Sara is Canadian Fertility Consulting’s corporate trainer and clinic liaison, and her surro-baby Logan just celebrated his very first birthday! To mark this very special occasion, we wanted to share with you Sara’s beautiful birthday letter to Logan:
Happy *Canadian* Birthday, Logan.
I know it’s been your birthday at home for almost a full day already, and you’ve been the subject of many posts and photos – but your birthday is just beginning here!
How lucky are you, to have almost 48 hours of birthday love coming your way?
I’m thinking of you today and wishing I could be there to celebrate with you and your amazing family. There was even a snowstorm the past two days, and after a winter of next to no snow at all, I feel it’s in your honour to match the snowstorm with the day you came into the world.
I’d say my life changed a year ago today – but really, it began long before that. It was September 16th, 2016, the first day I was introduced to your parents and we began working towards the dream that is you!
Your parents thank me often for my help in bringing you into the world, but they don’t need to. Watching them meet you for the first time, seeing the love in their faces… that was all the thanks I’ll ever need.
Meeting your parents and your family and helping them bring you here, has forever transformed me as a person.
People say what I did was selfless, but I don’t know how something that makes me feel so genuinely good inside and make me feel so fulfilled, could ever be really selfless.
I think of you and your family often, and I love to see your smiling face every time your beautiful mother sends me a photo.
I cannot believe you are one! You and your family each have a piece of my heart with them.
Happiest of birthdays, Turtle 🐢 and thank you, Mustoe family, for choosing me to take this journey with you.
For Sara’s first surrogacy journey she chose to work with Rachel and Craig, an international couple from Australia: “I originally told myself that I wasn’t going to match with a heterosexual couple because I was worried about the pain and the trauma that comes with an Intended Mom. With Rachel it was a little different because she had carried two children before having a hysterectomy, so she didn’t have as much emotional pain surrounding the loss and the trying. Rachel could also relate better to me because she had been pregnant before, so whenever I was uncomfortable, she knew what I was going through”.
Rachel and Craig wanted a child together, and luckily she had retrieved some of her eggs before her surgery. Sara’s first IVF failed, and the second attempt ended with a miscarriage at nine weeks. She went in for the final transfer, and out of the two remaining eggs, only one made it through the defrosting stage. This was Rachel’s very last egg, and amazingly, it created Logan!
What makes Sara’s surrogacy story so special is her incredible relationship with her Intended Parents: “Seeing Rachel and Craig together with Logan made everything worth it. All of the discomfort throughout the pregnancy and all of the pain of the delivery, everything else just melted away as soon as I saw them holding him. Everybody talks about what that moment will be like when you have to give the baby to its parents, but it wasn’t that hard for me because I felt closer to them than him. When the Rachel and Craig left, I was more upset about them going back home than Logan!”
Since Sara has such a unique connection with her Intended Parent’s we asked her to share with us some advice for how to nurture these bonds in your own surrogacy relationships: “I think a lot of people rush through that introductory ‘dating phase’, but for us it was all about really talking and getting to know each other and determining those ‘what if’ scenarios that could come up. If we had bad news, who would they want to hear it from, me or the nurses? If I’m going in for testing, do you want to know the results? We tried to cover every possible situation, both positive and negative, before we decided we wanted to embark on this journey together. My Intended Parents were super supportive of me and we really trusted each other. They trusted me to grow this baby and I trusted them not to text me multiple times a day for updates. The one thing I like to tell prospective surrogates is don’t rush the getting to know each other phase, because soon you are going to get pregnant and you’re going to be stuck with one another!”
Sara’s original surrogacy experience was so wonderful that she has already started planning her next journey: “This time around, as I get started on my second surrogacy, I’m worried about not being able to replicate what I had with my last couple because it was so great. So, I’ve decided to take an entirely different route and work with a homosexual couple now. There is no way I am going to be able to recreate what I had with Rachel and Craig, but I look forward to a totally new and special experience with the next couple I get matched with!”
Thank you, Sara, for sharing your surrogacy experience with us. We wish you all the best with your next surrogacy!