Do What You Think You Can’t Do

Before I came out to my husband almost two years ago, I lived in what most people would picture as the “normal-white-picket-fence” life. House, kid, yellow lab…A very picturesque life. I have an 11 year old son with special needs and he still requires a lot of my time and energy. There was something about his birth 11 years ago that always bothered me. I was young (26) and I didn’t do my homework around the “business” of being born. I fell into a statistic of women whose labors don’t progress and end up with c-sections. I always felt like my body failed me. Like I didn’t truly give birth to my son. I had severe postpartum anxiety and a very hard time connecting to him in the beginning.

Fast forward 8 years later and I am a birth photographer and doula and am constantly being invited into birthing rooms to capture parents meeting their new little ones. Over the course of my training as a doula I learned more about the process of birth and where sometimes hospitals don’t give women the chance to let their bodies work babies out on their own. This made me think “if I could be pregnant for someone else and have the chance for a natural delivery and prove to myself that my body works, I’d feel like I could close that chapter”. I didn’t want any more children but I thought maybe I could be a surrogate.. 6 months of research, 4 interviews, lots of health histories and fertility testing, I was given the profile of a woman whose biggest desire was to be a mother but for health reasons she couldn’t carry a baby.

Instantly my focus shifted. Yes, I wanted to re-write my own birth experience but now I wanted more than ever to help her realize her dream of being a mom was possible and make it happen. I just knew we were supposed to help each other. She had embryos already frozen and I was ready to get to work ASAP. Lucky for us, I got pregnant on the first cycle and after an uneventful pregnancy, 7 days late, and a looming c-section date, I went into labor on my own and delivered her son, naturally, into the world after 27 hours of labor. She and I both got what we thought was impossible. Her son is now over 2 and we still communicate weekly and visit each other a few times a year. Surrogacy was the most unexpected blessing in my life. It grew my heart to proportions I didn’t know possible. I look at the family I created and feel so incredibly proud of all of us that through determination, faith, persistence, a little science and boundless love we made several dreams come true.

This story was submitted by a human named Laura