us know that these surrogates were devastated, knowing that they would not have the opportunity to make a great deal of money for them and their families.

Once the surrogate becomes pregnant, they are housed in a special housing unit with a nurse where they can be monitored for the first trimester and make sure they are taking care of themselves and not putting the baby at any risk. They are not allowed to stay at their own home until they are cleared after the first three months and then are able to go home for the remainder of the pregnancy with scheduled visits back to the hospital. Once the baby is born, the baby is taken from the surrogate and placed with the parents. I don’t even think the doctors hand the baby over to the surrogate to even hold for a moment.  After a long 9 months of carrying another couple’s child inside them, their job is now complete.

I have to give credit and appreciation to these women who spend this amount of commitment helping out couples that cant’s carry children of their own and the surrogate that is helping Daniel and me. We do understand the reasons our surrogate is doing this are mainly for monetary reasons, we truly know Daniel and I will come out of this experience far richer than we were before…....