Episode 100 – Anna McKie – surrogate

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Welcome to our podcast series with Surrogacy Australia. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen and in turn for helping us spread awareness and appreciation for surrogacy. I’m your host Anna McKay and these recordings are from a regular webinar series that I run. You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org. During the one hour webinars, I will walk you through the surrogacy process in Australia and you can type in questions for us to answer.

00:41
My co-hosts have all done surrogacy in Australia and they alternate between surrogates, gay dads and straight mums. This episode was recorded in May 2024 to celebrate me, Anna, having hosted 100 free webinars since April 2021. My friend and fellow surrogate, Danny, took the reins and interviewed me about my own journey. I’ve been in the surrogacy community since August 2016, have been an egg donor three times,

01:09
and birthed as a surrogate in September 2020 for two dads, Brendan and Matt, who were previously strangers. My own surrogacy journey took two and a half years until birth and had challenges such as postnatal depression. You can hear from one of my intended fathers, Brendan, in episode 71. Honestly, I don’t expect many people to listen to this long episode. It can be hard to be invested in a journey that you weren’t there to ride the waves with them. But if you do take the time to listen to this,

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Please, please reach out and let me know. I deeply value your time investment and would like to thank you personally. You can send me an email, Anna at surrogacyaustralia.org, send it through the social media accounts for Surrogacy Australia, or find my personal account for Facebook Messenger with my username Anna McKay. I have a black and white sketched profile picture, so you know you’re finding the right Anna. Husband Glenn and I have separated since this episode was recorded. The partners of surrogates are often the unsung heroes of surrogacy.

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and I’m very grateful to Glenn for his support over many years and as we continue to be a team to raise our children. If you would like to see the images mentioned in this episode, head to our YouTube channel, Surrogacy Australia, and you can find this episode and many more to hear stories of other surrogates and parents through surrogacy. You can connect with me in the monthly Zoom catch-ups that we run, and if you’d like to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, you can do that on the Surrogacy Australia website. If you’re looking for support on your surrogacy journey,

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As a surrogate or IPs, intended parents, join SAS, Surrogacy Australia’s support service. We feel we’ve created the recipe to help you have a successful surrogacy journey and I can be your Siri for surrogacy or as one SAS member named me, your Chat GPT. Thank you for listening to this episode.

02:54
Well, I might do official parts. haven’t, I haven’t even got a script open or anything like that. So I’m just going to say welcome everybody. I’m so glad you’re all here. Lovely to see so many names that we know and some of the regulars at the webinars and people who have become friends in this community. The chat’s active already. If you haven’t been to many of these webinars, you’re welcome to access the chat, but you’re also welcome to remain anonymous. I’ve done a hundred webinars now, 100 last week with Nikita. And so then decided to do, you know, capture my story. I’ve done a few little podcasts with other interviews along the way, but I suppose this

03:24
one is to hear my whole story. so for those here tonight will hear it, but then we’ll also put it into a recording. Actually, while going through all the photos today, because I’ve got all these folders, I’ve got one called warm fuzzies and it’s screenshots that I’ve taken from back in ASC or any of the groups when people just sort of, you know, gave you words of encouragement. Because sometimes we forget to pause and reflect on all of this stuff, don’t we? So. Absolutely we do. Absolutely. I’m so pleased it’s you here with me, Dani. We’ve been friends now for like seven and a half years. Yeah. So, Anna.

03:54
Yeah, seven and a half years. You have been in this community seven and a half years. How does that feel? It’s almost like you are a geriatric in the other terms, right?

04:05
A funny pregnancy just as in the community. You’re like, you know, the little old lady that joined way, way back then, except you’re still young and fun. So I know. Right. And I remember when we joined, there were the elders, you know, and I suppose you never feel like you’ve become one, but I suppose just due to having been around so long and having done a journey, you do become one. Like one analogy I often gave was that, um, I wonder if surrogacy is a bit like high school. You’re there for sort of five or six years. And in the beginning, when you’re new to high school, you’re learning from people and then you form your team. And then you’re sort of in.

04:35
middle years and then when you birth or become a parent you hang around for a little while and become the the senior the old scholar so to speak and pass on the wisdom then I reckon most people move on from the community but then people like yourself and I we are going again and you know I’ve you know created work in this world now so that’s why I’m still here after seven and half years. I’m planning to be here another 20 so. feel that way too when I think about the community I’m like I just don’t know if I could ever truly part with it completely it’s such a big part of your life.

05:05
If you come into it, you would come into it like me Anna back in the day, you know, all bright and doe-eyed and it was so very exciting. And, and he thought, I’m just, I’m going to come in and I’m going to do this and I’m going to give someone a baby and it’s going to be amazing. And then, you know, I’ll just carry on my merry way of having done something amazing. And, um, you know, you’re still here years later after your surrogacy journey. And I love that you are.

05:30
one of those elders of the community now that people go to for advice that you you have mentored so many surrogates and so many intended

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parents in all your years, you have given so much of yourself to this community and it’s something that you really should be proud of because I’m proud of you. You you’ve had its ups and downs and you have soldiered on through and it’s been an incredible thing to watch and witness as your friend. So, you know, thank you. Thank you. On behalf of the community, I thank you and for half of the people that you have helped. thank you. So I should we kick off with some photos and start talking about Anna’s journey of surrogacy?

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because like strap in folks, it’s going to be a long one. You can leave whatever you want to. Maybe this podcast might be in two parts. Who knows? Just on that, like I guess there’s my work that now with Surrogacy Australia and Running Sass and I suppose I got to this point where I knew there was counselors, doctors and lawyers in the world, in the community. But then how did I fit in? And then I’ve realized I’m an educator. And as we know, I’m a high school teacher in my other part-time life. And so I realized I know how to sequence lessons and how to

06:39
educate people about something and hopefully in a way that doesn’t make them feel dumb. I was at the beginning for so long because I had to go back to the beginning with a second set of IPs and that’s what I remember being my strength, remembering how everybody feels at the start. So yeah, that’s where I see my calling in and so therefore there’ll always be people at the beginning and so I will always have a use. Definitely, yeah that’s right. You’re never going to be outdated and thrown off, you know? Not at all and that’s incredible that you’re able to pass on what you’ve learnt from this community and from everybody.

07:09
else in the community and pass the knowledge on to others. um, you know, I love that you educate people. think that’s really important. And I also think it’s really important that, you know, the people that maybe don’t know you so well, because this has happened such a long time. Well, it’s a long time ago. It’s not even that long ago. Your journey happened a while ago. Now that a lot of people maybe haven’t gotten to know another surrogate, they’ve just gotten to know another lady that runs SAS. It’s going to be really nice to hear your journey tonight. That’s a good segue as any right to, to launch in some of the folks.

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photos you’ll recognise from the regular webinars that I run, but a lot of them will be new. A lot of them are new. Some of these I have not seen before and I love these photos. So now I know who these people are, but can you tell everyone else who these amazing little people are? So this is at my kids sports day this year in what are we 2024. And so that’s my son Ewan on the left there who’s eight and Emily who’s 10. I love it. I love the rainbow flag representation there too.

08:05
Yes, that’s my umbrella I’m very proud of. so then as I was preparing photos for tonight, I went back to sort of when I joined, went, what did I do first? And I did my egg donation first. And I think this was one of the things that stood me out in the community to start with from memory. It’s like, who is this woman? Very much.

08:25
So, Anna, I remember seeing this, you know, I mean, I connected with you because you were from Adelaide, but I remember seeing you post this photo in particular, and it’s just incredible the amount of feedback and laughs and just excitement this got. So tell us what on earth you are doing and wearing and how. Yes. And so perhaps this other photo here explains it a little bit more. So it was my first egg donation I did for a single mum in Adelaide. And I remember getting all the meds from Reprimed,

08:55
main IVF clinic and thinking this is such a lot of wasted packaging here. It was only the there’s a little box here in the photo in the middle, the gonal F pens and things they’re like Epi pens. That was really all you needed. And I look at all the rest of this. And then I remember thinking I could make something out of this. And so, yes, I made a Wonder Woman costume and I think it took me I think it was like 40 hours of work over a few weeks. It was evenings and my kids were little. I think they were only like one and three when I was doing this. And so there was so much maths involved with like there’s

09:24
the plastic packaging that the those pen, the going left pens come in and so I spray painted them. There were the tips from the the needles. I spray painted my sharps box and in the skirt was made out of all the information leaflets that were really thin. And so there you can sort of see my my costume and on my t-shirt where there’s the W for the Wonder Woman. That’s all the pen casings. I even called reprimand to ask them, am I allowed to spray paint my sharps box?

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And they’re like, I’ve never been asked this before.

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weird question to call and ask a healthcare professional. Questions they thought they’d get that day. And it’s funny, I only had the costume on for 40 minutes. so getting that on and then getting into reprimand that morning to do an egg donation, you know, an egg collection. And usually people at those clinics, it’s, it’s off, you know, the hetero couples, it’s a sometimes a sadder or, you know, more anxious experience. And so I brought some laughter to the day and I had a little gift there for each staff member I found to say thank you for, you know, here’s a

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get a bounty of eggs or you know get some ripe eggs from that. I could tell so many more stories about even just that thing but I mean that I remember then posting that in the communities and it’s like who’s this crazy lady and I remember that being a step into the community that was cool. Yeah and what is she doing and question on that so where did you get the idea to do this Wonder Woman costume like what what do you think initially spurred that on? Yeah oh that’s a good one I can’t remember oh no no no no that’s why in that little photo you can see there down the bottom where it says we’re

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or Wonder Women, there’s a picture and in the EDA group, the Egg Donation Australia group, there’s a separate group for just the donors. I think that’s the profile picture in that group and it’s all these women being Wonder Women of all different shapes and sizes, in wheelchairs, different colors and all that. And so that made me go, ah, Wonder Women’s connected with that group. That must have been where that came from, I think. I can see that. And then I’m not sure what your next photo is going to show, but my question will be is how did that Egg Donation go? Well, there you go. There’s the first

11:25
Yes, some photos of stabbing myself with, you the pens and then I think each egg collection went well. It’s funny how at the time you remember the numbers, but now in time I can’t. I think maybe the first donation was maybe it was 17, then 12, then eight, just add a guess across the three donations across about a year. So two were in Adelaide, one was in Queensland and then I think this the next photo is here of the Queensland team. And so I took the costume up to Brisbane and if anybody knows Dr. Glenn Sterling at Life, that’s him there.

11:55
That was a laugh. I bet he had a good laugh about that when he saw you walking down the hallway. And you might be able to see his hand there. I gave him a little, one of those like a mini plush toy of Wonder Woman so he could remember me. There’s other stories I could tell about what was written inside my legs. Yeah, I was going to ask that because I think that’s a really integral part of this. Okay.

12:19
I’ll tell you this, I don’t have a photo but and so my my reasoning behind it was everybody gets to see this costume as I walk into the clinic but then when you go into theatre you’re in scrubs and I’m like oh the nurses and the anesthetists they won’t get to see the costume oh how can I bring a bit of fun you know to where they are and so somehow came up with I guess because had young kids they were reading the book we’re going on a bear hunt and if anybody knows it it’s quite repetitive and so I decided to change it to we’re going on an egg hunt we’re going to catch some big ones what a beautiful day we are not scared

12:49
and then the next verse and this was written on my inner thighs so as I figure that’s where they would be looking to do their egg collection then the next verse went uh-oh a bush a thick dense bush can’t go over it can’t go under it oh no we’ve got to go through it and so as they’re knocking me out with the anesthetist I’m like make sure you look read between my legs what a great great lasting comment there before you go to sleep

13:15
Did anybody mention what was written between your legs after surgery? After your procedure, sorry. I can’t remember. Probably just some more laughs when the nurses and people were checking on me type of thing. But one interesting thing is I had to be written there and I couldn’t write it because it was upside down and it was just too hard. And so it took my friendship to a next level because Rebecca here in the photo, the tall one, who’s the then the other lady in that photo is their surrogate. She had to write it for me. And so she’s a primary school teacher. So she does have beautiful

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handwriting but as she’s you know writing that in on my legs the night before and we tested out different permanent markers and what size tip it’s like really taking our friendship to another level here aren’t we? that’s a very intimate level right there.

14:01
Yes, one that worked out beautifully, I’m sure. And then I guess after my egg donations, I entered the world of surrogacy. Well, I was sort of in the world. And so this is part of my story that not many people nowadays know is that I was initially dating two IPs different to the guys that I carried for. And in the photo here where we’re all standing, that’s Jeremy on the left and Sean on the right and they’re Melbourne guys. I was not looking for interstate people. So I think I joined the community like September 2017 or August 2017.

14:31
No, no it was 2016. I feel like it was a lot earlier than that because I joined in 2015 so. No sorry it’s 2016 because my son was born 2016 and I was breastfeeding him I remember but then at the time there was nobody in Adelaide that was quite the right fit for me and so in the start of 2017

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I went, Oh, could I do interstate? And then the guys and I, particularly Sean and I just were starting to chat as friends and just supporting each other. And then talking to some other ladies like Shannon Garner and other people who had done interstate journeys. So I wonder if I could. So yeah, we started building the friendship we offered to.

15:06
To date, they came over to Adelaide, officially offered, then we were starting to go through Melbourne IVF, you know, and start the paperwork. But at the time, pre-COVID, they were not very flexible in terms of everything had to be in person. And that was hard. I had a one and a three year old, I was working full time and it’s like, gosh, how am going to get over there for all these appointments and stuff? Tricky to juggle that, isn’t it?

15:28
be flying back and forth when you have little ones. It’s amazing that, you know, they were so strict on it pre-COVID and now, po-COVID. It’s like, oh yeah, we can just video call. That’s no problem. You don’t even have to rock out. We’ll email you the force. It’s completely different. So, sorry to have cut you off there. So you met these guys just through the community. Now, can I ask you, what drew you to these fellows? Yes. And I forget to those questions too. That’s great. So I’d seen there,

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intro post and whatever. And again, I often would say there’s something about each of us that will draw us to each other and you just never know what it’s going to be. It might be the same taste in 80s music or the same type of pet or whatever. For me, Sean, I was going say the one with the beard, but they’ve both got beards there. So the one on the right with the blue and the white t-shirt. That’s better. Yeah. One of his good friends had home birth and he and Jeremy had been invited to it to help look after the other sibling. And so hearing about somebody who had been at a home birth and kind of understood that well,

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and because I had home birthed my son only that year, that drew me to them and it made me go, oh, they might be into that. And had they done, no, that was the next set of IPs. One of them had been a sperm donor. But yeah, which is just interesting. And similar ages too, which is not necessarily always the case, but yes, I remember that was the type of thing. And people that were sort of active in the community, they were sharing little posts about things that they were doing and they just being genuine, nice people. And yeah. And I think that really can

16:57
the attention of a potential surrogate, that activity in the community. Being active in the community, clearly it drew your attention. now we all, well for those of us that have been around, we do know that this surrogacy journey didn’t particularly come to fruition. So can I ask a little bit about that? What kind of happened with that? How did that unfold? How did that all make you feel when that all happened? Yeah, so they came over in April 2017 and then I went to the conference, the Growing Families Conference,

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in June in Melbourne of that year and stayed with them. That was okay, mostly on the whole, but then a month or so later there were some cracks starting to show I think. Just some things that didn’t sit quite the same of perhaps how we thought the journey would go. And so ultimately they called it off with me. They did it in an email, which was fine because that was the mode of contact that worked best, because then I got time to digest it before we then did have a phone call. I remember it was a Monday because I was shattered and I’m like, I can’t cook tonight and nothing’s open on a Monday for takeaway.

17:57
Yeah, it was shattering. was the end of a relationship. It was a breakup. It really was. And I remember looking up, you know, Googling the cycles of grief and thinking all these different stages you go through of all the different emotions you feel about this. And it took months. It took time to heal from that. I look to their credit. They did what they said they were going to do. which was we were here as friends. And so we did maintain contact for a while that Christmas. So sort of four or five months later, they sent the kids Christmas.

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presents and we kept in contact and it’s drifted off now.

18:31
But we did see each other. Then a couple of years later, once they did have their, don’t know if they’ve had two children, they’ve certainly had one and they did find a surrogate through a friend of a friend and have become dads at least once now. So I got to meet them and see them again and that was really nice. Just a couple of things to say on that. I remember another surrogate in the community saying, Anna, you’re a lovely person and Sean and Jeremy are lovely people, but just because you’re all individually lovely doesn’t mean you’re gonna make a lovely team. Yeah, that’s right. It’s really hard to draw those lines to and I think as a surrogate,

19:01
You maybe didn’t expect that that would ever be the case, that you would be in fact, the one being told by the intended parents that, this is not working for us. It takes a lot for intended parents to be able to, essentially say no to a surrogate. So yeah, as a surrogate, you would have really been taken back by that.

19:20
Absolutely. Yep. And I then became the surrogate that had been said no to, which I then my connections in the community in years going forward, I can say to IPs, it’s OK to say no to a surrogate. was that surrogate, you know, got said no to and well done. They were brave and they could see that. don’t know if I was pushing it, but I guess I really wanted this to happen. And I think they look there might have been some personality clashes as well, but they were saying, hang on, we’re asking this woman with a one and a three year old who’s working full time to come to Melbourne

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and her partner sometimes has to come for all of his appointments. This is too big of a thing to add on to the family. And so that was part of the reason they called it off for me in that sense. I mean, I’m sure if you ask them, it might be a slightly different story, of course. Yeah, I think I often said, you know, we might not have had a gold medal journey. We might have had a silver or bronze medal journey. Surrogates are determined women and we’re going to make this work.

20:13
But yeah, it’s okay if it’s not right, it’s not right. And I can see that now that it wasn’t quite the right fit, but it still hard. Yeah, it would have been very hard emotionally. look, I, and probably like yourself, believe that people come into your life for a reason and it’s generally to lead you on the path that you’re meant to be on in the end. you know, this was just a part of that journey to get to where your ultimate goal was. So yeah, what happened? Yeah. So then took some time. And then I remember in the surrogates group, maybe I was away for a month or two over the Christmas

20:43
break and then came back in and you know there were some new IPs in Adelaide that was you know it’s like oh Anna’s wait till Anna comes back from a break you know she’ll see them here but it wasn’t until about the April I think the year after now 2018 did things strike up with Matt and Brendan. Just some photos in between time though of conferences so then I just wanted to share a few of some of the things I did along the way was I was part of the admin group for ASC the Australian Surrogacy Community and the surrogates group this was the admin team of the surrogates group for quite a

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while, Amanda on the left, then Charmaine, Marnie and myself. And something we did in that group is we started a buddy program that we ran for quite some time. Marnie headed that up. so whenever a new surrogate would join, we would buddy them up with somebody that was already there that had volunteered to be a buddy. And so they could connect with a real person. it was quite a bit to run admin wise, but I think for the years that it worked, it was powerful. Yes, it was. I remember being buddied up with someone. And then I remember being the person that was buddied up and being the one to help them through because of that program.

21:43
So, you know, that program continued for many, many years and helped a lot of people. Yeah. And then this was that first Melbourne conference meeting all the other surrogates. So eventually it’s grown into surrogate retreats. But to start with, it was sort of a room off from the conference for a few hours. And this is a group of surrogates. And then it grew in future years to a whole day as part of the conference. Bec Marshall and I are often the crazies there at the front together. And this same conference, I had this idea, sort of, Sarah, Jefford and I ran

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this day and I had this idea of sort of boss them around a bit. had this vision and this has become an image that we’ve used and it is an image we’ve used. It’s an image probably a lot of people have seen and I’m gonna just stop you there and ask you to explain the image which I’m sure is where you were going but like myself we like to talk so and I always felt that like this the sign that we put on this when I’ve used in social media is behind every surrogate is a tribe of loving women

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who have her back. And so if you can’t see this photo, we’re all facing a wall so you can see all of our backs and then there’s one person at the front. It’s sort of a pyramid style, but we’re all on our knees. And then there’s people fanning out pyramid style behind and we’ve all got one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us. And I always felt that whenever a surrogate goes into her team,

22:57
This is assuming the surrogates part of the community though. She’s doing it solo. It’s much harder. She can often come into the surrogates group and gain wisdom, share her highs and lows and maybe gain a different perspective. Even just to feel heard and validated for her ups and downs, but maybe come away with an idea of how to approach her IPs about a particular issue that she’s finding hard to bring up. And so that when she goes to that chat with her IPs or friends and family or whatever it is, she’s got this wisdom and knowledge of the people who have gone before her, who have shared their journey and experiences, holding her there, holding that

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space for her while she has those tricky conversations. Even though she’s doing that conversation alone, she’s supported. And that’s how I always felt the surrogates group worked and even this community as a whole. And that was my way of visually trying to recreate that power. think it’s a very powerful image and really beautiful image of strength. And again, in the community, was surrogate Lee in Adelaide, her husband does graphics digital stuff and he took that image and he cropped out all the chairs in the background, black and white, and made it nice. And so

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Again, that was the community working. I could never have done that without him. And I love that that’s how it all works here. We call on the skills of each other. And then there’s the retreat we had in Adelaide in 2021, I reckon it was, Danny? Yeah, that was a good fun day. A weekend. It was a whole weekend. was an awesome time together, meeting surrogate sisters from all over the country. Just sort of a bit out of COVID and then before Melbourne went into all their crazy lockdowns. Yeah. So it was a nice chance to travel. It was. Well, I mean, it was a nice chance to travel for us.

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minutes up the hill. But yeah it was really really an honor to meet all of these women in one room and hear their stories and it’s quite strange isn’t it seeing you know people’s names on Facebook and are on on sites and being able to put a name to a face to that name is is a really incredible feeling. And a voice and hearing Madeleine with her American accent and all those things.

24:52
So a bit of a sidetrack there and then this was just some of the photos some of these photos I share regularly in the webinars This is just of the egg donation teams. They’re all five years old now and they’re all at school and so yeah We all keep in touch with a Facebook group with the mums and then

25:06
The Queensland team came down for a visit a year or so ago. then, so this is a photo of all the adults and all the kids. And yeah, all of those kids in that photo, except the tall blonde boy, they’re all my egg. That’s incredible photo, Anna. You know, look at these beautiful people that you helped.

25:23
And I have that photo in my classroom and as well as some of my surrogacy ones and photos of other classes that I’ve taught. so whenever it comes up in conversation or people, one of the kids say, hey miss, what’s going on in this photo? I can tell them. And I, you know, I’m such a believer that that’s how we change the world. One conversation at a time. And, and by me telling kids that I’ve been an egg donor and a surrogate, it might either inspire them.

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in the future to be an egg or a sperm donor or if they need an egg or a sperm donor or surrogate, it’s normalizing it going, wow, back when I was at high school, I knew somebody that did that. And it’s just another way of having a family. Great platform for you to be able to, again, educate those in surrogacy and egg donation. Has it prompted some interesting questions from your students, surrogacy and egg donation, anything that springs to mind? Often then the question is, does anybody know if they’re an IVF baby, for example?

26:13
seeing more hands go up as time goes by that there’s no shame you know in that. It’s funny that we often remember the negative things we sometimes forget all the positives but one parent complained once about that we’d had this conversation in class and you should be teaching maths. But they were a little bit dodgy shall we just say and they weren’t leading parenting examples some seems.

26:38
There’s always one right? When I was leading up to the egg donation because it’s very hard to schedule what day you’re going to have off work until you’re told okay you know in three days time it’s egg pickup and so then you say to your class right class I’m gonna be away now on Friday and this is why but then I could turn it into a maths lesson because I would explain how they take an egg and a sperm and fertilize it and after each day the numbers double and that’s powers of two and so we could talk about it mathematically about and then it becomes a blastocyst and

27:08
explain IVF as maths, so technically you are still teaching maths. Absolutely, right?

27:16
That’s incredible. love that. We move on to my surrogacy journey. so we’ve got I’ve got a photo coming up later of the actual first message I sent to the lads. So we’ve got Matt there at the front. Brendan’s the tall one. And then husband Glenn and myself there. This was, think, one of our just date nights at home when you had to make a time to talk about surrogacy stuff. Saw their post. And I think what drew me to them was Matt had been a sperm donor for some of his two mum friends. And so that was, again, somebody who had done what I had done.

27:46
and as I asked, you get what it’s like to be on the other foot. You now need somebody to help you, but you’ve already helped others. Yeah, in the first night we met at the local pub and talked for five hours, I think. It’s funny, Brendan often says, we were interviewing Anna as much as she was interviewing us. That’s it’s true, it’s what it is. I remember at first thinking, well, that’s a little bit arrogant, isn’t it, Brendan? But now I realize in time, that’s what you need to do as IPs in a nice, genuine way. But she’s got to be the right fit for you just because somebody’s offered or offering to date and get to know you doesn’t mean they’re going to be the right fit.

28:16
right. So I’ve got a couple of questions here for you Anna. One is going to be the obvious of what drew you to man Brendan to begin with. And the second one is going to be, did you always want to help a same sex couple have a baby? that your, was that what you wanted out of your journey? Cause I know it’s like for when I came into surrogacy for me, it was really important for me to help make someone a month. That was, that was my thing. So is that something you’d thought about previously or? Yeah, good question. At the time when we joined in

28:46
2016 it wasn’t legal at the time to have gay dads in South Australia. I think that only came in in 2017 or something and so that’s yeah I’ve forgotten that part and so if I did want to help two guys it had to be interstate. I remember going back and reading like my intro post which is still there in ASC if anybody looks it up. I’ve got an older sister and I remember growing up with a lot of her gay male friends so I’d often been around gay guys growing up and so I suppose I probably felt called a bit more to the guys but I certainly wasn’t ruling the heteros out and also at Josh

29:16
A gay friend from uni had been present at the birth of my son, he was my support person. But then I had looked at other teams where a surrogate carried for hetero couples and I loved that sisterly bond that the surrogate and intended mum seemed to have and there was part of me that craved that and it still does. In some ways I’m like, oh wonder what it would have been like, wonder if things would be different if I had carried for a woman who’d become a bit more like a sister type of thing. but… Each relationship brings its own, you know, things to play.

29:42
Yeah, then I do remember in the in the time after the breakup asking some of some close friends to like help me analyze what it is I’m looking for and what type of IPs could be a good fit for me. And one of them did say she did probably think two guys partly I could try and remember the reasons perhaps because they can sometimes be a little bit more straight down the line. And sometimes I need that. But also certainly I would need one who’s a good project manager.

30:06
because I can do that but if I was the one driving it all that wouldn’t work somebody would have to as we know in surrogacy it’s like hundreds of steps that you’re gonna have to do and so one of them has to be that. Who was the project manager? Interesting Matt I would say again in the lead-up to this I was thinking just of some of the comments this is probably more a comment at the end after birth is we had group chat so we had me and the two lads and then we also had a group of four but it was mainly me and the two lads. Matt and I are wordy ones so I guess words of affirmation is off

30:36
been a love language and and we write. Brendan’s not the type of in person though he’s the talker and he does much more talking and what I found is that in hindsight my stronger connection to start with was with Matt and that’s who I’ve been doing most communicating with and often the surrogate does that with the intended mother if it’s a female and then when the baby’s born the intended mother is now the mother and is home with the child and is the primary carer. In my situation it’s swapped and

31:02
Brendan was the primary carer. And so then the person I ended up having to do most communicating with once Baker was born was Brendan, cause he was, Matt went back to work and but it was Brendan in terms of keeping in contact for photos and arranging catch-ups. And I realized in hindsight, I lost Matt a little bit because I wasn’t in contact with him as much anymore. And that sort of, mean, and Anna was going through post-natal depression, but I think in hindsight, that would be my little advice to any surrogate, know, finding out if you’re caring for two guys ahead of time, who’s going to be the primary carer initially, they might share.

31:32
it but making sure that connection is built with both. it’s important to build the connection with both I think because yes what if if something happened what if there was a separation what if there was a tragic demise of one of them you know or anything one of them got sick and was in hospital for most of the time you just I mean these are all negative negative points aren’t they but these are the things we have to think about so. So yeah and so I suppose yeah they’re just easy to get along with people a little bit younger than me but yeah just once we met in person

32:02
and just sort of all clicked and they were in terms of the journey that they wanted. was they wanted to be there at everything. So I had a five minute blood appointment, like blood test. One of them was going to be there. And that’s what we did the whole journey. And so then we really made a point of getting to know each other’s friends and family and spending time with the kids. And again, I just took, you know, snapped a few photos here of spending time at the playground. So we live about 40 minutes apart, so still fairly local. And I remember seeing Brendan there holding my son, who was what, two, his hand as they walked

32:32
back to the car and so that was an image of seeing him almost being a dad. It’s those images that you’re like I want to help make you a dad. Yeah I was gonna say is there one do you think there’s one thing you could pinpoint would this be an image that you’d pinpoint to say this is this is the reason I want to do this for these people.

32:51
Yeah, and it was so it’s been nice reliving it today and I just spammed them with quite a few of these photos in the group chat as I doing it to remind them. Particularly now that their son is between the age of my kids now and so it was that type of playing with my kids at the playground, playing all the pretend games and they continued that during pregnancy too. They’d take the kids out to the park. Yeah and seeing them be hands-on I think that was really important to visualize what they will be like as parents that really helped to confirm yes these are the people I want to carry for because I can see them you know helping my

33:21
but then also disciplining my kids like if they’re being unsafe on the playground it’s like no to Ewan that’s too high come down from there.

33:27
Normal things, yeah. All the things. And then here’s other things we did. They helped us build a sandpit in our backyard. Impressive. Yeah. And we put them to work. So Matt’s job was entertaining the kids a lot of the time. And then Brendan, you know, hands on there and yeah, we got it built. And I remember there was one comment we made on the day where I was pulling up roots and he was leveling things out or whatever. And we were just working and Brendan and I can talk and there was silence and we’re just working. And I stopped and I’m like, that’s probably a good sign when you can just be around each

33:57
other and get on with the task and you don’t feel the need to talk all the time. thought that was a nice level of comfort to get to. Yeah. Yeah. So then we dated for five or six months and then, and then they knew that I would officially offer at some point. And so we did an escape room, an adventure room, if you like. And this box here, again, working in a high school, I got the tech guys at work to make this up. And so that on the left is the lid that says, let the adventure continue. And on the inside of the bottom of the box, it says, let’s make a baby 2020. And because it was an adventure room that we went to, hence let the adventure continue.

34:27
And we got there ahead of time and I gave it to the staff. And so that when we escaped the room or didn’t escape the room and they had to come and let us out, that they would bring the box in. And I remember Matt’s face, cause he’s like, is this another task to do? And I was like, yeah, but this one’s okay. And then we went out to dinner. And so that’s become our surroversary. So the start of September that

34:49
was this date. So we make a point each year as adults for all going out to dinner to celebrate the enormity of the tasks that we did. So it’s not the first birthday or Christmas or anything like that. It’s just the four adults and now they have to get a babysitter. So just like we do to go out. So yeah. That’s something you guys have continued to keep doing every year and my point of this moment in time of when it all sort of came to fruition and started. And we got that idea obviously from the community and know, psychologist Katrina.

35:19
I think Pax was one of the ones that… Yeah, she’s a woman. A wise woman, very helpful for me. And then signing the legals and we did that, and we did strawberry picking on the same day, because the lawyer was up that way. So then made that all official. then, so this was, this is my first message to them. You can read it there. I went back and scrolled and found that at some point.

35:40
Katrina had suggested this to really know a person, takes a hundred hours in person and that doesn’t include sleeping. Like if you happen to go away for a weekend and you’re sleeping in the same house. So yes, me as the nerdy maths teacher, I kept track.

35:53
and it took us 12 months pretty much to the day to to reach that and we reached that just before we had our first embryo transfer and that felt really right to me that we’d taken a year to get to know each other and so the 100 hours officially happened at that catch-up there that you can see in the photo in the at the cathedral hotel so yes I remember that catch-up very very well you’ve got a lot of interesting points in your 100 hours

36:20
Is there any particular moment in that list that you think stands out the most to you as something you really enjoyed the most with your team bonding or maybe meeting family and friends or, um, you know, just going on being silly together or. Oh, it’s funny. Not in any particular order or two there. We went to a Florence concert, Florence and the Machine concert. So, um, that we both had in common, the building of the sandpit and things. The Inglewood. I wonder if that was the time when we had a clash.

36:50
on something was again so this is something our team did well was conflict resolution.

36:56
And so, the one that is there July when we went to the Inglewood pub, was we had talked about what birth was going to look like. That’s right. And how long post-birth that they would stay near us. So we got this idea from a previous team that even though they live locally, that the intended parents would get an Airbnb near the surrogate’s house for a while post-birth. And so that’s what I had said I would really like us to do, because if they were an interstate team, that’s what they would have done. And I think there was then some confusion about how long Anna had said and how long they had said.

37:26
and we got brought back up and went, oh, this is different. So I think their memory of what I had said was I said two weeks and they were thinking more like five days and like, oh, hang on, they’re quite different. And so then you could tell that there was the tension on and so we, our technique as a team, whenever we come up with tension was everybody say what they want to say. Now we need to have a week or a few days, schedule another catch up and come back and talk about the sticky issue. And that’s what we did on our journey. And we even did it post birth too.

37:56
and that became a really good technique for us. And so then you each go away and go, what, how much of this is important to me? Do I want to lose the team?

38:04
And that’s what it was a few times. No, it was more like how about a week? Like, let’s say it’s more like the seven to 10 day. So, yeah, and that’s what happened. They stayed about seven, six or seven nights nearby. But I can appreciate that it’s really hard to book an Airbnb if you’re having an unplanned birth in terms of if you’re not inducing. You can’t book your accommodation. But I guess my argument was, but if you’re an interstate team and you were coming, you would have to make a decision as to you come two weeks before due date. So, yes. So, yeah, they were 100 hours. And then that led us into

38:34
first two transfers that didn’t work. could they only, oh, so their egg donor in that time was a friend, Jen, I’ll show you a photo of her later. We only got two embryos. This was with Brendan’s sperm. There’s so many things we could talk about. Brendan wanted to be the biological dad. In the end, he hasn’t been. This was the first embryo transfer. And I’ve got this idea of making a sticky bouquet of all sticky things like lint rollers, sticky notes, sticky date pudding, a bunch of sticks. You’re a very crafty woman, Nana. I stole that idea from somebody, but you know, that’s okay. Yeah, I did. So I took

39:04
into reprimand again. Again that’s the lads buying you know their first pregnancy test. And then these were now these are not in order but he’s like an example of the humor of our team of you know getting ready for scans and pretending you know you’re going to birth a baby and it’s just going to pop out like a football and Brendan’s going to catch it. I don’t think I have ever seen that photo of you.

39:26
That’s not one that frequents the internet, funnily enough. So I found a few of them today and then there’s a bit of jumping going on here. So the second transfer like yours, Dani, the ember didn’t survive being thawed out. Now that is rough, isn’t it?

39:42
again like yours it was the last one in the freezer. that’s right. So how then did they, how did you guys as a team navigate that? Like I know how we as a team navigated it and it was just allowing each other some space and time to grieve. In particular allowing you know my intended mum to grieve. So yeah how did how did they deal with that? What happened after that? Yeah so from memory it was say so 2019 April and May transfers back to back and then got told didn’t work. I think

40:12
think we kind of took June off. I don’t know if we had much contact or we certainly didn’t arrange anything. But obviously in the first days or week, post-transfer, it’s checking in on everybody, how you’re feeling, you know, emotionally, financially, you know, me as a person, like just what do we want to do? Does anybody want to stop? You know, that sort of stuff. things are normal to arise at that point in time. But then their egg donor said, yes, I’ll go again and we’ll do another collection. So we went, OK, so we sort of picked ourselves back up. But then obviously, you know, that’s going to take time.

40:42
So then I think that was say, an September or October collection. And then this time, again, because we were the first team in South Australia.

40:49
to be two dads to go through IVF for surrogacy. We were the second baby born. The first team was AMVAs and it was traditional surrogacy. But yeah, we were the first team to go through reprimand. You essentially paved the way for the rest of us South Australians to follow. Well, for the gay guys, yes. They split the cycle of the gen from her eggs and they did half one sperm and half the other. So that had never been done before. But what happened is that, and that they were testing the embryos and they were just sort of being knocked out.

41:17
And ended up being only like one of Brendan’s was sort of medium grade and or maybe a couple were medium grade. And then the one that was good was Matt’s. And so then it was, wow, what do we want to do here? And so I left it, we left it to Brendan and said, Brendan, you’re the one that wanted to be the biological father. So if you want to put that embryo in, let’s do it. But then I suppose you’ve got to weigh it up. Like what if you’re putting in a dodgy embryo or it doesn’t even last two weeks. What if it lasts 10 weeks and then you have a miscarriage? And so you’re putting potentially your surrogate’s body under undue stress.

41:47
and then she might stop the journey. so they decided, Brendan said, let’s go with the strongest embryo. Let’s, you know, I don’t have to be the biological father to know that I’ll be dad. And it’s so true. don’t. Genetics does not make you a parent. Agree. Everything else that comes in between emotional, physical, mental, that’s what makes it. Yeah. Yeah. So then, so then there was a quarantine for the embryos and then, you know, as soon as the days were done and we got all our, everybody had their STI tests done. So it was January, 2020.

42:17
think that leads us, I think this was the day. I’ll share one little joke that that I know we’re going for quite some time here. So anybody’s welcome to leave whatever they want but thank you for listening because you have to take off your knickers right as you have these scans and all these sorts of things and then people are like would you like us to leave the room? I’m like no no it’s fine just you know that’s why I started wearing dresses. Yeah. Yeah and then Matt in his cheekiness you know said at some point he’s like I’m surprised you’re even wearing underwear anymore.

42:48
That’s right. So for those that know in Adelaide, that’s Hilary Whittle, Dr. Whittle, showing, putting the embryo in or showing where it’s all going to go. And then, then it worked. So then this is peeing on a stick. I’d had just two progesterone injections. So we weren’t quite sure, you know, how much of that would still come up on the peeing on the stick. And so then this is us out the front of getting the blood test done. And again, you know, I had all these sticks with me and I felt like, what is it? Wolverine? Yeah, got your mouth, it’s a marble DC, whatever moment there. That’s right. And so again,

43:18
every five minute blood test, one of them was there. Cause I mean, that’s what’s inconvenient, getting to work in the morning, dropping the kids at school, Matt, you know, getting to his work too, but they did it. That’s what we said we’d do. So that was epic. Yes. And then we, we move into the pregnancy and these couple of photos here are of cravings. So these are late night snacks and this was at 8.40 at night became quite a regular having a bowl of porridge. What’s that? What did think?

43:43
That’s right, became a thing and apple crumbles I would make myself. This was the announcement to all their friends and family. This is their egg donor Jen on the right there with her son and we all went down to Grange Beach and they had a friend take some photos. Wow. Yeah, and I was just starting to show and then these are some photos of the realities of pregnancy of how tired you get. Yeah, so tired that you sleep under your desk by the looks of things. Yes, I did. This is in my maths office at school, particularly if I had a free lesson after lunch and I still had one more lesson at the end.

44:13
the day it was just yeah I would so I got a friend to take a photo of me but I regularly did this. You’ve got this napping yeah because it looks like first trimester and second trimester maybe it’s been into the third. Yeah that was mainly first but then it was still yes often in the afternoon just needing that nap and so these are the realities of it too and so then that takes time out of your day and your life and then you feel guilty you’re like oh you know I’ve just got my kids fed but now they need to be on a screen while I have a nap or the guilt.

44:43
I’m just going to off topic here, you know, you and I had the same couch back then. True, we had the same couch.

44:51
There you go. Yes, me and on that. That’s a comfy couch anyway, moving on. Yes, moving on. And then some of the photos. So this was, this is, think the only appointment I went to on my own in the whole time, it was the peak of COVID, you know, so we’re now in 2020. This was going to the hospital for my first triage appointment, I think, and Matt zoomed in. So I was allowed to the computer on when I was in there. And, and then this was an example, you might be able to see the debit card I’ve got in my hand there, but we had a card connected to their account. And so it was again, the night.

45:21
that you couldn’t be bothered cooking. This was getting some takeaway of KFC on this occasion. Hey that’s good you know KFC is life right someday. yeah you were around COVID times like many of us were and that obviously puts a bit of a dampen on you know how the team’s journey is envisioned. Were there many appointments that they were not able to make it to because of COVID regulations? No and I mean in all the years of the 100 webinars I’ve done of interviewing others we weren’t too

45:51
bad really, partly because we were planning a home birth and so the way that works is that you get assigned to midwives and even in non-COVID times what happens is they often come to your house for appointments. know or you meet them at one of their satellite clinics which is often connected to one of the hospitals but you’re just in with like a normal patient room type of thing and so it then meant when they come to our house because there were less COVID restrictions in a house the boys could be present. That was one good thing for us in COVID. I recommend

46:21
You recommend home birth. Really please everybody home birth during a pandemic and you will be fine. Yes, so then we just sort of navigated it and again you just sort of summarized pregnancy but there’s just I found a few photos here so this is me with armfuls of vitamins and and things that you had to take and

46:37
and stuff. mean I had low iron which is we suck the life out of you during pregnancy. had to have an iron transfusion at one point maybe at the time I got pregnant or maybe one during two. can’t quite remember now. Have you ever had to have in your own pregnancy? No but probably should have. I do take iron tablets in consultation with my doctor so I’ve always been low in iron too. So yeah we just wanted to be on the front foot with it. Did you find a big difference between carrying your own pregnancies and then carrying know Baker and

47:07
an IVF pregnancy, not your genetic DNA? Yeah again I forget all these great questions to ask. No because and I don’t think anybody ever really knows the difference of carrying an IVF baby or not. Look very similar pregnancies. I partly did surrogacy because I liked being pregnant and giving birth and I wanted to do that again. I quite liked my body during pregnancy. I would wear tight dresses which I wouldn’t normally wear because I liked all my pregnancy bumps and which is another thing a lot of them were second hand because I wear a lot of second hand clothing and the boys found a lot of it on like Facebook

47:37
marketplace and would go buy it for me and so they’d rock up with cash to pick up maternity clothing which is fun. I guess you’re always older each time you’re pregnant and so therefore you’re never younger and so it gets harder and you know this was my third pregnancy so my kids were what two and four pelvic pain.

47:55
really kicked in and we needed these, I think they’re called SRC shorts, recovery shorts, so that really helped lift my belly up and support it. So that photo of me there is unpacking the weekly grocery shopping and going, oh, this is too much. Like I’m overwhelmed by what I now have to do. And well on that then in the last 10 weeks, I reckon of pregnancy, they came up every week and they are in the last six weeks, they did my grocery shopping every week and they came, they got the list and the bags, took it there, brought it back, unpacked it on the bench, put it all away in the cupboards.

48:25
That was a godsend. And then often making a meal or things for the kids’ lunch boxes.

48:30
to really help me out. that’s again what we’d agreed to as a team. Yeah, so they were great like that. Yeah, that’s wonderful that they were willing to be so hands on and helpful. Yeah. You know, I mean, pregnancy is not easy and that last trimester can be rough. And then examples of them hanging out with my kids, taking them out to the park so that I could have a nap. I think they took them to the movies once, mini golf. Yeah, just getting really hands on with them, which was lovely. And for my kids to bond with them too. have a connection with them. Yeah. And then this was a 20 week scan.

49:00
with them, you know, seeing bubs on the screen and we did know the gender too. Yeah. And so was again, nice to be able to have them both in the room there. That was, we weren’t sure if they would have to alternate, but yeah, it’s really lovely to share those moments together. And do you remember getting to see their like face at the first GAN? I know this is just 20 week GAN, but you know that you remember that heartbeat appointment? Yeah. How was that one? I nearly put that photo or a mini video in. There’s this picture of them looking over there at the screen and I’m lying on

49:30
the taking a photo or video of them because all I’ve seen these before I just want to watch them and you could see Brendan visibly right yeah and he’s like so it’s definitely there it’s strong is it yeah good

49:45
So that’s a really special moment to share together. It is those little moments that just make it magical, Yeah. These are the SRC shorts that I was talking about. This neat armpit sort of style. They look like some good spanks Anna. Oh they are, really suck you in. And then we had the book, or maybe Ret from Ed give it to you. What is it? What to expect when you’re expecting? That book has, I remember reading that when I had my kids. Still going. Yep. And so again, for my kids, it was really helpful to

50:15
about what was happening and that there was a baby in my tummy and this is you know you and who was two and a bit um or maybe they were three and five when Baker was born or something. You lose track don’t you? Yeah and pointing at the pictures of the baby in a tummy and um yeah that was his way of connecting so that was really nice. And uh just on the topic of your kid then what what did you explain to the kids about how this this was all gonna work um and what was gonna happen to the baby that was growing in your tummy? Yeah I guess because I’d known me being an egg donor and the story we told the

50:45
there is you need an egg and a seed to make a baby and these ladies because I donated for three mums because at the time you couldn’t do that for two guys in South Australia these ladies eggs weren’t working I had some spare so I shared them and so then when it came to Matt and Brendan it was well you need a lady’s tummy

51:00
to grow a baby and Matt and Brendan are two boys and so I’ve got my tummy, should we help grow them a baby? And they’re like, okay. Really simplistic, right? For kids, they’re just sure, whatever. was always, know, Baker was always going to go to their house and it was important that we had therefore gone to their house so that they know what the house looked like and seeing the nursery being set up and things like that. And so it was just really normal that the language the whole time was, you know, the baby, he’s going to go to their house. Yeah. And then just some continued pregnancy photos and this is why

51:30
of the catch-ups I think and just sitting down and being able to, you know, grab Brendan’s hand and get him to feel a kick and share those moments together. Yeah, very special moment. And then again attending appointments where they were able to help do the Doppler scan and hear the heartbeat and then that’s a photo of our student midwife because when measuring my tummy it was exactly average and I said that’s what we want in pregnancy, we want to be average, yay for being average and so I thought that was funny. And then I took, you know, weekly pregnancy photos

52:00
the bumps along the way and these are photos of when it’s fine but I also made sure I didn’t do it on purpose but I just didn’t want to hide it. It wasn’t always easy, pregnancy is hard. The hard days, the days where you just feel exhausted and tired and feel like you’re a blimp on legs right? And I’m not gonna smile nicely for these photos. I mean it’s a funny thing because you’re not resentful like you know you signed up for it but then it’s still annoying when it’s hard. Yeah. And then that photo I was cooking

52:30
dinner and it just, because I like to cook and I’m the cook and but it still got hard. And so I just slumped, I was getting something out of the cupboard there and I just slumped to the ground. And like, it was a bit weird because I’m like, I said to Glenn, could you please take a photo of this? that, probably. Who’s taking these? Like, I just, I felt that and I’ve actually shared that photo with surrogates over the years when I’ve been in messages with them and they’re just saying it’s hard. And I send them this photo going, is this how you feel? Like these these three photos. they’re like, Yes, that is the reality.

53:00
but it is not all easy. And then but then there was also silliness so I think in the surrogates group you and I Danny did some of these photos along the way of um my coming my favorite coming on these are the two favorites so for those that hung around for these photos so we decided Anna looks a bit like a rotisserie chicken in the first one

53:22
And the laying naked in the Lego was an incredibly brave choice for those that have never stepped on Lego before. again, the staging of that asking your husband to, I’ve got this idea for a photo. Can you get my ass on the tubs of Lego and like scatter it around the bed?

53:39
What did Len say about this? Can you remember? I mean he’s put up with everything so far. know he’s done the egg donation, the surrogacy, this was just the next thing. He’s done a Wonder Woman costume, he’s like okay what’s next? The photo I didn’t put in was the one when I rolled off the bed and I had dent marks in my bottom. You had my ghost stuck to your bum. I did so. It’s funny when I look at some of these photos I see the acne that I have because in pregnancy I every 12 hours I would get a new pimple. Oh that’s not nice. What a horrible

54:09
symptoms. Yep on my face, on my chest, on my back. I’ve since gone on a course of Roacatine which is what the teenagers often go on for for acne which I’m just weaning off now which has worked but um yeah I look at these photos and I can see all the redness there but anyway that was that got quite laugh out of the group didn’t it? Yeah all I see is a rotisserie chicken so that’s we see very different things here. And also that at the time again I’m cautious of how much I say on here because I’m going to make this a podcast is that what you can’t see over your large pregnant belly

54:39
and then what you can see my actual cat between my legs that particular cat so you know that was another poignant moment there. There’s just a little nod to it right? A little nod there and then we had some um photos done during the pregnancies this is in our backyard and this photographer ended up being our birth photographer and then yeah this was a nice photo too to capture the dads with their hands on.

55:02
my belly. Also did some Demi Moore inspired some nudes. Again, because I was pretty sure this would be the last time I was ever going to be this pregnant. So let’s capture this big belly growing. Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful photos. And then the lads were followed on Instagram by quite a few people and we got offered this photo shoot. So we did that together. And I remember that photo of me standing in sort of the foreground and them in the background and not realizing it. But all of these photos. Ah, this is what surrogacy is to me. It’s how do you capture

55:32
surrogacy in a picture that doesn’t look like I’ve got two husbands and I’m carrying a baby for two men like that.

55:37
How does it look like surrogacy? Where there’s a little bit of distance, where they’re in the background, that sort of sums it up. Ah, this is for them. Yeah. Yeah. Nice moment there. speaks a thousand words, right? It does. And then we come to the day of birth, the night of birth. Now, just quickly before the night of birth, now, for those of you that don’t know you, you collect birthdays. Oh, yes. You collect birthdays, Anna. So everyone Anna meets, she likes to, you know, ask them, what’s your birthday? Cause she has a little book with everyone’s birthday. So was this a birthday?

56:07
collection. Thank you for remembering that. Oh yeah I have a video of this. Yes Baker was a good boy and he came on a day I wanted. So was due September 27 but I already had a birthday on that day to collect. So this book’s been going for like 30 odd years and but not every day is filled up. I’ve got multiples on some days. I didn’t have anybody two days before or two days after my due date and so like right and I’d gone over my due date with my own two kids so I thought this is possible. Um it was the end of term three.

56:35
That’s how we work as teachers. And so then the 24th of September on the Thursday, I’m like, right, buddy, I want you born tomorrow. And so I was out walking and doing everything I could to try and bring on labor and anybody that knows other techniques, trying to do all of those things too. And so, and then by about four o’clock that afternoon, I’m like, I think we’re on. We’d had a few false starts in the week leading up to it, but I thought these cramps are a bit different. So for some context, it says this is about four and then about 7pm, I made the call to them and said, we’re on tonight’s a night, come over. But being a home birth, you have to call

57:05
the midwife, a like the TV show and the book. You have to decide when to call them. And so that was interesting. And so we knew that our student midwife, she’s from Port Lincoln, which is regional South Australia, she had a horse that needed to be put down. And so she had a flight booked to Lincoln at 7am the next morning, the Friday morning. So she would have to leave the home birth at five in the morning to get to the airport. If she didn’t get to stay at, there for the birth, it didn’t count as one of her continuity births that she had seen the patient through the whole pregnancy and post-birth. You have to be at the birth.

57:35
like, right, so for her to be there, he has to be born before five in the morning, but for him to count for me, I don’t want him born Thursday night, I want him born Friday morning. So he to be born after midnight, but before 5am, and he was. Yeah, wow, he was very well behaved then. Good man, yes. So he was born just before 1am, so.

57:54
I love that. Just before we move on with that there’s just been a quick question Anna maybe you can address it later. What birthdays do you need in the last two weeks of September, Yeah perhaps when I’m coming to Melbourne catch up next week I’ll bring my birthday book with me and I’ll collect any people that I don’t know. I don’t know off the top of my head I’d have to bring the book.

58:13
Now you’re home bird, right? You’re all just standing around in the kitchen, just chatting. You’re just going through the contractions, the pools being filled up. You know, it’s all happening. There’s a hose clearly running from your sink.

58:28
with warm water. if you do a water birth so you have to try and have the water at body temperature so about 37 degrees and so I’d home birthed before so I knew that but this was the boys first time. Yeah and so this collection of photos the top left there is me briefing them on how I thought the evening was going to go of where I’m up to what I thought I needed and I thought this is like three men listening to okay here’s it’s going to roll and then just photos there in the kitchen of while I’m contracting Matt I think was showing me things on his phone or what playlist of music we wanted to have

58:58
and then feeling um contractions and pushes and kicks still while it’s all happening and then I put this photo in because this is it’s funny this is one of my favorite photos of the night what Brendan is saying in that moment is I’m a genius it was all about it was all about Brendan for a lot of this because trying to work out

59:15
again, so many things you could say, but for home birthing, it was your water birth, you have to get the pool to that temperature. So you have to be able to fill it with warm water. But then if the temperature drops, you’ve got to be able to get, you’ve got to get rid of some so you can add some more hot in. So how you’ve got to have two hoses going. And so you can see the window there, then having another hose going outside, but then it was, it was middle of winter. And so we needed that window closed as much as possible for the heat, blah, blah, blah. But we’re like, how are we going to get the water flowing out? And we eventually had a, like a champagne stopper or it had a valve on

59:45
the of the hose that’s outside the house but how are going to get the water? And Brendan’s like I’m a country boy he’s from Wagga and he’s like I’ve siphoned some petrol before. I’m going to siphon some water for you. And also being a gay man he’s like I could I can manage a hose and so he worked out to get the siphon working happening to get the water going in the other hose but then to be able to stop it and so then we could release some water if we needed to and also when you need to drain the pool at the end to get that happening so.

01:00:14
That was his moment. He’s like, I just need this all acknowledged. I know you’re in labour and giving birth, but I’m a genius. a photo of this moment right here.

01:00:22
So the photographer did. And so again, we need to call the photographer to come too. So it was fairly quick time from when I called them at seven to when born at 1am. There’s a lot going on in that time. And again, these are photos. This is I talk and laugh a lot during labor. So this is me laughing and also screwing my face up, you know, in hypnobirthing, we call it a surge as opposed to a contraction. But and that’s Matt on the phone to the midwife and she’s like, but I can hear her laughing. So she probably isn’t really in that much labor. That midwife on for that night, it was her first time being on call for the home birth.

01:00:52
We also had the chief midwife happen to be on and she said in hindsight knowing that I’d home birth before she would have come earlier like on that first phone call but they got it there and then oh that comes to nearly one of my other favorite photos but then this is the lads of supporting me so we’ve done a hypno birthing course together and so them learning pressure points and just yeah helping me through labor. I guess sometimes when you’re new to the community it’s hard to imagine that this is what surrogacy could be like at the end isn’t it that they’re that hands-on during labor. They were obviously happy to be hands-on you were happy to have them be hands-on.

01:01:22
hands on clearly from making photos. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that’s what we yeah, we planned as a team that they would be that hands on. Hence they did the birthing courses with me too. Is there any asked of them not to do in late? Oh, no.

01:01:34
No, no we talked through most things. It was more like I’ll probably just tell you to stop if not but as you can see yeah they were doing the pressure points and the hands-on and I wanted that. I wanted them to, it was their baby like it was my birth and pregnancy but I wanted them, this is their birth story to tell too and when I post-birth when I did hear them telling this story it was so beautiful hearing them talk about all of these moments that was there telling my birth and that was some of the highlights for me hearing them. It’s not just about here we’ve got a baby it was the night of the birth and

01:02:04
Thank you.

01:02:05
their version of how that came about and we saw it as in their eyes. And then this was so it’s 11.20 on the clock there and like I’m only an hour and half away from birthing and I love this photo because it just shows people that birth isn’t always all hard there’s breaks in between and so this is the midwives they just arrived I think 11.20 and they’re like so how you going and where’s everything up to and I’m cracking jokes and they’re like they didn’t believe how far along I therefore was that’s a nice photo and then we went up to the bedroom

01:02:35
wasn’t gonna have any internal checks, but we ended up having two midwives on that we’d not had during our journey. So we were just sort of getting to know each other. So I said, okay, I’ll have an internal check, which is when they tell you how many centimeters dilated you are. But my idea was, I don’t wanna know. You do the check because you need to and because we don’t know each other, okay, that’s fine.

01:02:52
But please don’t tell me the number. Yeah, because sometimes you can get so hung up on the number. Yes. And then actually stop your labor if your body’s not doing what you’re hoping it’s doing. Agreed. And it turns out that’s what Brendan was really nervous about. So this is him that they’re sitting there that the number would be so low that they’d go, they’d leave and that they’d come back a few hours later. And he’s like, you know, then I birthed an hour and half later. And then they said in hindsight, I think I was probably seven or eight centimeters dilated or eight or nine or something. And they’re like, yep, we’re staying. Yep. That’s all they said. Yep, we’re staying.

01:03:22
So then they call the hospital and say, we are now here, so you can’t call us for anybody else now. So while they were doing their phone calls, the pool was nearly ready. And I remember this photo of me coming down the passage and I’d just gone to the toilet. So don’t want to wee in the pool, go for the toilet. And I’m like, I wanted to wait for the midwives to come out from making their phone calls to get in the pool. I felt like I needed permission. I went, no, stuff it. This is my birth. I’m getting it. Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:46
And then this is photos of me like having to go under the water hoses to get to the toilet like this is you know it’s all part of it. And then the stories here are so student midwife I didn’t have oh what didn’t I oh I I had no more internals or something and I didn’t have this was the only observations I had just blood pressure and heart monitoring every 10 or 20 minutes or something.

01:04:07
trying to be hands off as possible. This is Matt reading me hypnobirthing scripts that we had practiced to get into the zone. But what happened is that the experienced midwife was showing the other two how the oxygen tanks works in case baby needs a bit of oxygen when they’re born. But what happened is when they put the valve on it, it didn’t go on properly and it like really loud hissed and we thought something, I thought I’d punctured the pool. And so we are laughing but it took me out of my silent moment there.

01:04:35
couldn’t get quite back into it then. but anyway, we were getting pretty close by that point. So I was only in the pool for about an hour. And then this is the infamous Civ. Yes, the infamous Civ. If anybody here tonight does not know who the infamous Civ is, please come along to the monthly webinars that we run. Sorry, not monthly webinars, monthly Zooms. Come along to the monthly Zooms and you too can meet the Civ. Yes. So this is Brendan scooping things from the pool there. And then I thought these were just good photos of Matt.

01:05:05
face like being told, you know, what’s happening and him trying to be helpful but nervous and yeah, was lovely moments. And then here is, wait for it, I think a unique photo here because this is my water’s breaking. Yeah, that cloud. Yeah, so this is cloud, I’m on my knees and you can see the cloud of water coming out behind me and so that’s what that cloud was and so then you’ll see in the next photo when he’s actually born, you realise my water’s broke only after his head was born. So he’s sort of partly

01:05:34
born on call or in the sack, not completely. Yeah and in this photo here of me bringing him up, the sack hadn’t had time to wash away completely so they call it a veil and so then you see in that photo on the right it’s like rice paper, cold roll paper. The midwife had to reach over and like pull it off his head because it hadn’t washed away so that’s pretty unique. off his head so he can get a breath in right? Yes there was a few other photos there where he looked like he was struggling. He a very short cord too. I’m sorry I love that you were you know

01:06:04
those photos there was no there was no hands on you you guided that birth you guided him out yeah yeah i forget that because i’ve done it twice now that yeah and on the birth um your birth notes there’s a section called i think it’s the accoutrement or something it’s french for like the catcher but it’s me for the last two births i’ve had i’m the person that catches it and i ask them advice i’m like right so how am i in between contractions like how am going to do this again they’re like yeah you birth the head and then if you’re on your knees or facing on all fours you just sort of bring baby up in front of you um and provided the water temperature

01:06:34
which is the same, they don’t drown. Yeah, so that’s what he did. Oh, so the head sat there for, because we filmed the birth two, I’ve never gone back and edited the video, I’d like to at some point, but just never go around to it. Two minutes, his head sat between my legs before the next contraction. Wow. Yeah, and I remember just saying, there’s a head between my legs, and they’re like, yep, we can see it there, yep.

01:06:55
And me saying to them, are you ready to be dads? You know, just while this giant head sitting in and he was a big lad, think he was nine pound one or what’s that 4.1 kilos or something like that. So it was a big lad. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Yeah. And so then those moments of we did it. It’s amazing. Isn’t it? You know, your face in that photo is just like, yeah, you’re so proud of your team’s journey, right? This is it. This is the moment.

01:07:20
I must say though, I found this photo really hard to look back at for a long, time because that was Anna, joyful.

01:07:27
We did it. Elation birth. Amazing. You do that again. But because then I went into postnatal depression. Yeah. I look back at that photo and I couldn’t remember that person. I couldn’t remember the joy from that moment. And I look back at that and I felt sad for that person because of what was to come. And it wasn’t until about probably a year post birth when I was reliving the lead up to the birth with the dads that I finally saw what everybody else sees in that photo. That that’s a woman who’s just given birth who’s quite relaxed, who’s not like exhausted.

01:07:57
do you know what I mean? Like sometimes you see birth and it’s like oh can’t be bothered but it’s like I don’t look like that look fresh and… You pure elation on your face. Yeah.

01:08:04
And so that’s been a really interesting photo for me. I found that a challenging photo. Most people don’t know that, but here we are tonight sharing that. And then a few photos there, which I share in most of the webinars there of the dads, you know, sitting by me outside the pool going, wow, you know, we’ve done this. Like you did it, Anna, you did it. And it’s like, yeah, I did it. And as I say, in every fortnight, this is Brendan telling me how proud he was of me. yeah, it was, it was some beautiful moments there on that night. And then here’s ones you’ve never seen before.

01:08:34
of birthing in a pool and in a home birth and so the deal was I wasn’t ready for handover I didn’t want to it in the water I wanted to be settled and so we did cut the cord in the water because we didn’t do that with my son we went up to the bedroom and then cut the cord but his cord was so short that you had to yeah and he was tugging so yeah this is me getting lifting up out of the pool holding a baby I’m wet and then putting towels around me walking up the passage yeah so these are nice to have these sort of moments there

01:09:02
this point you had not birthed the placenta. Correct, I had not birthed the placenta and it doesn’t just fall out. No, think it doesn’t fall out when you get up. As much as you might feel sometimes when you stand up that everything might just fall apart.

01:09:14
So yeah, we stayed on the bed. So we born at about one, just before one. And then, yeah, my kids were around too. They were up and down, but they was mainly sleeping. But then we got them up. so this is some beautiful photos of my children meeting their child. These were really special moments in the middle of the night. And then I’m doing a first feed with Baker there. That was about the position I sat in as the placenta came out and everybody in the room watching. And you’re like, oh, there we go. And they’re like, whoa, we just watched that.

01:09:44
That’s not part of it. It’s such a nice relief when it comes out too. yes, was great. And then this is part of actual handover so you don’t often see this photo. This is the literal handover moment here so we decided…

01:09:57
Matt was going to do it. He was happy to have his shirt off and do that skin to skin. And then this is often the photo I show just for a bit of time context, though. I don’t know if anybody can see the clock. It says 2.32 in the morning. Now he was born at 12.50, so nearly 1 a.m. I had him for an hour and 40 minutes beforehand over, which I know is pretty rare in this world, but just wanted to highlight that as an example of what one team did. Yeah, you can certainly you can have it such a multitude of ways. You can do a quick short handover, a long handover. It really has to be

01:10:27
something that feels right at the time. You can go into it with an idea, but sometimes that changes a bit during the birth process too. You need to have, yeah, as a team flexibility and be able to maneuver through that. And we had talked about that. We didn’t know how long it was going to be, but as they said, we’re going to have him for the rest of his life, you know, when you’re already. Yeah. And so this was.

01:10:47
Yeah, part of that that moment and that was that I remember sitting there next to my friend Matt thinking my friend Matt as his baby in his arms I did that I put that baby there and that was it was yeah powerful stuff. Powerful feeling. Yeah, and then yeah, so I got cleaned up I had a shower in my own house and then the dads took him for his way and put his first set of clothes on you know This is all happening in a house, which is sort of a nice sort of backdrop there if you like Yeah, and photos sitting on the couch. Yeah, and what happens in a home birth is the midwife stay for four hours post-birth

01:11:17
and then they go. that’s it. Oh golly, we’re on. And so the dad’s actually stayed at our house that night because it’s the, we had planned that anyway. But then this next photo I think is a great example. So we finally got to bed at four, five o’clock and then my son’s early-ish risers, it was by seven, it was probably before seven. He’s up, little Ewan. And so this photo there, this is thing called a Dock-a-tot, which is this little thing to keep a baby in. This is Matt with his son who is eight hours old sitting on the floor doing a jigsaw

01:11:47
puzzle with my four-year-old son. Yeah. Because this was part of it. You were here with my children as well. I was making us coffee and um and I just thought let’s take a photo of that and here he is with his son just sitting on the like in the floor next to him and yeah that’s a great example I think. I think it’s actually a really lovely photo.

01:12:04
and you know you can be so yeah in in your moment and in your bubble but yeah this is the reality of what it can be. and then photos of my kids and I think they look quite cute there holding Baker. Yeah I did a lot of direct breastfeeding for the first three days most of the feeds to bring in a milk supply and then pump milk for nine weeks and that’s some of the colostrum I hand expressed as well so they could do some of those early feeds. That was one of the other conflicts that we had during pregnancy of

01:12:31
I think I’ve missed another one about the gender reveal, but in terms of…

01:12:35
how much direct feeding I was gonna do. When I was heavily pregnant, it changed. I felt like had this maternal instinct and I felt like I needed to be Baker’s voice. And I felt that as many direct feeds from me felt like what he needed, but it’s so hard when it’s like, there child, your body, it was tricky. And so I got the midwives to help me bring up that conversation and I made sure that the midwives are there when the dads are there and I’m an anxious person. And so in my head, was gonna go, it was gonna be a fight. It was gonna be terrible. It wasn’t.

01:13:04
But it was like, we come at a compromise though? And so maybe I hadn’t planned on expressing as much colostrum. It’s like, could you do some of that? And it’s like, yes, okay. And then some feeds in a bottle. yeah, until the milk supply came in. And so then I went to their Airbnb and I stayed with them for a night or two until that milk supply was in. Yeah, but they were literally only five minutes away. So then on the other days, they would call me be like, up for his first feed. Auntie Anna, he’s awake. And so I’d be in my pajamas and I’d just drive up there. And husband Glenn was on board to look after our kids and it was school holidays too.

01:13:34
So he was around. So that was helpful. He’s a teacher too. So that’s really lovely. And then photos. There was one day where they went back home and left me to babysit for a few hours when he was about five or six days old. And this was, I took some photos on that day of me just with him to have. And then these were the photos I’d often look back on when I was expressing milk so that I could help with the letdown. Yeah. Isn’t it funny how those photos really help? found the same thing too. Just looking at a photo of Surro bub helped just relax your body and your mind.

01:14:04
Okay, it’s all good. Or little videos and crying or you know. had the two things there. I had a video of him feeding from me and like nuzzling like a little piggy at a trough. When they try and find milk. And I also had, we would swap a little onesie every week or so. Brendan would give me one that smelled like him. Yeah. And I’d, I’d smell that while starting the expressing. I think I’ve worked out in time. It actually doesn’t smell like Baker. It’s just their washing powder.

01:14:28
My brain then learned to associate that smell with Baker and so now whenever I smell that I’m like that’s the washing powder smell of Baker. Funny things. That photo in the middle looks like you were having quite an emotional little moment in there. Yeah it was I mean I was taking a selfie so was trying to like decide what angle to do for the selfie but I did that was that was a really special day because I talked to him and oh he hadn’t done a proper poo in days either and Brendan was all nervous about that but of course he did it on the

01:14:58
few hours he was with me and so I obviously sent them a photo and I had to have a whole outfit change and but I

01:15:05
Talk to him and I think I encourage surrogates to have some time preferably ongoing as well too as baby grows up in that first week or two have some alone time. They can be in the same house as the parents but I talk to him and I say, Hey buddy, we did a really good thing together. You know, I grew you and I’m really proud of us and you’re going to go live with your dads now. And yeah, I’m so glad you’re here in this world and to have a cry not because you said that he’s going but just that, your body, yeah, your body knows this baby as that baby belongs to your body.

01:15:35
doesn’t belong to you but that baby came from my body and it’s a very complex thing in surrogacy. It is, hard to explain. It’s almost that cry is almost just like you’re letting everything out, that relief, joy, pride, know, fear, nerve, everything that’s happened is in that cry. And then in that week post-birth it was really powerful to meet, I mean we’d already met each other’s friends and family, we’ve made a point of that over the years, but to see them meet their grandson for the first time and often be there.

01:16:04
when they meet him for the first time. These are Matt’s mum and dad. Brendan’s parents are interstate, so we met them later. But what was really powerful is on the day after birth when Matt’s mum and dad and his brother and sister came to my house and they had this big bunch of flowers for me and they sat and heard the birth story. And it was like, wow, because my parents didn’t come and do that because, I mean, they saw the boys and celebrated it too, but it wasn’t their grandchild.

01:16:28
Yeah and so that’s their egg donor Jen on the right there so obviously her meeting her donor child too, beautiful team photo there I think and then this was on the day they left to go back home 40 minutes away and so we had them over for lunch and I like to cook and so I cooked a meal that I had cooked for them in the past and you know classic timing Baker woke up for a feed just as we all sit down to lunch so you can see me there I’m feeding him while eating lunch but that’s that’s classic and they were comfortable with me doing that yeah and then them going and it was really joyful I was I was in a good place

01:16:58
that point when when they went home and and to move on to the next chapter. Yeah. And then just some photos of catch-ups and you know him being changed on a change table one time and really looking at me and I’m sure every surrogate’s got a photo like this all a lot of us do and you like to think that they remember your voice. I don’t know if they do but we like to think that yeah. Absolutely we do.

01:17:17
And then of me expressing milk and then feeding him a bottle of milk. Sometimes it was my milk, sometimes it was formula milk that he was on. I expressed milk for nine weeks. I think they were giving him a couple. I didn’t have a huge supply. So it was a couple of feeds a day with breast milk, which is cool. And then the stash of milk and then spilt milk. Milk milk. That is that is a horrible, horrible scene to see, Anna. But you are allowed to cry over spilt breast milk. Absolutely. you’re trying to put it in a packet and you knock the container.

01:17:47
It takes so much work to do it. I remember that after I’d had Evie and Troy spilled milk and I was like just devastated with him. I was crying. He’s like, I’m so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. And I would write little messages on every single packet like that said Australian made a hand wrote. Sometimes if I’d had Indian, I’m like this one tastes like butter chicken or you know, as a joke, know, 0.1 % alcohol in this one.

01:18:17
I got that idea from another surrogate

01:18:19
and then photos of him meeting the other family, Brendan’s family, picture of the first birth certificate that comes through with my name and husband’s name and my children’s name are on the first birth certificate. I always found that a bit strange. This is the photos that I’m gonna do in the future, my postnatal depression blog or the video that I did. I’m gonna turn that into a podcast episode. And so this is the photo of the day that if anybody’s read that blog post about the sip and see that was about six weeks post birth where, they didn’t have a baby shower cause of COVID. And so where people came in sick,

01:18:49
champagne and see the baby and so it was a chance to celebrate Baker and lots of friends and family there and I was not well I was mentally not well.

01:18:57
I suppose physically, but this is me taking over the last esky of the breast milk. And I would never have a load of milk that big again. And for some reason it was hugely emotional for, um, and again, that felt weird that, Glen, can you please take a photo of this? Cause I wanted to remember that. And that might seem twisted to some people, but yeah, it, that day created a lot of tension for our team because I, I brought my drama. Maybe that’s not quite the right word for it, but I, I brought my anxieties and my, troubles to that event. And I became the, the center point, unfortunately,

01:19:27
that event as opposed to Baker and everybody cared for me and they understood why like surrogacy is a complex thing they got it but it was um uh maybe I shouldn’t have gone it’s a tricky one yeah don’t know if you wanted to ask anything about that in particular or

01:19:40
I think that that is a tricky thing to go through that, you know, last pumping of milk and to have that all fall on that same day. It wasn’t the last pump of milk, but it was the last time I knew I would fill an Esky worth. that delivery of milk. And because the breast milk too, I knew it was appreciated, but it wasn’t quite celebrated in the way I would have liked. Look, I’m not saying anything here. I don’t think the dads are here tonight, but I’m not saying anything that we haven’t talked about as a team. So nothing here is that we haven’t talked about. Yeah.

01:20:10
So we had to have a few weeks later, I went over there and it was sort of like we were tiptoeing around, but I had to bring it up and I apologize for that day and how I was. And then I don’t think at the time I was on antidepressants, but it must’ve been when I crashed. I was born end of September, it was sort of end of November. It’s become a blur. I can’t quite remember when I crashed and I needed help and I put the cry for help out there and I was, I was not well. did not, there was times I just wanted to sleep. look, this is another reality of pregnancy in general.

01:20:40
surrogacy adds an extra element to it of course but this can happen regardless of surrogacy or pregnancy. You obviously found yourself at a point Anna where you felt like you needed to reach out like things just weren’t quite right. You reached out to some sorrow sisters, I know that, you’d built really good relationships with sorrow sisters in the community.

01:21:00
How was that for you to approach that with Matt and Brendan? How are you feeling? Look, they were great. They stood their ground. They heard me. They didn’t necessarily play into my drama looking back. They didn’t necessarily join me in the wave of it all, but they continued to reassure me and support me both in messages and in person and kept doing what they said they would do. I guess in my mind, I was always like, they’re going to cut me off. I think in one of the messages, like, I would cut me off. I wouldn’t be putting up with all of this. But yes, there were a couple of

01:21:30
surrogates that was um one was a gp or an obstetrician um who’s also called anna and i messaged her and i’m thinking i didn’t want to burden anybody and i’m like who can i burden and i’m like oh a doctor a doctor they’re paid uh

01:21:42
for burdens. And so it was that just saying I need help was the first step after quite a few big emotional crashes at multiple places. So there’s I’ve got a blog post on it. If it’s on my blog called surrogacy Safari, anybody ever wants to look that up, that’s where it is. And that’s been the good to come out of that is that I know that post even just the last couple of weeks, somebody again has mentioned it to me has been helpful for other surrogates to read it and go, I relate to some parts that you’re going through that if you read it before you’ve birthed, it means one thing, but then

01:22:13
if you read it post-birth, if you’re going through some of the wobbles, because the word depression is really loaded and I felt that if it was called postnatal confusion or postnatal muddled or postnatal wobbles that would have fit, felt better, but it’s saying I have depression, that’s hard to say. It’s a society thing isn’t it? We’ve got to work through that together. It is hard to say. It takes a lot of strength to say and a lot of strength to realize it and realize you need that help and support.

01:22:39
and then to follow through with the help and support. think, you know, in hindsight now, Anna, like you navigated that very well with a lot of good support systems around you. And, you know, you’ve from your experience helped other people through this. Thanks. Yeah. And that’s, yeah, you find the good, you find the teachable moments in it all. CSI had ongoing counseling with Katrina Hale for up to

01:23:02
for 12 months post-birth, regularly to start with and then eased off. I needed antidepressants and I eventually weaned myself off them and then I’ve eventually realized, no, I’m somebody that needs antidepressants. I’m an anxious person and they help that. And so I’m on antidepressants now and I think the more we say this stuff out loud, you know, the more we normalize it and I will be on them probably for the rest of my life. I can cope without them.

01:23:23
but it’s much harder for me. so that’s postnatal depression. doesn’t, you didn’t choose it. It’s not your fault if you get it or anxieties or anything like that. It’s not your fault. You did nothing wrong. You don’t know who it’s going to slap. With that, you can be the nicest person or, know, do have a good journey and you just don’t know if it’s going to hit you or not. Even if you had it with or without urine.

01:23:44
kids, you know, and so that’s what I like to tell people that just realizing it’s not your fault, you didn’t choose this, it’s your body. As I say, some women’s bodies cope with those post-birth hormones and they balance them out and it’s, and they’re fine. I don’t understand these people. I don’t know who you are, why your body do that and you’re…

01:24:01
it’s not me but it’s not your fault your body goes I don’t know what’s going on you didn’t choose that and so yeah that’s what I like to say to people. you’re right nobody would choose that you know especially after surrogacy why would you choose that you can’t help it you learn from it though and you grow from it and you know. Speaking of support networks here are some photos here of again what I’m really pleased and proud that the guys did these were two support networks on the left there is high school girlfriends and on the right

01:24:31
a teacher friends who you know my teacher friends saw me nearly every day while I was teaching. And so these people supported me on this journey and we’d made a point of they’d met Matt and Brendan beforehand and a bit of background check if you like and then I had asked that once Baker was born could they bring him to one of the catch-ups. So with the teachers it was Friday afternoon drinks at the pub and on the left it’s actually at Matt and Brendan’s house. The girls and I went out for dinner down near their area and so we dropped in and met Baker is quite little there too. So they’re making time to celebrate this

01:25:01
with my people in life so I could show him off. That was really important so I was really pleased that they made time for that. People know we have a Christmas tradition where our whole street does Christmas lights and so this is when Baker was a few months post-birth putting up the lights there. This is a project that I did and we often talk about surrogates needing a project post-birth or a holiday to plan for. This is a climbing cube if you like these two are those teacher friends so in the January holidays a few months post-birth building this for my kids. It’s like IKEA furniture for your backyard if you like. Yeah and wanting to do this as women.

01:25:31
Woo!

01:25:31
building this, we’ve still got it. Yeah, this was an important project so that you could see there was a physical thing that I had done as a project there. That was really powerful. How did you need that extraction post-birth too? Yeah, project to plan and work on. Again, this is, I think the Christmas just gone. So when Baker’s three there and the tradition continues. And then these are just some of the other photos I share in the regular webinars. So this is on the left there where we had the parentage order and the egg donor, Jen there, his third birthday. Catch-ups in our backyard, showing him my worm farm, him hanging

01:26:01
out with my kids, which is always nice, you know, and just sort of see their connection with him, like a cousin, so to speak. And then we had said, Danny, we were going to mainly talk about my surrogacy journey. And so then I was just, there’s so many other things, but we’ve talked for so long and I’m so grateful for anybody that’s still here and listening to this. Thank you for giving the opportunity to have this, this moment, starting up SAS, so Surrogacy Australia Support Service, starting a national support service, you know, and being audacious enough to go, yeah, I can make that happen. It wasn’t me on my own. It was a group of people in the pie.

01:26:31
stage. Um but I guess within that it’s the mentor program that in every capital city I’ve pretty much got a gate out of straight mom and a surrogate who are mentors and starting that and then I’ve had some mentors finish and leave the mentor program and now I’ve got Nikita who’s going to come on as a mentor who’s the first surrogate to be through as a sass surrogate and is now going to be a mentor so that’s pretty awesome. Um and Danny as yourself has been with me since the beginning there. Being the admin of the ASC group and the Facebook group. I then remembered there was the old forum called fertility connections which I actually joined first before I joined ASC.

01:27:01
because I had to rejoin Facebook to go online community. I think like that first too. Yes, it’s very clunky. That’s fine when you Google. That’s right, that’s what you found at the time. Took it over from Marion, the conferences I’ve presented at and then I now have an annual spot that I present at the Growing Families Conference each June where I sort of give the quick 20 minute snapshot of how surrogacy works in Australia, the data collection that I did which became a bit of a thing among the community of my little infographics because at the time there was nobody else collecting data. There’s no IVF clinics that collected

01:27:31
I’m really proud of the Zooms that we’ve created, Dani. You’ve helped grow so that there’s community there. And of course the friendships made. I didn’t have time to find all the photos of them, but those people, you know who you are. If you’re here tonight listening, or if you’re listening to this at a later date, I’m so grateful for all those friendships. That’s what we say, Dani, isn’t it? That’s some of those friendships that we come for. Come for the baby, stay for the friendships and the connections that you make. And so yeah, here are some of those little infographics. Oh, they’re a little bit overlapping each other there. I used to keep track of which surrogates were pre-

01:28:00
at the time and I think ah there’s it’s it’s overlapping there that’s annoying what

01:28:06
teacher coming out in you here. Yes and it was how many pregnant surrogates we had at the time and so the surrogates would get to the top of that spreadsheet and they’re like I’m the next surrogate in Australia to birth. It was kind of a cool feeling to know. Yeah the stats on who’s local to each other, the gay versus straight, how many offers had been made each year from the community. the photographs have been spread so far over social medias and passed down from person to person.

01:28:32
Yeah, really created something epic there. Yeah, thank you. And then I just put in some photos of the Zooms because this is the community, isn’t it, that we’ve done here and growing. So there’s two photos there and some people, this is their first time when they were there. Others are regulars like us. Oh, there’s Civ there off to the right. Red Civ. Yep, come to the Zooms for those conversations.

01:28:55
there’s one next week end of May. I’ll happen to be in Melbourne though in person which is cool. So we got through that I had no idea that it was going to take that long. Wow thank you. You did, did you? Right. How do you summarize seven and a half years into one hour Anna? You just can’t do that. I thought I could but I couldn’t.

01:29:17
But yeah, just to have that opportunity to remember the things I’ve done, like the egg donation, the first journey with the interstate IPs, the pregnancy journey with my guys, the birth. Yeah. And then the life after birth now. So three and a half years post-birth and just navigating life as friends and organizing a catch up from time to time type of thing. Yeah. Is there anything that you wanted to ask me, Dani? I mean, it’s nice to rehash it with people too. And, you know, I think it’s really lovely to have been able to speak

01:29:47
you tonight as Anna the surrogate, not Anna, you know, with the sass hat. And it’s going to be really lovely for other people in the community to hear this side of your story of what happened. I’d like to ask Anna, like you’ve been in the community seven and a half years, right?

01:30:02
Now, obviously giving birth to Baker is going to be the utmost highlight of that. But if you had to pick out one big moment to highlight out of seven and a half years, could you do it? I guess my putting together that page of things I was proud of. Yeah, I suppose some of those three spring to mind is that the friendships that are made and the support that you gain from other IPs and surrogates alike, and you support each other on that journey. Well, obviously starting SAS, but it’s the mentor program within that because I could not do the work that

01:30:32
I do without the help of so many other people. It’s if I did not have that mentor program happening and having the people do it, it just wouldn’t, wouldn’t work, wouldn’t have the value. And so that’s, I’m really proud of that. And then I suppose one of the talks I gave was my first one, it’s the 2018 I reckon, and Charmaine, sorry Charmaine said to me after, and this was the best, like everybody said that great talk, great talk.

01:30:54
And Charmaine said nobody was on their phones. Yeah, that’s huge, right? thought that was pretty powerful. And I remember thinking at the time, because Sam Everingham, who runs Growing Family, who helped me start SAS, I remember walking into that talk, I shared it with Sarah Jefford. We did half each. And I’m thinking this is sort of my interview for Sam, so to speak, to hear. This is how I view how surrogacy works. And it was me talking about it’s about time, that it’s an investment of time. Is surrogacy in Australia? It’s not.

01:31:19
Yes, there’s money involved, but you have to invest time into people. That’s the currency. So that was my real angle I wanted to pitch to the community. And I realized I wasn’t pitching that to Sam. That was my audition to the community. That was my talk and it’s been recorded of here’s my vision for you, surrogacy community. Do you agree? Have I got this right or not? And I think I did. And I think I’ve maintained that in terms of.

01:31:43
what I do and what I preach is that it’s about the time investment. There is no other currency better than time in surrogacy. No, no, no, you’re fine. As I just said in a voice message to another surrogate today, Bec Marshall, actually, I always say I.

01:31:59
and I hope this comes across the right way, but IPs come for a baby and or they get a baby. Surrogates get a story. Yeah. And I’m really passionate about that. If a surrogate wants to share that story, of course, an IP gets a story too. But for some surrogates, it doesn’t go well and they don’t maintain contact with the parents and the baby. Some some of us do. And it’s fine. And some are in the middle ground. But there’s always a story to tell. And I always feel that if a surrogate wants to tell that story, she needs a place to tell it. And particularly in that first 12 months post birth. And so that’s why I’ve always held

01:32:29
find people to speak on the panels for growing families. And by me keeping track of people, I know when you’re in that 12 months post-birth and I want to give you the opportunity to share your story if you want to. Some people go, no, no, no, I don’t like public speaking. It’s not for me. And that’s fine. But if you’re not asked in that time, it sort of feels like nobody asked me. Nobody wanted to hear my story and what I had to share and what learnings I have to say that what, cause most surrogates or OAP say, here’s what I think you should do. Learn from my journey.

01:32:58
And I think if people want a chance to share that, they should have the opportunity to. And so that’s what I’m really proud of in the webinars have ended up becoming that with the recordings that we capture these stories in time. And it might only be a few people listen to any one, but that surrogate then has that story. She can pass on to her children, her grandchildren, the surrogate babies can listen to these stories. I see myself as the collector of the stories. And I think that’s fun. An archive, you’ve made an archive for surrogacy, know, maybe, maybe hundreds of

01:33:28
years down the track, people will look back at these webinars and you know, this is where it all started for some people. I’d like to ask you Anna, again it’s been seven and a half years, what is something that you have learnt about yourself during this process? I sometimes ask people this in the webinar don’t I? It’s a tough question isn’t it? And a lot of people say, which is so true, I’m more resilient than I thought I was.

01:33:54
Yeah,

01:34:24
very well now as a person and I probably wouldn’t have gone on this wellness journey had I not done surrogacy. It meant I had to go to the bottom of the pit with the postnatal depression. But the path that set me on is I now have ongoing regular counseling. I see the value in seeking help. I have learned how to move my body and just value drinking water, moving your body, getting fresh air, seeking social support. And I now do that in my life and I feel well and I’m really grateful for the life that I have with the two jobs that I have with my teaching and my surrogacy. And so I wish

01:34:54
postnatal depression on nobody of course and I’ve read a lot of other things like Brené Brown if people know of her and it’s you know about rising again and so I’m really proud of my ability I think I’ve got grit I’ll rise from the ashes but I make so many mistakes along the way but I’ll try and own them and do better. that’s something that this community is you know.

01:35:16
you and helped you see and helped you work through and you will rise from the ashes Anna and maybe this is again the start of a new rise. Thank you. Yeah and I look forward to like some of the people that have joined us tonight. I love seeing the next wave come through the next people that were us you know at the beginning and seeing the passion that they have for the community and what they’re going to do and where they’re going to lead the community. I see it as an honor to sit here in the background and to do my bit and to to see where it goes in the future and who knows what surrogacy is going to be like in

01:35:46
I imagine it’s only going to grow. Who knows if we’ll go down a compensated path perhaps in the future.

01:35:51
And I’d love to be a part of that as that comes in or whatever changes come in. As we say, you know, it takes a village to raise a child and the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. And we are well and truly a part of the village. Danny, you’ve been one of my villages of, you know, support as a surrogate sister, as a friend, you know, I’ve been to your wedding. We keep in touch as friends now. even if one of us dropped out of the surrogacy village, we’d still keep in touch, you know, in some capacity and catch up from time to time.

01:36:21
come for the baby stay for the friendships you know and as um Alex and Carlo put it just so nicely yes Anna thank you for helping build the village Anna. Thank you and I’m proud to be a part of it and I can see that I have both as a surrogate and as a villager along the way and um yeah it’s a lovely village to be a part of and just like any village it’s not always lovely.

01:36:43
Yeah, it’s always gonna have its moments, right? You’re not gonna get on with everyone in the village, that’s okay. But you find your people and you try and learn from others. So yeah, thank you for this opportunity to share my story and my story in the village. Come for the story, have the story, I know, yeah, what a story, hey? look, I suppose we’ll touch space lastly, any imparting words of wisdom for anybody. I think you’ve pretty much summed it up nicely, but have you got anything you’d like to say or any great

01:37:13
sayings you’ve learnt or…

01:37:15
You know, no. the one that you did in your episode was, know, that’s one of the classics is don’t be a dick. That and then another classic one is a surrogate can’t find you if she can’t see you. That’s what Renee Gollum, one of the elders when we first got here would say, you have to be active and for both surrogates and IPs keep learning from each other. I feel sad sometimes when I see people come along or they, find them on social media and they’ve done a whole journey and they’ve never met another surrogate or an IP and they didn’t know that there was this world out there.

01:37:45
support. So I suppose that would be my mission to keep growing it so that nobody has to do this alone. You’ve got other IPs and surrogates along the way. So be kind to each other, learn from each other.

01:37:56
invest time into each other, into those friendships and you just never know who’s going to help you down the track. And it might be for something like, know that Trudy’s been with us here tonight, you know, we weren’t each other’s team, but we’ve helped each other at different points along the way. And you just never know who you’re going to help or who you’re going to call on for help in the future. And if you just come in transactionally with the thing that you want to do, even as surrogates, I’m just going to do this thing. it works out on the warmth from the people around you. But that goes for any community in life too, like your workplace.

01:38:26
too. You think of our leaders in our own workplaces and whatever. If the people that invest the time to get to know you as a person, not just the job that you’re there to do, you find they’re nicer to be around. You gravitate towards them more and you thank them for their time. yeah. it’ll probably be quite a few more years till I’ve reached another hundred webinars. It’d probably be a bit over three years at this rate because I started weekly when I started them and now they’re fortnightly. So who knows that 200 webinars daddy.

01:38:53
No one knows what’s going to happen in another hundred, right? Yeah, but I plan on keeping going. I think for as long as I’m in this community, I think these webinars are here to stay because that’s my contribution and I don’t think I’m stepping on anyone’s toes.

01:39:06
And there’s so many stories to share and there will continue to be so many stories to share. That’s right. So it’s an honour to be able to help people at the beginning to help them feel less alone. Yeah, that’s right. Well, Anna, what can I say? Thank you for sharing with us all here tonight. It’s been incredible to listen to you rehash this again. And as Jess said, you you rehash it and you unlock new memories as you talk. So that’s really nice to go over it again. Thank you. Thank you for being with me, Danny, for these two hours while we went through.

01:39:33
I really appreciate that. Thank you everybody else that attended tonight and everyone that’s going to listen from here. Yes, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode. To see the beautiful images mentioned, head to our YouTube channel to watch the webinar recording. If you’re looking for more support and potentially connecting with a surrogate or intended parents, head to our website, surrogacyaustralia.org to check out the resources and to learn more about SAS.

01:39:58
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.