I sniffed and turned to the last page, mopping up tears. I read the words written across the pink cardboard, outlined in a decorative black frame: There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in our hearts. I drew a short breath, struggling to hold in the emotion, Andrew slipping a comforting arm around my shoulders.
I had dreamed of this moment for so long. Our friendship sealed in faith, trust, loyalty and love. Far more blessed than ever before, not only did I have my wonderful family but I now had Jon, Justin and Elsie in my life. I had given so much, but I had gained so much more.
That night we ate dinner together and gelled as a family unit, the boys coaxing Jaxon and Keira to eat their vegetables, Andrew chatting to Wayne and Rick about fishing, me listening out for Elsie’s cries. After dinner my full breasts were my burden to bear, sending me packing for home, and I reluctantly gathered up my things just as Elsie woke. I cuddled her on the couch as the boys got her bottle ready, fussing over the temperature, splashing warm milk on their wrists.
I gazed down at the baby in my arms, watched her yawn and stretch, moving her lips close to my chest in search of the milk she sensed, the milk my body was making for her. I couldn’t give it to her in the way she wanted, the bond formed would be too strong. I kissed her forehead, took in her delicate scent one last time, and handed her to Annette as if she was a precious parcel. Goodbye, Elsie, my passenger. I love you.
Annette settled into the couch to feed Elsie with the bottle. ‘Thank you, Shannon, for everything,’ she said. ‘No doubt we’ll see you again.’
I nodded, smothered the urge to cry, and faced Sheri, hugging her then Wayne and Rick. I watched as Jaxon and Keira bounded over to them, comfortable, hugging each of them as though they were their own grandparents.
The boys followed us outside. As I walked to the car I gazed up at the black sky, pinpricked with constellations. When we’d buckled the kids into their car seats, the boys leaned inside and kissed them. Keira gripped each of them around the neck, gritting her teeth and squeezing with all her might.
Andrew stood beside me, holding my hand, and I felt my bottom lip quiver. I could move on, wean myself from producing breastmilk, go back to my writing, friends, exercise, but I couldn’t bear to say goodbye. My life had changed in so many ways because of the people before me, my view of the world and of myself altered. I was stronger than I had thought, kinder too. I had so much love to give.
Jon closed the car door, sealing Keira in. He turned to us and Justin stepped up beside him, his boots scraping over the gravel. The past eighteen months had brought both of these men closer to me than I had ever dreamed possible.
‘I guess it’s that time,’ I stammered, gulping down air.
‘Shannon, we cannot put into words how much you’ve changed our lives. We can’t thank you enough,’ Justin said, placing his palms together as if to pray, touching his lips to the tips of his fingers.
‘You’ve changed my life too. I feel so blessed to have met you.’
‘We’ll see you again soon. I don’t know when, but we will. Somehow it’ll work out and we’ll come up to visit or you can come down and stay with us,’ Jon said, his eyes moving back and forth between me and Andrew.
I nodded, feeling the sting of tears, words eluding me. Jon began to cry, so I reached up and hugged him, rubbed his back, felt the tremor in his chest. Moving on to Justin, I hugged him before kissing his cheek, then pulled back.
‘I better go,’ I said, soft and quick. ‘The longer I stay, the harder it’ll be.’ I opened the car door. ‘Please stay in touch and let me know how she’s doing. I want lots of pictures.’ I laughed, blotting my eyes with a tissue I found in my bag.
‘Of course we will.’
‘And you’ve got all the frozen breastmilk to take home with you?’ I asked, feeling like a bossy motherly figure.
‘We do; my parents have the freezer in their camper so they’ll take it home with them and drop it at our place,’ Jon said, pointing to the campervan parked next to our car.
Andrew shook their hands before pulling each of them in for a manly hug, thuds on the back. He walked to the driver’s side, opened the door and sat down.
I glanced at the boys one last time before blowing a kiss and stepping into the car. I shut the door and wound down the window as Andrew reversed.
‘Bye, Jon! Bye, Justin!’ Keira and Jaxon yelled from the back seat, waving their little hands like fan flags at a football game.
The car moved over the gravel, and I caught a glimpse of the boys’ sad faces before the darkness of night swallowed them. Andrew negotiated the narrow bends that snaked through the bush, the flash of our headlights falling on scrub, rocks, and blankets of thick fog. The window still open, the air whisked over my hot skin and I cried, clutching the pendant I wore around my neck every day.
‘Why is Mummy crying, Dad?’ Jaxon asked from the back seat. ‘Don’t cry, we’ll see them again.’
‘I know, baby, I know. I’m just a bit sad, that’s all,’ I said, sniffing and turning to my son, his face alive with optimism.
I cried because I had so much love in my life, it hurt.
Epilogue
Life went on, and I delighted in my family and our everyday interactions – the routines, laughter, frustration and joy. I immersed myself in my love for Andrew, Jaxon and Keira, concentrated on my good fortune, the gift the universe had given me.
December was busy, preparing for Christmas and holidays. We celebrated Jaxon’s last day of preschool with a family picnic and we farewelled Keira’s day-care lady, Keira telling her, ‘I’m a big girl now. I’m going to preschool next year.’ A tradition, we visited the carnival again on New Year’s Eve, the fireworks bursting, showering light above our heads – another year ahead bright with possibility.
As I wanted to avoid taking the drugs to dry up my milk supply, I weaned myself off producing breastmilk about a month after the boys left with Elsie. Each day my body regained more strength, and I returned to the things I enjoyed with a new sense of freedom: walking on the beach, weight training, wrestling my children and giving aeroplane rides, or lying on my stomach as I read them a bedtime story.
Each week I received several text messages from Jon and Justin. Pictures and videos saved to my phone: Elsie swaddled in a pink cheesecloth wrap or lying in the bath, rubber ducks bobbing around, a father’s hand underneath buoying her, guiding her through the water, the sensation lulling the baby to sleep, or Justin dressing her up, showing off the many outfits she’d been given at the baby shower – a soft yellow romper, a purple hand-knitted cardigan, a white suit with a motif of a pink and green pony on the front, Justin’s favourite. The boys were besotted by their daughter.
I was besotted with life.
In mid-January, Andrew had a financial planning conference to attend in Perth, so we decided to make it a family holiday and visit some friends. We’d fly to Sydney, then collect our bags at Sydney airport and check in with another airline for the leg to Western Australia.
As we bumbled through Sydney airport, Andrew raced ahead. I tried to contain our overexcited children, darting around people, grabbing Keira’s hand while pulling our carry-on luggage behind me. ‘Jaxon, stay close to me. Keira, come on, it’s not time to look in the shops. Jaxon, are you listening?’
Rising up on tiptoes, I saw Andrew walking out through the automatic doors, leaving me and the kids on the other side. What is he doing? He could help me! Then he turned, looking downstairs at the baggage collection area, his face lighting up, hand lifting to wave. He was supposed to be picking up a suit from a friend for a wedding he was to attend as groomsman in March – he must’ve found his friend, I thought as I negotiated the escalators with the carry-on luggage and the children.
‘It’s going to eat me,’ Keira squealed as we neared the bottom, the large steel jaws swallowing the steps one by one.
‘Jump,’ I said, pulling her up and over the metal teeth.
Then I glance
d ahead, and my heart started hammering inside my chest. Jon and Justin were walking towards us with the pram, Andrew standing to the side, grinning, hands on his hips.
‘Oh my God! What are you doing here?’ I cried, astonished.
‘We thought we’d surprise you. It was too good an opportunity.’ Jon shifted the pram to present Elsie, lying on a sheepskin rug, swathed in a blanket.
I hugged each of them before Jon lifted Elsie from the pram, handing her to me. In the seven weeks since I’d seen her, she’d grown longer and plumper, but she was still small, and – as Keira pointed out – she still smelled like sweet biscuits.
Andrew collected our bags from the conveyor belt, smiling with satisfaction at having kept the secret. I glanced at the boys again. ‘Thank you for driving all that way. It means the world to me.’
We checked in for our flight to Perth, offloaded our luggage and ate dinner in the terminal. Over dinner, Jon and Justin gave us a rundown on all things Elsie: her sleeping and feeding patterns, the endless visitors, how Walter was coping with the new arrival and how their own lives were adjusting.
Keira climbed onto Jon’s lap, smacking her lips together. ‘I’m going to Perff for a holiday, Jon.’
‘Ooh, that’s exciting, isn’t it?’
Keira nodded, grabbing the handle of the pram, nudging it back and forth before peering in. ‘Oh, baby Elsie, I love you so, so much!’ she confessed.
I watched as Jon settled Keira’s heavy-handed rocking, confident that he knew what to do. ‘So how long did you know about this?’ I turned, confronting Andrew, amused.
‘Oh, a while,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Jon wrote to me on Facebook and asked how long we’d be waiting for our flight to Perth, and because it was a few hours they decided to come in and see us.’
I laughed. ‘You did well to hide that from me. Honestly, I had no idea.’
Andrew and I attended our final mandatory counselling session in Newcastle in April 2015, the boys partaking in a separate session on the same day. The counsellor wanted to clarify how we were doing post-birth, our thoughts about how the process went, how we felt about Elsie and how our own children coped with the surrogacy. She was happy with our answers, putting together a report for the lawyers so Jon and Justin could finalise the parentage order.
Andrew and I also signed an affidavit for the courts so that Jon and Justin could lodge the order, nullifying the birth certificate with my name on it; the new birth certificate stated that Jon and Justin were Elsie’s legal parents. A couple of months later we travelled to Sydney with our children for the long weekend, which coincided with Jon’s birthday. We celebrated over dinner with the boys and Elsie’s grandparents, coming together to form one big, unusual yet wonderful family. As per the post-surrogacy plan we had put together with the help of Meredith, we hope, each year, to have two such get-togethers.
Every year in Australia, a handful of women become altruistic surrogates, compensated only by love and the knowledge that they’ve changed a couple’s lives for the better, so I know I’m not special or unique in relation to surrogacy here or around the world. I don’t consider myself to be special, just courageous: I stopped dreaming and stepped out of my comfort zone, pursuing surrogacy without fully understanding the road ahead but guided by my desire to help, hoping that I’d be shown the way. I’m just an ordinary person, a wife and a mother, but I reached out, helping in the one way I knew I could. I’m proud of my choice to become a surrogate, proud enough to write about it and tell my story.
Surrogacy in Australia and overseas is growing. Infertile couples are coming to realise – often after years of trying, of loss and heartache – that their dreams of having a child may never come to fruition if they don’t pursue altruistic surrogacy in Australia or commercial surrogacy overseas. It breaks my heart to see so many couples and singles crying out for help and so few surrogates in this country to assist them.
There are many women out there considering becoming surrogates, I interact with them online in forums every week, and I want them to know that it doesn’t have to be a journey filled with red tape, heartache or regrets. If your head and your heart are in the right place, you too can give such a gift. Of course there are risks, and a woman must weigh these up before she ventures on, considering her own health and emotional state, previous pregnancies and births, and also her own family situation as support is vital. And of course, not every surrogacy experience ends well: disagreements, miscommunication, miscarriages, surrogates left out of pocket financially, and women’s bodies and minds marred by the effects of pregnancy and birth are all potential risks both parties must weigh up through proper counselling and open, honest discussions. By examining and analysing the negative experiences we can take the opportunity to learn and discuss solutions. Surrogacy is not without its complications, and like any relationship it needs constant work and communication by all involved. I can’t stress enough how important counselling is when entering a surrogacy arrangement: it is the backbone, the foundation of your thoughts, feelings and expectations; if things do go awry, further counselling should be undertaken to try to resolve the issues.
But I can only tell my own story. For me, the desire to be a surrogate couldn’t be snuffed out. It was something I felt I was born to do, and even though at times the road was rough I’d do it all again to achieve that same outcome. I truly believe nothing in this world is better than giving and receiving the gift of unconditional love.
I’m not sure if I can say I was lucky; I think I was destined to meet Jon and Justin, two wonderful, caring men with supportive families and friends. I’m glad I now call them my family too. But I was fortunate enough to have a relatively easy pregnancy and birth, Elsie healthy and happy. As for the risks, I was willing to take them, for what is life without risk? Risk makes me feel alive, living my life on the brink of so many possibilities, both good and bad.
As you have read, I had my doubts at times – doubts about my body’s ability, doubts about myself and how I’d react once Elsie was born – but doubts can be met and overcome with optimism and courage. I’m all for stepping out into this vast and wonderful world with a smile on my face, love in my heart, and seeing where it will take me. The risk I took eventually brought a magnificent reward.
After all I went through, I have no regrets. My life is the richer for having Elsie in it. I’m now proud to say that I’ve given birth to three brilliant individuals, and the love I feel for them all brings me to my knees whether they’re genetically mine or not. I went into my surrogacy journey from a place of love. I pondered it with my head but I felt the way with my heart. Yes, there were times when the way seemed dark, but in those moments I found out who I truly was, who I could be, and if it wasn’t for those moments, I wouldn’t have grown into the person I am today. I opened up and let go and experienced something that changed every fibre of who I am.
Letter to Elsie
Dearest Elsie,
It’s been many, many months since your birth and I’ve sat down many, many times, pouring my heart out in this story about how you came to be.
It was never my intention to write about my surrogacy journey. After your birth I wanted to resume writing my novel, but the more I thought about our journey together, the more compelled I felt to write it down. The words flowed easily every time I sat in front of my computer, fingers punching keys, a framed picture of you and the boys sitting next to me. I was blessed to have the time to write about my experience, it’s a commodity so precious to any mother – personal time.
I wrote my story for you, so you know just how loved you truly are by everyone involved. I also wrote my story to help other women and infertile couples who may be considering surrogacy as an option. Lastly, but certainly not least, I wrote my story for Jaxon and Keira, so they know how much I love them, how much I hope that everything they dream of in life comes their way.
Thinking back to when you were just a thought, my mind almost explodes. Elsie, you were a dream
; a dream for your fathers and then a dream for me. As if brought together by a higher consciousness, we connected, along with Sereena, to make the dream of you a reality.
I often reminisce about the time when you grew in my belly, safe in my womb. I shared poignant moments with you, confessed my insecurities, my unease at times, but also my undying protectiveness of you. I begged you to turn head down, and I laugh now at the memory of your constant kicks after dinner and how I’d pat my orb-like belly and smile softly, recognising the life inside me – my passenger, always with me. We were close then, you listening to the beat of my heart, the rush of my blood, but I want you to know that no matter the distance between us, I’ll always be with you; like a satellite orbiting your world, I’ll be watching, showering you with love from afar.
I guess you’ll read this letter as a young woman and I hope by then our bond is strong, fortified by years of regular meetings, getting to know one another. I’ll have seen you cut your first tooth, learn to walk and talk, run after Walter, swim, ride a horse, perfect the application of mascara, and even drive a car. I’m sure I’ll see you cry, get angry, even have your heart broken.
From the day you began your own journey, growing in my body, you’ve always been with me, in my heart, right next to Jaxon and Keira. When you were born and I held you for the first time, bundled up in a blanket in my arms, your skin new, pink, your eyes closed, your thin hair a soft crown – and me sore from birth, tired but more alive than before – I wanted to give you the world, but perhaps my gift was that I gave you to the world.
I can only hope that over the years you’ll come to know and believe in yourself. I want you to know in your heart that you’re wanted, loved and deeply cherished. You’re a lucky girl to have Jon and Justin as your fathers. They love you more than you’ll ever truly know. As the months have passed, I’ve had the opportunity to watch your fathers care for you, and it makes me smile: the way they cupped your head after the birth as if they cradled something so precious, an exotic treasure. The way they lean in, chuffed by the recognition in your eyes and your crooked smile when you see their faces. The way they fuss over your food, clothes and bottles, keeping you comfortable, happy and entertained. When I see those things I’m filled with immense love, the decision I made shining inside me, lighting the way.
Labour of Love Page 30