We are Rick and Anna of Gilbert, Arizona. We want to share our journey as we go through it, so that others may view surrogacy as an option.
Twelve years ago, we started out like most people by making the decision to start a family. We became pregnant very quickly, within 2-3 months! We were thrilled.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last….and we quickly learned I had had a miscarriage. It was amazing to call the doctor’s office to say “I think I may have had a miscarriage” and be asked, “well, if you were pregnant, were you going to keep it” and only when I said “yes”, did they make an appointment for me.
We, like most people, decided it must not have been meant to be and everyone said, that the good thing was that my body was doing it’s job and something must have been wrong with the baby.
So time passed and 3 years later we again became pregnant…..yeah! Well again our celebration was short because again the pregnancy didn’t last.
So after recovering and discussing it with my physician, after 1 year we started with the clomid. From there we went through a series of 9 different OB/GYNs and Reproductive Endocrinologists to help us get pregnant and stay pregnant. I underwent several laparoscopies to clear out endometriosis and multiple and many infertility procedures and medications. After 10 pregnancies/miscarriages, we decided to become certified to adopt. That was tough, lots of questions as to whether we were “good enough” to be parents, etc. At that point we were questioning, was there something wrong with us that the Lord didn’t seem to want to send us a baby. Thankfully our faith was strong and we plunged forward.
In 2005 I had my last pregnancy and miscarriage. Unfortunately that seemed to be the last straw for my body physically and it took me about 3 years to put myself back together! I felt like Humpty Dumpty and I had been balancing on that wall for a long time and that 11th miscarriage pushed me “off the wall” and it took me 3 years! to put myself back together; Primarily physically, but also mentally. Rick did his best through all of this, but they compare infertility to cancer and I can see that…..it changes who you are, it becomes so chronic it is easy to become hypersensitive, hypervigilant and you have anxiety over things you would have never been worried about before! And you think you might go crazy, because how can 2 human beings take so much loss!
Thankfully the Lord had something different in store for us….
So finally I was feeling better and we started working on the adoption again. We decided to post an ad on craig’s list. We talked to several birth moms and even came down to being 1 of 2 couples, but things didn’t work out. So on December 24, 2009, we received an e-mail from someone asking if we had ever considered surrogacy. We thought it was weird, but after discussing it decided to respond. We had never considered it, because each state has it’s own laws and it seemed too scary….to get to know someone, put all our faith into them, to do something for us that we had not been able to do ourself….talk about our faith being tested! So we began this journey……
