I didn't come to surrogacy through infertility, or through a friend's journey. I came to it through an article I read in my first apartment after college, no boyfriend, no plans to get pregnant anytime soon, but an idea that lodged itself in me and never left.
I looked up the requirements that day. I didn't meet a single one. So I waited.
After my son was born and my cycle returned, I looked again, and this time I did. I applied to the first agency I found and heard back the next day. I wasn't chasing compensation. I just knew this was something I'd always wanted to do.
I matched with two dads, and from our first call it felt easy. Low key, straightforward, exactly the kind of connection I hoped for.
The process itself brought things I hadn't expected. Birth control to sync my cycle. A level of injections and monitoring I didn't fully understand going in. A legal contract I trusted more than I examined closely. Looking back, a lot of it went smoothly because I got lucky, not because I was prepared.
The birth didn't go the way I had imagined. The dads missed it. I had severe tearing. The baby spent time in the nursery instead of going straight to his dads. When the family finally left to go home, the communication I needed in that moment just wasn't there. It was still a beautiful journey. It also wasn't the fully supported experience I deserved, and that gap is something I think about often.
That's the work I do now. I'm not here to hand surrogates a checklist or walk them through logistics they can find elsewhere. I'm here to support the whole person, mind, body, and spirit, through a journey that's rarely as simple as anyone expects it to be, without judgment about what that journey should look like.
