Their Bun, Our Oven: Memoirs Of A Surrogate

By Melissa Jones

Would you risk your life to follow your dreams? I did. Only I didn't know it at the time.

For years, I longed to be a surrogate. I offered for friends struggling with fertility, even before I had my own children. My heart has always hurt for women who yearned for a family that their bodies couldn't give them.

After completing our family, my husband and I embarked on the journey of getting matched with a hopeful couple who couldn't conceive. We did, and what unfolded over the next few months was something no one could have expected, even putting my and the baby's lives in danger.

I survived by the grace of God, started writing, and these are my memoirs of a surrogate.

-Melissa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887633268

Melissa Jones

MELISSA JONES was born in London, where she now lives. This is her third novel.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Every. Single. Day.

November: Rozanne

December: The Match

December: Are We Crazy?

December: Erickson

December: Dr. Cantlin

January: Send

January 18: Breathe In, Breathe Out

February: SurroMel

February 9: I See You

February 10: Airport Tears

February 16: Brake Check

February 26: Polly-Polyp Oxen Free

April: Cautiously Optimistic

May 9: Shake It Off

May 15: Here We Go

May 16: She's Amazing

May 23: 7dp5dt

May 24: Stop It

May 29: Send the Orders, I'll Make It Happen

June 8: Six Weeks—This Roller-Coaster Ride

June 29: Nine Weeks—I Am a Surrogate

July 6: Ten Weeks—We Popped

July 21: Thirteen Weeks—He or She, What Will It Be?

August: Sixteen Weeks—Another Woman's Baby

September 12: Twenty Weeks—Baby Momma and Surro-Spouse

September 24: Twenty-One Weeks—That's Pretty Awesome

October 3: Twenty-Three Weeks—That Girl

October 17: Twenty-Five Weeks—Cold Panic

November 7: Twenty-Seven Weeks—Face-Palm

December 5: Thirty-One Weeks—My Heart

December 7: Thirty-Two Weeks—You Woke the Momma Bear

December 13: Thirty-Three Weeks—Extreme Babysitting

December 17: Thirty-Three Weeks—Holy Crap

December 21: Thirty-Four Weeks—Science Is Cool

December 23: Thirty-Four Weeks—The Pop

December 23: Postpartum Day One—Finding Peace

December 23: Postpartum Day One—She's Here

December 24: Postpartum Day Two—Thankful

December 26: Postpartum Day Four—The Best Day

January 6: Two Weeks Postpartum—Wait, What?

January 9: Two Weeks Postpartum—Bittersweet Goodbyes

Epilogue

About the Author

cover.jpg

Their Bun, Our Oven

Memoirs Of A Surrogate

Melissa Jones

Copyright © 2023 Melissa Jones

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-325-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-789-1 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88763-326-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To God, my family, friends, and amazing support system, and to everyone along the way who has made me who I am.

Every. Single. Day.

I stood there at the kitchen counter, eight months pregnant, chopping vegetables, tears of anger streaming down my face.

Why won't she just go to sleep? Why am I so angry?

My toddler, Olivia, lay in her bedroom, singing to herself, not napping. Brandon walked in from the garage and turned the corner to find me there, borderline sobbing. His dirty blond hair and freckled skin smeared with car grease. He was not an emotional man, and Lord knows, he didn't know what to do with me and all my pregnancy hormones half the time. Our eyes met, his likely hoping I would just not see him and he could slink back into the garage, mine full of exhaustion and sadness.

Whaaaaat's goin' on? he asked hesitantly. His strawberry beard glistened with sweat from the summer heat.

Through sobs and tears, I said, She just won't go to sleep! I just need her to take a nap. It's been forty-five minutes since I put her down, and she just won't go to sleep!

Brandon's face searched for the right thing to say, his gray-blue eyes wide, trying to figure out how to diffuse the hormone bomb in front of him. But there was no easy way of diffusing this bomb. I knew I was irrational, but the feelings were so strong. If I couldn't reason with myself, he may as well have waved the white flag and retreated back into the garage where he came from.

Do you want me to go try? he offered.

Through sniffs, and still chopping vegetables for dinner, I told him to go back out and keep helping his sister with her car. I knew I needed to just walk away and let it go, but why was it so hard? I kept myself from going back to her room again, although I could hear her singing for quite some time until she finally quieted and fell asleep.

A few days later, on a better day, after Olivia was in bed, and I was eating my nightly ice cream on the couch, I stopped and looked at Brandon. Babe, what would you think about us doing a surrogacy?

His head swung left to look at me, eyebrow raised, confusion on his face. What?

Surrogacy. You know I've always wanted to be a surrogate. Christina is going to be our last baby. We know that. We're done. What if, after this, we did a surrogacy?

No. Hard no, he said, shaking his head firmly.

I laughed softly to myself, thinking back to the incident a few days prior and honestly much of this pregnancy with our second child. My first pregnancy had been so easy, but then again, I napped when I wanted, and the only person I had to take care of was myself. This time around, I was tired, squeezing in naps when Olivia napped, if I didn't have other things to do or clients to see, and I was trying to rationalize with a toddler. I was in more pain than with my first pregnancy and, yes, more emotional. But the desire to be a surrogate was strong and genuine. I had thought about and talked about being a surrogate for years. I remembered the first time it came out of my mouth. I was talking with a friend of mine who was going through yet another miscarriage. Her heart hurt so badly, and I loved her so much and just wanted her to have this thing she wanted so deeply.

Hey, if you need someone to carry the baby for you, I'll do it.

At the time, I was young, single, and had never had a baby, but I meant it. To the core. I hated seeing my friend hurt that way. Fast-forward a few years to meeting my husband, dating, marriage, honeymoon, and jumping right into having babies. Within only a few months of being married, the stick turned blue. I remember being so excited. I had to tell someone, but I couldn't tell anyone close by until I had told Brandon, so I texted a friend we met on our honeymoon. I'm pretty sure I told just about everyone I saw over the next few weeks. Psh! to the idea that you have to wait until the first trimester passes to announce! I'm a mental health therapist, which means I'm essentially a professional secret keeper. But I am terrible at keeping my own secrets.

Eight weeks in, we lost the baby.

I will never forget the physical pain of that night. And I will never forget the actual moment when it truly hit me that my baby died. I was standing at the top of the steps leading to our living room, ready for work, thinking I had handled the past two days just fine. I was fine. Until I was frozen at the top of the steps. I couldn't move. The sensation of the emotional pain flooding over me brought me to my knees, crumpled in tears on the floor. The little heartbeat we saw on the monitor had stopped. My body rejected my own flesh and blood. Was it a boy? A girl?

A few months later, when I thought I was totally fine and past it, a family member announced they were pregnant.

Did you hear that Nick and Jenny are pregnant? Brandon asked me with a big smile on his face.

My smile sank to blankness, blood rushed to my face, and tears filled my eyes. I don't want to talk about it.

Brandon, not realizing my overwhelming physiological reaction to his words, continued, Yeah, they sent out an announcement earlier today—

"I don't want to talk about it. The tears flooded out. I wanted to be happy for them. They had been married a bit longer than we had, and she had been discretely not drinking the past few months. This was obviously" coming.

Why did this hurt so badly?! Why am I crying? We lost the baby months ago… I should be fine by now…

But I wasn't.

A few months later, Brandon and I decided to start trying again, and just like that, we were pregnant. The pregnancy was a breeze. I was happy, healthy, and everything was textbook. My water broke at thirty-nine weeks and four days while having my nightly ice cream, which started the most amazing birthing process I could have ever imagined. Nine hours of labor and thirty minutes of pushing, and I had sweet baby Olivia in my arms.

Two years later, we decided to start trying again. Once again, we were pregnant right away. I remembered a colleague scoffing playfully at me at the idea that I could plan a birth month, thinking I would get pregnant that easily. But we did. My body was made for this. Granted, pregnancy number two hadn't been quite as joyful as pregnancy number one, but I was just as healthy and only six hours after being induced and ten minutes of pushing, I had my second magical moment of baby Christina coming out and being laid in my arms. Only a few hours after she was born, I looked at Brandon and smiled, So what do you think about me being a surrogate? He rolled his eyes, and we laughed.

In the meantime, between my two babies, I had many friends reach the Let's have a baby phase of their lives, terrified that they would be a one-in-eight statistic. Every time, I would tell them, Hey, if you ever have an issue, I will carry your baby for you. And I meant it every single time.

The thought of being a surrogate was no whim for me. It was something I had thought about consistently for as long as I could remember. The idea of hearts breaking, wombs empty. Being a surrogate was my calling. And although I had mentioned this in passing to Brandon many times over the years, I made the mistake of trying to really bring it up for discussion while I was a hot-mess ball of hormones. Brandon was still hard on no. I randomly found my way back to the topic once a week, if not more, over the next couple months.

I think it would be really weird having sex with you if you're pregnant with another man's baby.

I laughed and rolled my eyes. Wow. You know I'm not going to be having an affair, right? We both laughed. I've actually read that it's fairly common for the father of the surrogate baby to have limited to no involvement in the process. A lot of men seem to just leave it to the ladies.

Brandon nodded, lips pursed.

I gave the topic some space and brought it back up again when Christina was about a year old. I was driving us home from a baseball game. He was just tipsy enough, so I took my opportunity.

So…what do you think about the idea of surrogacy?

His face swung left to look at me, eyebrow raised. "Are you still thinking about that?"

I glanced right at him. Every. Single. Day.

Brandon's face shifted from confusion to intrigued. He started asking questions, and I started answering the questions I could, finding answers to the questions I couldn't. I had lunch with a friend of mine, Mark, who had babies via surrogate, picking his brain to learn everything I could, especially the things I didn't know I needed to learn or consider. I joined a Christian surrogacy group on social media, watched the conversations, asked questions, soaked in all the information I could, and shared with Brandon everything I was learning and seeing.

Over the next few months, he continued with his questions, and I continued working to find answers. We had a lot of conversations, listened to each other's worries and concerns, and over time, Brandon softened. He knew I had talked about this for years, so it wasn't just some crazy idea I was having that would pass (this may happen at times, I admit nothing). This was something I wanted just as badly as I wanted to have our own children. I truly believed that if I didn't do this, I would feel its absence on my deathbed.

In my research, I learned that many agencies had an age cutoff for surrogates at thirty-five. Well, I was thirty-three, so that only gave me a couple years to make this happen, especially if the process took a while. Then one day, after that final, fateful conversation, we decided to move forward with the next step.

Umm… How long is this whole process? Brandon asked with a concerned, skeptical scowl on his face.

Well, based on what I'm seeing online, it could take months just to match with a couple. Just depends.

Brandon nodded slowly, his scowl softened. His jaw unclenched softly from behind his beard as he began swishing his pursed lips from side to side—his standard thinking move. But he seemed satisfied with this answer. I grabbed the laptop and plopped on the couch, typed in the website of the surrogacy coordination company I had chosen, Footsteps to Family, took a deep breath, and started my application.

November: Rozanne

The application was intense. From health to history to financial to preferences I may or may not have had about the intended parents I wanted to carry for. It took me several weeks, several saves, several scans and uploads to complete. Through this process, I was thankful for lunch dates with Mark, whose twin boys were born via surrogate a few years ago. My mind flashed back to the restaurant last spring, sitting across from him as I started in, Okay, tell me everything I need to know. What are the things I don't even know I need to know?

Well, he started, his blue eyes brightened with excitement, do you know if you want to do one embryo? Or two?… How do you feel about termination?… Selective reduction?… Do you want them to have a life insurance policy on you in case something happens to you during the pregnancy?… Are you willing to surrogate for a homosexual couple?… Do you want a relationship with the parents?… How do you feel about providing milk afterward?

Overall, I felt like I knew a lot of the answers easily. I had always known that my heart wanted to do this for a woman whose body wouldn't do this for her. I felt like I probably wanted a single embryo transfer, but my boundaries were blurry with a multiple embryo transfer. Could I be willing to start with a single transfer, then do multiple if that didn't work? I wasn't sure of the answer for this one. Hard no on termination for me. Once it's in there, only God takes it out. I do feel like if the baby was very sick or in pain, I would be willing to induce labor and let the parents hold the baby to allow natural death, but no termination in utero. And I completely understood that this may make matching with an intended parent more difficult. I was willing to wait for my match.

Selective reduction? What was this? Mark explained that sometimes when either multiple embryos were implanted or embryos split, parents could choose to terminate one (or more if needed) embryo to reduce the number of fetuses, in theory, allowing a higher chance that the others would be more healthy or had a greater chance at survival. I felt like this fell in the no-termination section for me, so that's a no.

Life insurance policy? Wow, that one never crossed my mind. You hear crazy stories of women dying in childbirth, but you never think about it happening to you. I mean, I had healthy pregnancies, so I should be fine, but I guess if it was standard, it was worth looking into. And I most definitely wanted a relationship with the parents. For me, this idea had never been about the baby. With my friends along the way, it was always about them. Their hearts feeling whole, not the baby at the end. I needed the relationship.

Breast milk. This one was a no-brainer for me. My body had always been a great producer of milk. It would feel wrong for me to not pump afterward. Like a waste. Even if they didn't want the milk, I could donate it. So that one was easy.

By mid-November, I completed my paperwork and submitted my application. With no idea of what came next, I mentally worked to leave it at that. All I could do at this point was wait, and I had no idea how long that wait would be. But within a few days, I received a phone call from a Nevada phone number. My heart began racing as I realized Footsteps to Family was based in Nevada.

Hello?

Hi, this is Rozanne from Footsteps to Family. Am I speaking with Melissa?

Excited shock ran down my back, and I looked at Brandon. Our eyes met as my mouth dropped with excitement.

Hi! Yes, this is Melissa! I answered as I scurried to the bedroom to avoid the background noise of two busy toddlers.

Rozanne sounded like a warm, bubbly, personable woman. Spoiler alert, she was. She's amazing. Her online profile displayed a gorgeous, fiery redhead with amazing curls and a smile for days. We greeted, personalized, then jumped in.

I've read through your profile, but I want you to tell me exactly what you're looking for in an intended parent.

"Well, I know that I want to carry for a woman with fertility issues. That is definitely where my heart is. I am no-termination unless there are extreme medical issues, then I would be willing to do something like April and Jackson did—sorry for the Grey's Anatomy reference." We laughed together, and she confirmed that she understood exactly what I meant.

I would love to have someone local so they can be involved in the doctor appointments and such, and I would definitely like to have a relationship with the family during and after the surrogacy. Other than those things, I don't terribly have a preference with any other details.

We talked some more and answered a few extra questions she had to help her narrow down her search. When it came to choosing your intended parent or IP, the surrogate had total control over who they wanted to work with. However, the IPs also had total control over who they wanted to work with, so finding a good match, I'm sure, could be difficult in some cases. You could choose based on age, fertility issues (or none), sexual orientation, marital status, race, location, literally everything you could think of.

Well, I have an IP that is looking to match. They are such a nice couple. They are located in Nigeria and have been looking… Her voice faded to the background.

My face dropped. Holy smokes. There was nothing local about Nigeria. I imagined she had been advocating for this couple super hard, but not being able to be close to the IPs was just not something I wanted. Rozanne was filling me in on details, but my mind quickly flooded through the what-ifs of going into labor early or, God forbid, the baby not making it, and the parents having to take a multi-hour cross-Atlantic flight before being able to be here. My helping heart was tempted to fold, but my desire to meet my needs stood strong.

Yikes, that's really far. I'm not sure that's the right fit for me.

Okay, no problem at all. I have another couple who is a bit closer to you. They live in Wyoming and are an amazing couple. Her story is just heartbreaking. She has been trying for years to have a baby, even trying IVF herself, and they have finally decided to try surrogacy.

She continued telling me about them as my mind drifted again. Wyoming isn't too far away. That's a day's drive versus a day's plane ride. And the other details sounded exactly like what I had in mind. Rozanne and I wrapped up our conversation, and she told me she was going to email me the profile for both couples so I could look them over and get back to her when I was ready.

I hung up the phone, and my face hurt. I may have been smiling that entire time. I'm not sure.

Oh my gosh! This is happening. It's starting! I just talked with a surrogacy coordinator who is matching me with a family to be their surrogate!

I sat, processed for a moment, then picked my phone back up and called Holly. Holly was my person. My ride or die. We met in our early twenties and had been through thick and thin since. She even set Brandon and I up on a blind date. Our girls were born months apart from each other. Our families were a beautiful mess of best friends. Needless to say, moments like these don't happen without calling Holly.

Hi! she answered with her kind, chipper voice.

Oh my gosh. It's happening! The words poured out of my mouth.

She giggled a little. What's happening?

Surrogacy. I just got off the phone with the coordinator. She's sending me some profiles of parents to look at. Holy smokes! This is happening!

Yay! That's so exciting! Is Brandon excited? I could hear her smile in her voice.

Umm, I think so? You know B. He won't get excited to try to keep me level. But he is engaged in the conversation and asks a lot of questions. In Brandon world, those are good things! We laughed together in agreement. I do need to ask you something.

Anything. What's up?

So I know there are going to be a lot of appointments, particularly once I get pregnant, and B can only do so much and take so much time off of work. So…will you be my surro-spouse? Come to appointments and stuff with me?

Heck yeah! I was hoping I would get to come with you! This is going to be amazing! I mean, I couldn't do it, but I'm super excited to do it with you! And we get to see Erickson!

I know, right! I just love him!

Dr. Erickson was the ob-gyn Holly and I both used for all of our kids. He was the kindest person you could ever meet and seriously the best doctor ever. He just brought a calmness and level of caring into any room he entered that made you feel loved and at peace. Holly and I loved him. Through each of our pregnancies, we would often coordinate appointments so that we could both go to each other's appointments. Dr. Erickson was very aware that Holly and I were a package deal.

I wrapped up my conversation with Holly then headed to the living room with a skip in my step. I shared the details of my Rozanne conversation with Brandon. He maintained his skeptical eyebrows while trying to simultaneously seem nonchalant and supportive.

Good deal, babe. Yeah, Nigeria sounds crazy. I wonder why they would come to the US to do a surrogacy? I smiled a little on the outside, big on the inside. My sweet B.

I sat down with the laptop and found some simple literature that indicated that many countries such as Nigeria do not recognize surrogacy as legal or legitimate, therefore the IPs have no legal rights