When Micaela Roy gave birth two weeks ago, she eagerly handed the baby girl to a woman she met on Facebook 18 months prior.
Nearby, Sylva Lloyd and her husband Kim finally held their daughter, grateful to their surrogate for making them parents after a traumatic fertility journey.
Content Warning: This story discusses stillbirth and includes photos and other content that may be distressing.
“Micaela saved my life; my heart was broken,” said Ms. Lloyd. “When she put Delilah in my arms, it was just so healing.”
Delilah’s nursery in the Lloyds’ Tweed Heads home was ready, with Ms. Lloyd, an artist, having hand-painted the walls in anticipation of her daughter’s arrival.
“It doesn’t even feel real, does it? It feels like a dream. She’s just so beautiful,” Ms. Lloyd said while dressing her baby in a cosy red onesie after a feed.
Ms. Lloyd and her husband had been in the delivery room before, but this was the first time their baby came home with them.
After years of reproductive health complications and six months of IVF treatment, Ms. Lloyd fell pregnant with her first child, Roman, in 2020.
“It was the perfect pregnancy; everything was perfect. I was good and healthy,” Lloyd said. “Then I went into early labour. There were operations and hospital stays. Everyone did everything they could… then they told us we were about to meet our baby boy, and he wasn’t going to make it.”
“It was just my cervix that collapsed. His little feet didn’t touch the ground, but he was with us for almost an hour while we said goodbye.”
Months of treatment followed, but doctors eventually said Ms. Lloyd needed a hysterectomy.
The couple then tried using Ms. Lloyd’s sister as a surrogate with their remaining embryos, which ended in another pregnancy loss.
After taking time to travel and grieve, Ms. Lloyd convinced her husband to post their story on a Facebook page for Australian surrogates.
“Sylva kept saying, ‘What if we find a nice lady with lots of kids who wants to help us?'” Kim recalled.
That happened when Ms. Roy and her husband Simon read their story and reached out.
“I didn’t need the couple to prove anything… as long as they loved each other, that was enough,” Ms. Roy said. “If people can come together with so much love after something so traumatic, they really deserved it.”
After a quick round of “surro-dating” to check compatibility, Ms. Roy had the Lloyds’ embryo implanted via IVF.
Ms. Roy’s youngest daughters confirmed the pregnancy news to the Lloyds, saying, “Our mummy has your baby in her tummy” during a phone call.
Two Surrogates in the Birthing Suite
Another surrogate, midwife Julie Laherty, attended the labour while 35 weeks pregnant with her second surrogacy for another couple.
With roughly 120 surrogate births per year in Australia, the presence of two surrogates at one birth is rare.
People often ask Ms. Roy if it’s difficult emotionally and mentally to hand the baby over to the parents. Delilah is the eighth baby Ms. Roy has delivered, after having six of her own children and two surrogate pregnancies.
“Having six children is a lot, but it means I don’t want another baby,” she said. “I refer to my surrogate babies as passengers — they’re just coming along for the ride.”
Ms. Roy felt no grief either time she acted as a surrogate. “If your head is in the right space, it’s one of the most rewarding things you could do. Looking at the family you helped create is just beautiful.”
The Expense of Surrogacy
Ms. Laherty says while some processes protect all parties, “some costs are unnecessary.”
“More Medicare funding would make surrogacy more accessible,” she said.
Paid surrogacy is illegal in Australia, but couples cover the surrogate’s pregnancy expenses, mandated counselling, legal costs, and IVF.
The Lloyds estimate their IVF bill alone ranges between $40,000 to $50,000. “Because I don’t have a uterus, we don’t get any Medicare rebates for IVF, which doesn’t seem fair,” said Ms. Lloyd.
In NSW, the surrogate and her spouse are the automatic legal parents of the baby. It can cost intended parents between $4,000 to $15,000 to adopt their own child, according to surrogacy lawyer Sarah Jefford.
“NSW shouldn’t charge $1,351 for filing a parentage order on top of the other costs,” said Ms. Jefford. “Everyone else can make money, but the surrogate can’t get financial compensation.”
Review of Surrogate Process
Ms. Jefford and the Lloyds want the legal process streamlined into an administrative one through Births, Deaths, and Marriages instead of a parentage order involving the Supreme Court.
A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Communities and Justice said: “The preconditions to a parentage order protect the birth parent and child from exploitation and ensure parties know their legal rights, including the ability to change their minds.”
Legislation dealing with surrogacy in NSW is under review, with the government encouraging public submissions.
Meanwhile, the Lloyds encourage potential surrogates to help others become parents after doing their research. “You start a whole other family for someone; we can be grandparents now,” said Ms. Lloyd.
