Our story… our lights at the end of a tunnel or the suns in our lives…
We wanted to be parents since 2011, and our journey to become so has been long and strewn with many pitfalls, numerous failure attempts and hope followed by disappointment, to the point that even some doctors found our file to be complex, so much so that one doctor even told us that I will never be able to bear children…
The failed attempts, the operations and the pessimism of certain doctors never got the better of our desire to create our family. I had tried so hard to try to carry our children, but fate was fierce, because after 5 years of IVF and countless day3 and/or day5 embryo transfers, I was never able to get pregnant.
So this is eventually what led us to research and consider surrogacy abroad—we had resolved to try to become parents with the help of a surrogate. In 2018, we sent emails to several agencies and then one day Hélène phoned us, and this was a call that would change our lives several months later…
Despite our track record with a complex history of medical interventions and IVF attempts, Hélène believed in our chances of becoming parents… and at times even more so than us (yes, sometimes we gave in to discouragement and sadness).
You should know that in 2011, we had an early miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, so I had to have my right fallopian tube removed, and my right uterine horn resected. This led to internal bleeding (I lost 3 litres of blood), which almost cost me my life, and I was left with significant adhesions which damaged my left fallopian tube, which also had to be removed in 2016 because a hydrosalpinx had rendered it inoperative.
It was also in 2016 that I discovered I also had endometriosis. Reading this, you are certainly wondering why we did not give up after all this… It is hope, like a vitamin in you, that is constantly renewed. But let’s go back to this phone call from Hélène, who accompanied us in our project as Intended Parents.
And if we had to start over, it is her and only her that we will trust again, because she is one of the decisive elements of our happiness. Indeed, at the end of the umpteenth attempt at IVF, I lost motivation, because the first and the last transfer with a surrogate mother had ended in failure. Knowing that we had benefited from an egg donation. For me, it was too much failure… with me it did not work, and with a surrogate mother, it hadn’t worked either… we had to stop… But Hélène convinced us not to give up and to try again. We were not far from the goal, she was right because our surrogate mother had had a weakly positive beta HCG test…
Hélène then proposed to change the donor and that she would do everything to find us an egg donor with whom it would work. After two months, no new evidence… but our original donor offered to try again, free of charge, if it didn’t work.
We accepted the offer to try again with her but gave her a legitimate financial reward because we knew the physical commitment that ovarian stimulation required.
And finally some good news… Several top-quality PGS screened blastocysts… my God what good news!!!!… the first for 8 years… We cried like it was the announcement of a pregnancy. Hélène was so happy for us… we were all happy, it was as good as hearing that the surrogate mother was already pregnant… and although she wasn’t yet, the chances of several attempts were there…
It was a euphoric moment for us… to the point of considering that I could attempt one last own embryo transfer… yes, yes, we dared to think about it after 5 years of IVF with successive implantation failures because the important thing is to believe in it and not to regret anything. We then made this request to Hélène. After having verified medically, legally, and contractually that this was possible, Hélène supported us so that it could be done, and put in place the measures which allowed it to be done as we wished.
So, I had the transfer in mid-October 2019… We were hoping for a miracle without really believing it and knew that we still had an attempt with the surrogate mother… But everything was aligned for us… We had waited years to achieve this goal… and there, 13 days later, my blood sample was POSITIVE for the first time since 2011…
“No, it’s not possible the lab made a mistake,” I shouted, and my incredulous husband kept telling me, “I don’t think so, honey… I think you are pregnant.” “Impossible, I can’t get pregnant, even a doctor told me.” The next day, I took another test, the next day another, and a week later too, and the beta HCG rate kept climbing, and not just a little… the lab didn’t make a mistake in the end, I was pregnant not with one but two reasons to live… Despite everything, after so many years, the doubt leaves you with difficulty, it did during this first ultrasound where I could see the heartbeats of our daughter and our son…
I carried my children, despite a high-risk pregnancy, and I carried them until 35 weeks… more than all the forecasts of the doctors who evoked at best 6 months of pregnancy with my scarred uterus… They were born a little premature in May 2020 during the first lockdown, 1.9 kgs for our daughter and 2.5 kgs for our son. Today, they are just over 5 months old, almost 7 kgs for our daughter and 7.5 kgs for our son… They are doing wonderfully, thank God.
Our thanks will never be enough to say to Hélène how much we are grateful to her for what she has done for us… and especially for having believed in it with us. I want to tell Intended Parents not to lose hope, to persevere, to listen to themselves so as to have no regrets and that they can entrust their parenting project to Hélène because she will be worthy of the trust they have in her.
Her kindness, empathy, listening, patience, and professionalism have allowed us to be the happy parents of our twins. We now have a sleep deficit like all young parents but incomparable happiness when our daughter and son smile at us. Without Hélène’s participation, we would never have known this; without that call that day back in 2018, we would never have had that journey with such a happy ending. So this is our story, but we hope that as future parents, you will soon be able to make your own.
C&B, France,
A journey in Ukraine
