It took the help of four surrogate mums for Lisa and Sheldon Pepe to finally achieve their parenthood dream. But when it came to taking their cute baby boy Evario Saxen home after his birth, there was just one woman handing the newborn over to the delighted couple – kindhearted Amanda oacLeod.
Having a final cuddle of Evario, Amanda says she didn’t feel even the tiniest pang of doubt as she passed him to Sheldon and Lisa. Knowing how much they had been through to become parents, she was able to share in their overwhelming joy. Dogged with devastating setbacks from the start of their long journey, Lisa (38) and Sheldon (35), from Tauranga, had begun to believe they would never become parents.
The first blow came in 2001 when a diagnosis of cervical cancer followed by a hysterectomy gave Lisa a second chance at life but destroyed her chances of ever being pregnant. However, with her ovaries still intact, there was a glimmer of hope, and six years ago, they began looking at options.
“our only hope was if Sheldon and I could find a surrogate to carry a baby conceived by IVF, using my eggs and Sheldon’s sperm,” says Lisa. When an old school friend of Lisa’s heard about their plight, she offered to carry a baby for them, and an IVF embryo was implanted in her womb.
Tragically, the friend suffered a miscarriage. Lisa and Sheldon then found a second surrogate through the Kiwi website www.nz-surrogacy.com, believing this time they would be lucky. But the first attempt resulted in a dangerous ectopic pregnancy in one of the surrogate’s fallopian tubes.
Despite her ordeal, the woman offered to try again and the couple kept their hopes up. But it wasn’t to be – the last of the frozen embryos died during the thawing process at the IVF clinic. “I just kept crying – it was the worse day of my life. We had to decide whether we should stop trying, but I couldn’t give up,” says Lisa.
The couple then found a third surrogate, but by this time they were no longer eligible to have publicly funded IVF treatment to conceive the embryos. They had to borrow $10,000 to pay for the treatment and cross their fingers that this time, it would work. Lisa and Sheldon could hardly believe it when, just the day before the surrogate was due to be implanted with Lisa’s eggs, they were given the devastating news that the embryos had died. Now, with no money left and Lisa’s egg’s now considered too risky to use, their only hope was to use a surrogate who was prepared to use one of her own eggs to conceive the couple’s child.
“We thought that third cycle was our last chance and I felt ready to stop,” says Lisa. “We were obviously beside ourselves, but I was happy to be off the IVF roller-coaster. It was just like we were gambling, thinking all the time, ‘just another go’.”
Then along came Amanda oacLeod. The Napier woman had already acted as a surrogate five years earlier and co-owns the surrogacy help website. She read Lisa’s heartfelt story and was so moved by it that she offered both her eggs and her womb to the couple. In a private surrogacy arrangement, Amanda was inseminated using a syringe of Sheldon’s semen. Then, on Mother’s Day last year, she was given the news that Lisa and Shledon had been desperately waiting for – she was pregnant. Picking up the telephone, a delighted Amanda phoned Lisa and said, “Happy Mother’s Day!”
“I dropped the phone and yelled ‘we’re going to have a baby!'” says Lisa, smiling at the memory. The pregnancy went well for Amanda, until just before she was about to give birth. She was overdue and had to be induced, but despite weighing 5.9kg (13.1lbs) – the size of an average three month old – Evario’s delivery went smoothly.
Lisa and Sheldon were present at their child’s emotion-packed birth. Sheldon cut Evario’s umbilical cord and the first person to hold him was Lisa, who was overcome with happiness as she cradled him.
To fulfil surrogacy-adoption legal requirements, Evario stayed with Amanda for 12 days of before he could be officially handed over to his parents. As Amanda watched the new family leave Napier for their home in Tauranga, with Evario buckled into his baby seat, she felt no ties to the wee boy, just overwhelming joy for Lisa and Sheldon.
“I just felt happy,” Amanda says. “He wasn’t mine from the start – he was made for them. I didn’t connect with him when I was pregnant. I care about him and I love him but he’s not mine.” Proud mum Lisa says little Evario (eight weeks) is laid-back little man who loves television – like his dad – but he has also inherited a dimple in his right cheek, just like all of Amanda’s biological children.
Sheldon has become a sperm donor in an effort to give back what they have received. But they both agree there will be no siblings for Evario. “I honestly think I’ve had my luck,” Lisa says, snuggling Evario. Sheldon agrees wholeheartedly.
“I don’t think we’d go down that road again. I think someone else deserves it.” Although it took the kindness of four women, their savings and an untold amount of anguish to get their baby, Lisa and Sheldon are glad they never gave up.
“This has been the hardest thing for us to do but it was worth it,” says Lisa. Amanda oacLeod received just $200 for having a baby for the Pepes – but it wasn’t a payment.
In New Zealand, surrogates cannot charge for carrying another couple’s child, but they can be reimbursed for expenses. In Amanda’s case, the only costs were for the ovulation and pregnancy tests, and an acupuncture session for a bout of morning sickness. So what makes a woman carry another couple’s child for nine months, with no reward? Amanda (35) firmly believes it was her destiny.
“I remember seeing a TV programme on surrogacy in my early teens and thinking, ‘I’ll do that once I’ve had my kids,'” she explains.
After having her two sons with husband Steve, Campbell (17) and Matt (13), Amanda decided to become an egg donor, but her two attempts for one couple ended in miscarriage. So she generously offered to carry the baby for them instead. Amanda also miscarried, but the second attempt, using the male partner’s sperm and one of her own eggs, resulted in a healthy baby boy, who’s now five.
“He knows who I am. I visit them when I go to town,” she says. “After that, I thought it was all over but then I started having this feeling that I wanted to do it again. However, I didn’t want to use my egg because you go through a period when your hormones do take over a wee bit. A month after the birth, I got quite weepy and I needed to see him.
“Even with Evario, I had a cry when he was a month old but then I was fine. I thought it was because it was my egg, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that – I think I would have had a bit of a cry regardless. It’s nothing to do with wanting the baby, though.”
Before offering her womb to Lisa and Sheldon, Amanda was a surrogate for yet another couple, but after 10 embryos failed to implant, they went back to the adoption pool. Amanda was thinking about offering her womb to another couple when she found out about Lisa and Sheldon’s plight. “It’s pointless trying to fight with it – I just felt it was what I had to do.”
Steve (40) admits he was surprised when Amanda announced she wanted to be a surrogate again, but points out that they’ve made two new wonderful friends. And he cheekily admits he liked to shock people by telling them that his wife was pregnant – but not to him. Amanda and Steve have explained to their sons that the two surrogate babies are related to them.
“We said they’re their half-brothers, but not like a brother like you two – more like a cousin. We see them but we don’t live together.”
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