Eloise’s Story: Surrogacy

I found the lump in my left breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer three months after my wedding. I had just finished law school and had been practicing law for less than a year. My husband and I hadn’t even had the opportunity to begin talking about having children. Due to the type of cancer I had, my doctors advised us not to do fertility preservation because they were concerned that the hormone injections you need to take to freeze eggs would have been problematic for my tumor. My doctors assured us that after five healthy years of being in remission, we would have no trouble getting pregnant naturally.

Fast forward five years, my husband and I were starting to think about building our family. That is when I found a new lump. This time, there were three tumors in my chest and I was diagnosed with a recurrence – metastatic breast cancer. It was like a slap in the face. We were devastated to learn that the doctors no longer felt I could safely carry a pregnancy and that after the additional treatments the quality of my eggs would probably be poor. Fortunately, this time I was able to squeeze in fertility preservation and we have 2 frozen embryos from that cycle. I went ahead and did my treatments and have been fortunate to be disease free for 3 years now.

You see your friends building their families in the “normal way” and you just know that’s not an option for you. It can be so hard to deal with.

I continue to take medications to prevent the cancer from coming back. I am not allowed to get pregnant while I am on the medicine, which will be for another seven years. I know there are other ways to build your family, like adoption, but we want to give our embryos a chance. My husband and I decided to pursue surrogacy.

At first, I really had a deep sadness that I would not be able to experience pregnancy. In some ways, I feel like my body betrayed me. I thought, “This is what a woman is supposed to be able to do,” and it was stolen from me.

I am realizing that motherhood can happen many different ways.

It has taken me a while to change the image I had for how I would become a mother and to feel ok about it. I have a therapist who has helped me cope with my grief and learn new ways of thinking that make me feel more positive. It took some time, but I am feeling less sad now and more hopeful and excited that I will still be able to be a mom.

After months of research, we finally signed on with a surrogacy agency to start the process. We worked with the agency to figure out what was important to us as we started this journey — the type of relationship we wanted to have with the surrogate and to make sure it would be a good “match.” Eventually, we met our potential surrogate, got to know her, and about a month later signed a Letter of Intent. We had the necessary medical appointments for my husband, myself, our surrogate, and her husband. Once we were medically cleared, we signed the official agreement. We really get along with our surrogate and her husband and have had great communication the whole time. I feel much more comfortable with her carrying our baby than I thought I would when I first started out, and have really grown to trust her. 

The one issue that remains a major source of stress is the cost. At the start of our family-building journey, we had paid off all of my medical bills and we had a good amount of money in savings. Now, we have spent down our savings and have debt again. We were not fully prepared for how much the surrogacy costs would add up. We had to pay legal fees, surrogate fees, and medical expenses. We are trying to be responsible with our budget and are making every effort to save wherever we can. It will take time and discipline, but we will eventually recover financially. We are preparing ourselves to stay committed to our budget for as long as we need to.

We scheduled the embryo transfer and were extremely lucky that it worked the first time! Our surrogate is now six months pregnant and we are thrilled. We are so grateful to be bringing our baby into this world.

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