Meet Maddie!
This whole journey has made me want to do it again!
Maddie is an incredible surrogate who delivered a baby boy for a loving family in 2023.
Q: What led you to become a Surrogate?
After having my own daughter, I felt so blessed to have had an uncomplicated and relatively easy pregnancy. I really wanted to do something to support the infertility community. I first considered egg donation, but that didn’t feel right for me and so I looked into being a surrogate. I wanted to build a relationship with the family I would be helping to build, and surrogacy seemed like the best way I could do that.
Q. Who was the most significant support person throughout your journey?
My husband never questioned my decision to be a surrogate or tried to talk me out of it. He was 100% supportive from day one, and he carried me through the whole process. Pregnancy gets really exhausting by the end, and he had to take over most of the childcare and domestic chores in our house. But he never complained that I had decided to do this despite the extra work it created for him.
Q. What made you decide to choose your Intended Parents?
When I first saw their pictures, they reminded me of my uncle and aunt who were going through IVF treatments at the time. They also live only a few hours away from the city where my husband and I plan to move, so I was excited at the prospect of being able to visit them often. Then when we met over zoom they were just the kindest people and I knew I wanted to be their surrogate.
Q. What are some of the highlights of your journey?
When I first met my Intended Parents they seemed very serious and somber. I just assumed that was their personalities and I chose them. Then when we met in person for my medical evaluation, they were so upbeat and happy! I learned that they had been searching for a surrogate for more than a year before they met me, and they had become pretty exhausted from the whole process. But we could all feel that this time it was going to work out, and that brought them renewed energy and excitement for the future. It was so great to see that positive change even from the very beginning.
Another highlight from the journey was when the IPs told me that they were pregnant! Just before we signed the contracts they told me that they had gotten pregnant naturally. I was even more thrilled when they said they still wanted to move forward with the surrogacy journey! They had only ever hoped to have maybe one baby and now they had a chance to have two. I was so excited to be pregnant together with the Intended Mother. So we moved forward, and they had their baby the day after I got my first positive pregnancy test. So we were only pregnant together for one day, but it was such a special time.
Q. Do you have advice for women who are interested in becoming a gestational surrogate?
Just do it! So many people think about doing something amazing like being a surrogate, but when it comes time to take action they never get around to it. The process can take a long time from application to embryo transfer, so start now! You won’t regret applying even if you decide not to do it after all.
Q. What did you find was the biggest misconception people had about surrogacy?
Most people seemed to think that the baby was genetically mine and my husband’s and that we were giving him up for adoption. That provided many opportunities to explain the process of IVF to people!
Q. What would you like other people to know about surrogacy?
It’s so much more rewarding than you can imagine. Just picture that moment when you first get to hold your child; it’s indescribable. When you get to be there for that moment when the parents have waited years for their baby, there is nothing like it.
Q. How has becoming a surrogate impacted your life?
This whole journey has made me want to do it again! It’s time for me to grow my own family now, but if I’m still able in the future I would love to be a surrogate again.
Q. What was the funniest/strangest/most common question you were asked as a surrogate? How did you answer?
Everyone asked me, “what if you get emotionally attached to the baby and don’t want to give him up?”. I always thought of the baby as my buddy, not my baby. It was easy to not get emotionally attached to him because I was getting emotionally attached to his whole family. And at the end it was not hard to “give him up” because I didn’t give anything up. I got exactly what I wanted: a friendship with an amazing family.
Q. Was this pregnancy different than your other pregnancies? If so, how?
It was so much easier because the stress of having to prepare for a baby was absent. I was able to remain shockingly calm throughout labor, and I think that made delivery much easier. I’d only been pregnant once before, and so I was constantly worried about the prospect of becoming a mother. But this time around I knew what to expect (more or less) and I didn’t have to worry about taking care of a baby at the end of it all. I knew he would be so loved and well cared for by his parents.
Learn more about becoming a surrogate by submitting a request for information, or start your surrogate application today!
Staci Swiderski, CEO and owner of Family Source Consultants has been involved in the field of reproductive medicine since 2002. Staci has vigorously grown the comprehensive egg donation and gestational surrogacy agency to become a worldwide leader in the third-party reproduction field. Staci is a former intended parent herself. She and her husband welcomed their son via gestational surrogacy in 2005. Additionally, Staci had the experience of assisting an infertile couple (AKA Recipient Parents) build their family through her efforts as an egg donor, with her donation resulting in the births of their son and daughter.
