How Cancer Led to Surrogacy

As most of you know, Emily is the product of a gestational surrogacy. In 2006, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. This type of cancer had a terrific survival rate, but I was still scared. The cancer was in a place where surgery was not an option. I was ready to have everything removed in order to stop the cancer. However, in November 2006, I started a regimen of weekly chemotherapy and daily radiation therapy. It was certainly a life changing event. When my chemo and radiation finished in January 2007 just before my birthday, I was sad to find out that basically my eggs were scrambled from the radiation and I would no longer be able to produce eggs. The positive note was that I would no longer be having a period even though I still have all of the parts. Unfortunately, I would be going through an early menopause and would not be able to take hormones as they could stir up the cancer again. Devastated that I would never be able to carry a child, we decided to look at other options.

Our friends, Danette and Mark, have two adorable daughters who were born in China and later adopted by Danette and Mark. We decided to look into international adoption. Rules have gotten stricted since Danette and Mark adopted their daughters and one of the worse rules was that I would have to be cancer free for five years and then there was no guarantee that we would be able to adopt. So we scrapped that and looked into domestic adoption. Even harder. We would have to be picked by a birth mother and the hoops to jump through would be difficult. Kevin and I have both worked with developmentally disabled children before and knew that we would not be good candidates for adopting a child with a developmental disability. If God gave us a child with disabilities, we would work through it. I'm sure we could handle it, but I longed to have a biological child. This may seem selfish to some, but this was how we were going to become a family.

We turned to surrogacy. Though a very expensive process, we knew this was for us. We chose an egg donor (Chickie Mama Carrie), since my eggs are scrambled, and a gestational surrogate (Baby Mama Julie). Kevin is the biological father. In fact, on Father's Day 2008, he became the father of 22 zygotes, 8 of which became embryos. A few days later, Julie was implanted with two of the embryos and became pregnant with Emily. Such an exciting, emotional journey that ended with a beautiful baby daughter and new friends Carrie and Julie and their families.