Hellobee

I’ve written a little bit about Baby Audrey’s surrogacy birth in this post, but I wanted to put together a list of tips as well as my thoughts about the birth experience from the point of view of an intended mother. There were a few things that caught me by surprise, and also a few things that I’m extremely happy we did beforehand to make things go more smoothly.

Magical moment. All photos by Sweetly Cherished Photography.

Preparing for the hospital

At the half-way point of our surrogate’s pregnancy, Mr. Starfish and I toured the hospital where she was set to deliver. This is absolutely necessary in my opinion. We learned a lot of things during this tour, including the fact that our surrogate needed to register for delivery beforehand, how to gain entrance to the delivery floor, and the maddening discovery that the hospital didn’t accept our insurance. We also were put in touch with a social worker at the hospital to ensure that they were aware of our special circumstances and to confirm that we would get our own room post-delivery separate from our surrogate.

We exchanged several emails with the social work team at the hospital before delivery, including a follow-up when we knew the exact date that our surrogate was going to be induced. I think that getting in touch with that team early on went a really long way to ensure a smooth experience. Furthermore, our surrogate was very proactive in telling everyone as she checked in for delivery and registered that this was a surrogate delivery and that we were the parents. The result was that we were greeted with huge smiles from all of the nursing staff when we arrived in the delivery ward; they seemed genuinely excited to be a part of such a special delivery and we felt so supported in a way that we did not expect at all. Mr. Starfish and I were admittedly very wary of the attitudes of the hospital staff before our experience because some friends of ours were treated very unkindly during the surrogate birth of their baby at a different hospital in a different state. I think a lot of it has to do with luck, but reaching out to the hospital staff far in advance certainly didn’t hurt things in my opinion.

We also arrived at the hospital armed with every single piece of legal paperwork that we had accumulated over the course of the surrogacy agreement, and I had it all very meticulously organized. In the end, we didn’t have to present a single thing to the staff, but I am glad that I had all of that information at my fingertips in case we needed it.

Mr. Starfish was in charge of the insurance and billing part of the equation. For his part, he came armed with a detailed record of all of the conversations that he’d had with our insurance company, as well as a list of phone numbers for all of the people that he needed to call as soon as Audrey was born. The day after delivery, he was on the phone with the hospital’s billing department and our insurance company for probably four hours. It got very confusing very quickly as insurance companies and hospitals don’t handle these cases too often, so unfortunately it comes down to the intended parents to educate and understand the law and insurance policies. Be prepared for frustration here; we are nearly three months post-delivery now and still dealing with billing and insurance issues.

Preparing for the emotions

It goes without saying that the day of your child’s birth is filled with overwhelming feelings of hope, excitement, happiness and joy. But I want to touch on a few other emotions that I experienced that don’t exactly register on the positive side of the ledger and that really took me by surprise.

The first is guilt. For an intended mother in particular, this feeling loomed very large for me. Our surrogate was in a great deal of pain for much of the day, but especially toward the end of her labor. I felt so guilty that she was hurting so much because of my baby girl. I will always remember a particular moment around the third hour of pushing when I looked at our surrogate and a single tear slid down her cheek as she silently suffered through the pain. That little tear carried so much weight in my heart, and I had to look away and blink back my own tears as my mind raced with guilt that she was physically suffering so much and I was not.

Our surrogate drying a tear as she labors.

The feeling of guilt was overwhelming.

The second feeling to prepare for is awkwardness. I am probably a more modest person than average, but let’s just be real here – crowding around the private parts of someone who was a stranger to you no less than one year ago is pretty awkward! No one wants to be a show, and so we were careful to give our surrogate as much privacy and space in this regard as possible. We only came up closer once our baby had been pulled out and placed on our surrogate’s belly for the cord cutting. If I have one regret regarding the whole delivery day, it is that we never had an open conversation with our surrogate about her comfort level about this very issue. We just assumed that she would want that privacy, but maybe we made her feel even more awkward by standing back so far. I would recommend asking her about her preference before you get to delivery day.

The third feeling that you may not expect is sadness. For me personally, this primarily came from the realization that the whole experience was over. The surrogate pregnancy and delivery was one of the most emotional and inspiring things I have ever been a part of, and we had grown close to our surrogate over the past year. When the birth happened and I looked at our daughter, I was filled with so much joy and relief, but it also dawned on me that one of the most amazing things I’d ever been a part of was over, and I was surprised by the raw sadness that accompanied that realization.

I also felt a twinge of sadness when we saw the name label on our baby’s bassinet and on her hospital bracelet. It is usually hospital policy that these signs match the name of the delivering woman and this was indeed the case at our hospital. Instead of saying “Baby Girl STARFISH” it said “Baby Girl [surrogate’s last name].” This left me feeling a little bit like she wasn’t entirely mine, and also made me confront the fact that I hadn’t been able to carry this baby girl as I had initially planned, which dredged up feelings of female inadequacy. I was able to power through these emotions and focus on the positive, but I encourage intended mothers to think about how this will feel before they are faced with it on that very emotional day.

Must-Do’s

Three things stand out in my mind as absolutely critical must-do’s.

The first is to hire a photographer. Like I said earlier, the surrogacy pregnancy and birth experience is simply incredible. I count it as one of the best things that I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing in my life. I don’t think that Mr. Starfish will be offended by my honest statement that the day of our daughter’s birth was more surreal and inspiring and meaningful than our wedding day. Nearly everyone hires a photographer to capture their wedding day, and likewise I do not think you will regret having a photographer capture this most special of days. We were so lucky that our surrogate set up a professional photographer for that day, and the photo album that she delivered to us with all of the special photos from that day will remain one of my most cherished possessions forever.

The second must-do is to cut the cord. I don’t want to leave out the intended fathers out there, but this one is so important for the intended mothers to do. It is an incredibly symbolic action for an intended mother to cut the cord that tied her baby to the surrogate. When I held those scissors in my hand and clipped that cord, the feeling was absolutely surreal. Blood spurted out and applause and hoorays ricocheted around the room as it felt like little Audrey became tied to me in that moment.

My final must-do and piece of advice is to do skin-to-skin. I changed into a front-opening maternity gown as soon as our surrogate started pushing. Audrey came to my bare chest as soon as she was deemed healthy, still covered in goop and blood. Her screams were so very loud, she was so very swollen and puffy and cone-headed. I cooed at her and marveled at her existence, and as I felt Mr. Starfish come in close with the same feeling of gratitude and bewilderment, everything around us fell away. All of the nurses and doctors and photographers darting around the room, all of the pain and suffering and sadness from years of infertility, all of our loving friends and family members calling and texting us so anxious to hear about our new baby girl at that very moment. It all faded away. And in that moment, skin to skin with my baby girl, it was just us. Lovely, perfect, and just us.