Leyla was desperate to be a mother, but being pregnant could kill her . . .
Which is why she used a surrogate even though she’s able to conceive
When Leyla hutchings takes her three-year-old son Zeki to see his ‘Auntie’ Rachael, he’s always excited to play with her three children, whom he treats as his cousins.
Yet their relationship is much more complex than that.
They’re not genetically related, but Zeki has a lot in common with Daisy, nine, Jack, seven, and Max, five. For ‘Auntie’ Rachael is not a biological relation — she simply gave birth to him.
Zeki is a surrogate child, the result of a sympathetic mother’s urge to help another woman have a child.
Last year, 400 surrogate babies were registered in the UK — nearly four times as many as in 2011 — due mainly to increased awareness that surrogacy is a possibility for childless couples.
According to the charity Surrogacy UK, common reasons for using a surrogate include repeated miscarriages, failed IVF treatments or early menopause, often as a result of cancer treatment. And one in 5,000 women has no womb or cervix.
But Leyla’s case was different — it was not infertility that drove her to surrogacy, but the fact doctors had told her she would risk her life by carrying a baby.
At the age of 26, she was diagnosed with an aneurysm — a bulge in a major blood vessel, in her case in the leg, which, if it burst, could cause fatal internal bleeding.
Leyla was on the Tube on her way to work at a London law firm when she collapsed with sudden pain. Rushed to hospital, she was diagnosed with vascular ehlers-Danlos syndrome (eDS) — a rare genetic condition.
This occurs when the body gets wrong instructions about how to make collagen, the protein that holds skin and tissues together — including blood vessels.
Doctors warned Leyla that a pregnancy would put too great a stress on her blood vessels, and two years after her diagnosis, she had an aneurysm that burst in the blood vessel that supplied her spleen.
her diagnosis ended the dream of a big family for Leyla and her barrister husband Richard, now both 39. After a few years, the couple began to look longingly at friends’ babies, and started thinking of their options for a child.
ThenLeyla stumbled on an article about Surrogacy UK, an organisation that emphasises the importance of a friendship between mother and surrogate.
This was how she met Rachael Coleman, 30, from Chatham, Kent, who’d go on to give birth to Zeki. ‘Until then, I didn’t believe anyone would want to do it out of the goodness of their heart,’ says Leyla.
Rachael had three young children and felt her family was complete. her motivation was generous: ‘I know how devastated I would be if I’d never had children, and I’d hope someone would do the same for me. My husband, James, supported me all the way.’
The minimum age for surrogates, recommended by Surrogacy UK, is 21 and potential candidates must provide a GP referral letter stating they are physically and mentally fit for surrogacy.
The likelihood of having a successful birth from a surrogate mother is higher than when a natural mother gives birth through IVF — it’s around 35 per cent for surrogate pregnancies, compared with 20.8 per cent for women in Leyla’s age range undergoing IVF.
This is because the surrogate mothers who come forward have usually already found it easy to have children themselves.
In the UK, no fees can be charged — though reasonable expenses, usually between £9,000 and £15,000 for travel costs, childcare and maternity wear, are allowed.
Over four months, Leyla’s eggs were extracted according to her natural menstrual cycle — injecting her with hormones might have prompted a vascular reaction.
The eggs were introduced to Richard’s sperm in a laboratory and the embryos were tested to ensure Leyla’s genetic condition was not passed on to her child.
In summer 2013, the first embryo was transferred into Rachael’s womb and everyone was delighted to see a positive pregnancy test.
Both women attended all prenatal appointments together, and on May 10, 2014, both Richard and Leyla were present at the birth.
After a difficult delivery — Zeki weighed 10lb 7oz — Leyla finally held him in her arms. ‘You could not get a baby that was more wanted. I could not thank Rachael enough,’ she says.
From Rachael’s perspective, she was always clear that the baby belonged to Leyla and Richard: ‘I was just carrying him for them.’
Under British law, the woman giving birth is considered the mother, regardless of the origin of eggs or sperm.
The biological parents of any child born to a surrogate mother must apply for a parental order between six weeks and six months after the birth in order to become the legal parents on their child’s birth certificate.
Such close bonds as those formed between Leyla, Richard and Rachael are far from unique.
NICKRAIne-FennInG, an associate professor of reproductive medicine at Queen’s Medical Centre in nottingham, says 70 to 80 per cent of couples he sees who elect surrogate mothers start out as strangers to them.
‘The taboo is that people assume in order to go through being pregnant — and all the discomfort that goes with it — surrogates must be doing it for the money,’ he says. ‘But so often I am enormously moved by the selflessness I see in the women who come forward.’
That’s a sentiment shared by Susan Smith, 38, and her husband, Mark, 33, who could only watch helplessly as their surrogate, Lianna Macfarlane, suffered severe morning sickness, then a difficult, 48-hour labour.
‘I was torn between holding my baby, Dexter, for the first time and taking care of Lianna,’ says Susan, an office administrator from Portsmouth. ‘She’d done so much for us and I’d seen her go through so much.’
For Susan, the birth of Dexter, now two, was a day she never thought she’d see. At 17, having not begun to menstruate, she discovered she had no womb.
her condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-hauser syndrome, is a random genetic mutation that means some women do not develop a normal reproductive system.
Susan had ovaries and was producing eggs — but had no uterus, so would never be able to give birth to her own child.
After she married Mark in 2009, she began to yearn for a family.
Researching her condition, she realised she could conceive a baby of her own — but needed a woman who could give birth for her.
The couple turned to Surrogacy UK’s forum, where single mother Lianna, 29, from Cardiff, who has a daughter, Poppy, eight, was moved by their plight.
‘I put myself forward for no other reason than I adore being a mum to Poppy,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t imagine other people being deprived of the love you feel when you have a child.’
Dexter was born on March 20, 2015, and Mark, Susan and Lianna are discussing baby number two.
Lianna says: ‘The pregnancy with Dexter was difficult, but it’s worth considering another one. You get so much back from bringing joy to another couple.’
surrogacyuk.org My Future Family Fertility Show is on September 23 at the Royal College of Surgeons, go to alternativeparenting.co.uk