AMAZING GIFT
DOWNING a pint at the bar with his best mate on a lads’ night out, Paul Bullock finally let all his secret heartache spill out.
He told childhood friend Marc Bott how he and wife Kelly had given up hope of having a second baby because of a condition that could leave her in a wheelchair if she ever went through another birth.
And when the mates met up at the boozer a couple of weeks later, the upsetting subject came up again – this time with troubled Paul reduced to tears.
What happened next as the two men went home at the end of the night would change Paul and Kelly’s life forever.
Because it led to Marc’s wife Kim helping by becoming a surrogate mum for them.
And the result is 15-monthold Riley, born through the amazingly close bond between the two families.
Overwhelmed Kelly, 33, told us: “I am so incredibly grateful. There are no words to say how thankful I am to Kim.
“At Riley’s first birthday Kim sat there and looked around at all the people and said ‘this is because of me’ and it was. She has completed our family.”
Kim added: “I feel I now have a really close bond with Kelly – she’s wonderful. I’d give her Riley again 100 times over.
“It was all over a boozy pint. Our husbands just got chatting about it and that was that.”
Marc said they were thinking of a surrogate. I said ‘I can do that’
KIM WHO HAD BABY FOR HUBBY’S PAL AND WIFE
RISKED
Kelly and Paul had first son Brody, five, in 2013, but the pregnancy left Kelly in absolute agony and confined to a wheelchair from 22 weeks.
She was suffering from SPD - symphysis pubis dysfunction – a group of symptoms causing the pelvis to become unstable during pregnancy.
The condition should have resolved itself after Kelly gave birth – but it didn’t and she now suffers daily pain.
The couple knew a second baby was out of the question as it meant she risked being in a wheelchair permanently.
Kelly, who runs an Instagram travel account, said she was so desperate for a second baby and a brother for Brody that she started to find it unbearable to look at pregnant women in the street.
The couple decided that surrogacy would be their only chance to expand their little family.
After Paul, 35, had spilled out their desperate situation to Marc on the first night, the energy surveyor went home and told Kim, mum to his two daughters Penny, five, and Scarlett, three.
Kim says: “Marc came in and told me they were considering a surrogate – and I said ‘Oh no way! Are they?
“I could do that.’ Just like that. And my husband was like ‘yeah.’
“We both laughed it off. But I Googled it to see how it worked and what it entailed. Then he went out a second time with Paul and came back saying that he’d got all emotional because things were taking their toll.
“Marc then said that if I did want to look at being a surrogate for them, we could. I thought, ‘ What an amazing husband I have.’ Then I told him I’d already looked it up. I asked him how he’d feel about it as I’d be pregnant with his best friend’s baby. But he said, ‘if you want to do it, do it’.”
Kim then invited Kelly round and broke the news. “She got quite tearful and said ‘ I can’t believe you would consider that’. I said ‘I can have a baby, I’m not bad at it, I’ll have yours!”
Kelly recalls: “I was feeding her little girl and I just burst out crying. It was like ‘wow’. I wasn’t expecting it in a million years. She has a heart of gold.”
The couples, of Warrington, Cheshire, chose the Manchester Fertility clinic and all had to have counselling and blood tests before being given the green light.
Eggs were removed from Kelly through IVF, with eight fertilising. The first transfer in February 2017 failed, followed