Growing Families’ founder Sam Everingham interviews one incredible woman who put everything on the line to create her family.
Fiona had a twenty year journey to becoming a mum. As a single woman, she froze her eggs almost 15 years ago at a clinic in the Midlands.
Fiona recalls “I was one of the first to do this at this clinic but it had a great reputation”. Given 29 eggs were retrieved, Fiona thought she had done her best to preserve her fertility.
Five years later she met her partner. When they were ready to create family, she asked the clinic to thaw 16 eggs. Sadly, none of them survived.
Devastated, Fiona was to learn her UK clinic had most likely used the wrong solution during the thaw. “It still makes me so angry how they treated us and lied to us. “
“At the time I still thought I had a chance. I had thirteen eggs still frozen and we took them to another London clinic who managed to thaw them properly and create embryos. But by this stage my body wasn’t playing ball. I kept miscarrying time and time again. They were dark times”.
“We tried everything – investigations, fresh IVF, frozen IVF and nothing worked. We looked into adoption as well – by this time I was in my late 40’s. I remember it feeling impossible to navigate when I kept feeling like everything we tried to do hadn’t worked”.
“It’s strange but somehow I knew somewhere that I wasn’t ever going to be able to carry my own child but I wasn’t ready to give up the hope of being a Mum. I knew the only way we would get to the finish line would be through changing tack and looking into other options – surrogacy”.
Fiona and her partner took the Midlands clinic to court and were awarded a settlement that would make surrogacy possible.
“I had a friend who told me about some research she had done into a (surrogacy) clinic in Georgia – she had researched all of them. So we went there in the October 2017. I had no hope left and just cried for the whole meeting. The clinic lead – Sophie – just sat there with me and told me we had a good chance – I honestly didn’t believe anything would work”.
But Fiona was matched with a surrogate in October and had a positive pregnancy result by January 2018.
“It felt very, very unreal. I honestly didn’t believe it would happen until I saw our baby born on 31st August. We were over the moon”.
“The clinic was honestly fantastic – it cost about €35,000 which we used from our court case but then you have the living costs in Georgia and other expenses as you need to stay for at least three months post birth, but it’s a great place to explore”.
“We then went back to try and do a sibling journey with our remaining embryos but it was lockdown and our Georgian surrogacy agency wasn’t operating”.
Again Fiona felt a door was closing.
However the agency’s Ukraine branch was open.
“We decided to move our last embryos there. It wasn’t our first choice. Of course we were worried about the potential political situation and we needed to find another surrogate but we really wanted our daughter to have a sibling – someone who could share her unique life journey”.
“Then it all changed for the worst as war broke out. By that stage our surrogate was six months pregnant. We lost contact with her and like many, had a complete panic given our surrogate had fled. There were so many in our situation and it was a terrible time. We couldn’t speak to the agency who had gone underground”.
“We were helped a lot on our journey by lots of amazing people but through their webinars and practical support, Growing Families were key in supporting us with information and logistical planning. We owe them a lot for this”.
“We finally made contact with our surrogate and used every contact we had to help her and our unborn baby to safety in Poland. I think we were on autopilot. But it did show us how amazing the human spirit is in the face of adversity, how kind people were, strangers that we had never met that went to the border to meet our surrogate and bring her, her family and friends and unborn baby to safety. I still have that photo of our surrogate crossing the border to Poland. Hearing she was safe and our baby was safe was like nothing else. The relief was immense.”
“Our second daughter was born in June 2022. We rehoused our surrogate and lived together in Poland for almost six months. It actually makes me feel panicked remembering this as brings back so many memories”.
“Someone once said to me – ‘it’s not how you get there it’s getting there that matters’ and for me it was more important to be a Mum than how I arrived at motherhood. It was the message I kept telling myself when things got tough”.
“And honestly, you don’t remember the journey and all the challenges when you change that first of many nappies. I know people have different views of surrogacy but I know that both our surrogates were so well looked after by the clinic and by us”.
“I am so grateful that I had people that had walked the walk before us and that helped us along the way. I recognise our story is not for everyone but I hope it gives others hope and to see that there is hope in the face of adversity, and to keep an open mind about how you may get to the finish line.”
Fiona along with five other parents, will share much more of their journeys to parenthood via surrogacy at Growing Families London Information Day on 14 September 2024.
The post Against All Odds: Fiona’s Remarkable Journey to Motherhood Through Surrogacy appeared first on IVF Babble.
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