A baby lost, a baby born
UNUSUAL SURROGACY CLOSES CIRCLE ON NEWBORN'S HEART DONATION
Kristin and Alex Chen of Orillia, Ont., were in Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children last week for a serious but as yet undiagnosed kidney problem for their newborn son Davos.
They know the place well, and being there again was upsetting, because Sick Kids is also where Davos' uniquely remarkable life story really began, in the unexpected death of his six-week old baby sister Ailah in 2018, and the donation of her anatomically perfect heart to another sick baby in care of the same doctors.
That was Rosalie Audia, 4, in whom the heart still beats, and whose mother Samantha carried Davos in a surrogate pregnancy for the Chens that closed the circle on Ailah's death with a poignant gesture of grace, gratitude and new friendship.
So being back in Sick Kids for invasive and worrying tests on their new baby was emotionally overwhelming for Kristin and Alex, they said in an interview Saturday.
“To have another child sick, it's not fair, I feel like we've paid the ultimate price. And now to have to go through a sick child, I don't think it's fair. The universe is dealing us hard cards,” Kristin said. “It was very reminiscent of Ailah. It almost felt like those feelings that were asleep inside us came to the surface all of a sudden.”
They were confident they were in a top pediatric hospital, but terrified that they needed to be. Kristin said her chest was tight, her head spinning, her vision darkened. “All I could think of was, call Alex,” she said.
Through hard experience, the Chens are practised at acknowledging, confronting and enduring emotional trauma.
“We balance each other out,” Kristin said. “We get a lot of counselling.”
“To be able to cope,” Alex adds. It still hurts to talk about Ailah, they both said. Kristin works in early childhood education. Alex works in kitchens, both restaurant and larger scale catering.
Alex's late father had always wanted a girl. He did too. He had heard his colleagues and friends talk about their daughters. They learned at six months it was a girl. “I was over the moon,” Alex said.
Kristin found Ailah unresponsive in her crib one night in 2018. A pulse was eventually restored, but her brain activity had irretrievably stopped. She was the ideal neonatal heart donor, a life saver.
In the months after, Kristin resisted medication for depression because she did not want to “numb” her grief. “To not allow myself to feel for her, it's like I'm trying to ignore her.”
She had lost her daughter, and also any hope to have another child because her pregnancies were difficult and after the second she chose a tubal ligation.
Donations like this are kept anonymous in Ontario, but when Kristin contacted Samantha on social media several months later, they figured it out, and brought their families together to record a video for the David Foster Foundation, which financially supports families going through organ transplant, and had done so for the Audias as Rosalie's transplant went ahead and required long stays in Toronto.
The Chens and Audias, who both live in Orillia now that the Chens recently moved there from Mississauga, were in Toronto this weekend for the foundation's gala, at which Jonathon and Christine Fischer were recognized for funding the fertility treatment required for the surrogacy. The National Post is a sponsor of the gala.
Brian Audia remembers, after a couple of nights at Rosie's bedside in Toronto after the initial crisis, taking a room at a nearby hotel for some uneasy sleep.
“If Ailah didn't come along, Rosie wasn't long,” Brian said.
That first morning started with the intrusive downtown sound of an unloading truck. Consciousness brought that brief moment of, “Where am I?” he said. “Oh yeah, I'm in a hotel in Toronto. It all starts to hit you. What's going to happen to everything? Everything keeps rushing in.”
Navigating that turmoil, not giving into it, he said has made him a better person, more grateful.
“Transplant changes everything,” Brian said.
The surrogacy proposal dates back to the first time Samantha and Kristin met, to shoot the video, and afterwards the two mothers retired to the hotel bar for a drink and a chat.
“It immediately popped into my head,” Samantha said. She has always wanted to be a surrogate, and through work as a doula has encountered many people in need. But it is risky to her as much as anyone, and with three other children, no small undertaking.
But sometimes things just seem to make sense.
“This would make sense,” Sam said. She interrogated herself, to make sure she was not doing this out of misplaced guilt, or obligation. She does feel guilty that her daughter is alive and Kristin's is dead. But that is not why she offered to carry this baby.
Brian took more convincing. The way they tell it, she acts on her heart and he acts on his head. He saw many potential complications. “I'm naturally defensive about that,” he said. But he knew this was something Samantha wanted to do. “I knew how much Sam wanted to do it and I knew how important and special it was.”
So Samantha offered. Asked what they thought about it, Kristin almost jokes. “I'll be very honest. We didn't.”
In their mind it was an “immediate yes,” “barrelling ahead” with no doubts. Meeting Samantha “was like meeting family that you just don't see for a long time,” Kristin said, so the decision was “automatic.”
Kristin called Alex from work and was crying so much a colleague had to fill him in as he took the call, also at work, with a concerned “Uh, what's going on?” Then he dropped the phone.
Davos is named for the noble, honourable character in Game of Thrones. Like Ailah and her brother Anais, 8, it is a name chosen so as not to invite a short form, which Kristin would not allow anyway.
“We would give anything to have Ailah back in our lives, but in every rain cloud there's a silver lining, and I feel like it's almost Ailah's way of allowing us to heal,” Kristin said. It is as if she were saying “I can't be there, but take this instead.”
As she says this, crying, Davos Chen, barely a month old, lies in his bassinet nearby and falls quickly back to sleep, swaddled by his attentive aunt, full on a bottle, head turned a little to the side, displaying the cutest little ear.