Amanda Interview - About Being A Surrogate
That really is amazing. Wow. So you have done two surrogacies?
Yes, we have done two.
What was your fondest memories of being a surrogate?
Ok, so hands down, we talk about this as a family all the time, our very favorite was, in the delivery room for the first delivery, we thought she was going to come early so my IPs had flown from Israel almost a month before her due date and then she just didn't come. I was dilating really fast, she could come any day now, and we were all freaked out, and then the second they arrived, I completely stopped dilating. So here they sat around, they had a blast, they traveled all over California and did all these things but they were just waiting and waiting. You start to feel bad, these parents are sitting here, and every day I was like I just need to have this baby. So finally the doctor agreed to induce us. She said get there at 5 a.m., so we show up at 5 a.m., they sent us home. Come back at 7, we show up at 7 and they sent us home. It was all day long, it was to the point it was noon, I was crying and I'm like please just take us. SO we finally get there at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm all hooked up and ready to have the baby and they started the Pitocin, my IPs are talking to my husband and they are all ignoring me cause I'm boring I guess just sitting there in the bed, and the nurse comes in and the nurse and I are talking, and she turns to the parents and says "OK, she's almost here, we are ready to start." And the look on their faces, it was just pure panic. They had been waiting, they know she's coming, they are sitting in the hospital. And they said "what?". And I said "oh no, she's here, she's already crowning, she's coming out of me right this second". And they said "no she's not". And I'm like "no she is" and the doctor said "she is, are you ready?". And they looked at each other, and they turned pale, and they were holding their faces like "What do we do?" and I told them it was going to be ok, I swear it, it will be fine. It was amazing. My husband was laughing cause it wasn't his baby so he could enjoy watching everybody freak out. We delivered her, and the look on their faces seeing their baby for the first time and then getting to hold the baby, it made anything that could have gone wrong or had gone wrong, or you know all the stress and the scariness of it all, it all went away and made it worth it. Just seeing them see their baby for the first time and getting to hold her, and you know my husband was there taking pictures so we documented every single moment of it. Because the parents, you know as a parent you are so excited and you're not seeing it, so my husband was there taking all these pictures and they didn't even realize it. They laughed about it, they said when they got home there were 2,000 pictures on there, how did that happen? My husband was like "I just took every picture". We waited two years and they called up and said "we want to have another baby" and we said "oh, I don't know" and so then their daughter got on the phone and said "Auntie, I want a sister". And how can you say no to that? This cute little baby is on the phone and so I was like "alright". So then we did a sibling journey and had the baby in January, another little girl. So it was wonderful.