“Just stop it!” Dara snapped.

“I’m just trying to help!” Esther argued back at him.

“But I didn’t ask for your help!” he retorted.

Esther slammed the pan lid that she was holding down on the table. The pan that the lid belonged to was on the floor beside the table, where it had recently landed with a long bang. She stormed out of the small holiday cottage, slamming the door behind her. It was dark outside but still humid after another hot day. There were no street-lights on the small road by the house; she hadn’t brought a torch…

#13

The middle of a pandemic seems like a strange time to start any activity that involves meeting people, so why did I choose March 2020 as the time to join Surrogacy UK?

When I first started seriously researching surrogacy, I was using the implant as my contraception, which lasts for 3 years. I decided that its expiry date at the start of 2021 would be a good time to aim for starting to try to conceive — it’s a very arbitrary date but it seemed as sensible as any.

Using this date, I worked out when I needed to have…

I took a wide berth around an elderly woman that was sitting on a set of steps leading up from the sidewalk. She was wrapped in several layers of scraggly shawls and bent forward to peer at me. Her mouth opened in a wide, toothless grin. I staggered backwards in shock and she cackled loudly.

These streets were unfamiliar to me and, despite the scribbled instructions I held in my hand, I felt quite lost. The buildings were tall and dark, from their brickwork to the lighting. The next corner was marked with a flashing neon sign advertising the dive…

#12

Content warning: Description of a medical procedure

At the start of January, I tried to arrange to have my hormonal implant removed because it was about to expire — but appointments weren’t being offered due to COVID. A month later, and a week after the implant had expired, I got a phone-call from the sexual health clinic offering me an appointment two days later for its removal.

As soon as I booked the appointment, I felt very stressed about it. If I’m honest, I’ve been feeling minorly stressed about having my implant removed since I first had it fitted three…

During my life, I’ve broken up with three people. Those three relationships were all very different and each ended very differently. Through experiencing the transition of these relationships from romantic to platonic (or not), I’ve learnt a lot about friendship.

The first relationship I ended was with my first boyfriend. He lived with me & some friends in a shared house at university. When we broke up, he accused me of not crying enough after the other people we lived with made me laugh. Then he dropped out of university and moved out. He phoned me for weeks afterwards asking…

#11

When I first started researching surrogacy I was overwhelmed by all the new vocabulary I had to learn. The most important terms that I had to understand were those for the two types of surrogacy that are available: gestational surrogacy (or GS), also known as host or full surrogacy; and traditional surrogacy (or TS), also known as straight or partial surrogacy. Not only did I need to understand what these meant but I also had to decide which of them was right for me.

Traditional surrogacy

Traditional surrogacy is similar to the conventional method of becoming pregnant. The surrogate monitors their ovulation…

#10

So far in my surrogacy journey, I haven’t allowed myself to look ahead too far. Although I’m really excited about being pregnant (I often turn to my partner and exclaim, “Won’t it be weird when I’m pregnant!” while overexaggerating my stomach with my arms), there’s part of me that refuses to accept that it will ever happen.

I’ve never been pregnant; I don’t know that I can physically become pregnant. (This fear is compounded by the number of infertile women I’ve met through the surrogacy community. Telling people that I plan to carry a baby for someone else also encourages…

#9

When I joined Surrogacy UK as a surrogate in the summer of 2020, I didn’t expect to meet my intended parents, Louise and Brian(*), so quickly — and they didn’t expect to meet a surrogate so quickly either! But before we could sign a surrogacy agreement together, as well as having a lot to discuss, there were also some things we needed to organise.

Life insurance

Every pregnancy carries some risk to life so the UK government advises surrogates to take out life insurance. …