Episode 31 – Lee – surrogate

00:00
Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKie. Thank you for sharing your time to listen to this episode. These recordings are from the regular one hour free webinars that I run, which I invite you to attend if you haven’t already. They take you through how surrogacy works in Australia, including how to find a surrogate or intended parents. There are opportunities to ask questions and you hear from a co-host each time about their own journey.

00:42
This episode, recorded in October 2022, features Lee. Lee birthed as a surrogate in Adelaide in June 2019. She carried for her cousin Hannah, who is a single mum, and they had a little girl, Imara. Lee has been an active member of the Adelaide surrogacy community, spoken at surrogacy seminars, and has supported many of her surrey sisters through their journeys. You can hear from her cousin Hannah, the mum that she carried for, in episode 28 of this podcast series.

01:10
In this episode we talked about the beautiful parts of their journey and the hard times. When an embryo transfer didn’t work. When there was a massive bleed on Christmas Day at 20 weeks gestation. Not engaging with the midwife Lee had for her own three girls. Having postnatal depression with her own three daughters and then quite strong with Surrobub Amara. Having six months off post birth before back to full time work. And how Lee was an inspiration for me on my own surrogacy journey.

01:38
Hearing her say, I’m not okay, allowed me to say the same when I struggled with postnatal depression after my journey. We had some technical issues during this webinar where Lee cut out. While she logged back in, I talk about my own journey. So I just mentioned that in case you’re wondering why I talk for quite a few minutes without Lee having any input. I hope you enjoy this episode. So we’re joined by Lee. And so we’re going to go through some photos from her journey of surrogacy.

02:03
And so Lee, who have we got in these photos and what’s happening in each of them? As Anna said earlier, I was a surrogate for my cousin Hannah. So I am the taller one in the pictures with the lighter hair, Hannah’s the shorter one with the darker hair. So in the picture on the right, I think, is a picture of me and Hannah standing with each other. And that was after we’d had an opera sound at seven weeks-ish, I think it was.

02:31
just to sort of see how things were looking inside. So Hannah had bought a collection of cards, so she’s got the card that it says the moment we’ve been waiting for. So that was after our second transfer. First one hadn’t taken, so the second one was looking more promising, and I think I was starting to feel pretty crook by that point. If I remember correctly, I think it was hard to see much on the ultrasound that day, and Hannah’s got a pretty good idea what she’s looking for, and so she was aware it wasn’t maybe the strongest looking little…

03:00
big loop thing, but they did their best to kind of reassure us and it obviously did, you know, then continue on. And then on the other side, there’s me in the middle standing next to Hannah and with my husband Jack. So that was at the baby shower. It was, I don’t know, a couple of months, weeks before the birth. It all sort of fades into the background after a while. So… It demands, doesn’t it? All those details. Exactly. So yeah, I guess Hannah already invited a pile of friends and family that were, I guess,

03:30
to the world. I think that’s important for you know if there’s new surrogates listening and and IPs to go oh yes baby showers that’s something to consider it’s possible for the you know upcoming parents to be different to the birthing person isn’t it but it’s still a milestone to celebrate. That’s right we could have taken our kids to that event so I’ve got three my husband Jack and myself have got three girls so they are now 10, 12 and 14 and we decided not to bring them to the baby shower only because it was at a pub and I don’t know.

03:59
They get ready at pubs. I guess you can see this was a couple of years ago. So we just, we left them at home for that day. So we could just really focus on being present and part of what was happening for Hannah on that day. Beautiful. Yeah. All these little milestones. And then I think the next photo is, this is birthday, isn’t it? That was birth likely. Yeah. It was like a birth. Strange question perhaps. When you look back at this photo and the photos that surround the birth, taken back to that moment and the feels in that moment. Yeah. 100%. That’s definitely like one of my favorite.

04:27
photos this one, just the emotion I guess that it’s got in it. So Hannah’s holding Amara very shortly after she was born. Because Hannah’s a midwife, one of the things that was really important to her as part of our journey was to be able to catch, deliver Amara herself and to be the first one with hands on her little girl. So we were fortunate that we were able to sort of make that a reality for Hannah.

04:51
because it was such an important part of what was happening. So there was a point where it felt like things weren’t gonna go kind of what Hannah and I were wanting out of the birth and just around hospital policies and dressing and all the stuff. But I guess in the end, yeah, we managed to be really well supported by our local public hospital to, yeah, have a birth that was amazing at the end of the day. I needed to be induced 39 weeks and four days, I think it was in the end. And so I had to be induced just to bring it on.

05:21
She was born quite quickly after all that. The body remembered what to do. It definitely remembered what to do, yes. It’s an amazing experience. Lots of emotions, lots of tears. Oh, indeed. I think we’ve got some photos here of each of you holding Imara shortly after birth, I’d imagine. Yep, yep, so it was obviously quite shortly after birth. I can’t even remember which one would have been. Oh, I guess the one where Hannah’s standing up, wearing the button-up top would have been the first one. Hannah had done lots of skin-to-skin contact with Imara shortly after she was born. And then the second one.

05:50
as I guess as we were all sort of getting a little bit, we’d sort of been up and moving for a little bit, sort of starting to feel a little bit fresher again. So by that point, Hannah had contacted her parents and siblings and those people that were really close to her. I think it was at that point as well, that Hannah had told me like ages ago that she knew what the middle name was and it never occurred to me that I have a very gender neutral name. Amara’s middle name is Lee, so that was pretty amazing. And I can still remember when she told our grandma that that was her middle name and grandma was just like, yep.

06:20
course it should be like and it’s just one of those lovely moments. That’s beautiful, a real honour, tribute to the connection that you will always have there. Absolutely. A question there that in terms of did you have any skin to skin or was there some plans for any of that? Was that important to you or how you felt about the journey? No, I didn’t feel that I needed that for me. I really wanted the delivery. It was so important for me that Hannah was able to deliver and have that immediate skin to skin. It just wasn’t really.

06:49
my radar like I totally wanted to cuddle, but I’ve always been someone that, not someone’s gonna come up to you and grab your baby and be like, no, your baby, it’s not my baby. And it was Hannah’s baby and that was Hannah’s moment. Beautiful. And I think this is great for people listening to hear a real variety of things that happen. Maybe I’ll just throw out there as a comparison point, I had baby for quite some time. We actually went from the pool up to the bedroom to birth the placenta. And so it just shows that there can be a variety in surrogacy, can’t there? There’s no absolute set way of how things can happen. So I think that’s really powerful for people to hear.

07:19
And then we’ve got some beautiful photography here. What was the event happening in these photos? So this was Amara’s first birthday. So Hannah chose to celebrate by getting some really lovely photos taken of the occasion. And she had a photographer she wanted to use for that because her birthday was, you know, halfway through 2020 and I guess the whole COVID and lockdowns and the idea of even organizing a party.

07:42
It’s been a nightmare anyway, so we were able to do this and just, it was actually really lovely to spend some special time together that day having some photos. I’m disorganized and I’ve got my favorites picked out and I still want to put them on my wall but I haven’t quite got that far yet just because that’s just how life rolls on. It does and I think this is lovely for people to see that you’re included in these photos and these catch-ups.

08:03
that you’re part of Imara’s story is being honoured here and shown in these photos and life goes on and we don’t all catch up all the time by any means, do we? This is some beautiful photos that we’ve got from those things. Absolutely. What a cutie. Definitely adorable. Is she going in for a little hug here on your shoulder or it just sort of happened that way? Yeah, I think that was just the way Hannah took the photo. It’s just a photo at Hannah’s folks’ house and it’s just one that I just really like. It is, yeah, some beautiful moments there.

08:29
And so, as you said, you and Hannah are cousins, so you’ve always sort of got a family connection, but I’m assuming of all your cousins’ kids that this is a special one. This one. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that was important to me as part of having Amara for Hannah is, we’ve grown up like, I’m the oldest of the cousins, then we sort of all just drop down by ages for a number of years, and there’s a bit of a gap in two others at the end, but being able to grow up with cousins was amazing, and knowing that Hannah couldn’t, I guess, grow her own.

08:57
little human. I was able to do that in a fashion that Amara’s got a whole pile of cousins like within a similar age range to her. So I think that you know that was one of my most important things. That’s cool well that’s that probably brings me to my next question then. So and we said so Hannah was born without a uterus and when she found that out I guess some word got around to the family and then at some point you offered. How did that all roll? I think like some people have these amazing like you know these big dating stories and then they offer like and they make cool cakes and like

09:24
balloons and stuff. It was a bit more just ad hoc for us. So when Hannah was first diagnosed, I remember saying to my auntie that I’d consider being a surrogate down the track whenever Hannah was ready and that was still quite, I reckon I’d had one of my three kids by that point so I wasn’t finished with my family anyway and Hannah was, you know, she was only 21. My memory says me correctly. She can tell me later if I’m wrong but she’s about 21. So it was still quite early in the piece and she’d only recently found out that, I guess that was what her…

09:53
journey was going to look like in terms of having a baby. And then shortly after I spoke to my mum, I let her know. And yeah, that just sort of got parked for a number of years. And then I think anything else has really said about it until, must have been like, I don’t know, 2018 some point. And then Hannah, we caught up at a family thing. She’d sent me a message and was just like, hey, can we catch up? And I just from that moment, I was like, I reckon I know what’s coming here. So anyway, we had had a bit of a chat about it. And then I just went away and gave it a bit of thought and had a chat to my husband, obviously, about.

10:22
that might look like and we were good to go so I just didn’t know that I was good to do that. So Hannah was amazing at researching the ins and outs of everything so she kind of knew the next steps that we had to take and was very much able to lead the process along from there which was awesome. Yeah with all the research and the steps there. So it sounds like it was an idea that had simmered away so in your mind so in some ways if you had wanted to change your mind you would have had time over the your next two pregnancies and births.

10:50
if you wanted to change your mind. So it’s sometimes nice to have longevity there to make you go, no, this is not something I’m doing on a whim. Well, you did what you wanted to do, hey? We’re gonna answer one question first and then I’ve got a few more questions for you, Lee. I’ll ask the second part of this question here. Any advice to IPs who are struggling to get accepted into social media groups? I think we’ll answer that in terms of any advice for IPs that I guess that you’ve met within the community about what advice that they can have in terms of how to engage with the community.

11:19
What tips have you got? I know you come at it from a different way, don’t you? Cause you already had a team, but what over the years, what have you noticed? I think like being active and present without coming in too strong, I guess, being open to learning, open to listening to other people’s experiences. I guess if there’s in-person.

11:39
catch-ups, you know, going along to those kind of things and just getting to know people like so much of it. It’s a relationship ultimately, like you need to feel that you’re going to gel properly like both ways. So the more I think that you can kind of be out there, whether that’s online or in person at actual meetups, I think the more opportunities people have got to sort of feel that connection that they might have with you, that you’re the right people for them. Yep, I’d agree with that.

12:06
And it’s always good advice, like if you’re starting a new workplace, you’ve got to go out there, you’ve got to be seen, you’ve got to ask questions. It’s a bit scary, but you do it. And then sometimes there are subgroups that form within there. For example, there’s sub-surrogate groups that form.

12:20
Lee and I are both Adelaide surrogates and so then we have catch-ups from time to time and it’s always scary going to those first ones where you’re like I’ve not met anybody in person now I now can’t even remember the first time Lee and I met because that’s so far in the past now. I can but that’s only because I was really nervous going. Oh there you go right was it one of the North Adelaide ones? Yeah yeah it was North Adelaide I think I was already pregnant. Yes and because

12:42
I remember probably meeting you because you’re quite tall and I remember us talking about the fact that, you know, the doctors were always a bit like, are you sure you’re pregnant? Because you didn’t show. And it was always just having to challenge medical people on these things. Well, there’s something to talk about then, Lee, in terms of were there any hard times in surrogacy? Were there challenges in the pregnancy or post-birth that are worth sharing with people tonight? I guess when the transfer didn’t take, that was hard, the first one, having to tell.

13:09
Hannah that that one hadn’t taken, that was hard. Particularly because you’re somebody who had your own children. And so then you’re like, wow, now I’m faced with an early miscarriage here, essentially. Yeah, yeah. That was hard. At about 20 weeks, I had a huge bleed. So it was Christmas day, 2000.

13:26
18 it must have been, and I’d literally just told the in-laws that this is what we’re doing and trying to like get Christmas lunch and then I just started gushing blood everywhere so that was pretty bad. Eerie and timing and then yeah, ringing Hannah and having to be like I need to go to the hospital like I’m bleeding like so that was horrific and the hospital weren’t very responsive initially because I must have been just under 20 weeks because…

13:52
to a lot of convincing and threatening, and it was putting the word on very strongly with her midwife knowledge that we were gonna go to a different public hospital if they weren’t gonna take it seriously. And eventually they paid some attention to us and we managed to get some proper checks. And so it was just, and in the end, was it just a bleed or something that happened? Yeah, it was subchorionic hematoma.

14:16
I think so. The placenta had ripped away from the uterus wall quite significantly, which was what had caused all the bleeding. And then it just meant that I guess the rest of the pregnancy had to be quite very cautious that it didn’t flare up again or get irritated. And it all, you know, it healed eventually. There was no signs of it on the ultrasound by the end, which was awesome, but it was definitely super scary just knowing how.

14:40
how close it was to things all going very pear-shaped. It’s intense for everyone in the team because it’s in your body, but it’s Hannah’s body and it’s all invested and what happened? Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the other big things was with my three girls, I’d gone through the midwifery group practice at my local hospital and I’d been supported by the same midwife for those three times and I really wanted that to be the case when I had Amara and hospital policies and procedures made it really quite.

15:10
complex and they wouldn’t let me go with that midwife even if she saw me privately. And so I found that really devastating but because that particular midwife was just a super lovely person, she was still happy to be a contact for me through the whole thing. So if I was feeling pressured in any way or not trusting my body because of what people like doctors and stuff were saying, she was just always on the end of the phone and happy to sort of reassure me.

15:34
and just give me some words of advice. And even on the day that I delivered, she came into the room for a bit and spent some time. So that was, yeah, it was really lovely, but yeah, just being told that things couldn’t go how we’d kind of hoped that they would go was upsetting as well. It is, that’s hard. So that was clearly part of your vision of how you thought your journey would go, having that midwife. And me too, because we went through the midwifery group practice too, and I’d imagine having my Irish Bernadette with me again. And then due to changes, things happen.

16:03
I found that hard to manage that change. You’re right that you have to shift your vision of how you think this is gonna work out too. Yeah, definitely. And then did you have any visions for post birth? So for those surrogates listening, for example, you do get a maternity leave if you’re-

16:19
is entitled to it and you get the government paid parental leave and so did the IPs. And so we do encourage surrogates to take time off, take all the leave that you can and I know Lee you took yours too and even reassessed during the leave too. Could you tell us a little bit about your post-birth journey? Yep, I guess I’d hoped that I would just have some lovely…

16:38
couple of months at home and then just go back to work. I ended up staying home a bit longer than I’d anticipated. So with my three girls, I got post-natal depression and it got worse each time. And then when I had Amara, that, you know, it came back strong again that time as well. So I really didn’t have an amazing time off. I wasn’t in a very good place at all. Hannah was amazingly supportive and so was my.

17:02
husband and like family everyone was amazing but it just definitely wasn’t a nice chill time that I thought I might get because I’d have some leave and I wouldn’t have a baby to look after. So then I just negotiated with work and went back and it was probably about six months post-birth before I was back back full-time but I think the thing that kind of always sort of just worried me the most with the postnatal depression and it being after having a surrogate pregnancy was

17:28
I was just so worried about other people judging me, being like, oh, it’s because she had a surrogate pregnancy, that’s why she’s depressed. But I, and so I often made a point of telling people that that wasn’t the case. This is just me after having a baby. This is just how my body and mind react. It’s got nothing to do with any regret at all or wanting to change anything. It’s actually just how it plays out for me. And it’s not like, oh, she wants to keep the baby.

17:52
None of that surrogates don’t go through that. I’m just going to add my story in here about how one of those catch-ups that we had where you were a few months post-birth. I remember sitting next to you, I’ve told you this story so many times, but because it was so powerful for me, you know, language warning here and I turned to you and like, and how are you really, Lee? You know, I think you basically like looked at me and went, you know, that’s my memory on it. And it’s like, yeah, that’s pretty much what it was. I’m so thankful that you were so honest, because it can be so hard in society to just say, I’m struggling.

18:18
alone, then it added surrogacy post-birth, that this was a catch-up with about six or eight surrogates. So it was the place to say it. For someone like myself who hadn’t yet been pregnant to see another amazing woman experience surrogate that I had so much respect for, go, wow, she struggled. She didn’t choose this.

18:33
Postnatal depression and anxiety don’t separate who’s going to get it and who doesn’t. And so it’s just the way our bodies navigate the hormones, isn’t it? It’s not our fault. It’s just some people will be fine in society and some will struggle. So have you got any advice then for any women, I guess, who have experience with their own kids that they may be more prone? Is there anything that they should do to prepare as a team or a surrogate? Just having the conversations when you’re trying to work out the ins and outs of everything if you do need.

19:00
counseling post-birth, what’s that gonna look like? Is how long is the now parent was IP? How long are they willing to cover some costs around counseling for? Is it an indefinite period of time or is there a time on it? I guess also just considering what supports you’ve got available to you. So I have my husband and my family, but if I had been a single mom, it might have looked different and I might have needed to make sure that there was other things. Other people.

19:28
stepped in and helped a little bit. As hard as it is to ask for help too. Yeah, yeah and we did do a bit of a plan as well prior with us or a perinatal psychiatrist. So when we went through our initial surrogacy counselling and everything went to the the board for approval for surrogacy, one of the things that they wanted was me to see a perinatal psychiatrist just to kind of make a bit of a plan and just sort of have another.

19:52
set of, I guess, eyes and ears over the situation before they signed off on it. So I’d gone and done that and had sessions with her beforehand. And, you know, obviously it all.

20:03
It was all signed off and we had a plan in place. So it wasn’t like it was a reason for them not to allow me to be a surrogate. And then I was able to reconnect with her, the same psychiatrist afterwards, which was super helpful. Yeah, that’s good. I’ll add in my story, so I had continued counselling quite frequently in those first few months post-birth and then up to a year post-birth, which the dad’s covered and I needed antidepressants to help me out. Well, I’m glad somebody’s asked this question then, anonymously, are we at risk?

20:29
A higher risk of postnatal depression as a surrogate, do we wonder? And what do you think is important from your midwife as a surrogate postnatally? What do you reckon, Lee? Do you reckon we’re more of a higher risk? I honestly don’t necessarily think so. Like I don’t think any more or less than any of the rest of the population, really. I think I’d agree with that. I wonder if you’ve had it before, are you prone to get it again?

20:51
maybe. Katrina Hale, the psychologist, talks about head heart hormones and this idea that your head and your heart know where baby is, loved and cared for, we did what we wanted to do. But the hormones, your body, it doesn’t have that baby with it. There’s a lostness. So I felt in my body a confusion added on to our body’s struggle to regulate the post-birth hormones. So sometimes when you see the baby and have the cuddle, or sometimes anyone’s baby and have a cuddle, I found this sense of peace that would come over me. It’s interesting though, because I did have one friend

21:19
Sam Everingham, who’s quite connected with the overseas commercial surrogacy agencies, once he read my story about postnatal depression, he said, you wouldn’t have been signed off, Anna, if you were an American surrogate because of your history of postnatal depression. So that’s just one little anecdotal story. So Lee, I wonder if there were, you know, bigger agencies here in Australia, if people like you and me would have been signed off or not. But I like to think that if as what you’re saying, if we have a plan and we’ve got surrogate support, some mentor support, you’ve got an agreement that you can have some counseling, that’s probably the best way to go

21:49
So Anonymous, I hope that’s helped to answer that. Are we at higher risk? We don’t know, nobody knows. Are there pockets of society that are more at higher risk for postnatal depression generally anyway? I think it’s something to be aware of the surrogates in terms of not having the baby. I wonder if it’s as though your body’s grieving the baby because it’s not there and your body’s searching for where it is. Even though your head and your heart, two thirds of you are happy.

22:11
and you know where baby is, you wanted that baby. And so it was all fine there. So it is a complex juggle for us all. So I’m glad we’re having this conversation tonight to talk about all of that. For me, it was having a group of women that were surrogates that I could chat to and hear about their experiences and realize no two are ever the same, but talking to people before you’re pregnant and giving birth yourself helps you go, oh, okay, that happened. We could be aware of that. And then you can take those conversations and have them with your team and go, oh, this happened to Lee’s team. What would we do

22:41
scenario. For me, although, you know, I articulate woman and said, yes, if I’m struggling post-birth, I will ask for help. It didn’t happen. And maybe I should do a whole webinar on my own postnatal depression journey. I have a blog post that I’ve written about it. If anyone wants to look it up, it’s very long to read. My blog is called Surrogacy Safari. We called it a Safari instead of a journey. And then there’s some posts on there about that. You know, in life, a lot of people struggle to ask for help. You’ll each think maybe like when you’ve been in COVID lockdown, and it’s really

23:09
to go and get things for you. But I guess in surrogacy, so it’s the same. And so as a surrogate, you’re a woman that can run your household, usually with your kids, run your budget. You’re an independent woman. It’s really hard to then ask other people for help when you’re like, I can usually do this.

23:24
financially and emotionally. Yeah, so sometimes post-birth it is about asking for help. Did you feel that you noticed yourself that you were struggling? Or was it perhaps the midwives around you or your family that went, I think you’re struggling or it’s not so easy? I knew I was, I told everyone I was fine. Even though I knew I wasn’t. And we kind of played that dance for probably nine weeks post-birth.

23:47
I was in a pretty bad place by the time that I decided to actually say that I needed to get some help. But it definitely didn’t come easy and if anyone asked me if I was doing okay or not, I would be… I’d sort of… I might say I’m a bit not okay but I didn’t go into it maybe to the extent that I should have. Yeah. Because there it’s… I found you’re not not okay all the time. There are still moments of the day you get on with it, you get things done, but there’s this underlying current that’s there.

24:16
and it’s very hard to call a spade a spade, isn’t it? Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, it’s tricky. Is there anything else that you’d like to add in about that part of the journey or any other you do differently at that part? I don’t think so. Like I think regardless, it’s always a hard thing to say, like that you’re not doing well, even though I guess mental health and stigma is like, it’s a lot better than it used to be. It’s still not, you know, you still feel pretty vulnerable to be able to say, you know, I’m a real.

24:44
doing very well at all. And I guess I didn’t, I still get emotional when I talk about some of this stuff. I didn’t want to take away from Hannah’s time, like her new mum and baby stuff by worrying them about me. So I think that that also added to me not wanting to say anything because that was their amazing magical new time. And I wanted it to be that for them. Oh, I totally agree.

25:09
because they’re joyful. This is a very long awaited baby, isn’t it? And they’re happy. And then I felt the same with my guys. I then don’t want my messages back and forth to them being, but I’m actually not okay, because you don’t want to bring the tone down, do you? About.

25:22
You know, they’re sharing photos and the things that are the little milestones that are happening and you’re happy for them in part of you. But you’re this part of you that’s just not doing well. I absolutely agree with you. That’s a really hard thing. Although we can say it beforehand. Yeah, yeah, we’ll ask. But when we’re seeing the love bubble of the new parents and it’s tricky because it’s not like they don’t care about us, is it? No, they wouldn’t want to see us struggle. But it’s it’s hard to bring it up when they’ve got a newborn to navigate to. And, you know, they’re sleep deprived and.

25:50
And in some ways you want their support, but we know the dynamic has shifted from the team that it was. And so they’re busy now with the newborn too. I hope they should be. That’s right, because we did what we all wanted to do, didn’t we? Yeah, well I can see that it’s still, even a couple of years on, is really close to your heart there. That it hits a nerve every time talking about it. Is there a sadness that you feel for yourself looking back at Lee at that time? Is that what that’s attached to? Nah, just get emotional. It’s just me.

26:20
It was a pretty tough time, nine weeks it was for me too. It was when I stopped expressing milk, the microphones crashed. Well, I think it’s really important that we talk about these things. So thank you, Lee, for sharing your journey on that. Is there any sort of parting wisdom for those then that are starting out or anything you do differently or guidance for those? I don’t think there’s anything I would necessarily do differently. I think the main thing is just communicate about everything. Yes.

26:47
have the hard conversations, have the fun conversations, be honest about what you both want. I don’t know, it just requires work because relationships do and that’s okay, and that’s normal. Spot on. I think that’s a great way to summarize that because it’s a relationship, it’s a friendship, and that requires work. And it can be hard to ask for the things that you need, but you need to lean into that and ask in whatever way you all communicate, be that in person, texts, phone calls.

27:14
You’ve got to find a way to keep talking about it, don’t you? Well, well done to your whole team, for navigating through the surrogacy and getting out the other end and being a couple of years on now and celebrating life there and for sharing this story. So that those that have been here tonight, I’m so pleased that you’re here and you got to have Lee because I know that the wisdom that she can offer here tonight. So thank you, Lee. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you. Thank you for joining me. If you’d like to see the photos shared in this webinar presentation,

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head over to our YouTube channel to watch the webinar. You can head to surrogacyaustralia.org for more information about surrogacy. Also check out our Zoom monthly catch-up sessions, which are a great way to connect with others in the surrogacy community. Attending a Zoom is scary the first time, but there’s only ever one first time. We have all been beginners at some stage. As we say, it takes a village to raise a child, and in the case of surrogacy, it takes a village to make a child. So welcome to the village.