Episode 28 – Hannah – straight mum

00:00
Thanks for watching!

00:14
If this is your first time, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series with me, your host, Anna McKie. My guest on this episode was a co-host on the regular webinar series that I run. Those one-hour webinars are free and will take you through the surrogacy process in Australia. You will hear from a surrogate or parent and there are opportunities to type in your questions and we will try to answer them. You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org.

00:43
This episode, recorded in October 2021, features Hannah. Hannah became a mum through surrogacy in June 2019. Her daughter, Imara, was carried and birthed by Lee, who is Hannah’s cousin. Hannah is a midwife and was diagnosed with MRKH in her early 20s, which essentially means she was born without a uterus. Hannah is a mentor with SAS, especially for single mums, and has supported many new intended parents’ IPs at the beginning of their journey.

01:11
At the time this podcast goes to air, November 2023, I can tell you that Hannah is due to be a mum for the second time in early 2024. She is expecting another girl, but with a different surrogate. Hannah met a new surrogate, previously a stranger, and it just goes to show having two children through surrogacy in Australia can be a reality. Hannah appeared on another webinar when I interviewed three mothers through surrogacy who induced lactation and were able to breastfeed their babies.

01:39
I’ll add a link to the YouTube recording of that, and my aim is to release that as a podcast episode in mid-2024. You can hear from her surrogate Lee in episode 31 coming soon. I’m also going to do a little shout out to Wendy. Wendy is the mother of an intended father couple in our community and a regular listener, so that makes her an intended grandmother. She has requested a webinar to then be made into a podcast episode, which features the parents of intended parents.

02:07
so she can learn how to support her son and his partner as well as a future surrogate. Great suggestion, Wendy. Watch this space in 2024. Please be like Wendy and reach out if you have feedback or episode suggestions. I make these recordings because I enjoy sharing stories of members of the surrogacy village, but it is nice to know if you do like what I’m actually doing. I hope you enjoy this episode.

02:29
Hannah, I’ve got some photos here of your journey that you shared with us. Obviously there’s a long road to get to this point. So these were some pregnancy announcements and then a baby shower photo, I think. The one on the left was after quite an early bleed, a fortnight prior, and we weren’t sure if Bubs was in there or not. This was about, yeah, 10 days to a fortnight later. So right around the six and a half week mark where we did see her first little heart.

02:55
So that was a very special one. I actually saw it before the sonographer. Being midwife, I’ve seen a few of her sounds before. The moment she put it in, I saw the little flutter of the heart, and I just like squealed, and she took it off in like fright. She’s like, what’s wrong with them? I’m like, it’s okay, it’s okay. I just saw that, I saw the heartbeat. Sorry, continue. So that was that appointment. And then that was our baby shower on the right.

03:19
How many embryo transfers to get a sticky one? Two, two. So we were lucky that it was, yeah. Two. But you still have a lot to get there. Yes. And some pregnancy photos there? This was taken with the birth photographer the morning of the birth. So we didn’t do a maternity shoot at all. Neither of us really loved posing for photos. We ended up needing an induction. So we went into the hospital early morning and broke waters and then they left us for a few hours wandering around.

03:49
up and down some stairs a million times. Anyone that’s aware of that hospital, that’s their outdoor area in the middle of Flinders Hospital. And she just said, can we take a few pregnancy shots and I’m like, yeah, perfect. So actually it worked out really well. Yeah. So that was the morning she was born. Wow. Yep. It was, Lee’s a good birther because I mean,

04:08
But those listening, you know, we’re all Adelaide girls, so we know each other in person. So she’s had three girls herself. We thought just breaking the waters would have done the job, but no, she did need a little sniff of the IV hormones in the end, but that’s all right. A sniff of the IV hormones. Just a little, just a little to get her over the edge. And then everybody’s like, okay, I know what I’m doing now. Off we go. And then, and so I’ve shown one of those powerful photos. Do you remember how you were feeling in these moments? I was, so this was the only thing I was actually concerned about.

04:37
Was I gonna be emotionally attached and bond or is it gonna be that midwife in me that’s just, because I actually delivered her. I didn’t plan to do it with my bare hands. I didn’t actually even think whether it’d be with gloves or my bare hands prior, but my concern was, is it just gonna be like work? Am I just gonna deliver this baby and go to hand it to Lee, which is not what we had planned. I was gonna, you know, take her straight to me. Was it gonna feel like my baby or was it just gonna feel like work? The moment I saw her crowning, like the tiniest little bit of her head, I was bawling my head.

05:06
So no, definitely, definitely all the emotions came flooding through. They’re pretty powerful there. So encouragingly, yeah, just to get through that, you know, the crowning into birth, I’d imagine. Yeah, she did an amazing job. Good on her. She pretty much breathed the bumps out. She didn’t do much pushing. It was more breathing. She did amazing. Good on her. I guess for IPs who are brand new in listening, hearing Hannah saying, you know, I saw baby crowned. So if you’re brand new to listening to surrogacy, you might go, oh, are we going to be down the business end or are we going to be up?

05:35
at the shoulders and I think most surrogacy teams by the end, everyone is so comfortable with each other. I had also delivered Lee’s second little girl, so we’ve already been down there, it’s all good. I know that. And I know, you know, I had two dads and so it was, you just don’t care by that point. That’s not what it’s about. It’s an amazing experience to share together. And then got some photos here, you know. So that was the moment she was born, yeah.

06:02
Juicy cord attached still. Yeah, so Lee delivered on all fours. So she didn’t actually see these moments. I’m so thankful that we had the photographer because she was still kind of sorting herself on the bed, trying to turn around and all that. So she didn’t actually see these first moment. I’m sure they’re very special to her as well as me. So yeah, that was Bob straight out, gave her a quick wipe down and then just, harder than I expected trying to juggle it and undo my buttons and get her down, but it was.

06:27
Oh, that was the best moment to do that skin to skin. We had two midwives, because it was crossover time, and the obstetrician in the room, because she was the one that was telling the midwives to let me deliver. So there was a room full of people. They were all very supportive in the end. Yes, I know the story that you’ve told me, how you navigated that to make sure how it worked. When you birth fairly naturally, people go home a few hours after birth. And so I know you guys did from the morning. It was about five, five and a half hours at 11 o’clock at night.

06:57
There was a scary first drive being single mum driving my baby home. I just wanted to be in the back with her but I couldn’t. And then you’re home, you’re on, you know? Yeah. That’s it, all responsibility to you now. I mean, then a leap in time, this was around the first birthday for Amara? It was on her first birthday, so this photographer is a former midwife of mine that I work with and so she was able to do it on her actual birthday which was nice because we didn’t really have…

07:23
big plans on her birthday. Her party was the following weekend or something. So it was really nice just to get these photos on her actual birthday, which was lovely. And it was very close. The photo shoot was over the time of birth as well. It was in the afternoon. There’s a photo about three minutes from her time of birth.

07:39
one point, yeah. Lovely, very special there. And then this photo too, Hannah breastfed. So Hannah did something called inducing lactation. So even though her body had never had a pregnancy or birth before, there’s a protocol that you can go through to do that. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about that for you Hannah? It’s gonna make me cry, cause we’ve just weaned. I like wean. Oh, it’s gonna make me cry. So Imara’s too, and so they’ve fed for a long time. 27 months in the end. Well done, girls, well done.

08:08
I did it a bit later than most intended mothers really do it. I did it when she was already born. I wasn’t planning on doing it. I didn’t even really think it would happen. I was a bit skeptical. And then the midwife for me goes,

08:21
I should give it a try. Like, let’s see what happens. So started the hormones at the pill and the Domperidone. You’re supposed to be on the pill for quite a few months prior, but I did about six weeks and then stopping the pill, continuing the Domperidone and just pumping, pumping, pumping. If you didn’t obviously have bubs here already because Imi was already here. I just started doing all her feeds on the boob with what we call a supplementary feeding light, so a supply light.

08:45
So it’s where you wear the bottle around the neck, have a little tube attached, and so bubbles get its milk, whether that be formula or surrogate milk. We also used a lot of donor milk from, human milk for human babies. So lots of women around Adelaide supported our journey as well by donating milk, which was fantastic. Even had to go.

09:05
Dairy free, Lee went dairy free, I went dairy free and we had to source dairy free donors. So yeah, we mix fed the whole way through. It was definitely an amazing bond and always just having enough if you’re out and about and not having to take bottles and stuff was very convenient. It’s a beautiful bond and she’s still once a day, it’s kind of coming every second day now. Maybe mommy booby milk come back tomorrow.

09:27
Her vocabulary for 27 months is amazing. That’s fantastic. And yeah, so, so hard every time she’s, maybe Mummy Boobie Milk will come back tomorrow. Wow. She loved it, yeah. That’s beautiful.

09:41
Well, well done, Hannah. That’s a fantastic feat. So in any intended months listening there, you know, that might be the first time you’ve ever heard of anybody doing that. That might be amazing. So if you’ve got some specific questions about inducing lactation, you’ve got one of the experts here, although I’m sure nobody ever feels like an expert in surrogacy or any one thing, because we’ve only ever done it once. You know, you have a lived experience there of what that’s like. Lots of benefits can be done. I mean, it’s a commitment, I gather. You’ve got to be a lot of effort.

10:07
Right. Yeah, there’s a lot of hand expressing, a lot of pumping, a lot of fixing the supply line, moving it, spilt milk, it’s all sort of juggling, but for me it was worth it. Good, so we’ve got one question we’ll start off with here, so it says, how did you Hannah know when to start the process? Was it something that you had?

10:25
planned in advance. Erica who’s asked that, did you mean the process of surrogacy generally for her and Imara? Or did you mean the lactation specifically? So obviously I knew that I would need to either go down surrogacy or adoption from a young age when I was 21. So coming up to 30 is before I turned 30 I decided to freeze some eggs because I knew I’d need them at some point so went through that process and

10:51
prior to freezing eggs, they sometimes do a test to check your ovarian reserve, see how many eggs you’ve got left, put an AMH and that showed that my levels was extremely low, like levels of a 40 year old egg reserve. So they got me to see the specialist the next day to do my egg retrievals. That’s all I’d planned at that point was to get them in the freezer as many as I could. But then someone in the clinic asked why I wasn’t freezing embryos. And then I was like…

11:20
didn’t have a partner at that point. So there’s no point. And then someone like the same lady goes, I can’t remember who she was. She was just a random nurse giving me like education on the drugs that I had to take or something. Because often there’s donors, you don’t need to be in a relationship. You can do it yourself, there’s donors. So that’s when I thought about it and went ahead with the whole surrogacy process. So Lee actually offered when I was like 22, 23.

11:46
I think to be my surrogate one day if I needed to. Yeah, once you knew your diagnosis and you shared it with your friends and family and then I could do that. She offered early days, yeah. And then I went on with life and it was kind of eight years later when I froze my eggs that I asked her again if she was still willing and she was. So then I went and chose some donor sperm and we went from there. Yes. Wonderful, so you’ve still got some embryos with that sperm and some eggs left, is that right? Yes.

12:14
So my first cycle, I did just eggs. I’ve got eight eggs ready for whatever I choose to do with them and five embryos as well still. So I did three cycles all up in four months, almost back to back. Yeah, pretty much back to back. So I’ve done three egg pickups for the egg donors, but they’re probably over a year. Yeah, no, this was all in four months. It was.

12:35
your body on the… Very intense. Yeah and any women listening here who’ve gone through that, you know, that’s intense there. And asking here, can you freeze donor sperm as embryos? Yes, yeah. You choose, you go through the process of counselling with the donor clinic counsellor, choose your sperm and then he’s kind of signed on for however many cycles you need. So it’s kind of, we like I said, I did two cycles, the same sperm was used each time, so fresh egg.

13:04
from retrieval gets combined with the sperm and then frozen. And then they line it up with the surrogates cycle and how thick the lining is of the uterus and then defrost and transfer. Do you know, is your donor an Australian donor or an American donor, do you know? So cause of our situation of having to transport it to Sydney, we had to do it in Sydney. I had to use an Australian donor and we had to have a five family limit.

13:29
So that means he could only donate to four families and his own family. So it’s a bit limited with donors, but yes, he was an Australian. So it’s a clinic recruited, anonymous donor, but then if they change the rules in so that even though he may have donated anonymously when Immy’s 18, she can have access to his. 18, yeah. So 45, I think, when he donated. So by the time she’s 18, he’ll be rather old. We’ll cross that when it comes to her, if he’s still around.

13:58
So she’ll know her story, like Cleo was carried by Lee and what language, I know for my kids having been an egg donor, we say, oh, you need an egg and a seed to make a baby. And that lady’s eggs weren’t working, so I shared mine. And so I’m sure you’ve got similar language stories. Being a midwife, she is.

14:15
She already knows all the terms. She knows her belly button was because she was attached to Lee. We’ve got photos all over the wall of the day she was born. And in Lee’s tummy, we’ve got a photo book that I gave to Lee for Imi’s first birthday. So we’ve got a copy as well. And she loves sitting there looking through her book on the day she was born. And she knows Imi’s in Lee’s tummy. Imi, me, Imi, tummy. She knows, she already knows half her story. She doesn’t understand it and all that, but she knows it. She’s already been told.

14:43
And you find is it kids adapt to these things? They’re fine, that’s their story. Is that all the problem? They come into it going, oh, how do you think she’ll cope? Yeah, that’s her story. No more just the whole single parenting thing I’ve got the comments about, but not too much the donor side of it, yeah.

14:59
not the donor or the service you part. No, apparently, you know, split families fighting is better than, you know, having a donor. No, like just, you know, those situations happen. People separate and that comes up. Whereas, you know, this little girl, she’s not going to have that. She’s not going to have fighting parents. She’s not going to have weekends here, weekends there. You know, she was that wanted. Yeah, she’s. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She’s a very wanted child. Lots of people. Yeah.

15:26
and she’s got a village I know with your you know mom and supportive family there so we’ve got a question I can see it’s over in chat she’s a single IP and is excited to do this solo journey as well a thought are you in a relationship now? Not at the moment no there has been a few little short term things short term friendships and on the way I just don’t have the energy at the moment I don’t have that obviously I have the energy for my child I don’t have that desire to

15:55
put that energy into someone else. It’s, I’ve got what I want. I’ve got my daughter, it’s me and her at the moment. And I’m very happy with our little duo doing me and her. So I’m not ruling it out in the future. I am in the process of, do I go for sibling journey now, or do I wait for a few years to see if there’s a partner? Just trying to suss that next step out.

16:16
And then, and I guess so, you know, people would ask that, okay, so you’ve already got your eggs, eggs frozen or eggs with a sperm. So you might be faced with the possibility of doing a sibling and having a full genetic sibling for Amara or do you use your eggs and new partner’s sperm? Lots of complexity to work through. So there’s a thought process going on at the moment with a gay single mate discussion of co-parenting has just, just in the early work started to have a few.

16:46
little chats here and there to see if that’s a possibility. Yeah, definitely. And look, there’s a great example of how families are made in lots of different ways, aren’t they there? So Erica, a question here, and did your costs align with the estimated surrogacy costs? She’s read 30 to a hundred thousand is what I’ve read. So I’m probably the one that collected the data.

17:04
on the 30 to a hundred thousand. I’ll add in before Hannah answers, but any brand new IPs listening tonight might be curious. Yes, I would say a range is, I’d say 35 to 85,000 is a pretty common range. Those that do it at the 30, 35 are those that probably live in the same state, very local to their surrogate. They possibly already had their embryos made with IVF or they just had one collection and it worked first embryo transfer.

17:28
Perhaps she was fairly healthy and didn’t have 20 weeks bed rest and not too many complications. My dad’s baker cost them $60,000. Up at the higher end is probably multiple egg collection cycles because sometimes they don’t get Medicare rebate if it’s surrogacy mentioned, unless it’s done fertility preservation. You can some ways you can work around that. If the surrogate was interstate from them, so there was a lot of interstate travel with them coming for appointments and supporting her, particularly if it didn’t work, first transfer.

17:54
and then accommodation when they were visiting and maybe some loss of wages, you know, she had some rest and was unwell. For us, their egg donor Jen needed two egg collection cycles and we didn’t get Medicare rebate. So the IVF component costs 30,000 of the 60,000. Hannah, what about yourself, roughly? So yeah, with my three collections, two transfers, and we did have to do some interstate travel and bits and pieces like that. Lee had a bit extra time off work afterwards, so covering of wages more than was planned

18:24
a rain agreement, I think about 70, but you know, expect like you said, next time to be a bit cheaper because hopefully I can do it in my state. I’ve already got the eggs or embryos which, whichever way I go. So yeah, second time around should be a bit cheaper. Good. So Hannah, from the time you and Lee said, yeah, let’s get this journey on the road to birth, was it two years? No. So we started trying to remember the actual dates, two months under the two years come.

18:50
We got our counseling and all that kind of ticked off reasonably quick. We got that done in a day. We had all our sessions done in the one day. All our legals were done really quick, mainly over Zoom and stuff. We used a lawyer in, I used a lawyer in Queensland and did it all over emails and Zoom. So I think we got started reasonably quick. We had a few hurdles along the way. I think from when deciding to starting transfer was maybe seven months, I reckon, because we already had that relationship being family. It was a little bit quicker.

19:20
I think it was probably about seven months we started Trans. So Erica and anybody listening, as a guide, expect a two year from the moment you meet a surrogate or somebody offers, you wanna take some time to discuss what that would look like. Look, as a rough guideline with SAS, we would say, take six months, even if you do know them, take some time to chat about how you’re gonna support each other, maybe allow six months.

19:42
in your head to do the counseling and legals might happen faster, but if you allow that and then assume a pregnancy, yes, nine months, but assume it’s a year, you know, with the recovery and stuff too. So Erica, in terms of costs, then you don’t have to have $60,000 at the beginning by any means, because you’ll still be earning your income. And so you can still be topping that up. You know, if you had a good 10, 20,000 saved. Yeah, I think I had about 20 and that.

20:07
Reassured, she was umming and ahhing whether I could financially support her as a single mum intended parent. I had a reasonably decent job at that point and did just show her my bank statement. And that reassured her that, yep, 20 years back up there already and then paying along the way for things. And I still had that 20 when Imi was born. So managed to spend and save and spend and save. So I was actually able to take quite a bit of time off work.

20:32
back when she turned two, so that was lovely. Definitely, yeah, access your maternity leave and things like that. Hannah, have you got any sort of insights or thoughts about what went well or what could have been done better or that you often share with people? Just communicating. Once you do have that bond, like once you’ve met the surrogate that’s offered and just keep up those lines of communication, nothing’s off limits, don’t sit and dwell on things. Check in and you know, you being sorry, you’re not always gonna ask for what you need.

21:01
So offering things that you think, what would I like? If I was pregnant at this point, what would I appreciate? Things like that. Don’t wait to be asked, offer things as much as you can. And I guess learning over time, what they like or their family or kids like, or if they’re a drink herbal teas, or if they’re a chocolate person, and you learn their creature comforts, or if they like space. And it’s like a relationship with multiple people really, isn’t it? Yeah.

21:30
But one question here then, so does the surrogate and IP get maternity leave from the government for them for recovery? Yeah, how does that work, Hannah? I definitely got my work and government, I think. Yeah. Lee got work but not government. From my knowledge, this is the only time in surrogacy it’s double-dipping.

21:48
Oh, it is. Okay. Everything else is, you know, no rebates and whatever. So it’s the one odd thing that two people can claim the paid parental leave if they meet the work tests for the same child. So the intended parent who’s the primary carer and then the surrogate. And then if their employment also provides maternity leave or paternity leave Hannah’s in, you know, midwifery, I’m in education. So we’re very generous with the maternity leave.

22:13
faculties. And so yes, so Erica, both the surrogate and the IP get that. So the surrogate, I, for example, I stopped teaching at 35 weeks pregnant and I got 20 weeks maternity leave from teaching, not from Service Australia SAS work. Just the work went on in the background, which is probably not sensible looking back. So that is one nice thing. And so as a team, you discuss how long you’d like off.

22:35
post-birth because it’s well for a surrogate you’re really not in the state of mind for a good three months I have to say it’s not just six weeks with a caesarian you know that idea and I know Lee and both myself six months yeah yeah Lee we were wobbly I had postnatal depression and I’ve had antidepressants you know I needed to go on them so I got hit really hard and I know Lee had wobbles and it was actually because of Lee that and seeing her struggle

22:58
gave me the strength to go, that’s okay to struggle. I’ve just watched another surrogate go through it. I’m not alone in this. So it was good to share experiences there. So yeah, as a team with a future surrogate there, you know, talk about three months, buffer that out, could be six. So there’s that question there. And then Nathan’s asked a question as a general rule, how much involvement is generally expected from the surrogate post-birth, every day, week, month, et cetera, how much involvement is expected from the surrogate? I’m just interesting the way that’s word in terms of how much involvement.

23:28
she would want or you would want her to have? Any thoughts on that Hannah? I guess it’s team space. I think it sounds like from a surrogate’s point of view how much were you wanting to have that sounds like that’s how that’s worded. Every team like I said every team is different with that and it’s something you talk about early days and even though you’ve talked about it early days that might change you know you might intend to you know some teams you know stay together for that first week some the first day.

23:55
was five hours because we live close to each other we knew that we would be catching up. What you expect and what happens is very very different. You might have expectations that you see each other every second day for the first two weeks or but things change you know so it might need more might need less mum might need more mum like it changes. Yeah so it’s okay to have a plan and discuss what you think it’ll look like and then just as a team coming back closer to birth re-checking that post-birth re-checking that plan I guess.

24:24
I guess for my team, so the dads live about 35 minutes away from us. But what I requested, because I’d seen another team do it, is that they stayed in Airbnb near us for a week, so even though we’re in the same city. And so that was tricky because they couldn’t book that in until I was in labor. They had a few places on shortlist. I mean, look, if they had money to burn, they could have booked it in for a month and come for two weeks before birth and stayed for two weeks after. But we decided on a week. We had a planned home birth, so they actually stayed with us.

24:52
here for two nights and then I stayed with them at the Airbnb for a night because I did a lot of direct breastfeeding to bring in my milk supply and then they stayed near us for a week. We saw each other every day for that first week, probably multiple times a day and then we pasted out to every second day in the second week and then it was paste out. But always for me, a really helpful thing was knowing when the next catch up was and one of the dads, Matt.

25:14
He was particularly, that was his job. He knew that put my anxieties at ease to say, okay, let’s book in the next catch up. So then I wasn’t left wondering, you know, and you know what it’s like when you’ve got a newborn, it’s not that you don’t mean well or care, but you’re just stuck in cycle. And so if we knew it’s booked in, that put me at ease, knowing that I was still valued and had a part in their life and that they wanted to see me and I needed cuddles.

25:35
So yeah, so Nathan, yeah, if it’s an interstate surrogate, you’d probably plan to stay for a couple of weeks post-birth to be near her, and her body needs to adjust to not having that baby, but every team is different. So if a surrogate goes in going, you must do this, be warned about that, because occasionally we do get some dodgy surrogates too, but sometimes people are beginners and are learning what to expect. And so that’s why sometimes if you get to chat to like a mentor or other people, you get to hear what other people have done and what might be reasonable there.

26:05
We’ve answered lots of questions there tonight, Hannah. That’s some really good ones about your journey. For yourself in some of the hardest times in surrogacy, what’s something that you learned about yourself in those times? I guess some resilience. You’re not in control as an IP. Gotta let go of that a bit. And being a person that likes that control, having to let go of that control and put that trust in someone else is tough. But in the end.

26:33
It was all worth it. Every little step, every cry on the shit, the shower, the floor, because you don’t know what’s happening. Just to now, my girl, she’s in bed. She’s here. It’s so worth it. Every little hurt or every heartbreak, it’s so worth it. Just to be a mum, have your dreams come true. Good. That’s beautiful. Well, I think anybody listening here tonight would agree that’s a beautiful sentiment to…

26:58
to end on there, but it is all worth it. So keep at it people, so beautiful. Thank you for joining me. On our YouTube channel, you will find many other episodes as well as the images mentioned in this webinar. If you’re looking for more resources, check out the show notes for this episode and consider joining us in one of our webinars so you can have your questions answered on the spot. Please subscribe to this podcast if you found it valuable and share it with someone so they too can benefit from this conversation.

27:28
Until next time, welcome to the village.