From the outside, their 24-year relationship looked solid.
After a stillbirth through surrogacy, friends were convinced the couple would be fine because they seemed like the “most together couple” they knew. But the wife wasn’t so sure.
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For months, it had felt like she and her husband Ethan were two bodies fumbling to find each other in the dark. At home, their orbits rarely intersected. Once, he didn’t realize she was right behind him and he shut the door on her.
Years of Undiagnosed Illness
The challenges didn’t start with surrogacy. She suffered from endometriosis, adenomyosis, and early menopause – conditions that the medical system had trivialized for years. Her symptoms rattled their intimacy, upended her career, and made Ethan her caretaker. Decades of being undiagnosed also cost her fertility, depleting her ovarian reserve and leading to miscarriage after miscarriage with IVF and IUIs.
It felt like they were suspended in the quiet between the cracks and the crumble.
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Though the couple weren’t living the life they dreamed, and the wife felt guilty for the weight she’d foisted on Ethan, the two managed to maintain the joie de vivre they’d had since first meeting – until surrogacy entered the picture.
The Surrogacy Compromise
The decision to use an egg donor and a surrogate was an act of compromise. She had been ambivalent about motherhood, but the idea of coparenting with Ethan had gradually filled her with tenderness and curiosity. But after years of illness, she wanted a hysterectomy. Ethan still really wanted to be a dad. Neither wanted to jeopardize her wellness with more hormonal treatments and pregnancy losses. Some doctors criticized her for giving up on her eggs and uterus “too soon,” but the choice initially felt liberating.
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The First Surrogacy Experience
Their first surrogacy experience ended in stillbirth. It was the kind the couple now caution other intended parents against. They entrusted an agency with their fate and their funds, putting the agency in charge of introducing them to a surrogate and acting as the intermediary for reimbursing her pregnancy-related expenses. At the time, the two were unaware of the agency’s proven fraudulent history.
The couple had weathered life-altering challenges together in their 20s and 30s. But surrogacy nearly destroyed what they had left. The account does not describe how they came back, only that the experience changed them. The wife notes that she wasn’t sure they’d be fine – and she was right to be unsure.
