I know I’m supposed to keep active during pregnancy, but how? — All the official advice about exercise is that pregnant people should continue moving their bodies as much as they can and that keeping active during pregnancy leads to all sorts of health benefits, from fewer pregnancy complications to quicker births. However, that’s easier said than done. Before I got pregnant…

What happened at the antenatal scans for the baby I’m carrying? — As their surrogate, I witness an intimate event in my intended parent’s life: the scans of their first-born child. …

Thinking about carrying another surrogate pregnancy while I’m still pregnant with the first — I went into surrogacy thinking it was a “one and done” for me. I wanted the experience of pregnancy and when I’d had that I couldn’t imagine wanting to do it again. However, once I learnt more about surrogacy, I discovered that, apparently, it can be quite addictive. In the…

Tips and tricks that got me through a queasy first trimester — CW: extended discussion of nausea and reference to vomiting I’ve never been pregnant before so, when I was deciding to become a surrogate, I had to decide whether the risk of morning sickness was something I was willing to accept. I decided that it was, but I also optimistically thought…

I’ve never wanted to see two lines on a pregnancy test before — As a surrogate, it’s sometimes hard to know which words are the right ones to use. Hospital and legal forms refer to me as the ‘mother’ but I know that’s definitely not right. I’m not sure whether I am ‘expecting’ because I’m not sure what that means we’re expecting to…

Worrying whether my body is capable of carrying my first pregnancy as a surrogate — CW: This blog discusses pregnancy complications and embryo loss. I haven’t done this before. I’ve never been a surrogate before. I’ve never been pregnant before. I can read and research a lot but I can never know what it will be like for me. One way that I’m researching is…

How to get pregnant with someone else’s baby — The process of IVF for surrogacy is very similar to any other kind of IVF, except the intended parents’ embryos are used. When I met my intended parents, they had several embryos waiting on ice, so the protocol that I followed was for a frozen embryo transfer. The first step…

★★☆☆☆: Necessary but disgusting — The first part of my FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycle is to turn off the part of my brain responsible for marshalling my ovaries into action. This is done through a nasal spray taken twice a day called Synarel. My first impressions of Synarel were not great. The little bottle…

I hope this doesn’t happen to every surrogate! — (To avoid publicly complaining about someone with a stake in a decision about my life, there has been a long delay since the events described in this article.) As a child-free surrogate, my fertility clinic was very cautious about accepting me. …