Episode 112 – SJ – surrogate

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you

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Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKie and my aim is to raise the level of awareness of surrogacy through these conversations. This podcast is a recording from a webinar that I host and you can find more details about those and upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org. The webinars are free, go for an hour and we’ll take you through how surrogacy works in Australia. You can ask questions, typing them in anonymously if you prefer.

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and you hear from a co-host who has navigated surrogacy in Australia, either a surrogate, a gay dad, or a straight mum. This episode, recorded in July 2025, features SJ. SJ birthed as a surrogate in Brisbane in March 2025 for a couple who were initially strangers and are now lifelong friends. They had a little girl, Blake, and her parents are Emma and Steve, who live nearby on the Gold Coast. SJ is a member of the Surrogacy Australia Board,

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a regular on our Zoom monthly catch-ups and advocates for surrogacy at every chance she gets. I had a couple of other options for the title of this episode as SJ had some great comments, including, it’s a small price to pay for the joy that I’ve made. It doesn’t get better when you sit on things, speak up. I’m not going to know unless they tell me. And ultimately the one we chose for the title, those 1 % issues turn into something bigger if you don’t speak up. I think this is very useful advice, not just for surrogacy, but life in general.

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I’m grateful to SJ for many reasons. She helped me out on this webinar at short notice due to a cancellation. We were due to do her webinar next month, but she shuffled her plans to make this work. Thank you. She helps me out with her time in terms of being an advocate for the work that I’m doing with SAS. And she has become a good friend to me. The surrogacy community in Australia is a beautiful one. And friendships like this can blossom. And we’ve actually never met in person yet.

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I encourage both IPs and surrogates to step into the community with the focus on making friends, because you never know who might help you out in the future and whom you can help as well. I hope you enjoy this episode.

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So SJ, thank you for joining us. We’ve got some beautiful photos of your surrogacy journey to work through. So I think what we’ll do is we’ll go through the photos and then we’ll go back to the beginning as to why you became a surrogate. I guess each time tell us who’s in these photos and sort of what’s happening. All right, we’ve got Steve who he was the intended father, but now father. Emma the mum and myself, and we had just had a appointment with the fertility specialist there. Excellent. And so they needed a surrogate

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medical reasons I’m assuming for Emma? Yes, Emma was born with no uterus so they were looking for a surrogate through the ASC and I was looking to become a surrogate so I decided to put an introduction post up and then one of the replies was Emma’s. Wonderful, right well there’s lots to unpack there. The next photo we have I think takes us to Embryo transfer day so there’s a lot that’s happened in between there. Can you roughly remember the time frame of when you first started chatting to them?

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to when it got to this embryo transfer? It was definitely over a year. We started chatting in 2023 and then we did transfer in 2024 and then we just not too long ago had our two year anniversary, but it definitely took over a year.

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to get there. I like that it took that long so that we could spend time on our relationship as friends first. that’s surroship as we often say in the community. So you did some surrogating with your IPs then, would that be right? And what did that surrogating… Yeah, our first date was at the library with my son.

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Yeah, so I had my first date at the library and my son came along and Emma bought us ice cream afterwards and I think that sealed the deal for my son that she was the one because she got him ice cream.

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But that was our first date and it was so nerve wracking. remember choosing my outfit and doing my hair and trying to look nice. It was kind of daunting. that interesting? Because they were probably just as nervous as you were. I’d say so. I’d say so. But in those photos there, that was like the day of our transfer on the left there. And that was with the whole team. Afterwards, we went out for McDonald’s chips because we heard that helps the embryo stick and everyone

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So that was our little after transfer date. So did it work first embryo transfer? Yeah, we were super lucky. It did work first embryo transfer. And honestly, I was only thinking about positive thoughts that it would work first time. yeah, we were really fortunate that it did. at the time,

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We’d had the emery transfer and then we’d all gone as a family up to Cannes for a holiday. We were going to get the bloods done while up in Cannes to see if it was a positive. And then we came back down and we flew back down and we all came to our house here. So we’d gotten off the plane and we drove home and Emma and Steve met us at our house and we’d already done the blood test, but we told the fertility clinic, don’t let us know

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the result or anything like that. We wanted to all be together in person.

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And we said, what we’ll do is we’re going to pee on the stick. And we covered up the window and I came out, I did that and came out into the living room and then Emma pulled the pee stick out of the brown paper bag and we looked down and it was a positive and we were like, oh my God, we’re so happy. And then we called up the fertility clinic to confirm the blood test results. Fun. That’s a great way of doing it. I’ve not heard of that before. That sounds fun. Yeah, it was really good. We’ve got a video of it.

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and and I love rewatching it and the kids were there and like Emma started crying and I was crying and yeah it was was a really good moment.

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I love remembering those special events. Do you happen to remember how many embryos they had in the freezer going into surrogacy? Yeah, they had three, so they obviously have two left. And it was something that I did sort of go into it thinking, oh yeah, three’s a good number. was happy with three. Definitely. So then moving on, am I guessing that there’s a Canada connection here? Yeah, Steve’s Canadian and he loves the…

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the ice hockey team, the Maple Leafs. And when I went on the surrogacy retreat in Tasmania,

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one of the girls made up this t-shirt and I surprised him with it before our first scan and he absolutely loved it and it was like a nice way to kind of get him involved too. yeah, this is good. If those that are listening to the podcast, says baking a mini maple leafs fan. Yeah. Beautiful. And so then we’re moving through the pregnancy. How was that pregnancy compared to the two keeper children that you It was definitely a lot harder.

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It had been like five years since I’d had our daughter. I was 41. Some things that came up during pregnancy I hadn’t experienced before. It was pretty tough. So I had a lot of varicose veins come up in my legs and stuff like that. And so I ended up taking kleksane injections and I had 80 of them overall. And my husband was giving them to me each night, my neighbors, my friends.

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All sorts of people because I didn’t want to do it myself. The right-hand photo of me lying down was all of the needles that I had kept and my husband’s a police officer so he kind of fashioned that into some sort of death shot I suppose or something like that. But yeah. those of can’t see it, it’s like SJ’s lying on the floor and surrounded by like this outline of these 80 odd needles like it’s a murder scene and there’s you know.

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the body was lying. So it really gives that great indication of wow how many injections there were and these things that surrogates do that often our own pregnancies are fairly smooth and that’s part of the reason we do surrogacy. But there’s just no guarantee of that the pregnancy is going to be the same and I remember through the zoom monthly catch-ups seeing and hearing about your legs and the veins and it was just like whoa!

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That was unexpected wasn’t it? should have put a leg vein photo in there. They have gotten better but they’re not the best afterwards. I think there’ll be some lifelong marks but you know that’s to me that’s still like a small price to pay for the joy that I’ve made for another couple so it was definitely no regrets and it was all worth it. I’m writing that down. Listen, it’s like a small price to pay for the joy that you’ve given. mean but your body now four months post-birth still has the

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lasting scars so to speak but the impact and so every pregnancy leaves an impact isn’t it but so well done for doing that and going through that. Thank you. In the pregnancy sometimes people do like bump photos of how far along they are and therefore the size of the fruit or the vegetable that baby is. You took a different tact here. Tell us what is going on. You’ve got your pregnancy photo on one side and then on the other half of each photo is then we’ve got a raspberry, we’ve got like fruit tingle strips, we’ve got a gum leaf and a mushroom.

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I started feeling like I was looking like certain items.

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when I was wearing things and then I just kind of put up my likeness and that was kind of just like something fun along the way because I really wanted to have my IPs feel connected during the journey and have them involved and so I sort of we talk every day still through the journey I was sending lots of photos and stuff like that and we made a little page for family and friends and sometimes I just put up little things and they always got lots of attention so I just kind of kept doing it. It was nice

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I never did any of that stuff for my own pregnancies. I hardly have any photos from my own two kids. So it’s kind of nice to do it so that, I don’t know, baby Blake look back later and go, oh, that’s cool. Yeah, definitely. Yes. The things we do for surrogate pregnancies that we might not have done for our own. And as you say, yeah, finding ways to involve the IPs and their friends and family. I’ve forgotten that, that we had a little Facebook group as well for our team there. What’s the distance between your IPs in terms of

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Therefore, how often you might have seen them during pregnancy? live in Brisbane and my IPs are from the Gold Coast and so we live about an hour to an hour and a half, I suppose, depending on the traffic. During the pregnancy, I’d say I probably saw them, I was seeing them probably at least monthly because I had a lot more scans. So I would see them every month for a scan towards the end and stuff like that. But we’d see each other every few weeks. It’s carried on now, probably the same. I see them once a month, maybe once every year.

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six, seven weeks sort of thing. And then we still talk almost every day just

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even just a little check in and send I get photos which I super appreciative of all the time. did kind of say, oh, you know, if you want to kind of dial back the chatting now that you’ve got Blake, that’s completely fine. Because I get it as a new parents, you’re very busy. And Emma said to me, oh, you know, we’ve been talking every day for the last two years. Don’t really want to stop now. So that made me feel really good. I clarify what does talking mean? Does it actually mean on the phone or chatting during messenger or something? So we chat during messenger. We do sometimes talk on

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the phone too but sometimes you know Blake might be going to sleep or I’m in the car and I might give her a call but it’s mainly on messenger. yeah it’s just interesting to clarify isn’t it because so when you said talk every day something interpret that as on the phone like verbally every team will work out.

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you know, what is right. And yes, my team too, you know, for like two, two and a half years daily contact. So it did feel a bit weird to when you start to ease that off, but then it will happen in its own natural way. And then that brings us to the day of birth, hey? So talk us through what it was like and what you think and feel when you look at yourself in these photos.

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I sort of forgot and remember when we looking at these photos and stuff that this was like right after the cyclone happened, the cyclone that came through. And so we were told by the hospital if there was any kind of inkling of movement just to come in, they weren’t sure if people would be able to move about and stuff like that. And then it kept on getting like the cyclone kept getting delayed, I suppose. And we were just trying to get through the weekend because we were like, okay, we do not want this baby to come now. We need it to

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later and I had been looking after like other people’s kids at the house because they’d lost power and then my friend had to go to work and stuff like that because she was a nurse so it was good because my kids had someone to play with but I’d been looking after my friend’s son all day and then we’d gone to bounce and we had like a heap of kids and I was sitting there and I was thinking oh you know I’ve got some I feel I got back pain you know and I kind of felt some tightenings and I was like oh I was a little bit sus on stuff

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Anyway, I got home, it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and you know, was probably too much information. But I went to the bathroom and there was like a little bit of a show and so I called up the hospital and you know, the cyclone had come and gone but it was only like pretty much the day later and the floodwaters kind of thing had receded. Anyway, they were like, okay, come in, we’ll just check you out. And I was like, okay. And I thought, okay, I’ll just take my bag because it has all my lollies in it. Because I’m a big lolly head and there was like 10 bags of lollies.

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I was like very important and I went in and then we decided that I’d stay there because I was having some bleeding and so I wasn’t too concerned or anything like that. Emma and Steve, I remember ringing them like Emma didn’t answer and then I called Steve and Steve didn’t answer and I was like can’t even answer the phone for the birth of your own child. anyway they called me back and I did make that joke to them and I said look I think you should like take Leo which is their fair baby. I said you know go to your parents house so you’re a little bit closer.

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And I kept updating them and stuff and I think they ended up getting to the hospital like 2 a.m. In the morning because every woman in Brisbane that was pregnant that was holding on to her baby was at Redlands Hospital ready to give birth because now they are gone they could they could go to the hospital but I hear babies sometimes born in storms ours was a very rainy stormy night I they often hold on it’s a midwife thing apparently that they they know that so anyway carry on so then you eventually all got together at the hospital

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Yeah, we all got together at the hospital. I’ve been checked into a room first because at this stage my waters still hadn’t broken and they’d broken spontaneously the previous two times and so I was expecting that but labor was progressing but my waters hadn’t broken so Emma and Steve they went into the room that I was initially put in and I was in the birth suite and my husband and I we hung out in the birth suite and then we all got together at seven in the morning and anyway they were like okay I think we’re gonna break your waters and I was like alright and I said to Emma and

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Steve, why don’t you go and get like something to eat or whatever, because it’ll probably still take a while. And I sent them away. anyway, it was like, after I’d sent them away, I swear like I must have I was like Anthony called them to come back because it was like 30 minutes later. And I was like, oh, I was really in the throes of like labor. And I was waiting for the birth photographer to come. And she told me she was 40 minutes away. And I was pretty much like squeezing my legs together so that baby Blake didn’t come. And then I remember hearing

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the photographer behind me when she came in, because she was like, she was so cheery and excited and I felt relief. I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was there and I was like, okay, we can have this baby now. And I really love this photo, Emma with her hand on my back. And she was really active during the whole labor as well, holding my hand and she was getting like wet towels and giving them to me. And Steve was giving me encouragement and stuff. And it was really lovely. So after my water’s broke out, two hours

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later baby Blake was born and yeah it all went really well. So we’ve got Karen the midwife who followed us she’s in the background and my husband’s hands on my back in that photo but you can’t quite see it and Emma and Steve are there. Emma and I cuddling with baby Blake and it worked out really well it was like an unmedicated natural birth and I was really pleased about that because I really like being in the moment even though it’s painful it it’s birthed something that I really enjoy and that was one of the motivating factors of being

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surrogate as well like that that’s my reward that moment giving birth and yeah I was so happy and relieved so I love these photos beautiful well done me too that’s how I felt about this yeah well done what you you created life you made a mum and a dad yeah yeah you should be stoked should be proud

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And so then life goes on as a few months post birth and we’ve just got one photo here. for privacy reasons, we’ve blurred out Blake’s face there. Again, different people might do things differently on social media, mightn’t they? And so, yes, she’s just turned four months old. think you told me as well. Yeah, she’s just turned four months old. We didn’t know she was going to be a girl. So the gender reveal was I looked down and I was like, it felt like forever, but it was only a moment. And I was like, it’s a girl. And Emma was super stoked because she was hoping for a girl and I was hoping

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for girl for her. Yeah, this is myself and baby Blake. Oh, not too long ago, a few weeks back, but I did see her last week and I’ll see her tomorrow because we’ve got our parentage order. So that’s pretty exciting. is. Yes. So parentage order tomorrow. So that’s the end of the official paperwork stage. And that’s been about four months post-birth and in Queensland, you all get to go to court and have a few minutes in court. Yeah, we all get to go to court. My kids will be at school, but I’ll get to go there with Blake and Em and Steve. And it’s nice. It’s nice just to see them. Yes. Will your husband come along to

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Oh yeah for sure yeah um and he’s coming he’s coming he’s got the day off from all day long. Lovely because it’s a journey that your whole team went on. I’d like to ask a little bit about that so just for context so you have two children roughly how old were they when Blake was born? Seven and

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Yep, so mine were similar. I think four and six So just as a context there for surrogates when they’re wondering, you know how old your kids might be and Sometimes they say the partners or husbands or wives of surrogates are the unsung heroes in this your your ma’am was significant part by your side through all of this Yeah, a hundred percent. He had to give me all the needles listen to me like complain and whinge and if anything was you know, not feeling great He was my greatest support for that type of stuff. The emotional support is definitely an integral

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part for the whole journey. don’t think I could do it without him. That’s probably a good opportunity. I’ll just do a little plug there. One of the podcast episodes that we’ve done is Partners of Surrogates. So people listening have concerns about how surrogacy goes. Look up that episode. So every journey’s got ups and downs, doesn’t it? And what do we say? know, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but even when it goes relatively smoothly, there’s still tough times. Are there any that you can remember from your own team of some of the tough times? Yeah, we had a few little ups and downs, I suppose, because

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surrogacy relies a lot on open and honest communication to get you through the whole journey. then sometimes, sometimes it could just be hard. one of the things that popped up was direct feeding, which is probably something that a lot of teams go through, which might be a little bit difficult. For me, it was something that I want to do so I could give Blake the best start. And it was something that we had to work on in the end, when the day arrived, Emma offered. And so I took up the offer and I got to direct

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I did that over the next couple of days like yourself and my milk came in and then I got to express for five weeks for baby Blake. And so that was something that was really important to me as a good start for my mental health. And I have to say like, I don’t know if that was the thing that got me over, but my postpartum journey has been really good. I do probably put it down to the fact that Emma was so great with just rolling with everything once baby Blake arrived, just all those warm

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I think just went out the window and so the postpartum journey has been good and I haven’t had any type of depression or anything like that so I’m like very thankful. That’s good. So yes, so if people are new and listening we often talk about these first three months post-birth and people call it the fourth trimester and I know as friends you know checking in on how you were going and sometimes you’d say something like does it make me heartless if like I haven’t had any?

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big detachment feelings and I think I remember saying to you, no, I think that makes you the perfect surrogate because I think surrogates before we’ve done it, we just know it’s something we can do that we’re going to be okay handing over this baby. And that’s why we do it where there’s plenty of women out there that go, oh, I could never do that. And it’s like, well, that’s probably cause they’d struggle at that point. So I think it’s just a credit to you that you knew you could do it and you did it. And so well done. I did have like a moment we were like meeting up at the shops and I had not seen Blake for, I don’t know. was like.

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week and I just couldn’t wait to see her. I remember like going to the wrong car park and I was starting to get like, oh no, overwhelmed and stuff and got a bit teary because I just couldn’t wait to see them. But that was probably the only time when I was like a bit emotional. I just was so looking forward to seeing them both. So, but my relationship I suppose is like mainly with Emma and it’s the one that I want to foster the most, I guess. So I realized when I saw Emma and Blake a week or so ago, it was Emma that I miss, not Blake. I really enjoy speaking

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with her and my cup feels full after I spend time with her so yeah Blake’s just like the icing on the cake but yeah all the ingredients I guess is Emma and I’s relationship together. That’s so perfectly said and that’s exactly how I felt that the bit that I was sad about when the journey ended was the intensity of the contact that I’d had

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Matt and Brendan. It wasn’t the baby, baby Baker. It was like he’s just my friend’s kid. I just happened to have birthed him but it was that oh the journey ends and so but it’s trying to find that new normal with your friendship. So yeah I 100 % relate to what you’re saying there. Well then that almost takes me back to the very beginning. So you carried for a hetero couple. When you went out of your way to decided to be a surrogate did you therefore specifically go looking for a hetero couple because you kind of wanted that sisterly bond with a woman? I was looking specifically for a hetero couple but actually it was actually because

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of how my family would feel as well. So that played a part in it too. I knew that my dad might be a little bit, I guess, less open to the idea if it was for a same-sex couple due to his religious views. And I needed the support of my family as well. I remember telling my dad about wanting to become a surrogate and I mentioned that I had met Emma and Steve and the reason why that they needed one. And my dad was, he was so proud

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and pleased that I was helping this couple and my mum was really happy too. you know I feel like I, and Steve were the couple for me but it was important that I still had that support for my family and that’s why I was looking for a heterosexual couple as well. that’s really powerful to hear that ideally if we can have our extended family support it does make the journey smoother. I know there’s some teams where that doesn’t happen or it creates a rift among people and sometimes surrogates have to they go well I’m

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to this project anyway and it’s a bit tense. Yeah well done for picking the team that was right for you then. Is there anything else then?

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that we haven’t covered that you’d like to make sure we talk about for your journey. Is there anything for your team that you’re particularly proud of? You think that your team did really well? Look, I’m really proud that we got to the point that we’re at and we were able to navigate any type of, you know, niggling things that were sort of like on our minds where they could have caused friction. I was glad that we got through all those things and we’re still together as a team. And like, I don’t think that our team’s going to fall.

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hard after the parentage order or anything like that, which is sometimes like a stressful time for Sarah gets wondering if your relationship’s going to keep going. I feel like Emma and Steve are going to be our friends for life. That’s really important for me just because of I want Blake to.

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you know, know her origin story and that see that she was made with so much love by so many parties and stuff. You know, we really wanted her to be here and we did that together for her. So having her in my life and is important just because she wouldn’t be here without me, you know, and I don’t know if I’d be the same person now without having her because she’s part of my story too. So yeah, it’s important to me that we still stay in contact and I think that we’ve done that successfully. Yeah. Well, well done navigating it so far. As you say, it’s important to

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as a team to maintain contact and keep in touch, is there any advice then that you’d give to teams that might be in the middle of their journey or at the beginning? How do they become a team like yours so that the communication does maintain even if there are certain conflicts? Is there any feedback that your team had? Definitely, if something comes up where you’re not feeling really good about something or something’s annoyed you or bothered you.

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scared about something. I know it’s super hard. Speak up about it because it doesn’t get better when you sit on things and all those like little one percenters turn into something you know that that’s a lot bigger because you haven’t mentioned things. It can cause animosity and stuff like that or resentment if you don’t speak up and I know it’s hard. It was hard for me too when I might not have been as happy about things and I’m sure Emma as well but I was always appreciative that she did raise something because I wouldn’t want my

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friend to be upset about something I did and I’m not going to know unless she tells me and that same vice versa. And being pregnant you’re really emotional and it’s not always a good time and I’m sure that Emma and Steve might have felt the same way because it’s stressful becoming parents. So I definitely for any teams I’d be talking about everything before we even did our surrogacy questions we went through the surrogacy questions twice over making sure that we ticked the same boxes because if we’d gone through

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and there was a lot of things that we didn’t align with with our values. I don’t think we could have been able to move forward because we would have been too different as a team. And that’s something when I reached out to talk to Emma initially from her reply to my introduction post, if we hadn’t have clicked and gotten along, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going with talking to her. But it didn’t fizzle out and it just kept going like a normal friendship. And that’s when I knew that like Emma was the one for me because it just naturally kept progressing.

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So yeah, so for any teams go through the surrogacy questions and then go through them again and make sure your values align and if anything comes up definitely talk about it and bring it up because it doesn’t get better with time if you just leave it. It’s such a it doesn’t get better if you don’t do anything about it. Yeah.

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Yeah, and you’re right. You’re like, oh, but it’s only 1%. It’s a small thing. But you got to try and sort these things out when they’re small. And I think your advice is for both the IPs and the surrogate, both sides of the team need to bring it up, don’t they? 100%. 100%. I definitely would have been upset if they hadn’t spoken to me about stuff when I found out later, because I don’t want to upset my friends either. I think that’s perfect. I don’t think there’s any other way to end. So I can see in chat that Jamie and Cody are here tonight. And they’ve often written this podcast series with me

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I’m editing episodes and often it’s like, let’s get to the juicy stuff. Like let’s talk about some of the hard stuff. And I think what we’ve, although you might not have had a huge major drama, but the advice that you’re giving there is that any team can take on board. It’s every team’s going to have niggly little things and it’s leaning into that discomfort when they’re small. Yeah, a hundred percent. Great advice. Thank you for sharing your time with me for this episode. If you’re finding these episodes helpful, please share them with friends. If you’d like to see the images mentioned,

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head to our YouTube channel for all of the recordings. If you’re looking for more individualized support, consider joining SAS, Surrogacy Australia’s support service, so you can be connected with a mentor and also with me to help guide you on a journey. You might think of me as your Siri for surrogacy. Until next time, welcome to the village.