Surrogacy Update: The Announcement We Didn’t Want to Make

It’s been a minute since we’ve posted any surrogacy updates, and truth be told, I had hoped that we might be able to make some exciting announcements by about this time. But as you can already tell from the tenor of this post, we’re disappointed to say that we won’t be making any of those kinds of announcements anytime soon.

If you’re just catching up, we received an unsolicited text back in January of last year from a wonderful woman who was willing to be our surrogate. We started taking steps down the surrogacy road, which took a long time. Doctor approvals, attorneys, contracts, paperwork, and more insurance policies than I ever knew existed. But we slogged through it all and finally, we were ready to begin the fun stuff. In October we started the medications necessary for IVF and it took a little trial and error to get everything just right. Then in November, we were able to do our first embryo transfer! Unfortunately, it didn’t work the first time and she wasn’t pregnant. But that was ok, because they had warned us that it would likely take a few tries. They said it was about 50-50% chance that it would work on the first time, but about an 80% chance that it would work within the first 3 tries. So we were advised not to get too discouraged unless we got to the point where we had tried at least 3 times and were still unsuccessful.

Unfortunately, after we got the news that the first try was unsuccessful, our surrogate called us to say that she did not want to continue the journey anymore. Which, as you can imagine, was a pretty big blow. We had spent so much time, energy, emotions, and money to get to this point and it was really disappointing to do one transfer attempt and have it all suddenly be over.

We aren’t mad at her; she did a wonderful, beautiful, selfless thing for us. She gave us hope. She walked alongside our path for a little while. She was obedient to do what God had laid on her heart to do. But she wasn’t meant to walk the whole journey with us, and there’s no way anyone could have known that before the journey began.

So now what? Good question. We don’t know what is next for the Gorman family. Maybe we try the surrogacy route again, if so I think we’d probably go through an agency this time. Which is significantly more expensive, and there’s nothing that says a surrogate is even available or a good match, and there’s a lot to consider in starting this process all over from the beginning again. Maybe we consider adoption, but of course that comes with a lot of the same obstacles. Maybe Matt and I are just going to be really awesome aunts and uncles to all our friend’s kids. We’re just not sure what’s next. But what we do know is that God will provide the answer when the time is right. We are praying through it and are so thankful for your ongoing prayers as well. His hand has never left us; not through cancer, not through infertility, and it certainly won’t now.

Once upon a time, God spoke to a man. He told the man to go outside and go push on a rock. So the man obeyed. The rock did not move. Every day the man went outside and pushed on the rock, and every day it did not move. Finally, the man came back, angry at God, saying “God, why did you ask me to do this? The rock hasn’t moved at all!” God answered, “I didn’t ask you to move the rock, I asked you to push on it.” Then the man looked at himself in the mirror and saw the change that had taken place; the muscles he had developed, the strength he had gained, the perseverance he had learned, and realized what a good thing God had done, which was exactly what He said He would do. 

God never promised us success along this journey, He only asked that we go on it with Him. Who knows, maybe the whole reason this story has been written was simply to give us hope we needed to get through the cancer season. Maybe there is more. Only one way to find out.