Courtesy of Shannon Curry
From left to right: Nanette (surrogate) and intended parents, Shannon and John Curry
Surrogates are like a thing of mommy lore. We may know of a couple going through surrogacy or have mutual Facebook friends who became the intended parents ("IP" is the industry term), but the person who played the vital role in building these families is usually cloaked in mystery. We don’t see a rash of images of her budding belly or sweat-beaded face as she lay crumpled out on the hospital bed, post-delivery. And that’s intentional; it’s not an overlooked aspect of the process. Surrogates just aren’t the showy type.
“Surrogates are women who foster animals, volunteer at their kids’ schools, give blood,” says Shannon Curry, surrogate business development manager at ConceiveAbilities, a surrogacy agency. “They work at ObGyn clinics, they are nurses, they are teachers …. And they have a lot of empathy for people who can’t carry a child as they find mothering to be one of life’s greatest experiences.”
When you consider the overlap between surrogates and health care providers, there's no eureka moment—it makes complete and utter sense. At their core, health care professionals and surrogates embody a giving, self-sacrificial spirit. And humbled as they are, they’ll just tell you they’re here for the ride.
Getting Everyone on Board
Julie Supanchick specializes in fetal echocardiography and serves as lead for all ObGyn offices of M Health Fairview. Growing up, she always knew she would one day work with expecting moms. But the thought of becoming somebody’s gestational carrier wasn’t in the plan—it happened on the job.
Courtesy of Julie Supanchick
"Hi daddies!" An ultrasound pic addressed to the intended parents.
“I returned to work after giving birth to my daughter a few months before, and saw a slew of surrogates in a row,” she says. “The last surrogate brought the intended parents with them. Hearing from the intended parents’ side, you don’t realize how much they go through. It’s a lot emotionally, financially, time-wise. The ups and down of creating embryos, enduring all of these medical processes. We all love our babies so much it physically hurts, right? And to imagine spending my life savings to wait three years just to have a chance … I mean, for all those who are able, this is something everyone should consider doing.”
That heart-to-heart compelled Supanchick to start researching the surrogacy process through Facebook groups. These groups, she says, became her stopping point for questions, guidelines, screenings, recommended agencies, and more. While a prospective surrogate isn’t legally required to register with an agency before undergoing the process, it’s highly encouraged as the legwork associated with doing it independently can be arduous.
Supanchick ultimately landed on IARC, a Maple Grove-based surrogacy agency. “The agency process involves interviews, collecting medical data, making sure you’re a candidate—sometimes even undergoing psychological testing—and then you sign with the agency if you meet the requirements,” she says. From there, the agency sends out the intended parents’ preferences to potential matches. But contrary to popular belief, surrogates do have a say in who they’re matched with, too.
“I can only speak from my company’s approach, but I feel we are a very surrogate-forward agency, and we want to make sure this is as much the surrogate’s journey as it is the IP's,” says Curry. “She has to love the family, she has to love the experience—she’s absolutely a part of the decision and never has to move forward if she doesn’t want to.”
Kristen Russek, a physical therapist and clinic coordinator for Allina Health, says she couldn’t officially undergo the surrogacy process without her children’s blessing first. “I had to make sure they were on board because this will affect their lives, too,” she says. “My kids saw this as the baby being like a cousin to them and the mom being like a sister to me. They were 100 percent on board.”
Photo courtesy of Julie Supanchick
She says the surrogacy conversation was initially broached when she learned that her friend was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Prior to that, she had experienced a flurry of infertility issues and desperately explored all avenues, including uterus transplants (Editor’s note: This is largely considered an experimental procedure in the U.S.). Russek mentioned the idea of surrogacy “in passing” to her friend who later followed up to see if the offer was still on the table.
“I thought, I can give a year of my life so they can have a lifetime of a family together,” she says. “With me having my own kids, I knew what that meant. And for someone to have it taken all away because of something beyond their control made me appreciate everything I do have.”
As it stands, one in eight women experience infertility—and that doesn’t factor in people that may have medical conditions barring them from having a healthy pregnancy. “I have a medical condition with my eyes that could threaten my eyesight during pregnancy,” says Curry, who is herself an intended parent. After delivering a healthy baby boy, she was told by eye doctors and retina specialists that having another child would mean potentially forfeiting her vision. Add to that, the medication she takes to manage her condition hasn’t been tested in utero. She believed the risks were too stacked against her.
“We didn’t feel like our family was complete yet, so we explored adoption and then surrogacy, and ultimately determined that that was right for us.” Curry underwent the independent route, and talked to as many people as possible about surrogacy.
She eventually matched with Nanette Wester, a newborn care nurse for Fairview Southdale who has three children of her own. “Working as a nurse in the mom/baby unit, I get to see the joy that a baby brings to families,” says Wester. “I also get to see different struggles people have gone through to have a baby. I had a coworker that did surrogacy and every time I saw her, I would drill her with questions to try to gain as much knowledge from her as I could.”
Curry says the journey between surrogate and IP doesn’t have a cold stop in the delivery room. “Nanette pumped and gave us breastmilk for the first three months. We’re actually having a date night with her and her husband in the next two weeks!”
Not Giving Up
Staff at ConceiveAbilities is often confronted with long-held misconceptions from interested parties. Chief among them is the fear of “giving up” a baby the surrogate has presumably grown attached to. But in Curry's opinion, maternal instinct doesn’t cloud a woman’s judgment. If anything, it sharpens the picture: Straight out of the gate, a surrogate approaches her pregnancy through a completely different lens than her previous pregnancies.
“In talking to many surrogates, and speaking to my own experience, there’s very much a feeling that she [the carrier] is the child’s forever auntie,” says Curry. “It’s been established from the moment that they did this that the baby isn’t theirs. Surrogates never say they’re giving a baby up—they’re giving the baby back is what they tell us.”
Supanchick says starting the process with a support system in place poised her for that future hand-off moment. Through Facebook groups and IARC, she sought answers to all the hard questions she fielded along the way. “So many people came up to me and said ‘You’re giving your baby away!’ But it’s a completely different mindset so early on,” she says. “It’s a mindset of understanding that you’re doing this for someone. Especially after you’re matched with someone, it’s settled: This is their baby and I’m so excited for them.”
Similarly, Russek says she experienced a very conscious mindset. “Right from the start, knowing that this is not my DNA puts you in a different state,” she says. “It’s like, I’m growing this baby that I’ll always love and take care of, but I also know that I’m giving baby over to this family and this is their child. It just naturally happens in your mind—you have this conscious awareness and your body reacts differently.”
Traditional surrogacy used to involve a carrier’s own egg combined with donor sperm—rendering her genetically related to the child. But this is a rarity in today’s landscape. “There are legal implications that factor in when a carrier is genetically related to the embryo,” says Curry. “There is also fear about attachment that comes into play.”
These days, families opt for a gestational carrier (most notably popularized by Kim Kardashian and Gabrielle Union). According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, when using a GC, the eggs used to make the embryos do not come from the carrier. Because the eggs will be retrieved from one woman and implanted in another, this technique requires in vitro fertilization (IVF). “One of the first questions I get is ‘Is the baby related to me? Do I have to use my own eggs?,’” says Curry. “I say, no, this is someone else’s bread and you are there cooking that bread.”
A Special Delivery
Throughout their careers, Russek, Wester, and Supanchick have collectively touched hundreds (maybe even thousands) of patients, literally and figuratively, and it’s this shared sense of humanity that led them down the surrogacy path. Russek says that health care workers belong to the broader, overarching realm of caregivers.
“I think that as caregivers, we see so many patients have so many struggles,” she says. “We just have a different perspective of the obstacles, the struggles, the health conditions of other people that you may not see on the outside. But I can’t tell you how many people I have had through my life come back to me and say my [surrogacy] story hits home with them, inspiring them to consider it for themselves.”
Wester adds, “Surrogacy has brought so much happiness, joy, honor, and fulfillment for me. If you’re thinking about being one, you will not regret it. There are so many people looking for a special someone to help grow their family and it would not be possible without a surrogate.
"I loved watching my little belly buddy grow and seeing how much happiness he has brought to his family makes my heart burst.”
