As of today, April 5, 2020, I am 33+ weeks pregnant with a baby girl that is not mine. I am a gestational carrier for a wonderful couple who has chosen this route to grow their family for many very personal reasons, but it is their only means of having a biological child at this time. I'll share more about how I was connected to them and our relationship later. However, I need to start at the beginning.
The start of this journey was in the early months of 2018 (February or March, I think, but I cannot remember for sure). I had never considered or even thought about being a gestational carrier. Side note: gestational carrier means I am just that- I am carrying the baby, but she is fully biologically related to her parents. A surrogate on the other hand uses her own eggs in the process; therefore, the child she delivers is biologically related to her. Anyway, as I was saying, I hadn't ever considered this path before. I don't particularly enjoy being pregnant, it is not something I yearn for or miss when I am not pregnant. I get significantly sick, I hate the weight gain, I hate the heart burn, and in my last pregnancy with Lizzie, I had a medical condition called cholestasis that was straight up miserable. All of that to say that this decision was not made on my own. It took an act of heaven, or multiple, to get me to this point.
In February or March, whatever month it was, 2018, I was at a board meeting for the Utah Infertility Resource Center. They are a fantastic organization that provides multiple resources for the infertility community in Utah. Because of my work with Utah Adoption Specialists, I was asked to sit on their Community Advisory Board, which consists of other professionals who work in the infertility arena, such as physicians, attorneys, therapists, etc. The Advisory Board meets just a few times per year to advise on the needs we are seeing with our clients/patients. Anyway, at this particular meeting, an attorney who does a lot of work with 3rd party reproduction was giving an update on new laws that were on the legislative table that would affect surrogacy and gestational carriers. As he spoke, an impression came to me, "This is something you are supposed to do." I was really surprised by this, because as mentioned, it is not something I have ever thought about.
I was initially concerned about talking to Devin about this thought because it just seemed so out there. To be fair, I have had my share of "out there" ideas (ahem, promptings) in our marriage and he has always been very supportive and taken the time to figure things out for himself to determine if the path is right for us, such as with Flor's and Mishell's adoptions. But this one just seemed so...strange. I didn't really know how to bring it up, so I didn't for a time. I just sat on it and continued to contemplate it. I also started researching. I started reading whatever I could about the process and learning from both sides what it entailed. I have since learned much more, but at the time, I did not know that the majority of carriers use what is called an agency to match them and to keep tabs on the legal process, etc. Instead, I just figured that if and when I was ready to move forward, I would put my contacts in the infertility community to good use and just contact one of the fertility clinics in the area to start the process.
After taking some time to think about it and pray about it on my own, I felt like this was something I should continue to pursue. At that point, I shared with Devin what I was thinking and feeling. He was initially taken aback, I think, but as I said, he is very good about taking the time to figure it out on his own and then coming back to me with his thoughts. It did not take him long to come back to me to tell me that he thought it was something I should continue to research and that he was supportive of whatever I decided. I have said it before and I will say it many times, but I totally hit the jackpot in the husband business. It has to be a little weird to think of your wife being pregnant with someone else's child, right? But he is just so supportive and truly understanding of the promptings I receive. He recognizes the source of such impressions and I remember one comment he made as we were discussing it, saying basically that he made sense of it because it was a good thing to do and a way we could serve someone else in a significant way. He commented that he would never stop me from trying to do something good.
I decided to take the next step forward and contact a 3rd party reproduction coordinator at the Utah Fertility Center. I met with the coordinator in April of 2018 and she did a great job answering all of my questions. I had a much better understanding of what the process looked like and what to expect. I told her that I still needed to solidify my decision, but she could tentatively put me on the list of people looking for a match. I then went home, continued to pray about it, and determined that I was ready to move forward unless I got a strong reason or prompting to not move forward at some point.
From there, it was a waiting game. I waited all summer long to hear from the clinic about a potential match. It was easy to second guess myself and to wonder if this was the right thing after all with so much time passing and hearing very little from the clinic. During that time, a second impression came, though, that reiterated that I was on the right path.
Every year, my ward (church congregation) does a little ladies retreat. This particular year, we went up the mountain and had a dutch oven dinner and then a guest speaker. To be honest, I am not one that usually attends events like these for whatever reason. But this year, with some pressure from friends (thanks friends), I decided to go. The guest speaker was Meg Johnson, a woman of our faith who faced significant trials after becoming paralyzed in hiking accident in her early adult years. Meg spoke to us for an hour or so and I was completely riveted by her talk. As she spoke, she shared how she had to learn that she still had significant contributions to give, despite what she felt were big limitations after her accident. She talked about how each of us are a different type of tool with different purposes and how she really wanted to be a big piece of machinery that makes a really big difference, but she was actually a small tool, something like a screwdriver (I may be remembering the exact details wrong-- this is why we should write things down soon after impressions come! But the gist is still there). She said that over time, she came to realize that even if she is a little screwdriver, she still can make a huge difference in her own little area. Not everyone needs to be a bulldozer, but we all still have things to give in our own way.
While Meg shared this story, I had the distinct impression, "You are a crane. You are a builder of families." It's a good thing it was dark up there by then because I immediately started crying and had the spirit wash over me and confirm to me that yes, I was absolutely on the right path and it was something I was being asked to do. I have thought of this analogy a lot in the time since. I have always been a builder of families in the sense that I work in the adoption field and I revere it truly as a calling. I absolutely believe that it is an area where Heavenly Father has blessed me with certain talents and skills that I am supposed to utilize in helping others build their families that cannot in the traditional way. I can look back and see definite divine intervention in the way I joined the adoption world, and later through the creation of my company. I know as surely as I know that I am supposed to be a mother to my particular children that I am also supposed to help others become mothers and fathers who turn to adoption to build their families. I have seen so many miracles in my years of adoption work and it is truly a blessing to see and know that families are created in many different ways. I also know this with a surety because of my own experiences adding Mishell and Flor to our family through adoption. There were no coincidences in either of their stories, just miracles.
When the impression came that I am a builder of families, it made sense to me right away. Though I had never considered building families outside of the adoption arena, I knew through that impression that my role in building families was going to shift a little bit and that in addition to adoption work, I would personally be involved in growing a family through the gestational carrier process.
That seems like a good stopping point, right? More to come, but because all posts are boring without a photo, here is one of my two dear friends Melanie and Annette, the two that dragged me to the Relief Society retreat to hear Meg Johnson. They have been close friends and confidants throughout this entire process and I am grateful that they followed whatever promptings they had that day to take me with them to the retreat. We were not as close of friends at that time, but they took the time to reach out to me for whatever reason and ask me to come along, and for that I am glad. (Also, this picture is from much later-- I have none from the actual retreat, but it looks good, right? It looks like we might be up in the woods during a retreat, so it will suffice!)
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