Episode 5 – Sarah W – straight mum

00:14
Welcome back, or 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.

00:40
You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org. This episode, recorded in June 2022, features Sarah. Sarah and Ben from Adelaide became parents to baby girl Evie in February 2021, when their surrogate and now lifelong friend Danni birthed as a traditional surrogate after a long journey first as their gestational surrogate. Sarah is also a SASS parent mentor and has helped many IPs at the beginning of their journey.

01:09
Sarah has many great insights from having been involved with the surrogacy community for many years. She discusses managing fears and excitement as an intended mother, enjoying the process, engaging with the community, sorrow dating, the importance of getting to know your surrogate and her family, Evie’s first birthday, and how she worked through moving from her own eggs to Danni’s eggs. The questions asked in the webinar were about the average cost of a surrogacy journey, average timeframes, and medical approval for surrogates.

01:38
You can find photos of their birth on YouTube by searching for Team Just Right’s surrogacy birth. That’s right spelled W-R-I-G-H-T. I hope you enjoy the episode. So we’re gonna be joined by Sarah and start to hear about her journey. Obviously there’s a lot that goes on in a journey to get to the point of being pregnant. So Sarah, I’m gonna get you to tell us who’s in this photo and at what point in time this was taken. So we have Troy.

02:07
on the left, which is our surrogate Dani’s partner. And then we have Dani who is pregnant at about 24 to 26 weeks here. And then we’ve got myself and my husband Ben on the right. So yeah, this was our bump photo shoot that we got. Beautiful. I think I’ve got a couple more photos here from that. So some black and white ones there. Some beautiful powerful images there.

02:36
Hands on tummy. They are. And actually I was quite nervous to touch Danni’s belly and feel the baby for some reason. But in these photos, it’s probably one of the first times that I felt really comfortable and it actually like sunk in that, oh my gosh, we’re having a baby. So yeah, I think these photos are powerful because it reminds me.

03:02
of I guess, yeah, how nervous but excited I was at that time as well. Yeah, that’s interesting because I know you and I know these photos but if people didn’t know you and they look at that photo they wouldn’t know that story. Is it, was it because it’s so long to get here, was it a little bit of that don’t want to get my hopes up, is this really happening? Yeah, that was definitely it because it took so long to get there.

03:28
You know, we were looking into surrogacy three years before we met Danni. And then it took us four years, um, to, you know, get to this point and have a baby. Um, and there were bumps along the way, um, with, you know, transfers that didn’t work out. And so I think as IPs, there’s always a lot of nerves and I always had, um, a bit of a wall up. To sort of protect my, uh, feelings and stuff at certain points. And, um, so yeah, not allowing myself to.

03:58
get too excited was one of them. Um, whereas at this point in the pregnancy, I felt like, yeah, you know, when you can really see that bump and you know that there’s a baby there and you can finally feel it, um, like that’s a huge moment, I guess, for an IP to be like, wow, this is real. This is happening and now I can feel it. And, um, yeah, so that wall kind of started to come down a little bit and I could enjoy the process a little bit more, but

04:26
Yeah, I was sort of guarded for a while with that. And I think because there’s so many appointments to get through too that are just leading up to that, that it doesn’t quite seem real at the time. And then it’s real, hey? I know. There’s little baby Evie who is not such a baby anymore. She’s 16 months now, but yeah, it is amazing to think that we went through this whole process with

04:55
Um, Danni and Troy, and we just, you know, we, all of us really did have such an amazing experience and now we have this beautiful baby girl at the end of it. And yeah, our friendship and everything will cherish forever. Yep. And so obviously we can get to questions like that. So you, oh no, we just got these photos here. So then you had some newborn photos taken here. We had newborns. So I think, oh, Evie, gosh, she was so eight weeks old or something at this point.

05:24
and she was not having a good day. The photographer was there. I think she was there for quite a while because it was trying to get happy steps in between the tears. She was not happy far of it. Lots of things you’ll remember when you look at these photos, but we wouldn’t know that would we? Yeah, no, they turned the photos turned out beautiful. So yeah, no, it’s sweet very important to get I think these sort of images like the bump.

05:52
photos and then yeah like these photos at a few you know days or weeks old and then um you know we’ve got photos later on as well and they’re all just such beautiful memories to look back on and yeah remember how far you’ve come and you know remember all the emotion you know that you went through to get to that point. Absolutely and I know um I’ve shared on social media too the your birth video sort of um as photos as a collage sort of thing that I think

06:22
together. So that’s, I haven’t got any of those in this presentation tonight, but obviously we can see the final product here. And then Evie’s first birthday. So that’s Danni holding Evie there on the right and Troy in the background. Her first birthday. So that was at a park. During COVID we were restricted on numbers here so we could only have 20.

06:48
So it was just our immediate family, Danni, Troy and her kids, and then her parents as well. So it was really nice actually to have her parents there because they were an amazing support for Danni and we’ve got a really good friendship with them as well. Yeah, so it was really nice to just spend her first birthday with those immediate sort of family people. Yeah, and I think for people listening tonight who might be very brand new,

07:18
This is just normal for you and I, but for hearing this going, wow, okay, you could only have 20 people, but you had the surrogate and her family there in that 20. Like that’s pretty special. Wow, you must have developed quite a deep friendship and you have, they’ve become family. Yeah, we have an amazing, I just, I do feel like we’re family. Like I would talk about…

07:39
you know, my friends or whatever, but there’s friends and then there’s Danni and Danni and Troy, they are family. Like they surpassed the friends for me. They’re like, yeah, they’re family. They’re invited to all the family events. Yeah. What you guys have been through together. And I think we might just pause on that point. We’ll come back and talk about the fact that this ended up being a traditional surrogacy. So it ended up being Danni’s egg and husband Ben’s sperm there. So she’s

08:08
Danni’s quite a tall girl, as people can see. So Miss Evie might surpass you by one of her birthdays. Oh yeah, Danni loves to laugh when I put photos up and she’s like, she looks like a giant baby in your arms. She’s like half my height already. But then when you have her on Danni’s hip there, she’s in proportion, isn’t she? Tiny. Tiny, so.

08:31
Last photo we’ve got here, that was this year sometime? Yeah, that was recently. We went to Cannes. So this was our first family holiday, Evie’s first time in a plane. She did amazingly, like, slept the whole way and she just had such a ball on the trip. She just loved being in Queensland. So yeah, they were really nice memories there. Good. And that’s it. That’s what it’s about, making family memories and

08:58
doing things together, isn’t it? So. Exactly. So Sarah, just sort of take us back to the beginning though, because there might be, you know, some women listening who might have had a similar journey to you, what brought you to surrogacy in the first place? And then how long till you found Danni? And how did you find Danni? Yep. So I needed a surrogate because I had cervical cancer when I was 22. Being so young, we sort of didn’t look into it personally until my husband,

09:27
we were married. And so once we were married, we thought, okay, like, let’s look into this. At the time, surrogacy was illegal in Australia. And so we did look at surrogacy overseas in Thailand, we had some embryos created, and we tried with surrogate in Thailand, which didn’t work out. And then

09:54
surrogacy changed and it actually became illegal in Thailand, but they’re legal in Australia. So we had our embryo set back. We were speaking with surrogates through Facebook forums, Australian surrogacy community and surrogacy in South Australia.

10:18
We were just chatting to other intended parents and surrogates on the forum and attending the catch-ups. It was at the catch-ups that we sort of got to meet some surrogates. And we were chatting to one previously where things didn’t work out with her because medically she was not approved for to be a surrogate. So we were sort of back to the drawing board.

10:46
And then along came Danni and we were just chatting with her through Facebook forum and messenger and after probably like a couple of weeks, I think of messaging, we decided to go out for dinner and just get to know each other. Um, at this point, it was just Danni and myself who went out for dinner. Um, and literally from that first dinner, like we just hit it off and I, you just get that feeling that you.

11:16
already know someone, you’ve been friends for a long time and we just hit it off so well from the get-go. I think I just came home and I said, Ben, I think we found the one like we just, yeah, and the way that she spoke about Troy, I just knew that Ben and Troy were going to hit it off, which they did from the get-go, so that was really nice. I think we met in April and then we were sort of sorrow dating for a couple of months.

11:45
of 2017? Yes. Yeah. So, Danni has three kids and she obviously needed to, you know, go through the whole surrogacy with her children and wanted, you know, needed their support, wanted them to be on board. And so our first meetup with her children was at the show and she said, if we can take Ben and Sarah to the show,

12:14
and they can get on with our kids and have a good time and watch us interact with them, then they wanted to offer to be our surrogate. And so it was really sweet. We all just had the best day at the show and she had kind of fueled the kids on that. Yeah, if you…

12:32
If you get on with Ben and Sarah at the end of it, you know, we’ll pull them aside and offer to be their surrogate. And yeah, so the kids were involved with that and it was beautiful. Ben and I weren’t expecting it that day, but yeah, it was really nice. So Danni and Troy, along with the kids, offered to be part of our journey and for Danni to be our surrogate. That was, was it April, May, June, July, or September? So five months.

13:01
Then we went through three transfers, which were unsuccessful. So sorry, we did our legal and counseling and all that first, which takes here probably six months to maybe get through all your legal and counseling. And after that, we went through a fertility clinic to do our embryo transfers.

13:25
three that were genetically connected to you? That were genetically connected to me. They were the only three that I could create before going through surgery and things for chemo, sorry, for cancer. So they were my three embryos that unfortunately didn’t take. And after that, Danni offered traditional surrogacy, which was using her egg and my husband’s sperm.

13:53
Obviously as an intended parent and mother, it took me a little bit to get my head around that and I had to kind of go through the grieving process of not being genetically connected to my child after losing those embryos. It was a bit of a process. So again, it probably took me a few months to get back to Dani on that and just say, yes, okay, I feel like I’m ready now.

14:20
and take her up on her offer. He was kind enough to kind of, you know, just go with me on that journey, be a support person at that time. And I think for any of the Intended Mums listening to, you know, that would be the question, how did you feel about that? And it was something you could get to a place of peace with, some couldn’t perhaps. Did you seek any professional counseling during that time, or you just had enough knowledge within the community and support to work through it?

14:48
I just kind of worked through it on my own, probably like three months. So Dani offered in November and it was the January, they came over to our house for just a pool party and swim with the family. And it was that day, sort of, yeah, in January. So a couple of months later that I, you know, I said to her that, yes, you know, if she was still willing to, you know, go with that and offer traditional surrogacy that we would, you know, want to continue.

15:17
you know, with the team and the friendship that we had built. Um, so yeah, it did take me a couple of months to really kind of work my way through the emotional process. So, and then, you know, look at moving forward again, but she was a really good support and just, you know, extremely patient during that time. Um, and yeah, so when we, it was January, 2020, um, we decided that yes, we would go.

15:45
on with this journey and it was March of 2020 so bang on COVID. We had to go through our legal and counselling again because the agreement had changed from altruistic surrogacy to traditional. So we redid our legal and counselling which took a couple of months and then we did our first home transfer.

16:13
in the May and bingo bango first transfer worked. I was totally surprised. I did, yeah. Again, talking about protecting your feelings. Like I wasn’t, you know, expecting it to work first go and was quite cautious. I know the day that we did the transfer and Danni left, I was already kind of planning like, okay, yeah, we’ll see you this time next month. And

16:43
she turned around and said, there might not be a next month. Like, you know, this could work. Like, you know, I could be coming back in a month and saying, hey, we’re pregnant. So, and it shocked me to hear that, you know, there was a potential that it could have worked. And so I just, yeah, it hadn’t crossed my mind. I was already, you know, forward thinking and it kind of stopped me in my tracks a little bit to think that, okay, well, maybe this could work. And yeah.

17:13
It was today. How did she tell you? Yeah. Today, two years ago that, so they went on a little family holiday to the river for I think a week or a couple of days and on their way back. So we plan to do a pregnancy test on day 10. And so I was just kind of, you know, waiting for a phone call.

17:40
on the way back from their holiday to say, yeah, we’ve done a test on day 10 that we agreed. And, you know, with the results via a phone call. But she just rocked up at our front door. Oh, hey, I wasn’t expecting you. And she came in with Troy and the kids and we’re just standing around the breakfast bar, just having some small chat.

18:07
I sort of didn’t really know what was going on. I wish he really caught me off guard. And then the kids actually gave Ben and I, so they had hand drawn these little train tickets because I had mentioned to Danni previously that, a lot of my friends were having babies and I just wanted to like join the baby train and have a baby.

18:37
And so they had drawn these little get train tickets and said, um, admit like one path to the baby train. Um, and then underneath it was like one mommy and then on Ben’s, it was like admit one daddy. Um, but that was really cute. Um, and they had the date of, you know, the transfer and everything on there. Um, so the kids gave that to us and little did we know Danni was in the background recording as the kids were.

19:04
giving it to us. So that was a really special moment for all of us. And it was really sweet to have her kids involved as well in, you know, sharing that news and seeing our reaction and being a part of that. And also to have captured that moment on video. It’s so nice to look back on and just see that raw emotion, which I should probably go back and watch it tonight.

19:30
And it’s that breakfast bar behind you too, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was that breakfast bar behind me that we’re all standing around. Because I’ve seen it, as you know, because Danni, the main Facebook group for those listening, there’s the Surrogate Only group. And so surrogates often know, you know, we’re sharing with each other what’s going on. And I remember seeing this video, because I know you in person and I know Danni’s kids watching that video. Oh, and then the

19:59
It’s just such a joy. That was the biggest hug I just, I held on tight to Clarity and while it was, I know in my head I’m just thinking, is this real? Is this real? And I was like, Clarity wouldn’t lie to me. So I’m like, this is real. I can believe it. And I think that’s really powerful for people listening, going, hearing how involved, it’s not just about the surrogate. It’s about her partner, her kids. They all come on this ride. And so really thinking about building

20:28
friendship with all of them. You’ve got to be prepared to do that, don’t you? Yeah, 100%. Danni’s kids were amazing, just, you know, during and getting to know us and being a part of the initial journey. But once Danni was pregnant as well, you know, the surrogate’s family.

20:45
there for the surrogate when you can’t be. So you know when she was emotional and whatever, they would be there you know just to give her a hug or you know to help out with dinner or sweep the floors. Like her kids were amazing at picking up the slack when she couldn’t you know do something cool was too tired and yeah they were just always there for her and I really do give credit to.

21:08
She’s got three beautiful children and Troy, who’s just the backbone of everything as well. So yeah, it’s really nice that she had that support. And also from family, I feel like it’s really important for your surrogate’s family to be on board and supportive. So like her mother as well. Yeah, so that was really good, you know, that she’s got other people besides her family, you know, or intended parents to.

21:36
to speak to about things and have a shoulder if she needs it. Yeah, it’s definitely a whole village involved there. So, well, as we keep finding more out about your story, let’s weave in some questions. So, I’ve got one question here first from Carly. So, Sarah, you can probably answer this one, I’m sure. Can you be in different states? So, can the IP and the surrogate be in different states in Australia? Yes, absolutely. You can be in different states.

22:05
And as Anna mentioned, it’ll just go the laws what is in the IP state. Yep, so even if a surrogate births in her own state, that’s okay, the birth is registered there in that state, but that’s fine because the parentage order legal work after birth will get done back in the IP state. So yes, Carly, plenty of teams do that. Perhaps some teams who already know each other, like if you have a sister or a cousin or a friend interstate.

22:32
and they’re the one that’s offered to be a surrogate. Well, finding a surrogate is probably the hardest part and one of the hardest parts in this journey. So yeah, really do explore options if that happens. Trying to think if there’s any other, there’s lots of little specifics, for example, unless you’re in Tasmania as the IP, then you have to have a Tasmanian surrogate. So Carly, I hope you’re not in Tasmania then in that sense. There’s lots of little ins and outs of each state. Maybe in our lifetime we’ll see uniform laws there, but who knows?

23:01
because I mean, you’re a mentor. So you have these chats with people very, you know, regularly either online or in person sometimes. What’s some sort of, you know, beginner guidance that you regularly would say to people? A lot of people are probably quite nervous, yeah, about finding a surrogate, inquisitive about costs involved and just see how long it takes to go through the process.

23:29
Personally, I found finding a surrogate is probably the hardest part, but once you have found someone and if it is a family member, you know, I think that’s awesome having somebody that you already know and you’ve already got that kind of friendship there and family member that you can build on your surrogacy journey. In terms of going through the counseling legal, it doesn’t take that long. It’s something that it’s worth, you know, spending extra time getting

23:59
to know your surrogate and her family and building that relationship before you go down your surrogacy and before you go down your legal and counselling because it’s, and as well, well, surrogacy, the legal and counselling side of it, it’s important to, I’d probably suggest doing counselling first, in my opinion, counselling first before legal because the counselling report for us

24:28
formed a part of your legal agreement. Yeah. So for that reason, I would do the counselling first. And also some, some surrogates have medical checks prior to offering, um, being a surrogate. If they haven’t, um, I think suggesting that your surrogate, um, has a medical check, that’s probably something that we hadn’t done with our previous surrogate.

24:57
And so we’d already sort of, you know, spent the time forming that friendship and actually doing some of our counseling. And then she was ruled out medically. So I think, yeah, just trying to do things in the right order of like maybe, um, yeah, getting your medical check, especially for your surrogate first, um, doing your counseling and then doing your legal is probably the order in which I would suggest going through the process.

25:26
Yeah, that’s good advice. And I’m just going to add some bits onto that. So for IPs listening, I would encourage you to come along to a surrogate webinar because I take, like, because it’s imagining surrogates are listening, but in case you get a woman in your life, step forward in the future and offer to be a surrogate or going, I might be able to do this, but I’m not sure. She’s going to have lots of questions about if she’s eligible and medical questions. And so by coming along and hearing about surrogate eligibility will empower you with information.

25:55
about, yeah, basically if she’s fit and healthy enough to have another pregnancy or not. I guess a bit of a plug for SASS there, all of our surrogates and IPs go through medical checks and we cover the costs of that for surrogates. So the surrogates has an extended chat with her GP with a form from our website and they talk about a lot of those previous pregnancies and births and that’s the opportunity to maybe flag if there’s something there. So I guess the surrogates that come through SASS are…

26:22
as checked as they could be, other things can obviously crop up. And then even if you do meet your own surrogate, I would encourage you to all come through SASS because it can be a little bit tricky and awkward then to ask your friend or family member, can you go have a medical check? Whereas if you sort of say, oh, will SASS suggest that you do this step, then you can sort of blame it on us. So that’s some, yeah, just going off some suggestions that Sarah has put in there. And there’s also discussion questions that we’ve got in our portal for all those things that you

26:52
so that you’re prepared for counseling here. I might do the next two questions, Sarah, because I probably got a bit of the overview of that. Swati’s asked one, and then anonymous, the two classic questions are, how much does it roughly cost and how long does it roughly take? Okay, cost-wise, it can vary hugely. On average, it’s about, let’s say about $60,000 with a range of about 35,000 up to about 90,000.

27:20
And why there’s a range is, so if you’re down the lower end, it might mean you’ve already got embryos or you only needed one egg collection. It worked on the first embryo transfer. You didn’t have interstate travel. You didn’t really have loss of wages for your surrogate or many expenses along the way. Our team had two egg collection cycles and a few transfers. That’s why we’re closer to the 60,000. And then…

27:43
At the top, it would have been interstate teams. So the IPs would have had quite a bit of interstate travel. Maybe there was some loss of wages to cover there and a couple of embryo transfers. Average duration, again, Swati, there’s no national database for every team. So I’ve gathered some data from surrogates over a four-year period. Average duration from perhaps the time a surrogate says, yes, I think I could be your surrogate. And then you take some time to either discuss that with your friend or get to know each other, do the paperwork.

28:13
You could get it done in two years. Probably an average is probably more like two and a half years. That’s what it was for us. Sarah, it’s probably a little bit longer than for your team from first chat with Danni to birth, nearly four years. Yeah, so we know each other four years now. So yeah, three, four years to kind of get there. Yeah. The tricky thing is there’s no guarantees, are there? You could go through all of this and still not have a live baby.

28:40
at the end. So it’s hard to find an average. Melissa does ask Sarah, I wonder if you could expand on any that come off the top of your head there. What sort of medical issues rule out surrogates? So the medical issue with our previous surrogate is she had, I’m just trying to get this right, I think she had seven children of her own and she offered to be a surrogate.

29:10
And just medically, because the more children you have, it puts you in a higher risk category of complications. And so medically, her gynecologist didn’t recommend surrogacy for her. She then went on to have more of her own children, which, you know, there’s nothing ruling out her having more of her own. I think she kind of did it to prove the gyno wrong in the end.

29:38
But yeah, so just medically, yeah, in her instance, yeah, because it put her in a high risk category, but I think that would be if there was anything that put the surrogate in a high risk category. So if they were potentially, you know, at risk of, you know, diabetes or, you know, if there was any blood clots, if there was anything that would put the surrogate in a high risk category, yeah, I think there might be.

30:07
further consideration around approving that? There’s not too many in my time that I know of that have been ruled out. And that’s why it’s better to get it ruled out earlier on than later. That’s why we have these checks and Sarah just suggests them at the beginning. Yeah. The rule of thumb is, Melissa, if she’s fit and healthy enough to have another pregnancy, if she wanted to keep a kid, then she’s probably fit and healthy enough to be a surrogate. Obviously, so if you’ve already had seven kids,

30:35
It’s not to say she couldn’t have another healthy pregnancy, but there’s a lot of play here in surrogacy. There’s a lot of people depending on this working well. So I suppose some doctors might be hesitant. I mean, you could doctor shop around, but I hope that sort of answers your question, Melissa there, but come back and ask another one if you need. And Carly asks, can you get a loan to help pay for surrogates? Sarah, your knowledge on this one? I don’t think. I personally wouldn’t if you can’t.

31:04
afford at the time, I’d rather spend that time getting to know your surrogate and potentially saving. But also don’t be scared about the cost because it’s not like 60 grand just comes out of your bank account like in one chunk like that doesn’t happen. You know if you take the time to get to know your surrogate over you know 12 months and then you’ve got six months of legal and counseling and you know six months of transfer there’s two years so already you’ve got two years of savings.

31:34
behind you and when you pay for things, it’s kind of, I guess, in the moment. So, you know, when your legal stuff comes up, you pay for that in the moment. And then, you know, if you can’t afford to do your counseling straight after that, you might wait a couple of months to do your counseling and pay for that when you can. So and when it comes to things, you know, then the rest of it is really during, you know, pregnancy and kind of later on, you know, during pregnancy.

32:04
Um, you might be spending money on things, you know, like, um, uh, appointments or massages, acupuncture, anything. It could be, you know, clothes, maternity things, anything directly related to surrogacy and then towards the birth nursery. Yeah. But even for Danni, you know, it could be things like, um, you know, your

32:28
your vitamins, things like that. There’s milk bags if you’re expressing milk. You know, we bought robes and everything for the hospital to pack in the bag, all your baby things. So yeah, it’s kind of, you know, I think more costs come later down the track if you’ve already been through all of your costs prior to that in terms of, you know, making embryos and the transfers. Yeah. So yes, they are staggered. So, Kali, I hope that helps a little bit.

32:55
But I mean, it’s a reality that surrogacy is kind of like a middle class or above thing to do, isn’t it? That it’s not cheap. I think I would recommend having 10,000 save to start with and knowing that you then going to be adding on to your savings. But the surrogates need to know that you’ve got a backup plan. And so that’s something the boys and I talked about really early on that because I, you know,

33:25
And Brendan said, oh, 30,000. And I think I said, and the rest, not necessarily knowing, but then they said that they were interviewing me as much so as interviewing them. But for me, it was knowing that they had a backup. So in case there was a large sum, or let’s say I was pregnant and was bedridden for 20 weeks, I got to 20 weeks of pregnancy and the doctor said, to save Anna’s life and the baby’s life, she’s on bed rest now. And they would then have to cover my wage so that my family can still pay the bills. I needed to know,

33:56
where they would get that money from if they didn’t have it all straight up. And so it was basically knowing that their parents were on board and that they would spot them, you know, each a $5,000 loan so that I wouldn’t be, my family wouldn’t be out of pocket. And then that’s up to the boys to navigate with their parents and pay back. And so, you know, you can’t get a loan for this sort of thing. There may be some people that access their super to pay for specific things like IVF, different ways, calling on equity of your house, you know.

34:23
other family and friends, you need to know sort of what backup you’ve got there. But it’s a good question, Carly, because this can be an expensive venture, can’t it? What’s something you’ve learned about yourself during this whole journey? Has it changed anything for you individually? To, I guess, let my walls down a little bit and, you know, just enjoy every moment. Sometimes that was hard to enjoy every moment. And Dani kept a really good journal and

34:53
photos and actually gave that to me for Evie’s first birthday as her present, like her journal that she kept. And I sort of didn’t want to keep anything from failed transfers and anything like that, whereas she still kind of documented it. And now looking back, Evie’s here and I’ve got my girl, it’s like it’s easier to now look back on that. And I’m actually grateful that she has kept

35:22
things from the whole journey and not just, yeah. So for me, just learning to, you know, let my walls down and to enjoy, you know, the process and the milestones for what they are. And, you know, even if it’s hard, you know, things that you’re working through together, that’s what makes your team stronger at the end of it. So, and that’s what helps you through birth. You know, those tough times that we went through in, you know, the transfers not working and things not going our way.

35:51
that’s what brings you closer. So that at birth you’re like wow if we can get through all that other stuff together then we’re a solid team going into this birth and in birth I think you just need to be solid and there’s a lot of trust there. Your surrogate is trusting in you and you’re trusting in her to birth your child. So in that room is such a special moment that

36:19
You know, you’re her support person as well as her partner. You know, she needs to have that trust in you to be her support person. And yeah, I really felt like all of our battles brought us closer together to be in that room together. That’s beautiful. And that it really culminated in that. And having had some of those setbacks as hard as they are at the time actually strengthens you as a team, doesn’t it? Yeah.

36:45
Yeah, now I can sort of appreciate the setbacks and know the strength that it gave us and that it made our team stronger. And yeah, just the appreciation that, you know, for Dani that she kept, you know, everything from our whole journey, you know, parts that are probably, you know, blocked out at the time. I think that’s a perfect way to end tonight. Just, you know, remembering that it is a journey up and down and that… Yeah.

37:12
going to make you a strong couple and an individual and a team when you find that team. Yeah. And just, you know, appreciate all the little milestones, no matter how big or small is your journey and whether it’s up or down, just appreciate all the little milestones that you go through. Because when you get to the end of it, it is really nice to look back on everything. Thank you for joining me.

37:37
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