Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Pub chat led best pal’s wife to be our surrogate mum
by another failed second attempt. With costs spiralling – each transfer was £2,000 – the couples crossed their fingers for third time lucky.
On the third go, Kim fell pregnant. When she broke the news to me I turned to jelly,” says Kelly.
“I was so happy. She is the best friend, an angel. Every step of the way she’s been my rock.”
Marc, 35, was worried he’d get attached to the growing baby, so he avoided any hospital appointments and the birth.
Kim says: “His view was ‘my friends are having a baby – it just happens to be in my wife’. He felt the baby kick but there was no caressing my stomach.”
Riley was induced at 39 weeks as Kim had suffered painful ribs during the pregnancy and the Riley was born last April, with Paul and Kelly both there. “I was thrilled to have Riley and so proud, but he wasn’t my baby,” says Kim. “I was never attached to him.
“Riley was placed on me, and that was enough. I needed that just to see him. I thought ‘Oh my God he looks so like Paul’.
“Kelly and Paul were really happy to let me have a cuddle and a minute on my own with him.”
Kelly adds: “I thought that it would be strange watching someone give birth to my child, but I’d do it again tomorrow.
“When he came out we were all in bits. We were all crying. It was so emotional. My pregnancy was awful and horrific but this one showed me how it should be.” Kim says the days after the birth were strange as she and Riley had kept waking up at exactly the same time for his feeds – even though they were now several miles apart.
Now, both families are very close, with Riley and Brody almost like brothers to Scarlett and Penny.
POWERFUL
Kim went back to her job working in supported housing two weeks after the birth – but the experience has changed her life too.
She now wants to be a midwife and begins her training next month.
“Throughout the pregnancy I was very aware that I was having someone else’s baby,” says Kim. “And I wanted to do the best job I possibly could of producing this amazing human being.
“I can’t keep having babies - my body just won’t take it. So I’ve decided I’m going to help other people have their babies instead.
“Being a surrogate has changed the path of my life. It feels powerful. I get joy from doing things for other people. I like to make other people happy.”
A spokeswoman for Surrogacy UK said: “Surrogacy is on the rise in the UK with more altruistic surrogates coming forward than ever before.
“It’s now a real option for those who need it and a very normal next step on the pathway to parenthood.”