Episode 117 – Marnie – surrogate

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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 is one from the archives, recorded in September 2022, and features Marnie. Marnie birthed as a surrogate in Sydney in August 2018 for a couple who were initially strangers and are now lifelong friends. They had a little girl, Sienna, whose parents are Kristy and Ben. Marnie was one of our original SASS surrogate mentors, has been an admin for the surrogates Facebook group,

01:11
where together we created and ran a buddy program for many years and she has helped many at the beginning of their journey. You can hear from her intended mother, Christy, in the previous episode, number 116. The timing of this podcast and the previous one is around the time of Sienna’s seventh birthday. This time last year, Marnie and I got to spend some time together when I was in Sydney to see the musical Hamilton and we went together. The friendships you make in this surrogacy community, the village, can often be ones for life.

01:41
Those good friendships where you might not see each other very often or even be in contact much, but you can pick up where you left off. And genuine surrogacy friendships extend beyond just talking about surrogacy, as that part of our lives is many years in the past now. For example, and I have shared the road of neurodivergent children in our households, which ultimately led to us both seeking out diagnoses for ourselves as adults. I am grateful for Marnie’s friendship during my time as a surrogate.

02:08
and then in more recent years, sharing her neuro-spicy experiences and guidance. So just like in surrogacy teams, our friendship has extended beyond surrogacy, beyond the Surroship , and it was actually Marnie who invented the word Surroship. I’m sure many of you have heard us use that word or use it yourselves. Now you get to hear from the lady that started it, because the surrogacy journey you go on together is deeper than a friendship, more like an intimate relationship with your life partner.

02:36
You can hear psychologist Katrina Hale refer to Surroship a lot in episode 63 where she talks about team culture. I hope you enjoy this episode. Marnie, hello. We’re going to hear about your journey now and see some photos from that and of pregnancy and birth and.

02:54
taking us through how we got there. we have a photo here that’s clearly a further along point in the journey. Tell us what’s happening in this photo and who’s there. So this is the day we transferred. So in the photo we have my IM Christy, she’s the one on the left and my IF Ben who’s on the right and I’m in the middle. We were actually an interstate team and because I have young children myself, my husband Craig had to stay in Sydney while I travelled down to Canberra for transfer. So he unfortunately missed out.

03:24
transfer day and this was just before we went in for transfer. None of us had done IVF before so well and Christy created embryos but yeah none of us had done transfers before so it was all a big unknown at this point. Yes and so many people in the room as you get pregnant and legs are up in the air and it’s just uh that’s good for everyone. Did it work first embryo transfer for your day? You were very fortunate the first embryo did work. Ben and Christy actually had three embryos.

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but we were very fortunate.

03:55
first one did work and this is our dating scan. I think we’re eight weeks along here. So that’s my son Harry. He was obviously there three, I think three, no four. was four and so he’s being disinfected. And she was fine. yeah, I think we’ve got another photo of them coming up. So I’m Hang on. There we go. No, right. So this is, is this an early stage of pregnancy with some This is an early stage of pregnancy though. Looking at my, well, this is my, actually my fourth pregnancy. So, you know, I was showing a lot earlier.

04:25
than I did with others. This is actually the combined family. on the right, you actually have my mum and dad. They were very much involved, guess, really committed to seeing it work as well. Next to my parents, you have Ben’s parents, so his mum and his dad who live in Canberra. Then you have my husband, Craig, and myself. And then you can see Christine Ben there. And then behind Christine Ben, you’ve got Christie’s dad and her step mum. And they’re actually from Adelaide. So we had all come together. This is actually our front yard. So we’d come

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together. It during the first trimester because we really wanted, it’s part of a family. was basically two families coming together to create this baby. It was a lovely day. It was a really lovely day. Beautiful. And we’ll go back to it later and just how you met them, but just to people in that they were a team that didn’t previously know each other. So this really, when we say bringing families together, these people that weren’t previously connected suddenly are and supporting everybody in that. it’s a beautiful photo to have. Yeah.

05:24
And then you’re clearly pregnant. yeah, this is actually towards the end of the pregnancy. This is, I think, 36 weeks. This is my 36 week appointment. So Ben and Christie would come up for each appointment. think they actually, both of came up for most of them. I think Ben missed two and Christie missed one. This is our 36 week appointment. At this stage, we, little miss was actually still head up.

05:47
not head down, she was a bit naughty. So we weren’t quite sure whether or not we were going to have a vaginal birth or a Ceasarian, but shortly after this photo she returned, We had a lot more room than my other two, so after each pregnancy there’s more and more room apparently. Yeah, that’s true, right? So they say. Right, I’ve got these photos not…

06:09
quite in order then. But then we came with Sophie there. Yeah, so there’s Sophie and This is our baby shower. So also in this photo is Ben’s auntie who lives up on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. And we actually still keep in touch with her. We were actually up that way in June and unfortunately couldn’t catch up, but we tried to. So it’s very much that Ben and Christie’s family have become part of my family. So yeah, we’re very close. So yeah. It’s the village, isn’t it, to make children’s It is. And here we are.

06:39
Here are your moments. These are powerful photos here. Take us back to this moment or what you feel when you look at these photos. Yeah. So as you can see, Sienna was born in the water. My own children liked water birds and Sienna actually wasn’t going to be a water bird. However, her labour was actually the longest of all of mine. We had intended to use the water, but not necessarily birth in the water. But once I got into the bath, I remember saying to Kristy, I don’t think I can get out. I think I need to stay here. And she was, you

07:09
She just went with the flow was like, whatever you need. There is a funny moment. My husband and I went into, this is actually at Westmead public, so public hospital in Sydney. And we went into the room where the bar is. And there was a moment at that stage, I was still dressed. And I remember saying, there was a moment with my husband where I said, actually have to get my clothes off now. And these friends of ours are going to see everything. So literally I only had a crop top on. Ben and Christie saw everything. but, I’m quite a modest person usually. So it was a, I mean, we laugh about it now. Never talked about it.

07:39
and Christie since but Craig and I laugh about it now. So I laid it in the bath or I think I was probably in there for about an hour or maybe a little bit more and Sienna was born in the water and she was passed, I was on all fours, she was passed through my leg so this was just shortly after she was born and so I actually held her that way for a few minutes I think and then actually rolled over. I think we have a photo of

08:00
We got you. Yeah, So you’re sitting down now. Yeah. So still in the bath there and basically sort of rolled over and had her on my chest. So I actually held Sienna for about 17 minutes. I think it was all up. We had talked about how what was going to happen immediately after birth. was talk of initially initially there was talk of her being placed on me. Then there was actually talk of Christie catching Sienna. We had a little bit of a rough, not ocean. So it was a rough time towards the end of pregnancy where we kind of weren’t

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wasn’t that we weren’t on the same page, we just had different ideas. But in the end, Christy actually said to me that she thought it was important that Sienna land on me and that I hold her until I was ready to hand her to them. So it was about 17 minutes all up that Christy will actually say it didn’t seem anywhere near that long. It went so quickly for them. The thing that sort of came to her head, and I’m not sure how much you can see in that photo, but I actually did have a postpartum hemorrhage after the birth. So it got to a point where my midwife said we need to get you out of the bath and just make

09:11
a little bit of blood in water looks like a lot. yeah, it looks like a lot more than there is. I mean, this is really powerful because I’m imagining all of those, you know, listening tonight might be new going, wow, yes, all of these things to consider like first hold and hearing what Marnie’s saying, even though they

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did surrogating and had time before they got pregnant. Still during pregnancy, things can be adjusting and changing as people learn. Kristy might go, I want baby straight away. And then they learn, oh, hang on, there are benefits to the surrogate’s body having baby first and we’re to have bubs forever. But you know, it’s okay that IPs want that at the beginning and they might.

09:49
That might still happen, as a team you need to work that through. I’ll just, I’m the absolute outlier. mean, I’m a bit odd, aren’t I? I did the home birth and all those things. say 17 minutes, I did for two and a half hours. Which is like, now for those listening tonight, that’s unusual. But that’s just the way it-

10:06
work with us and the dads were with me that whole time. so was just to do, did the first feed and stuff too. So that’s why, but yeah, it’s about as a team to discuss. And so you can go away from this webinar tonight going, wow, I’ve heard two stories. I wonder what would feel right for us. And that’s, you know, the powerful there. And so that’s tying in well to Nick’s question, which we’ll get to about how do you discuss all of these things? Cause there are so many, you’ll think of most of them as a team as you go, but then there’ll be many more. So then what’s happening in these photos? So this is actually my kids meeting Sienna. Harry, can see Harry’s my youngest.

10:36
Harry is a very sweet, always now nine, but he still is a very sweet little boy. And he used to talk to Sienna, we called her Sunny when I was pregnant, but he used to, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, Anna, he used to talk into my mouth. I’d be sitting down, he’d be like, I want to talk to Sienna. so he would talk into my mouth and I’d actually answer him and go, hi Harry, hi.

11:02
But anyway, so he was very attached to Sienna, to Sunny and to Sienna when she came out. So my daughter there, she’s six in that photo was like, she’s not really into babies. And she’s like, oh yeah, it’s not a baby or it’s just a baby. So you can see it’s, this is typical of my kids in this photo. One’s like, oh my gosh, I love babies. love, you know, love this baby. And the other one’s like, yeah, well, you know. Yeah. So they certainly never actually viewed Sienna as their sister.

11:30
We had a bit of a funny incident when I was pregnant with her. was at the library one day with Sophie and I was actually getting a library card for her and the librarian asked her, Oh, are you having a brother or a sister? So he’s like, completely confused. Like what? Like she knew because we never talked about Sienna being a brother or a sister. I said to her, Oh, we’re talking about Sonny. And she went, Oh no, that’s not my sister. That’s my sister. That’s Ben and Christie baby. the librarian sort of like, what? And then I had to explain. I was actually sorry.

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But yeah, it was just like, so it never ever occurred to either of my children that this baby was in any way their sibling. That’s really powerful for people to hear too, because you know, they’re surrogate, listening on how my kids going to cope, kids are.

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better than adults. If we just tell them that, I guess having been an egg donut, some of the words that we use are you need an egg and a seed to have a baby. Some people’s eggs don’t work and you need a girl’s tummy to grow a baby and that and Brendan are both boys and so they couldn’t grow a baby. So mum’s just growing the baby for them. And kids just take that on board. don’t think about the, know, whereas the adults would be like, oh, you know, how are you going to separate from the child and that sort of stuff. yeah, kids take it on board quite well. So I hope those listening tonight, hearing these stories make you go, yeah, okay. But you know,

12:44
be varying ages too so the way you explain it to know four and six year olds versus teenagers would be a different different thing there so but it is important to maintain that friendship isn’t it so that they definitely know where the baby’s going yeah yeah that’s right and they knew i mean yeah they they didn’t have any issues separating from that harry missed my belly a bit but that’s more like he’s a quite a sensitive kid so he um was a little bit sort of like i miss sonny but it was never it was never like our mum’s giving her daughter away or a baby away or anything

13:13
And I suppose in that bottom photo, there’s an example of a catch up, know, and yeah, so significant things here, the continued friendship, what’s happening? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, in the top photo there, that’s, you know, I she was about eight weeks old. So that was actually our first catch up as, um, all together after she was born. I did a couple of trips down to Goulburn. So about two hours from Sydney and they’d come up from Canberra to deliver milk. Cause I expressed milk for about five or six weeks. Um, but neither Craig nor the children.

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came with me on those trips. So this was actually the first catch-up as a teen since Sienna was born and so she’s got eight weeks old there. And then the other two photos were actually taken the day the parentage order. We had to go back to the ACT for that to happen because that’s Ben and Christie’s home state or home territory. So that’s actually at the law courts there with Sienna, she’s six months old and

14:07
Yeah, you can see we sometimes talk to the kids about their, their womb mates. So they call Sienna their womb mates. So they all kind of, they all grew on the same.

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we’re not the same uterus, but yeah, they don’t actually view her as a sibling at all. Sometimes we’ve used tummy cousin. Yeah. So yeah, just trying to find the language that works for the kids. Isn’t it? Yeah. And then this photo of her first birthday and then a catch up, I think you said at the end of last year. Yeah. So this was actually the last photo there was taken last December. We had always talked about ever since we started dating, we talked about we wanted to holiday together. And it’s been a really rough couple of years with COVID, you New South Wales.

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shut out from everywhere for a long time. For a couple of years there, we probably are only catching up once a year. So in this photo, this is the first time we’ve caught up in a year. That was the first time we’d seen them in a year. We hadn’t seen them for previous December, so that was last year. And we’re actually all holidaying together, which is always something we wanted to do. So we spent a weekend down at Batons Bay, just past Batons Bay, Malua Bay, which is on the south coast of New South Wales, about a few hours south of Sydney, five hours south of Sydney.

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of hours from Canberra. And obviously maintaining photos and contact in other ways during that. Yeah, yeah. So we have a chat group, just a messenger chat group, and Ben and Chris are much better than I am. terrible at texting, so they’re much better at sending photos around them. that’s just, so yeah, they’re really good. So we probably hear from them.

15:36
probably only hit me here from about fortnightly. It used to be weekly or more often earlier on. That’s still pretty good. I’d say that’s still pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s returned to I have a bit of trouble with during the journey the Surroship basically. It kind of we were really good friends before like well we didn’t know each other at the very beginning but then we became really good friends and it was all about it was friendship and then you go through the pregnancy or the lead up to pregnancy the pregnancy and that first little bit afterwards until and there was some

16:06
the parentage order went through it was kind of it was just it’s different to a friendship so now we’re actually just back to being friends and it’s it’s just good it’s just yeah we’re just friends so um yeah that’s a good point um that’s what i i think i’ve missed too the grief there it’s i’ve grieved the end of the the sorrow ship i hadn’t thought about that until today i’ve often said the um the intensity of the friendship though the project ended but

16:27
It’s the Sorrow Ship ended. It’s still there. We did it. But now it’s just friends and seeing what that looks like. So that’s yeah, really good point to hear. Yeah, I kind of felt there was a bit of pressure during the whole Sorrow Ship.

16:39
to know I didn’t want them to ever fear that I was going to that they couldn’t trust me and vice versa that so even though we’re a very strong team I was always really conscious of not saying anything or doing anything that was going to make them think oh my goodness she’s not going to follow through with this and it was just hard it was hard it was hard like we had a great journey but it was really hard so it’s nice to be best friends now and they’ve got their daughter and I know that they’re not going to walk out of my life and they know that I’m not going to take their baby away from them so

17:09
Yes, you’re getting to that point, that nice central friendship there. that’s lovely point to be at. Before we go right back to the beginning, Marnie, and just how did you meet them? We might answer Nick’s question and you answer that in terms of what you guys did. So he’s asked, how did you discuss all the things needed in the legals? Did you have a list? Seems like there are so many things that need to have been decided prior to seeing lawyers, things like breastfeeding, first hold, what if someone dies? What if baby has a disability? I’m just going to chime in first and say, Nick, these questions for the legal

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are exactly the same as the counselling. So by discussing all of these, you’re getting really prepared for both. That’s my plug for SAS. In the portal is a list of all of these discussion questions. And so some teams have different ways of doing it where they might have spreadsheets or they might catch up for date nights and talk through them all.

17:56
What did your team do, Marnie? So if I just go back to the beginning, prior to meeting Ben and Christie, I had said to my husband, I want to be a surrogate. And he was like, I’m not sure about this. He was concerned for me, basically. He was worried about us being taken, or me being taken advantage of. He was worried about something happening.

18:15
pregnancy or the birth and he really wasn’t sure where he sat on that. One of the reasons why I wanted to be a surrogate is that I’m actually adopted myself. So my parents had to rely on the help from someone else to become parents. So it was kind of like paying a board and that was my real motivation behind it. Plus I loved being pregnant with my own two and I wanted to do it again and I didn’t want any more children. We’ve made up our mind not to have any more children, but I want to experience it again. So I also had that.

18:45
My husband was really anxious. He said, I’d really like to talk to someone about my fears. And I haven’t been on, I joined the Australian Surrogacy Community Facebook page and I joined as a surrogate page as well. And I had heard about this surrogacy counselor, Trina Hale. And so I said, well, what if we have a session with this surrogacy counselor? And he said, yeah, you agree to that. So we went to see Trina. Apparently I was the first surrogate she had ever had who came to see her before.

19:15
actually forming a team and now a lot of surrogates do this now but she was really excited to actually speak to us before we had even met IPs and she basically went through the good, the bad and the ugly sorority. Things without with while maintaining

19:29
professional confidentiality, but sort of problems she had seen in teams and stuff like that. And I actually walked down there, walked away from that Zoom call, Zoom call, was a Zoom call, there’s no way my husband’s going to agree to this. Like there’s so much that could go on and go wrong, but it actually had the opposite effect on him.

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He kind of felt like he was able to, okay, I know what the pitfalls are. talked about how to best avoid the pitfalls. And so from that, I then started talking to different IPs through the Australian Surrogacy Community. So I’ll jump forward to when we met then and Christie, my husband is particular personality where he likes to have all these ducks in a row. He’s very methodical. So.

20:11
When we did meet them, we decided because we’re a long distance team, needed to date. Trina had recommended we date for at least six months. And we decided that we would dedicate a weekend every month to catch up with them. So, and we alternated something between Sydney and Canberra. On those weekends, you know, we wanted to, we wanted to see how the IPs interact with our kids because even though the baby isn’t yours, still, there is still a responsibility that you’re bringing this life in into the world. And you kind of want to make sure that it’s a good thing.

20:41
We spent the days doing things in a team of six with our two children. We did things like visiting the zoo or we went out for lunch or whatever, doing activities with the kids. And then at night, once the kids were in bed, we actually had a list of questions that we would go through and what we did initially is we each wrote out, Ben and Christie did theirs and we did ours. So was mainly me. We wrote out what our ideal journey would look like. And from that, we were able to see the similarities that we had, could see the differences that we had.

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what we did when we came together at those night times, we had different topics that we would talk about and Craig actually kept notes, so he kept minutes. So he would actually type everything that was said, so the questions, everything that was said and then

21:25
On the Monday after we went, either we came back to Sydney or they went back to Canberra. He would actually type up those minutes and would send them to us. So we actually have a record of everything that was discussed. We borrowed that idea from your team. So one of them is Glenn, teacher too. And that’s one of the things in SASS in the portal is a minutes template. Cause Glenn runs meetings and agendas and all of that stuff. And so yeah, it was really helpful. And it’s a good thing for partners as surrogates to do, them something to do. But then it’s great record for what did we agree on?

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as a team and you might change it over time, but it’s a good thing to go back to and remember.

21:59
What was our starting point? Particularly as a surrogate gets more anxious during pregnancy and goes, am I asking too much? Or, you know, that is reasonable for me to ask because this is what we talked about. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I don’t think we ever went back and looked at the notes up there, but they were there. They were there. Because our team and that was because we spent so much time getting to know each other, we were so strong and we just always knew that whatever happened, we had to put ourselves first and my health had to come first.

22:29
And that was something we all agreed on that my health trumped everything. Because we can’t your kids without a mum. No, no, no. So, and thankfully we never had to make a decision over my health, over the baby. So thank you, but you know, I do know teams that have had to do that. think what I’m hearing and to sort of answer Nick’s question there, it sounds like there are lists out there, but other options are as a team, write down, come up with all the things you can think of, share the list out, but then have some time. each have the IPs in the surrogate.

22:59
team have time to think about their own answers and then come back together at designated times to talk about that and you’re not going to get through it in one night. And so have it done over time because having time to simmer on these ideas is really good to then go away and rethink. So there’s some ideas Nick there I hope that that helps to answer those questions.

23:17
Want to add in anything else there about that? No, I was going say, so we probably did over, if we were gaining months, two nights a month. So yeah, it was probably about 12, 10 to 12 nights of talking and we would talk for hours. And I think it’s also important to know that particularly surrogate hasn’t done it before. I had never done it before. I went into it thinking, oh yeah, I want this, this and this and it actually changed. So I kind of thought that I would need more contact with Ben and Chrissy, like physical in-person contact.

23:47
than I actually did need and I’m even though you know I’ve seen I went a year without seeing Sienna I was actually okay with that whereas I kind of thought I wanted to catch up every few months. Yeah so you’ve never done it before and I’m sure it’s the same with IPs that you know I think everyone has to be open to the fact that if you’ve never done it before you actually don’t know how you’re going.

24:08
feel once you’re in it. And it’s quite a complicated relationship. And the thing I struggled with the most was in my own pregnancy is I only had to worry about my husband and I and my oldest child when I was pregnant with my youngest. And all of a sudden I was having to worry about Ben and Christie and what they would want. And that was very hard. Having a baby with four adults is not a dynamic that anybody’s having. It’s complicated, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s complicated. And then a question for probably both of us. How long did it take to recover from birth?

24:38
and did you take maternity leave? Recovery from birth can come in this physical, this head heart hormones as Katrina talks about. So depending on the birth, because if she’s had a caesarian, you have to plan for that and helping her drive. I took maternity leave. I had from teaching and people are entitled to the paid parental leave, both the surrogate and the intended parents. I wasn’t actually a classroom teacher. I was running my own tutoring business at the time. So I was working very part-time. I probably was only working.

25:04
eight, 10 hours a week. So I wasn’t entitled to pay parental leave because there were rules around you have to work a certain number of weeks in the year leading up to pregnancy or something like that. And I hadn’t done that or a certain number of hours. can’t remember. So I took off. had planned to actually work up to my due date, which is what I actually did. I was running my own shooting business when I was pregnant with my two kids as well. And I actually worked up to my due date with my daughter, my eldest. And I kind of thought I’d be fine. But with everything that goes on with surrogacy, I got to about 38 weeks and I was like, I can’t do this anymore. So I

25:34
took two weeks leave then and my IPs covered my earnings, which is a drop in the ocean. yeah, I think all up it was about $2,000 for the whole of, I had eight weeks off all up. So I wasn’t earning a lot of money. Yeah. And then I had six weeks postpartum.

25:51
In hindsight, I really should have had a full 12 to 13 weeks postpartum. Physically, it was my easiest recovery. All three of my births were vaginal births, but Sienna’s was the easiest out of all of them in terms of stuff that happens during birth, like tearing. I didn’t have any with her. I would felt amazing within a few days, really. I had very little pain after her birth. Yeah, physically, I mean, two weeks after her birth, we were actually shopping for bikes. So,

26:20
You know, that’s how great the recovery was. Emotionally, was hard. It was hard. You know, and I know Katrina talks about your brain. Your brain knows what’s going on, but your heart doesn’t. Is that what she did? Just to get the memory. Your head your heart know where you are. In the house that we wanted, we did what we wanted to do, but the body’s like, where’s the baby? Like, I don’t have the baby. What’s going on? So I find there’s a confusion. There’s a sadness. Your head and your heart are happy because we did what we wanted to.

26:50
your body’s safe. that’s a and it was really hard because you’ve gone through this pregnancy and you get strangers coming up to you going, oh, you know, congratulations, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you choose whether or not you’re going to tell them it’s not your actual baby or whatever. But I had this case a week after I gave birth to Sienna and my IPs only stayed in Sydney a week because back then the recommended time was one to two weeks. Katrina Hale now says at least two weeks stay close to your surrogate. But yeah, so this was the day after they had left.

27:20
and I actually had a counseling session with Katrina that day and so my daughter had gone to a friend’s house to play and I’d gone over to pick her up. The grandmother of this friend was there and she didn’t know that I had been a surrogate. I birthed a baby and I was seeing her chatting to her and she said, oh you just got the two children and it was like yeah I do. I’m gonna get emotional now. Yeah I’ve just got the two but then inside I want to scream. You I just wanted to scream. I’ve just given birth. I actually gave birth a week ago but I don’t have that baby’s not mine and I don’t have that baby and it was really

27:50
It happened a number of times over that fourth time, where I’d be out and I would see people with newborn babies and just want to go up to them and say, I just gave birth to two. And I think it’s possibly not the same, but it’s similar to people who probably lost babies. And you kind of just feel like, yeah, there’s an emptiness there, but it wasn’t. And I said, it actually wasn’t Sienna that I was breathing. It was actually Sunny, the baby that I carry. It complicated.

28:18
But you know, that’s part of the fourth trimester and it’s just really important during that fourth trimester that IPs are there for their surrogate and just continually reassure her that they’re not going to run off because I know, I mean, Ben and Christy would never do that and they never ever did anything to make me think that, but I was scared. I was scared that they had their baby now and I was never going to see them again.

28:40
And even though we’re smart, intelligent women, our brain plays tricks on us. So for those listening, you may not have heard of fourth trimester before. We’ve talked about that being the first three months post-birth. And so that’s that fragile time for the surrogate. It could be fine. Some navigate it fine, but it can be quite up and down. lots of either contact, but phone calls and photos and counseling, we would recommend having some scheduled in. So Nick, I think just as a bit of a general guide from what I know from other surrogates in terms of recovery from birth, I would say up to three months. And so therefore,

29:10
surrogates have three months maternity leave, I would take it because although physically your recovery will probably be quick, emotionally, every other time the surrogates had a baby as a woman, she keeps the baby. And so her body’s never had to go through this departure before. So she doesn’t know what it’s going to be like. And that’s often the reward to herself to have some time off with her and her family. She might be fine with her hormones. I wasn’t one of them. My mom’s officially got postnatal depression, needed antidepressants and continued counseling with Katrina. So I got hit really hard, even though I’ve been in the world.

29:40
and knew it could all happen, it still hit me and I didn’t quite recognise it. So there’s perhaps some examples, Nick, of what to hear there of recovery and taking leave. And I think I stopped teaching at 35, 36 weeks, because I was in your late 30s. So yeah, prepare to have a few weeks off before birth too there.

29:56
I might answer Haley’s question there about SASS. So when are the profiles created and are they through SAS? Yes, Haley’s. The profiles are created after you’ve done your application form, then you’ve done your police checks and medical checks and had the mentor session. Like Marnie used to be a mentor in the past, so you might have a Zoom session with your mentor or me in person if you’re in the same state. And then…

30:15
you are creating a profile and I talk you through how that process works. IPs and surrogates are creating profiles and then they’re shared and swapped so to speak. So the surrogate picks IPs and then the IPs get a chance to pick her too if you like and see her profile and they might say no at that point as well. So we’re there to be that third party and

30:33
to help through that. So, but Hayley, shoot me an email if you want to know a bit more about the process of that in detail there. Yeah, so I think Marnie’s kind of hit on tonight some of those, you know, points about, well, you know, the journey leading up to lots of things to talk about preparing for post-birth. One question I will ask you, if you could do anything differently, would you do one or two things differently in your journey? Yeah, if I were, yes, yes, I think I would. One thing I struggled with when I was pregnant was actually asking

31:03
my IPs for support for things like physical support. They couldn’t actually physically support me because they were in Canberra. But things like cleaners, I’d probably look at, yeah, sort of talking about what physical support I was going to have prior to it, prior to pregnancy. I always found it really hard to talk money with my IPs. And in the end, pregnancy hormones are strange things. I would often find myself questioning whether they were actually questioning whether I was

31:33
spending too much money or whatever. And I wasn’t spending too much money. In the end, my husband, Craig, any discussions around any sort of money he had with my IPs, because I just couldn’t handle the feeling that maybe they were questioning whether or not I really needed something. I didn’t have, I mean, we did have a cleaner in the third trimester. I would definitely get that cleaner for the first trimester because I was sick as a dog in the first trimester, far sicker than I was with my own children. And just sort of, I would talk more

32:03
about how my family would be supported. So a lot of it fell on Craig and I did feel Ben and Christy don’t want to do a sibling journey. I would do a sibling journey for them, but I wouldn’t do it again, I think with new IPs because I still feel guilt about what I feel I put my family through. Now my husband so supportive and my kids, I mean, they were so young, they didn’t know anything else. Yeah, I would talk more about how they would be supported, how Sophie who was five, five and six during the program.

32:33
And she said to me once, she came up to me one day during the first or early second trimester and I was really sick and she was like, oh mum, I know you’re not feeling well, but if you’re feeling a bit better later on in stuff, then could we go to the park? And I was like, you know, just the guilt, the mum guilt. You’re just like, why am I doing this to you? I don’t regret it for a minute. I don’t regret it for a minute, but I would sort of talk more about having gone through it, talk more with IPs more about this is, these are the challenges that I had last time. And so I need to know there’s some

33:03
support around, but my kids aren’t missing out on things. So they are, there is someone there to take them to the park, but my husband’s not coming to pick up all the slack. And I mean, he was amazing. And one positive that came out of it, besides the fact that we have this gorgeous little girl in our lives now and great friends is that it brought my husband so close, so much closer. Like if he supported me through that, he’s going to support me through anything. yeah, I think just sort of, if I did anything differently, really talking more about the kinds of support that I would need if I was really sick or

33:33
you know, that my kids weren’t missing out on things and stuff like that and that Craig was supportive. I don’t know if that answered it, but yeah. I think it does and listening to it now, have very similar things for me. I think I’ll just add my little bit I haven’t thought about.

33:46
I said this out loud to others, it’s just Matt and Brendan were very present in the last 10 weeks of pregnancy doing my grocery shopping, in the last five weeks and in the 10 weeks either coming and taking the kids out to the movies or the park or doing some bulk cooking but that stopped and so the amount of contact my kids had with them stopped and my kids missed them and then when my kids miss something that hurts me and so they didn’t…

34:09
them to bed anymore or would Glenn and I go out on date nights? And so we, of course that wasn’t probably going to happen but we hadn’t talked about that as a team and I think I would have liked something for my kids to maybe have another playdate at the park with them to wean them off it. So I think you need an exit plan as a team for the kids sake. Yeah and that we kind of didn’t have that either and it kind of yeah stopped after that. We were seeing them every four weeks regularly and then it just

34:34
We saw them at eight weeks and then we didn’t see them until Sienna was six months old for the current adjudicator. yeah, think it’s hard when you’re an interstate team because I’m covered. I mean, this we had seen it before COVID, but you know, that’s just trying. what I would always say to you, sorry, it’s coming in. It’s just take your time. Like I went in and thank God my husband was there sort of holding me back going, no, no, don’t jump in because Ben and Christie actually went

35:04
first IPs that I spoke to. I was talking to not dating but just part of the part of the

35:33
what you need as a team and really take the time. Katrina talks about taking the rose-coloured glasses off and you really need to get to a point where you know.

35:43
particularly as a surrogate and I’m sure it’s similar for IPs that whatever you go through, they’re going to be there and they’re going to have you back because once you’re pregnant, you can’t back out of it. You’re kind of in it for the long haul. And you need to need to have that trust. Because as I said, our journey was really smooth. We really didn’t have any health issues. First transfer worked, first was easy. Well, relatively easy, was long, but relatively easy. But still, for me, it was like a roller coaster.

36:13
of the whole time. the easiest. and it’s going to feel like an eternity isn’t it because you just want to get on with the project both the IPs and the SARI a bit but you know take that You really need to take your time. You really need to take your time. 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 head to our YouTube channel for all of the recordings. If you’re looking for more individualized support

36:40
consider joining SASS, 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.