Episode 162 – Laura – mum

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you

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Or if this is your first time, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series with me, your host, Anna McKie. My guest on this episode was a co-host on the regular webinar series that I run. Those one-hour webinars are free and will take you through the surrogacy process in Australia. You will hear from a surrogate or parent and there are opportunities to type in your questions and we will try to answer them. You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org.

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This episode, featuring Mum through surrogacy Laura, was recorded in August 2026. Laura and her husband, who live in Canberra but were in Sydney for the surrogacy journey, became parents to their daughter Harriet in October 2023. Harriet was carried by surrogate Joe, Laura’s sister, and is fondly referred to as Auntie Joey. They moved to be near Joe in Bundaberg a month before the birth.

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and Laura was able to induce lactation and exclusively breastfeed Harriet for 15 months. Laura made me laugh when talking about breastfeeding Harriet and the hormones, oxytocin, that gets released. Essentially they’re a bonding chemical for mum and bubs, but also the smell of the breast milk is quite unique. I find it quite sweet. Laura said it was the best smell in the world and she couldn’t get enough. And her husband even said, stop sticking your nose in our baby’s mouth. I hope you enjoy this episode.

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Laura, thank you for joining us. We’ve got some lovely photos to share here of your team and some birth photos. So I guess you could tell us who’s in these photos and essentially what brought you to surrogacy in the first place. Due to a medical condition, I had a hysterectomy when I was 25, but I knew when I was about 17 or 18 that I wouldn’t be able to carry a pregnancy. And so that was a while ago now. And at the time, my sister, Jo, who’s the one with the glasses there.

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When I was 17 or 18, she said, oh, that’s fine. I’ll do it for you. You know, I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. And so I was very fortunate that going into having a hysterectomy, I knew I had a surrogate if I needed one. And I think that’s a real point of privilege in this journey. Most people, yeah, will struggle to find a surrogate. So it’s always something I’m very grateful for.

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The other person in that photo is my husband Rowan and that is the day of our embryo transfer. So we’re actually my family when we found out that we were all approved for surrogacy we’d done the counseling and the legal paperwork and stuff and so we knew we were going to go do an embryo transfer we were actually

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one from quite a large family. We were all in rural New South Wales together for my brother’s 30th and we had these like dorky matching shirts. I was wondering what was on those shirts. Yes. Yeah. Like I think we’ve seen that people like will make shirts and stuff for the embryo transfer day or you know they’ll like do team things and we were like

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didn’t really get a wrap, we didn’t do that. And so we were like, my sister was like, okay, we’ve got matching shirts. So actually on the back of the shirt is a picture of my brother in a leopard print speedo. it was like, in hindsight, probably shouldn’t have done that. Just before the embryo transfer, the first one. And again, another huge point of privilege is that the first transfer worked. So we did one round of egg collection, my egg.

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and we got a great number of embryos and then we did one round, one transfer. And so we’re really lucky that it all worked, but it was so funny when the day my sister did the test, she lived in Bundaberg at the time my husband and I were living in Sydney, but my husband was traveling for work. So the three of us were on FaceTime when my sister did the test. So was a bit, we were all, and we were all alone. So it felt really surreal to be like, oh, I’ve got this amazing news, but I’ve just hung up and now I don’t know what to do with myself.

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Yes, that is interesting. That’s probably advice to people. Have people around. be together if you can. I might just add on that. I’ve done some data gathering in terms of how many embryo transfers it takes. I’m just sort of going to add a bit of information there. My suggestion to people is to have at least three in the freezer. Funnily enough, think my surrogacy stats are a bit, IVF might not agree with this.

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But about, I think it’s like in my data, 55, 58%, it does work on the first embryo transfer. And then within three transfers, 90 % of people, it’s worked. So it often shows that surrogates are often the fertile people who have a good womb, so to speak. And so you’ve still got some embryos left in the freezer yourself then. Yeah, we’ve got a few, so very lucky.

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And so then you navigated a pregnancy interstate and you did have some scans and things together. had all but one scan together. I went up, now I’m trying to remember. I think there were maybe there was one or two scans where it was just me but other than that my husband and I went to everything that we could to support my sister but it was quite fun so she had two teenagers at the time of our journey.

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So was a bit special. The one scan we didn’t go to, my niece was there and she got to hold the phone and be that it was nice for her to be involved that way. Um, but yeah, so that was just a photo of one of the scans. I got in trouble for taking that photo as well. That what I remember about that day. And then yeah, I’m the right there. So that’s my sister being induced and I was able to induce lactation. So in the 24 hours before Harriet was born, I pumped over a liter of milk. So I had

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a whopping supply. So that’s fantastic. As somebody I pumped milk for nine weeks and I don’t think I ever got a liter in a day. My grandma was very convinced. She says that we come from good Jersey cow stock.

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So interestingly, my cousin actually had a baby by surrogacy as well. And so that was about a year ago, maybe a bit more. She also induced lactation and had a similar result. So yeah, it was really fantastic. But yeah, so it was quite fun. So my sister expressed colostrum because you need a placenta to produce colostrum. So we were, at least she didn’t want to breastfeed. So we chose to syringe feed that Harriet, but otherwise, yeah, it was.

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quite remarkable to be able to breastfeed my baby. Well, yes, let’s talk more about that in a minute. I’ll just say for people listening, we have done a webinar where we had three mums on who all induced lactation and their babies were born via surrogacy and that’s episode 50. So that’s something you’d like to investigate perhaps doing for yourself. Check out that on YouTube or as the podcast episode number 50. So that’s what Laura was able to do. There’s a whole process that you have to go through and pills and things to take. And the result of that is yes, your body can produce milk and you have to.

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pump quite regularly in the lead up to bring it on, it can be worth it and really helps bond with your baby and wow, for 15 months, that’s fantastic. Something I bet you were really proud of that your body was able to do. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And so, yes, so we come to the day of birth. We’ve got some beautiful photos here. What do you remember about the birth or how do you feel when you look back at these photos?

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I think the biggest thing I remember is the fact that my sister was so over being pregnant. So we were up there and she was going to sweep and trying to get things moving and hurry. was in no hurry.

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Interestingly, like sitting here looking at the photos, one of the most standout memories for us will always be, I think, disappointing that I can’t carry my own children. But it was the most remarkable thing to get to watch my baby be born. I’ll never forget that. So my husband and I were in the room as well as my sister and my mom was there as well. And poor Jo, Harriet had a necklace. She was born a diva. She had wrapped her cord, was wrapped around her neck a few times. So it got to a point where they said, oh,

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was going to need to do an emergency seizure and Joe, it wasn’t quite an emergency. She’d said, I’m ready for a seizure. She’d been going for a really long time. Her heart rate dropped. Suddenly a lot of doctors ran into the room and I was up with Joe. She was just exhausted and they had a look and I said, you’ve got to be, there’s no time for a seizure. You’ve got to push babies too far down. So she did, but my mum came up.

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to me. It always makes me a little emotional, this part. Yeah, my mum came up to me and said, you go stand with Rowan, I’ve got Joe. Because my biggest concern was Joe at this point. She was exhausted. She was doing an incredible job. But she’d hit a wall. So I went and stood with Rowan. And yeah, we got to watch, like hold each other while our baby was born. And that was something I’ll never forget. Obviously, had a plan about how we thought this would go. And it doesn’t always go to plan. I got hold Harriet for really brief moment.

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as was the plan, she had to get a bit whisked. She had to be whisked away by the doctors. Afterwards, the midwife and doctors were telling us that they saw Harriet looking around whenever I spoke, which was really interesting. So Jo had bought some belly buds, like the ones they put on the belly. she’s amazing. Rowan and I, used to just pick Rowan up from work sometimes. It was our commute. So we just started recording our commute home and uploading it to the app. So we weren’t saying anything because we felt really dicky sitting there going, hello baby. it’s just like,

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it’s not us. So we just recorded our commute home just chatting. Um, and Joe would sit there hours on end at work with these. She really did it so much of it. And yeah, we really think it worked because yeah, people said like, I didn’t see it. So yes, it be a crock of shit, but yeah, it was.

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Well, who knows? I mean, I would do it in the evenings, but I hadn’t thought about that. You could do it at work, the belly buds on your feet. I think my dad’s read out, read some storybooks, but that’s a great idea. Like, and we tried that, but you felt it just like, but I guess if the surrogate’s not having to listen to it, cause it’s just going to the Yeah, recording just your chats.

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great idea. I’ve been in this community nearly 10 years and I keep learning things so thank you for sharing that. I’ll pass that on to people. Great suggestion there. So then everybody did have some cuddles once Harriet was okay. My sister didn’t want to hold Harriet first. She wanted us to hold Harriet first and she wanted me to have that. She wanted me to have the golden hour of you know an hour post birth. I would have done whatever she wanted. I think that’s a really critical thing with surrogacy is that even in postpartum you know

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My sister put her body on the line and it’s her body going through a major event. So whatever she wanted, I was open to and would do. And so that photo in the middle there is when I finally got to properly hold Harriet. So just held her and let her wiggle down for a little breastfeed. so that photo on the left was about an hour, maybe 90 minutes after Harriet was born. And that’s when Joe was ready to have a hold. So that’s my husband passing Harriet over. Yeah, was really special.

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special. How was Jo, I’m sort of skipping ahead a bit here, like there’s often some postnatal wobbles that go on even though your head and your heart know where baby is and they’re happy but the adjusting hormones, was she okay? like she went back to work one week.

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What? Okay. sister’s a weapon. Yeah, we would recommend, I’m just saying we would recommend to surrogates because you get maternity leave, take the six to 12 weeks, but often they’re bored. yeah, yeah. 100 % on hands and all that. I’m it was more sort of admin sit down work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and so yeah, she’s a weapon. So she went back to work one week postpartum. We’d planned on being in Bundaberg.

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for like a month afterwards, maybe even the six weeks. And two weeks in, she goes, okay, go start your life. So we saw each other quite a few times. She shut down milk production. So you can take medication as a surrogate if you don’t want to be producing milk to stop your milk.

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coming through. So she was taking that and would have to if we were all hanging out and Harriet started crying my sister would just run out of the room. Otherwise yeah my sister’s incredible I was so shocked when she was oh was it one week or two weeks after? I think it was one. remember. She’s incredible. And then do you happen to remember then once you did go back home when it was until you had the next catch-up? Yes we it was probably around

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before Christmas? Months or a year, we ended up not being together for Christmas and such. it just, you know, it’s so funny. We are a very close family. I’m one of five and yeah, it was quite interesting. Like Jo wanted to be in Bundaberg with her kids for Christmas and it was my husband’s year for Christmas. Oh no, we did have Christmas. Oh my God. How bad is this?

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No, we did have Christmas together. So it was two months. Yeah. I’m such a dill. was the following Christmas we didn’t have together. Yeah. I’m an idiot. Yeah. So Jo was in town. She came down to Canberra first and so did we. We weren’t living here yet. So we had, a wide family Christmas and then a couple of times again before. Do you know what’s interesting though is that I feel like we haven’t needed to do extra catch up. Like we FaceTime all the time and we have a really beautiful surrogacy book for kids.

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And it’s about a kangaroo growing a baby in a pouch. so Auntie Joey, like it all kind of worked. so Harriet took it to book week at daycare and she loves the book. And so yeah, we FaceTime a lot and such, but like, I think it hasn’t necessarily changed the dynamic. We still see each other several times a year, but it is, unfortunately, it’s just really far and expensive to get to Vandenberg or vice versa. But our brother and his wife had a baby a few months ago and my sister’s coming down soon to meet my nephew. So we’ll get to see her soon. That’s lovely.

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So that yeah, they’ve maintained like an auntie miss relationship. Yeah. And this is so funny. My sister from the beginning was like, Oh no, I don’t want like, it’s not going to be a special relationship. Like it is a special relationship, but she, she doesn’t want extra special treatment or anything like that.

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She has always said that and so yeah, it’s just a really special auntie. Well done. And just a couple of photos here of you being mum with your little munchkin, hey? Yeah, I think it was well worth the effort to induce lactation. I think if you’re considering it, definitely explore it. It was a lot of work. at one point I calculated how many hours I spent pumping before Harriet was born. I was promptly horrified. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of effort, but it was the most amazing way to bond. And I guess for intended mums, intended

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parents who are able to breastfeed. My mom interestingly said, so she birth five babies. She said she never bonded so much with the babies when she was breastfeeding, know, when comparing it to being pregnant, obviously you will bond with the baby. But interestingly, she said it was breastfeeding for her and yeah, it was remarkable. I think I said studies and research, it’s about like that distance of holding your baby that close, a bit bottle on your breast. And then also the hormones that get released in your body while you’re breastfeeding.

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attaches you to your baby doesn’t it? Oh I was addicted to smelling her breath when she was breastfeeding. Yes. Like after she breastfed like their breath is just like crack. Yeah. And my husband wouldn’t get it. He was like this is so it stops sticking your nose in our baby’s mouth. Like it was just the best smell in the world. I loved it. It’s definitely a weird hormone thing. each podcast episode I try and have an interesting title maybe that should be it. Stop sticking your face in our baby’s mouth or however you just said that. I mean it was like crack. Yeah.

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I’m going to come back to these when I listen to it back. That’s fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing those beautiful photos with us. When my kids…

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came with me on the surrogacy journey, they were four and six. And so the questions that kids of surrogates have can vary. So my kids knew, you you need an egg and a seed to make a baby and a girl’s tummy to grow it. And we cared for two dads or a girl’s tummy was broken. But obviously your sister’s kids were teenagers. And so they’re much more aware of surrogacy and how conception works and those sorts of things. I have actually had children of surrogates on a webinar, people. So if you’d like to look up that episode, it’s episode 70. I’ve had mothers and partners of surrogates on too.

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Did you find that you had to sort of keep in touch with your niece and nephew during pregnancy or have any particular side chats with them? Oh, there’s another question. Sometimes because they’re teenagers, they actually have to be involved in the official counseling leading up to pregnancy. Is that what happened in your case or not? No, no, they didn’t have to be officially involved. mean, I am close to my niece and so we were all like, we’d already text. It really didn’t feel like a lot changed. Like during the, can’t remember if it was just before the transfer or just after.

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I my niece down to Sydney and I took her to Harry Styles. my nephew was, I don’t know what my memory is about, 17 or 18. It was a bit 17. He would go around town to like everyone. His mom was pregnant and it wasn’t his dad. But yeah, so she was saying, okay, but you’ve got to follow up with it’s not mom’s baby either. They were really excited by it. That was special. Like they knew from a really young age. I remember we were wedding dress shopping for my wedding. My niece would have been like six.

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or seven and had come up that joke because I was having a hysterectomy shortly, like two weeks after the wedding and so it had come up when we were all together and my niece was like offering to do it for me at seven years old.

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Right. So she’s going, I’ll grow your baby in my tummy. Now my own daughter is offering. She keeps telling me, mummy, I’ve got my baby sister in my tummy for you. Wow. There we go. Was surrogate Joe there, Auntie Joey, a one and done surrogate? Yes. Oh, yes. I don’t think we need to go through that again. No, no. But you still got the embryos in the freezer. So watch this space, I guess. That’s right. Well, surrogate Danny has typed in some questions. One of them says, did you ever run into a decision

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the pregnancy or journey where your preferences majorly changed and how did you navigate that decision? Yeah, it was before the transfer. I think the only thing was that Jo had thought she’d give birth in Sydney because that’s where we live and I had said you know we’ll give you can give birth like you’ll want to go home and be near your kids and whatnot and so but like that’s not even really a change of preference that was just like

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disagreement with how things wasn’t even a disagreement. No not really like we discussed things. I find most teams have a bump of some sort because you’re dealing with pregnant hormonal women but I suppose perhaps in Jo’s life too there might be some changes and stuff we had talked about that might have gone on. Was there anything that caught your team off guard in terms of that emotional element of the relationship that you had to navigate? Yeah I think so like I think I’d push if I’d pushed her I would have liked to have

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push harder for involving the kids a bit more in terms of the therapy. They were old enough to have joined in on that and we didn’t in the end. I think that would be my regret. And I think that in Australia, it’s bizarre to me that it’s mandated that you only have very minimal amounts of counseling before even agreeing to a surrogacy arrangement. I think there needs to be a lot more involved.

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I actually had three psychologists, Narelle Dickinson, she’s a Queenslander if you know of her, on a webinar the other week and I asked them about what changes because there’s an Australian Law Reform Commission doing an inquiry at the moment and my question is would they like to see mandated ongoing counselling during the pregnancy and post-birth? I think it needs to be before that, way before that. Before you even agree to be a team, I think you need to be doing a year of counselling together. Something like that, but I think that needs to be way more involved.

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before you make the decision before you get to a transfer. Absolutely. think and obviously still during pregnancy and postpartum but I think it would go a long way to easing those bumps.

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In the community, we talk about sorrow dating and we would encourage that for six months. And I suppose in that time, you’re talking together, hopefully talking to some peers. But I think what you’re suggesting is doing some formal stuff and getting to know the counselor. So when you said you perhaps would have involved the kids in more therapy, said, are you saying that your team had sessions during pregnancy that the kids could have come to? Or were you talking about the before pregnancy? no, like I don’t think they should have joined the sessions we were having per se. I think that needed to remain between the adults, between the three of us.

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But I think doing a session or two with them in addition would have been good. That’s really valuable for surrogates and IPs to hear. Yes, let’s consider how the kids are thinking about this and what they might be fine, but they might have little issues that are coming up for them. That’s really valuable to hear. Thank you for sharing that. Danny types in and says, what did your sister say was the most practically useful support that you helped her with? Obviously being long distance, either you could help when you’re in town, but you might have been able to pay for things.

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What springs to mind? I think it was probably we would by retried giving her, well, gave her our credit card. She never put one thing on it. Wow. I think because she’s my big sister. So we had to get a bit creative in how we supported her and showed up. So I think, you know, we did lots of vouchers for things, whether it was like the cafe near work or prenatal massage, things like that. And so I think, I think that helped.

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But I think also just trying to keep our sisterly relationship as normal as possible. I don’t know, like she doesn’t need me fussing over her, that’s never been our dynamic. And vice versa. She’s an incredibly strong, capable woman. She didn’t need me fussing over her and sticking my nose in, reckon. That’s a good point. It’s important to just make sure that you’re still spending time as friends or in your case as sisters. Yeah, yeah. And like I trust her implicitly, so there’s no need to fuss, you know.

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Had you ever thought about what it might have been like then to do surrogacy with a stranger and how different that dynamic might have been? Yeah, like I felt interesting because obviously, or maybe it’s not obvious, we are hoping for a sibling journey and it is something we’ve been discussing and because I don’t know if it was easier to build that trust because that trust was already there with a sister. You know, you’re saying there was a cousin a few slides ago and I don’t know.

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I know, I find it really hard to imagine. Definitely. And you’re welcome to say as much or as little about a sibling project as you want there. Because you then already have a dynamic of what to go back to once baby’s born, like how often to catch up. Whereas for my team being strangers, we’d never then got to that point in our friendship where they had a kid and how often do we now keep in touch? it was still new. Yeah, it was really lucky. We were lucky for that. Yeah. Oh, and Alison, is, I can just see in the chat, that is the book. I’m like, yeah, my daughter loves that. I think it was originally written,

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by surrogate to explain to her own children about what she was doing but it works in this instance as well.

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yeah and harry adores it yes so um in the chat alison’s put there the kangaroo pouch story and on the socials that i share for surrogacy australia i’ve got about a dozen or so books about surrogacy or families made in unique ways and some some of the books are for the children of surrogates and some of them are for the children born from surrogacy and i’ve been fortunate enough to search and find contact with all of the authors to double check permission to share them and they were all quite touched that you know that we were sharing their work so yes some beautiful stories that have been made out there

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And then also you probably have photos, you know, that you share and talk about it and language. Yeah. Yes. Your cousin that you said did surrogacy, did they do surrogacy here or overseas? Here in Australia. Yeah. How fascinating in the same family to have. I know. Yeah. It’s quite rare. So it was, it was quite nice though, to be able to put her through, like I was able to help her a lot with inducing lactation. So she saw the same lactation consultant over, she’s actually a doctor.

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able to kind of answer a lot of her questions along the way. Have you had any strange comments or questions from people about being a mum through surrogacy or any negativity that you’ve had to handle? Oh there’s so many weirdos in the world so yes yeah but it’s such a special thing that we got to experience. I’m such a special girl out of this special experience so I just don’t think anything anyone

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say about it could ever take the shine away. That’s lovely to hear. Are there any particular changes that you would like to see in the surrogacy landscape in Australia? Yeah so like I did make a submission for the law reform. Yeah mine was around the minimum requirement for counselling and I think it needs, I think it does need a complete overhaul in that respect but yeah that’s kind of my passion there but I say just it gets incredibly hard for people to find surrogate.

24:05
But I think the thing that maybe isn’t spoken about enough is the fact that it’s so almost unregulated, not unregulated, but it’s so unsupported. And so it leaves a lot of women really, Sarah gets really vulnerable. think they’ve taken advantage of being left. And I think.

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quite a few surrogates have ended up in inauthentic relationships and are left quite heartbroken afterwards. And so I think there really is merit and benefit to matching through agencies. There’s a bit more security in that. And so I’d like to see that become legally allowed in Australia in the same way it is in Canada. It’s still altruistic, but you can match.

24:44
Yes, that’s lovely to hear. I did not prompt her to say that people’s that’s come from Laura herself, but yes Well, then any advice for any IPs listening about how to find a surrogate then I know you didn’t have to in that sense. Yeah I don’t know that I have any good advice be born of Irish Catholic parents and have a hundred million siblings Find a friend who is born. Yeah

25:09
When you start meeting people, say hi, how many siblings do you have? My little brother used to make friends by saying hi, do you own a boat? He really wanted a boat. But no, unfortunately, I’ve got no good advice there. But I do know that their Facebook group is really active. I think for IPs, it’s quite daunting to be vulnerable and put yourself out there in such a public forum.

25:33
But like in my sister’s instance, like her brother and also her child, they’re going to be way more vulnerable. Like, you know, you’re asking a woman to do a very vulnerable thing. Yes. And I’d encourage people to attend our monthly zoom so that you can find community and be connected with others and learn from them. One last question here from Danny. Did you find it hard to share the exhausted, overwhelmed times with your sister when your bub was doing what newborns do? No, because she had

26:02
two teenagers who slept a lot. It was real different. Yes. We had had a baby that didn’t sleep. Well, she still doesn’t. No, so that was fine. She was an amazing support. Yeah, I was very lucky. And in some ways as surrogates, we often want to hear the struggles of parenthood, even the poo explosions and the struggles that you have, because we’ve had them too. And we kind of want to go, well, I helped create that for you. You’re welcome. Yeah. Yeah, I get to blame her. I asked her what the returns policy was one after one quite bad night.

26:29
Yes, no take backs. Yeah, that’s what she said.

26:33
Wonderful. I’ll just mention from Chad Allison said, where do you find the other webinars on the Surrogacy Australia website? I reckon upfront it says like social catch-ups or the Zooms and then click on that and you’ll find them or you can find a SASS email address and feel free to email me and I can send you a direct link. But if you follow along on socials, you’ll see them there too. Well, as we summarise that Laura, any last bits of parting advice to people who are starting out or anything that you just want to add? not really. I think it’s so hard, but you just kind of have to be patient. It feels like there’s a lot of hurry up and

27:03
Hurry up throughout the whole journey. So find a good therapist. Find a good therapist is so true, right? And build that relationship with them early so then they get to know your journey. Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic advice. Thank you so much for joining me. On our YouTube channel, you will find many other episodes as well as the images mentioned in this webinar.

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If you’re looking for more resources, check out the show notes for this episode and consider joining us for one of our webinars so you can have your questions answered on the spot. Please subscribe to this podcast if you found it valuable and share it with someone so they too can benefit from this conversation. Until next time, welcome to the village.