Episode 66 – Candice – 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. You can find upcoming dates on our website at surrogacyaustralia.org

00:43
This episode, recorded in August 2024, features Candice. Candice and her partner Robert, from Adelaide, became parents to their daughter Abigail in December 2023. Abby was carried by surrogate Laura, who was previously a stranger. At four years old, Candice was diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Due to the radiation therapy and multiple cases of pneumonia, she now has only 30% lung capacity and doctors advised her that she would need a surrogate to become a mum.

01:12
You can hear from her surrogate Laura in the previous episode, number 65. I really appreciated how vulnerable Candice was in parts of this chat. She acknowledged that there were things they should have done for Laura during the pregnancy that they didn’t, referring to things like helping out with Laura’s children more or help around the house. Candice advocates for ongoing counseling and reflects that her team should have done more during the pregnancy. She also joyfully confirms that there is no issue bonding with her child.

01:39
even though she didn’t birth Abby. And she makes a very good point that parenting is not about being genetically related to your child as then other parenting formations wouldn’t work. Things like adoption, fostering, step families and the like. Candice’s advice is to be yourself, step outside of your comfort zone and build a genuine friendship with your surrogate and her family. I hope you enjoy this episode. Candice, take us back to the beginning. Why did you need a surrogate in the first place? And then how did you find one? Well, I found out.

02:08
It’s like more than a decade ago that due to all of my underlying health conditions, not just the like low lung capacity, but also heart issues and other medications and things that are just, it wasn’t safe.

02:22
I went to reprimand to actually find out even if my eggs were usable because I wasn’t convinced. And the doctor actually almost laughed us out of the room that we hadn’t actually been trying to get pregnant. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was pretty convinced we wouldn’t be seeing us again when he referred me to a high risk obstetrician. The obstetrician on the other hand had a very different opinion. If you decide to go ahead, please, please, please let me know so we can make sure we’ve got everything. Like we’re getting pregnant. So we can, you know.

02:51
monitoring from the get-go because there was a high risk like I was extremist could be having to deliver it like 23 weeks if it even made it that far yeah and so that’s why I ended up having to look at surrogacy. I mean we looked at you know other options to have our family but due to our ages and weightless and things like that

03:12
Surrogacy was their best option, really. Yeah. Is there a grief process that you went through then? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like when I, for that decade, I was pretty convinced we were never gonna be parents. Yeah. And it was rough. It got really tough at times. My partner, Robert, comes from a big family. He’s got five brothers. Yeah, wow. And…

03:35
And I found out that I wouldn’t fly from that obstetrician, that first obstetrician, just two weeks before his first brother announced their first pregnancy. And it’s been every year since there’s been at least one birth from the family. And so, and they get together a lot. They get together like once a week, at least, and go on holidays together and stuff. So there was no escaping it, that kind of thing. But I mean, I love those kids, they’re niblings. I’ve got to see them grow up.

04:04
Were you fairly open with them about your journey? Did they know the challenges that you guys were facing to become parents? I tried to sort of subtly slide it in just in case I had a bit of a breakdown at some point, but I also didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

04:21
you know, because it’s a difficult thing. Like you don’t want them to feel like they can’t talk about their challenges they’re going through as parents or share their, they can’t share their happy moments. Yeah, it’s a fine balance, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And so then ultimately when surrogacy was your path and you decided, okay, we want to do this in Australia, as I talked about in the information part about people are statistically more likely to find a surrogate from someone they know, but you ultimately found a stranger, was it part of the thing that in some ways

04:50
and family first or let them know that you needed a career? We did let them know. Like, even now, I think it’s still contemplating starting their own families. There were some that had their own challenges and stuff. And it’s just, yeah, I think it was just, you know, the timing maybe didn’t add up or whatever. Again, like it’s a very personal decision to be a deserter. It’s not something everyone can do and like just emotionally can’t do. So, yeah, you have to be able to do that.

05:20
It’s so, we’re certainly very lucky that we found Laura and her family and they’re just amazing people. So tell us a bit more about that ultimately when you realize, okay we’re gonna have to find a stranger, we have to find where are the surrogates, where’s the community and so what was that journey like? Were there any other surrogates you chatted to or how long were you in the community before you… Um we actually met Laura at our first catch-up and was their first catch-up too. I think I was there. Yes I think you were. Yes.

05:47
Robert and I are not very extroverted people. So going to this big group of people was very overwhelming. I didn’t even realize she was a surrogate at first. I just saw this woman and her partner across the room. You know, she looked about as nervous as I felt. And so I went, okay, Candice, you’re going to talk to someone. So I went across and started talking to her. And then I nearly had a panic attack when she said she was looking to be a surrogate. So I’m like…

06:16
Oh no, have I broken the someone written rule? Like, wait, you’re not supposed to be swarming surrogates and talking to them and the-

06:22
unless they want to talk to you first and I was all that all that etiquette can be so hard to navigate sometimes. Yeah very much so. Ultimately you just got to be yourself don’t you? Yeah and I think that’s why we clicked so well is that we just sort of tried to be ourselves and you know not just talk about surrogacy stuff we talked about so many things she had her daughter Charlotte there that day as well. And did that make it easier sometimes having a kid to engage with? Yeah

06:52
was preoccupied with a game on Laura’s phone because you know it’s a group of adults. The kids aren’t exactly gonna be like you know social butterflies necessarily. Yes and so what was the timeline then from that first catch-up to then I guess you know becoming

07:08
closer friends, but I guess you’re still in the community during that time learning and attending. Yeah, we saw each other at a couple more cat shops. And then I think Laura invited us over one day. She turns out that she’s only about like 10 minutes from us, which made, you know, getting by visiting regularly quite easy. And then we just sort of slowly got to know each other over a period of several months. Right, okay. So there, well, yeah, let’s take us through that stage. So then you start to get to know each other as friends is that the type of thing where you’re just learning

07:38
what they’re like as people, and then also starting to chat surrogacy stuff. Well, we didn’t really talk surrogacy at all for a long time. Like, it was more just about wanting to hang out as friends. It almost felt like, eeky, just, you know, talking about surrogacy stuff. It’s like, I don’t want you to think that we only wanted to get to know you because you might offer to be a surrogate. We actually like you as people and individuals. We want to actually get to know you, and your kids, and your partner, and you know, help that Robert and Justin.

08:08
share sci-fi in common as the amount of times they would just talk and talk and talk. It was like we would actually physically have to try and separate them sometimes like after midnight because they’d still be there talking about something. I think that’s really valuable if the partner of the surrogate and the husband or if it’s a hetero couple but I suppose at least you know both sets of the IPs get on with if there’s four people in the team that would be quite important wouldn’t it because I suppose if the surrogate’s partner wasn’t as involved it wouldn’t

08:38
jokes throughout the process that so often he was left out of certain things. I mean, you understand from a legal point of view why, but it’s also like, it’s like, go away. You’re not part of this. But it’s not. But he is. You know, he’s as much a part of it as the kids are, for instance. Mmm.

08:57
They’re important in a two. Yes, so as well as getting to know them as adults, you’re spending time getting to know the kids. So I’m assuming were there some catch ups where you did kid things together? Yeah, a lot of the stuff we did was like, just like settling during the holidays and things, did things with the kids. We actually went away on holiday together a few times. So yeah, we’ve gotten to know the kids really well. Right, so then this journey, so then you getting to know each other and then at some point Laura offers, that’s probably a good point. I’m just gonna do a little plug and say, in the previous webinar that I had,

09:26
I had a lure on.

09:28
So if people want to hear her story, you can find that in our podcast series. They’re also on YouTube. And so these episodes will become back to back. And so then at some stage, I’m assuming Laura sort of officially offered. And then it was sort of like, okay, let’s get on with the steps. Is that how it worked? Funny thing about when she offered, Robert and I weren’t like prepared for it in any way. In fact, when I was opening the photo frame, which had the little message in it, I still did, took me a long time to actually realize what it was. I actually opened it and I’m like, Oh, it’s a photo frame.

09:58
It must be a photo of them. How no-

10:00
And then I look at it and I’m like, oh, it’s a baby friend. They must be wishing us luck. And then it actually took, I think Robert actually saying that there was a message in it for me to realize what it actually was. Because I just sort of put it out of my mind so much, I think by that point, things still took a couple of months because it was Christmas holidays before we started looking at counseling. And then we had issues with the counseling, for the initial counseling we tried to do.

10:28
They’d set us back a few months and… Did you want to expand on that at all or? So the counselor very much did the wrong thing. I mean there were issues from the start where she was doing things like routinely showing up.

10:40
very late to appointments, was talking very much about herself, was more interested in pushing her NDIS services than actually talking about surrogacy related things. She accused Robert of being a liar or psychopath. Yeah, just made a lot of very off comments. She actually initially denied our team and her only reasoning was she said we didn’t know each other for long enough. Yeah. She said that

11:10
her the phone call, her phone call was, which lasted, like she wanted to get off the phone immediately. But I tried to argue with her and she just wouldn’t listen. She said that she’s, she’s got evidence to the contrary. When we asked for her evidence, she was evasive. And eventually we found out that she wasn’t even qualified to provide the service.

11:28
So it’s interesting, I’m just gonna just claim that going. We actually used her as well. She’s now not doing surrogacy counseling in Adelaide. Well, there’s different levels of recognition. There’s levels of being registered with ANZICA, which is an overarching body, I think, for the psychologist. And I think when we did our surrogacy, perhaps before some laws got updated, they didn’t have to be registered with that. She wasn’t even eligible for membership at that stage. So she didn’t even fit that qualification.

11:58
that had been updated but it was the sort of thing that she would have if she had been keeping up to date with stuff she should have known that she wasn’t qualified to provide the service and that doesn’t excuse her basically disappearing on us like she she took it in prompt to holiday after denying us refused to answer questions when we asked for an actual report of her findings we got

12:22
what amounted to what you would expect from a receptionist for summarizing someone’s notes. And there were other issues too, like her staff would openly gossip about patients by name when they thought that they’d put people on hold. There was a lot of issues. It’s taken me this long to get to the point where I can talk about it without bursting in tears because I actually had a bit of a breakdown over it. I felt like I’d failed Laura in protecting her, Justin.

12:52
they offered this wonderful gift and were put through all that when they didn’t deserve it. And we didn’t deserve it. And thank you for sharing that with us. Like I wanted to file a complaint so many times but every time I wrote I had to write it down. I couldn’t and yeah. It’s upsetting because we all reached out to a few people in the community during that time and what it meant with accusations and…

13:19
Like it’s like, you know, people tell you when you start this process the counseling is the easy part You can’t be denied like unless unless there is something seriously wrong. You can’t be denied So no one wanted to believe that it was possible that someone that clearly had their own psychological issues going

13:36
Yeah, and I remember that happening to your team and it was and the sick that’s why we actually didn’t actually post a lot of What was going on with us on the? surrogacy groups because it’s like, you know when we tried to reach out to people we thought we you know We’re friends or people we could trust it, you know, we didn’t get trust back Yeah, or people tried to downplay what we went through and so why should we share? You know our happy times and things with yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m sorry

14:06
I didn’t want to bring it in bring down the whole no I’m thankful that you’ve brought it up and I’m sorry if the the community has let you down in some of those ways I mean, I’m generally pretty bad at Advocating for myself in a lot of ways. So I probably didn’t speak up enough of how it was feeling It’s just well, I’m very grateful that you’re here tonight and you’re sharing this and we’re sort of capturing the whole part of the story I know from Laura’s sharing of the journey that you then eventually

14:36
to a different psychologist, one of the queen bees, Katrina Hale. And yeah, we tried to find another counselor locally because the only reason we went with this first one was that she was so close by. We thought, we thought, you know, oh, we really want to be able to go in and do our sessions. But she only ended up doing them by video anyway.

14:57
Like, well, why did we bother doing that when we could have been doing that with like, Katrina? She was wonderful. Like, the difference was night and day difference of the counseling and the knowledge. And like, you know, she was, you know, showed up on time, we shouldn’t be a positive, it should be a given. But she also stayed on, like if she felt that she needed to give more information and stuff, she stayed on and gave that information.

15:24
Yeah, just night and day difference. Yes. And she was like, we were upfront with her about what we’d been through. Like it was a big thing. Certainly for me, like after that, I sort of felt I have this issue of catastrophizing mix where, you know, with everything I’ve been through in my life. After that, it felt very hard to be in the moment of, yeah, I wasn’t too after what I was doing. So yeah, being vulnerable and embracing the counseling again, because it’s like, what if this happens twice? What if we don’t get approved? But ultimately you were approved.

15:54
and you went on the journey. And so then you finished doing the counseling and the legals and so you’d had some embryos made at some point in time with your eggs and sperm? We got really, really lucky. Like after the issues that we have with the Repromed, they also were basically taking big risks. They wanted to take big risks with my health. So we ended up switching to another clinic that at the time was just starting doing surrogacy. And we believe that we were the first ones that went through them actually. Family Fertility Center, yeah.

16:24
Dr. Martian Stankovic, I think his name was. He was very good. He agreed that, you know, doing a normal site for me would be dangerous. Well, that we’ll be taking risks that were not wise, basically. So we did a half site.

16:40
So basically reduced doses of medications and things and we managed to get 10 eggs and 8 fertilized 6 embryos in the end. Great, isn’t it? I was astounded. We were both like, so we don’t have to go again You know which for me like I have to be in hospital, you know, it can’t be done in the clinic sort of situation I actually have to be in hospital because um, you know, there’s risks with anesthetic and things like that Although I’ve never had an issue. It is a case of they have

17:08
to be careful. And I take blood thinners too. So, you know, if there’s something gets nicked or whatever, you don’t want to be in a situation where. Yep. Wow. So yes, of all the times your body has let you down, it didn’t on this occasion. Yes, this one time, this one time, it worked like a charm. Good work. And so then I hear it was second embryo transfer worked. And then, and then so 2023 was the year of pregnancy for your team. Yes. How was that? What was it like having somebody else pregnant carrying your baby? How did

17:38
Um, I feel like I let Laura down a lot, honestly. Okay, tell me more. Just, it was so hard to know how to help. Cause she’s very, very independent person. Most surrogates are. She’s very, very strong independent person. She don’t have.

17:54
a lot of things in common, in particular of feeling guilty if you’re actively doing something when someone else is doing something for you or asking people for help, which made the, like I didn’t wanna step on her boundaries of things. I didn’t wanna overstep, Robert didn’t wanna overstep, Laura didn’t wanna ask for help. So we often ended up with this sort of stalemate.

18:16
situation where we felt like we should be helping, but we don’t want to help unless she specifically asks. You know? Is there anything you would go back differently and do then? I would probably go back and create more of like a schedule of, okay, this is the exact day of what we’re gonna come around and do, or this is how we’re gonna lay things out, you know? Be very specific, like maybe make a joint calendar so that we could keep track of who’s got what scheduled when

18:46
it makes you know working out when is convenient much smoother. Like for instance she’s got three kids they all have extra extra curriculars and then her being a teacher she’s got like lots of work with that and yes I know for surrogates who have young kids it can off that can be different if a surrogate’s got older.

19:05
children in terms of trying to keep the kids occupied when your mum is tired and grumpy and you can’t be as on hand to help with your own kids. And so that being hands on as IPs to help out around the schedules, it’s a fine balance. Yeah. Well, thank you for being so honest about that and reflective. That’s lovely to hear for the people listening who are new to go, okay, what can we do and what reflections have you got? But we thought we talked about everything we needed to. We were pretty thorough beforehand.

19:35
well we all thought that we could we would definitely absolutely communicate on these things and it didn’t really work out no and that’s really common I’m not even talking about making promises that you don’t intend to keep type of thing which I know there are some that do that

19:53
I’m talking like we genuinely wanted things but when the time came didn’t know how to actually do it. Yes. Did your team have any ongoing counseling as a team at different points in the journey? My team did. I had some individual ones and then we had a team one at 31. Yeah I had some individual ones with Katrina during it. She meant well. She advised me to just go do it. Just go do the help.

20:23
I believe Laura had some sessions with her too during it and after too. We always said, you know, like, if you ever want a session with her or with someone else, go ahead. Because yeah, obviously, you know, that’s not an issue. We didn’t do any as a team, which we probably should have. Okay, yep. I think that’s good advice. I think that more than anything, so Katrina could give us all the talking to in a group session.

20:46
That’s what she did in our group session. Okay, I’ve been talking to all of you now and can I just do these things that I tell you to do? Yes, sometimes having that third party tell everybody all at the same time is then you blame it on Katrina. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

21:03
And that’s one of the beauties of SAS that I do that, and because Katrina helped us plan and create SAS, and that my check-in emails that I do to teams at different points in the pregnancy is that, here are the things that teams should be doing at this point in time. So you can sort of blame it on Anna’s email told us we should do this now. Yeah, sometimes that third party can be helpful, can’t it? Yeah. What I might do is I might take us to the photos and we’ll go through them. We’ve had so many wonderful conversations here. Here we get to the day of birth. So what was it like, you know, being around

21:33
a woman giving birth to your child? We felt very awkward because like we didn’t really know what we should do. Like Laura was so like she knew what she was doing, Justin knew what he was doing and there’s Robin and I just standing there you know with you know this woman that’s having our baby. Not really sure what to do. We didn’t want to get in the way of the doctors or anything and if they needed to come in and yeah just we very much sort of stood there just off to the

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side very sort of not sure what we should do. Sure yeah and that can be different for each surrogate in terms of how they birth too particularly if their partner’s quite used to being the support person there. Did you know you were having a girl? Yes we did. And then some beautiful photos of when you get handed to a girl what how do you feel when you look back at these photos? Uh so the first time I saw her I went my mind immediately went that’s the wrong baby. Right why? Because of the red hair.

22:33
a lot of things on an ultrasound but you don’t see that. Yes, true.

22:38
It skipped two generations and I didn’t even know my grandmother originally was a redhead. I’d always known her with white hair. Seeing that was very, made it even more surreal. Obviously I got over that. And then some photos of you guys being mums and dads. Yeah. Is it powerful seeing your partner be a dad? Yeah, I was. So of course with him having so many brothers and stuff that have had children, like I’ve seen him holding babies before.

23:03
There have been, oftentimes, there have felt very emotional, you know, watching him being that way with other kids and thinking, oh, this is never gonna happen for us. You know, he’s never gonna get to experience that.

23:16
It was good seeing him with getting to hold her. He is like on the ball, very good with her. That’s lovely. Lovely to hear that bond that they’ve got. And then you being a mum too. So Miss Abby was born very close to Christmas. Is that right? Yes, two weeks from Christmas. Yes. So it was a very hectic time, especially since everyone wanted to see her Christmas. Yes. On Christmas day. And so we had to visit his family, my family.

23:46
It was a lot and then you know having a little baby with you know traveling with us and of course, you know still being you know We’ve Laura and kids and Justin do you know everything? Yes, because you’re navigating that time together and police shoes a very good sleeper from the get-go So we didn’t have to worry about that We’ll come back and talk about the couple of weeks post-birth in a minute we maybe we’ll just finish these photos and so then life starts to go on and

24:14
Abigail’s getting bigger and then joining you for some hospital visits yourself too. So we actually also took her to Japan. Wow. Yeah. Shortly after we got back, I had a blood clot, which put me in the hospital for a night. But then this, these photos are just after Easter, where I had a severe case of pneumonia and I was in ICU for a week and a half. Then I was in hospital and for about

24:38
a little like bit over two weeks and then I was out for a week, went back in after getting another chest infection. Then I was out for nine hours at which point I had a bad coughing fit and actually blacked out. Abby was on my lap at the time and thankfully Robert had already moved the coffee table out of the lounge room at that point and so I ended up back in hospital again. So it was a very crazy more than a month. I’d been in and out of hospital and

25:07
She came in and lit up the hospital. That’s all the nurses loved her. She spent the entire time just grinning at all this hospital stuff. Oh good, well she’s got a beautiful grin there. One day the doctors and nurses were doing their round. She saw there were more people near my room than usual. She came in with this big grin on her face like, ooh, I have a big grin on my face.

25:29
a little fan club. I have a big audience today. A couple of the nurses actually took off with her around the ICU. Showing her off. Yes these photos I’m guessing get some of those from Japan that you mentioned and just being mum and having your girl sleeping on you hey. Yeah she still sleeps on me. Gorgeous. It took her a while to get back to it after the hospital because you know of course our routine was all disrupted and stuff and it was a while before I was actually able to breathe well

25:59
I couldn’t even hold her for the first week in hospital actually because I had a turtle line in.

26:05
I couldn’t risk her accidentally, you know, swiping or ripping it out or anything like that. But these are probably great examples of how IPs at the beginning might fear that, oh I didn’t carry in birth my child, am I going to bond with my baby? It looks pretty obvious to me that you two are bonded, yeah? Oh yeah, she’s my little buddy. Yeah, so obviously keeping in contact still with the surrogate family and Laura’s children have watched their mum be pregnant and now they’ve got a connection with your daughter as well too, is that right? They love her, she loves them, she like gets,

26:35
smiles and everything with them and they get so excited every time that she starts doing something new. That’s good. They’re proud of her too. How often would you see each other now these days now life starts to slow down? It varies. We try to see each other once a week but life gets busy like Laura’s back at work and again you know the kids have things on and we do things with Robert’s family and then then of course if I get sick or they get sick and it gets yeah.

27:05
It’s busy, doesn’t it? Just some last photos here of life going on, wearing glasses, hanging out with the family cat, or is it Laura’s cat? No, that’s our cat. Although it came from Laura. Oh, right. Laura fosters animals, well, at least she did. And she fostered a cat mom and her kittens, and Gingy was one of their kittens, and she actually kept the mom. Lovely. Unfortunately, he can’t go back to visit because the mom has a little bit of a breakdown when he’s around. Okay, right.

27:34
I don’t want that to happen. And then some of these last photos here is Laura, holding your baby, her surrogate baby and her husband Justin there. What does it look like when you watch other people hold your child and is there any awkwardness, having a surrogate, having birthed your child, that sort of thing? We didn’t find it awkward in any way. Laura’s wonderful with her. But we didn’t feel any concerns about bonding or anything like that.

28:02
Yep. Speaking of bonding, I know from Laura’s, when she was on this webinar and as the podcast, that she directly fed to bring in her milk supply and pumped milk for five and a half months and did most of those feeds for the first nine days when you were living basically at her house in your caravan. And so they develop a bond too, but we talked about how the breast milk is on tap, the correct temperature, don’t need bottles. Yeah. Was that something that your team had planned on and felt comfortable with or anything to add there? Yeah, it was. Although I did create a bit

28:32
of an issue for a while there because when Abby wasn’t feeding.

28:37
The kids wanted to cuddle. So Laura essentially became a food person only. So it’s like after a while we had to sort of make a point of making sure Laura actually got to cuddle rather than just being, oh, you’re hungry. Just coming for the milk. That’s beautiful. So Laura talks a lot more about that in her episodes. I do encourage people to have a listen to that if they wanna piece together the whole story there. I’m gonna answer one question that’s been typed in because it’s actually more about Sass than your journey specifically.

29:06
SAS trying to understand how it’s bad etiquette to ask if someone would be willing to be our surrogate and is it reasonable to expect that by joining SAS we would be able to be connected with a surrogate? How long does it usually take? Couple of questions there Andrea, I’ll do my best. The bad etiquette, it’s more about sharing with your friends and family that you have a need for a surrogate and saying because there’s two guys they may not know that you even want kids and so it’s about saying yes we do want to start our family and the best option for us is surrogacy and we’ve been looking into that we’ve joined a free webinar from Surrogacy Australia and then you would say if anybody

29:36
wants to know more about our journey, feel free to send us a message. That would be the way to go about it, as opposed to saying, if anybody could be our surrogate, please let us know. Partly because you’re not technically supposed to do that in Australia, although nobody’s ever being prosecuted about that, but it’s just more that etiquette, that it’s the idea of a gift. So I hope that answers that one. In terms of how long for SAS, well, it’s tricky because there’s never enough surrogates for all of the IPs in Australia, and a portion joins SAS, both surrogates and IPs. So there’s no guarantee you’ll ever be connected with a surrogate.

30:06
what you’re looking for. I’d advise considering overseas surrogacy because they pay surrogates and so therefore they have more women stepping forward and they can guarantee you a match at some point in time. We educate you about how to find your own by being about being active and spreading the word and gaining confidence talking to other IPs and other community members. So I hope that answers your question because everybody who’s been to this webinar or registered you know I’ve essentially got your email address so you’ll get subscribed to our monthly newsletter which of course you’re welcome to unsubscribe to

30:36
and resources about SAS on our website. There’s a monthly report that you can find as well. And that gives you some of the numbers of who’s engaged with SAS and when introductions happen and how many teams we’ve got, we’re working with and how many surrogates join each month and IPs. Andrew’s answered, thank you. So it sounds like I’ve done that one.

30:52
Back to you, Candice. Summarizing everything we’ve talked about here, is there anything else you’d like to add about your journey that you feel went really well or things that you’ve learned or advice for people at the beginning of their journey? I would say, you know, be yourself always. It is really a relationship that you build.

31:09
If you’re not gonna get along in the early stages, you’re not gonna get along in the later stages. So yeah, make sure that you’ve got someone that, if you do find a surrogate, make sure it is someone that you actually are able to click with rather than just, oh, this is the person that’s on. And trust your gut when it comes to like dealing with agencies and stuff. We, even with the fertility specialists and stuff.

31:31
where you still had to push things and ask questions and stuff. Do your research, make sure you’re staying on top of things. Also, I guess the final thing would be probably more counseling than what you think. There’s a number of things that I only realized at the very end that I probably should have been getting counseling for at the beginning. I hope. And I’m now in counseling for post-surrogacy stuff. It’s stuff related to my childhood or more than anything. This whole process can bring up a lot.

31:59
of feelings that you may not even realize are there. I think a lot of that comes from, you know, the actually becoming a parent. Things that people generally do feel. Things that, you know, you might’ve been burying from your own childhood can get brought up. Don’t be afraid to basically ask for help, ask questions. It’s worth it if you do. That’s great. And there’s one extra thing that you said to me off air at the start there in terms of that bond that you have. Is there any doubt that your mom? No, no. If Leona is, like, it felt weird actually coming up

32:29
to begin with is like, how do you name a human? She’s going to be her own person one day. No, there’s definitely no doubt I’m a mom. I think you said there’s so much more to being a parent than being a birth. Yeah, there’s being a parent, it’s about the little moments. There’s more to being a parent than whether or not you gave birth or whether or not you’ve got genes in common.

32:47
Otherwise, adoption, foster, that wouldn’t work. If step parents or whatever, none of that would work if genetics was the be all end all, giving birth was the be all end all. It’s just so much more. It’s the, you know, being there, being their safe place, being the person that laughs with them and cries with them and, you know, that’s there for the birthdays, that’s there for when they come home from school.

33:12
It’s everything. Yeah well said. I think that’s a beautiful summary of your journey and anybody’s journey to parenthood however it comes to be. And in the chat Kylie says thank you Candice for sharing your story. It gives us hope to find a surrogate and have our own family. Lovely to hear that your story tonight has had an impact on others. And I was very introverted. Like I know that a lot of people find it hard to post on social media and that kind of things. It was so hard. It’s not that I didn’t want to. It was that I second-guess myself.

33:42
lots and so try to write those comments of I want to engage with you but how do I engage without like what if you take this the wrong way yes all the overthinking it’s hard but it gets easier the more you do and you might find you make new friends in the community like other people’s

34:00
journeys, they might be able to help you. Yeah, yes. And I think you guys attended the in-person catch-ups as well sometimes. Yeah, we attended a few. Got to meet people there and have those chats in person. I was disappointed we didn’t get to go to Moa during our journey, like to like during the pregnancy and stuff, I ended up sick quite a lot, which made it difficult. And then I think a couple of the catch-ups ended up being scheduled on the same day as like one of our nieces or nephews’ birthdays, for instance. Can’t do both and… Yeah.

34:29
And once you’re pregnant too, you’re also focusing on your team. Oh, your spare time is to get Laura and her family. That is one thing for anyone scheduling that decides to host a cat job or organize a cat job. If you’re going to say kids are welcome or that, oh, there’s a playground nearby. Make sure that it’s near where you plan to.

34:49
Like it’s actually like right next to where you’re actually having the catch up. Because otherwise you end up with the people that brought their kids end up having to go all the way away from all the people. And they don’t end up getting to socials. A couple of times we would hang out with Laura by the playground because you know, the playground was far away from where the other people were. Some people called her, they said, oh, we should be more social. And it’s like, we want to be, but you know, the kids are going that way.

35:19
Yep, they’ve got to be there for the clip. Good tip there.

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