The 22nd day of the second month of 2022 had an air of fortuity about it, but for Jessica Van Nooten it started like any ordinary day. The Melbourne-based chef went to work, came home and did some laundry. She was folding washing when she received a spine-chilling WhatsApp message. “Hello, your baby has been born unexpectedly,” it read. “She’s alive for the moment.”
Fifteen-thousand kilometres away in the Black Sea port city of Odessa, Ukraine, Van Nooten’s baby girl had been birthed by a surrogate mother. She’d come into the world 11 weeks early, weighing just 1450 grams. Her arrival marked the end of Van Nooten and her husband’s seven-year struggle to have a baby, but the start of another tumultuous journey.
“Kevin [Middleton] and I got together 20 years ago, when I was 18, and we always wanted children,” says Van Nooten. “We’re both chefs, so we travelled the world for work, and started trying for a baby when I turned 30.”
After trying to conceive naturally for two years, the couple went through 15 rounds of IVF. “That’s when our third and final specialist said no more,” recalls Van Nooten. “And he suggested we look into surrogacy.”
Van Nooten was initially hesitant to pursue the procedure – a form of assisted reproductive technology where a woman bears and births a child on behalf of a person or couple who are medically
