Until recent years, surrogacy has often been seen as taboo (Picture: Getty Images)
The clock had just struck 1am at Dorset County Hospital when Rosie Mead gave one final huge push and brought a beautiful little girl into the world.
But instead of picking her up for some skin-to-skin contact, another couple bundled the baby away into a separate room for this all-important bonding ritual, leaving Rosie to deliver her placenta before being stitched up, the gas and air barely taking the edge off the pain.
Once she had been cleaned up, Rosie recalls how she simply sipped a cup of tea and had some toast, as she felt the warm glow of knowing that she had just fulfilled a life-long ambition.
‘I had always wanted to be a surrogate since I was a teenager, after seeing Phoebe on Friends and realising it was possible,’ Rosie remembers. ‘Obviously Phoebe’s story was very different and they played it for comedy, but it did make me see that it was a really selfless act.’
Until recent years, surrogacy, where a woman carries a baby for another couple who are unable to conceive or carry a child themselves, has often been seen as taboo.
However, with an increasing number of celebrities speaking openly about taking this route to parenthood – including Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Olympic diver Tom Daley, and most recently, Chrissy Teigen,– it’s becoming an alternative route to parenthood. And not one just the preserve of the rich and famous.
Chrissy Teigen welcomed her son Wren through an ‘incredible, loving, compassionate’ surrogate (Picture: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
According to recent figures, the number of parents having a baby via surrogate in England and Wales has almost quadrupled in the last 10 years. The report by the University of Kent and My Surrogacy Journey shows that two-thirds of applicants are now mixed-sex couples often in their 30s or 40s.
Unlike countries such as the US, where commercial surrogacy is permitted in certain states, it is illegal to pay a woman to act as a surrogate in the UK, apart from ‘reasonable expenses’.
So what motivates a woman to carry a child for a complete stranger?
For Rosie, it was after giving birth to her second child in 2017, that she felt the time was right to revisit the idea of surrogacy, with the support of her husband Jon.
She joined a Facebook group run by Surrogacy UK and connected with a mixed-sex couple who lived just 30 minutes from her Dorset home.
After getting to know the couple, including arranging playdates with their children, Rosie, who is CEO at Musica, decided she wanted to be a surrogate for the pair.
Rosie recalls how some of her friends expected her to break down after being a surrogate (Picture: Supplied)
However, not everyone was at peace with their decision and Rosie admits that she found it more difficult to convince some friends and family. ‘I think they found it hard to put themselves into my shoes because it’s not for everybody,’ she says.
‘And they were saying from their perspective, they’d have felt like they were giving up their child and so they were worried for me and my mental health.’
When Rosie gave birth at Dorset County Hospital, Jon and both intended parents were by her side.
She had been given medication to prevent her producing milk, and later that day the new parents took their newborn home while Rosie returned to her family.
Looking back, Rosie says the hardest part of the process was forcing herself to slow down to allow her body to recover after the birth, and accepting the change in dynamic with the baby’s parents.
‘The main thing I hadn’t expected to happen was that I almost grieved our friendship,’ she recalls. ‘We had been so close during the pregnancy and the intended mum would come over and help out with my girls and we were intertwined as families.
The number of parents having a baby via surrogate in England and Wales has almost quadrupled in the last 10 years (Picture: Getty Images)
‘Towards the end we were together all the time on the off chance that I might go into labour, so I hadn’t quite prepared myself for them embedding as a new family of four.’
What also surprised Rosie were the legalities surrounding the birth certificate.
‘Jon and I had to be down as the birth parents, which was bonkers because he really wasn’t,’ she explains. ‘Then we had to go to court to prove I was of sound mind to hand the baby over.’
Then there was the feeling that it was almost expected for her to break down after the birth.
‘Friends kept saying to me “just let us know if you’re about to fall apart, it’s completely fine”.’ she remembers. ‘I felt like people were sometimes almost waiting for me to suddenly say, “Oh, I made a really big mistake and I regret it”.’
Amy Beere from Staffordshire, decided to become a surrogate after seeing her friend become a parent via this route, and says she had a similar experience.
‘There’s a myth that you come out and you have this whole sense of loss, depression and grief, all this stuff that you experience when the baby’s gone,’ she says.
‘A lot of people’s first question was, ‘how was it handing him over to her?’ expecting a negative answer, for example that I was crying. But I didn’t cry once, other than happy tears.’
‘There’s a myth that you come out and you have this whole sense of loss,’ says Amy (Picture: Supplied)
Amy gave birth to a baby boy for a mixed-sex couple in London in February this year after going through the process with Brilliant Beginings surrogacy agency.
She already had a three-year-old daughter with partner Matt and the couple had planned to have another child, but the high cost of childcare meant it was not possible at the time.
‘Normally for surrogates, you will have completed your family first, so then if anything did happen and later on you face the reality that you can’t have any more yourself, then it’s not so much of an issue,’ Amy explains. ‘But Matt and I were quite happy with that risk.’
Amy had to go through countless hormone injections to prepare her body for IVF (Picture: Supplied)
Amy underwent three rounds of IVF using embryos created using a donor egg and the intended dad’s sperm before becoming pregnant with a boy. It meant that she had to endure countless hormone injections to get her body ready each time.
Despite this and the opposition she came up against, Amy, a recruitment hiring manager, said she would do it all again ‘in a heartbeat’.
‘The aim was to see them as a family, to put a baby into her arms because she can’t have one herself, and that’s exactly what I accomplished,’ she explains.
‘I haven’t lost him, he wasn’t mine. He was always theirs.’
Amy said she would be a surrogate for another couple again ‘in a heartbeat’ (Picture: Supplied)
For Laura Clarke, surrogacy is a well-trodden path. She has gone through the process three times since 2011.
Although the 39-year-old had a positive experience with her first surrogate birth in 2014, when she decided to do it again so the baby could have a sibling, things didn’t run so smoothly.
Her relationship with the intended parents became strained after Laura started to dilate just 24 weeks into pregnancy.
‘I was hospitalised and on bedrest for weeks, as there was a chance I could go into early labour,’ she recalls. ‘I managed to keep their son strong for the next four weeks, but then he was born just after 28 weeks.’
Laura says that it was during that time her relationship with the intended parents became ‘really tricky’.
‘We had differing opinions on what medication I should take, and what should be done at this point to support their child,’ she explains. ‘So it did become quite fraught at times.’
Since then Laura and the family have acknowledged it was a stressful situation for all.
‘And we have been able to keep that relationship going, which was really important for me,’ the former NHS nurse adds.
Laura at 36 weeks pregnant with the twins (Picture: Supplied)
Although she was reluctant to pursue surrogacy again, Laura decided she didn’t want to end her experience on a negative and approached Brilliant Beginnings in a bid for a more supported journey.
In 2019 she was matched with a gay couple and after four rounds of treatment, she was pregnant with their twin girls. However, when Covid hit, the couple that Laura had grown so close to were unable to see their surrogate and connect with the two lives growing inside her.
Laura, who lives in Northampton, recalls: ‘We had to figure out a way to keep our relationship strong so they could feel that connection with their babies as well.
‘Although we weren’t able to see each other, in order for them to feel like they were helping out in some way, they did my shopping for me online every week.’
I don’t like to be told that I’ve been exploited
Having been through the process several times, Laura believes that far more needs to be done to make surrogacy more acceptable in the UK. ‘The legalities in the UK right now are very archaic and they’re just not up to date with what the reality of that looks like in today’s society,’ she explains.
If you use a surrogate in the UK, they will be the baby’s legal parent at birth for at least six weeks. However ‘revolutionary’ law reform proposals have been announced to remove the ‘legal limbo’.
Meanwhile, Helen Prosser, co-founder of Brilliant Beginnings, hopes that updated laws will encourage intended parents to seek surrogates in the UK and avoid entering into any potentially exploitative agreements abroad.
‘We saw operations in Nepal and Thailand closed down for that reason,’ she explains. ‘In India, women were being paid a life-changing amount. We want people to be able to surrogate here and have a community that support her as well.’
With the issue of exploitation being a contentious one, Laura insist that it’s wrong to assume it also happens in the UK.
‘I don’t like to be told that I’ve been exploited because that really is not the case,’ she argues. ‘I think people who say it aren’t educated about what surrogacy is.
‘I’m a grown woman who has a good education and wants to do something to support others and help people have families. I enjoy the pregnancy and birth bit.’
However, for some women no matter how perfect their surrogacy experience was, once is enough.
‘It was exactly as I envisioned it,’ says Rosie. ‘But, for me, I’m very happy with it being a one-off perfect experience.’
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‘I haven’t lost him, he wasn’t mine. He was always theirs.’
