For 24 years, my husband Ethan and I had a solid relationship, but our first surrogacy experience ended in stillbirth, and it felt like we were suspended in the quiet between the cracks and the crumble. Our friends thought we’d be fine because we were the “most together couple” they knew, but I wasn’t so sure.
My whole-body symptoms from endometriosis, adenomyosis, early menopause, and a medical system that trivialized them all had rattled our intimacy, upended my career, and made Ethan my caretaker. Being undiagnosed for decades also cost us my fertility, depleting my ovarian reserve and leading to miscarriage after miscarriage with IVF and IUIs.
Our decision to opt for an egg donor and a surrogate was an act of compromise. Though I’d always been ambivalent about motherhood, the idea of coparenting with Ethan had gradually filled me with tenderness and curiosity. But by then, after years of illness, I wanted a hysterectomy, and Ethan still really wanted to be a dad.
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Neither of us wanted to jeopardize my wellness with more hormonal treatments and pregnancy losses, so we took what people called the “easy way out.” Though I was criticized by my doctors for giving up on my eggs and my uterus “too soon,” our decision to pursue surrogacy felt liberating—at first.
We thought finding a gestational surrogate would be the hardest part, but we were wrong. Instead, we were totally unprepared for the ways surrogacy was going to change our marriage.
There were three mistakes we made in surrogacy that nearly broke our marriage. Neither of us verbalized the red flags we saw, and we didn’t equally share responsibilities.
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Our first surrogacy experience was the kind we now caution other intended parents against. We entrusted an agency with our fate and our funds, putting them in charge of introducing us to a surrogate and acting as the intermediary who would reimburse her for pregnancy-related expenses on our behalf.
At the time, we were unaware of their proven fraudulent history. Not only were Ethan and I new to surrogacy, but we also felt vulnerable—maybe even desperate.
I worked hard to keep my eyes focused on Ethan until it became natural again. Even now, as we grapple with whether and how to continue with our surrogacy journey, when we start acting like passing ships because of our full heads and aching hearts, we drop everything, hug, touch.
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I never expected our strong marriage to be impacted by the most tender gift we gave each other: the chance to grow our family through surrogacy. We’d naively thought what awaited us would be easier than the road that led there.
Our experiences with surrogacy have changed how we show up for each other, both in joy and in grief. I know we’ve built what we’ll need to recalibrate our direction to find each other in the dark.
They have changed us.
