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Expecting Twins Via Surrogate: Our Birth Story

Expecting Twins Via Surrogate: Our Birth Story

Last updated on November 28th, 2023 at 07:16 pm

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Are you expecting twins via surrogate? Here is our story:

My husband and I went through an extremely traumatic and horrible undiagnosed five year infertility struggle. I was finally diagnosed with Celiac disease (we figured it out from a Dr. Oz show!) and decided to use a gestational carrier because I was too traumatized to be pregnant again after all the miscarriages (including one at 20 weeks on our 8th IVF cycle) and 11 failed IVF cycles,

Surrogacy is illegal in New York so we had to look elsewhere for a carrier. An agency matched us with most wonderful woman down in Dallas, TX. Once she became pregnant with the twins I decided to fly down and stay with her the last six weeks of the pregnancy to help out as much as I could. It was December 2010 and the weatherman was calling for a pretty bad snowstorm in New York, so at the last minute I switched my flight to one a few hours earlier to try and beat the storm. I made it to Texas safely before the storm.

Then the unexpected happened. Just 12 hours after I landed, our surrogate went into labor! She woke me up with a light shake on my shoulder and whispered “Marisa, Marisa, I think we need to go to the hospital.” I was completely taken aback. My husband was back in New York, it was 3AM, she wasn’t due for another six weeks, I had just arrived in Texas…what was happening!?

I assumed we would get to the hospital and it would be false labor, she would be watched for a few hours and then we would go back to her home. But she was already 6 cms dilated and baby A was head down ready to come… NOW! It was an awful thing to have to call my husband and tell him the babies were coming NOW, and that after 11 IVFs and 5 years he would have to miss the birth of his children. To make matters worse, the storm was so terrible in New York that every single airport was closed and all the roads were blocked, he couldn’t even get out of the driveway to drive to Texas if he had wanted. He was stuck, and there was nothing he could do about it.

My surrogate gave birth to the twins vaginally. Baby A (our little boy) presented sideways and came out blue and bruised in the face. Baby B (our daughter) was breech, but she was not in distress so the doctor simply let nature take its course, helping guide the baby’s feet down the birth canal. 31 minutes after our son was born, she arrived. l My amazing surrogate just gave birth vaginally to a sideways baby and a breech baby!

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The story of this amazing birth quickly spread throughout the hospital and we even overheard people talking about it in the parking lot! Thankfully, after two long days my husband was finally able to catch a flight to Dallas and meet his beautiful children. They spent 11 days in the NICU as “feeders and growers” and are happy and healthy. They are now 20 months old, and we can’t wait to share with them how they came to be, the village of people that helped us, and then the actual birth!

Written by: Marisa Jaffe

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