The Most Beautiful Thing: Nearly Defeated After In Vitro and Adoption Attempts, This Couple Found the Answer in Surrogacy by Dave Bigelow
An SPS sucess story
In my dreams someone spoke to me in a language I couldn't understand. When I
didn't answer, the words turned into screams. I was out of bed and running down
the hall before I was fully conscious. Andrew, my three-month-old, was awake and
hungry. When I reached his room, my wife Lien was already there.
"I'll feed him" she said. "Go get some sleep." Andrew took the bottle and his howls
stopped. The clock read 3:45 a.m.
"This is tougher than I thought." I said. Like all first-time parents, our lives had
turned upside down. Compared to most, though, we were starting late. At 45, we
didn't have the energy of couples 10 or 20 years younger. Carrying the baby, car
seat, diaper bag, etc. was taking a toll on our aging joints and muscles.
"It's tough," Lien agreed."But we've been through worse." She was right. Andrew's
birth in late 2005 was the culmination of an exhausting, frustrating and often
heartbreaking process that had spanned half a decade.
Early in our marriage we concentrated on getting ahead in our careers and
enjoying our scarce free time. Late in our thirties, the priorities changed. By then
we had traded our roller-blades for walking shoes, our sports cars for sensible four-
door sedans. On my 40th birthday, we finally decided it was time for children.
We sought medical help right out of the gate. Extensive testing, fertility drugs and
other procedures should have increased our odds, but 18 fruitless months
convinced us to go to Plan B: In Vitro Fertilization, a modern miracle that has
enabled thousands to overcome fertility obstacles and experience parenthood.
IVF isn't easy. During each month-long cycle, Lien received one to three injections
per day, some with a needle as long as my pinkie finger. I gave the shots; I won't
claim that I got the worse end of the deal, but it was nerve-wracking nonetheless.
At the end of each cycle, Lien had to undergo two painful procedures: extraction of
the eggs and insertion of fertilized embryos, each of which required several hours
in the hospital and at least a day of recovery.
Two weeks after the first cycle, Lien was recuperating at home while I was working.
We had been waiting nervously for the results. We had no doubts it would work.
Still...
My assistant pulled me out of a meeting; Lien was on the line. By the time I got to
my office, it was crowded with well-wishers. I took a deep breath and picked up the
phone. "it didn't work," was all Lien said. I sat in stunned silence. The hubbub in my
office suddenly died down. People muttered words of encouragement as they filed
out.
"Don't give up." someone said. We didn't. Despite the crushing failure and the
resulting two-week tailspin of despair, we kept trying, five cycles of injections,
anticipation and disappointment before we gave up.
Adoption didn't work either. These days, people looking to adopt a newborn greatly
outnumber newborns available for adoption. It still takes some good luck, but our
bad luck continued.
"Maybe God doesn't want us to have a baby," Lien said one day. "He just wants to
make sure we want one." I answered, with optimism I didn't feel. By that time, we
were exhausted from four years of defeat. For awhile, we stopped trying. We
barely even spoke about it. Slowly, though, we began to. After a year we could
look back and analyze what went wrong. IVF had probably failed because of our
age. A woman's egg quality declines rapidly after 35, and we didn't start until after
40.
The solution: an egg donor. Through an agency, Lien selected a tall redhead.
Then I read the application for her candidate. One question was "List any
mechanical skills."
"Hello, I'm a girl!" was her answer. I laughed out loud. Humor may not be genetic,
but I knew she was the one for us.
Aside from egg quality, we worried that Lien might have difficulty carrying a baby
because of surgery she'd undergone years before. With no patience for trial and
error, we finally caught a break. After three months, our agency found an excellent
candidate who lived just ten miles away.
A few challenges arose along the way. The start was delayed while the egg donor
recovered from a minor health problem, and Andrew arrived late at the end. For
the most part, though, everything went right. On a December after noon I cut the
umbilical cord and our miracle baby had arrived.
Three Months later, we can't remember (or even imagine) our lives without Andrew.
We couldn't have asked for a better baby: blond hair green eyes, fine features and
a happy, friendly personality. After five years of terrible luck, our ledger was
instantly balanced in one perfect moment when Andrew cam screaming into the
world, skinny as a stick, his blue skin covered with blood. But even then, he was
the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.