Part 1 The Journey: The beginning that has no end:

Infertility plagues everyone. No matter your race, your gender or your age. Percent of women ages 15-44 with impaired fecundity: 11.8%. That is 7.4 million people in the USA alone. So maybe double that and you will get a small glimpse as to how many people suffer from such an unfortunate problem. I have so many friends and family members that are unable to bare children themselves. I asked myself, How am I so fortunate to be able to experience being a mother and these people are not able to. But they would make wonderful parents. That then lead me to the next question, can you guess what it was? HOW CAN I HELP?? Well, I am able to carry children with no major issues. I am young, fit, and love being pregnant. So I started doing some research online and came upon surrogacy. Boy did that open a can of worms, in a good way of course. :) I became obsessed. I started reading and watching and became an "expert" over night. I looked into several agencies and came upon one that really popped!

I had only one thing that I was really struggling with, I am LDS. I was concerned at how the church would view this decision that I was interested in making. Not saying at all that I would allow a religion to make my life decisions for me, but I would like to get some feedback. So I confronted my bishop and spoke with him concerning the churches views on surrogacy. After what seemed like a long discussion, everything went pretty much like I expected it to. In LDS religion, family is a HUGE part of our everyday lives. In fact, its the key component that we strive for. The view on surrogacy is that it is a way of creating a family, not exactly the traditional way, but a way non the less. So now that that was covered, I could move forward to the next step. Just a bit of advice, if you are part of a religion, please take the time to see what the views are of surrogacy, because having your churches support can be EXTREMELY helpful. It was for me.

 So I applied to a website, but never in a million years expected to be contacted in the first 24 hours of my application being submitted. They then asked me for additional information, ie: full medical history, family history and the what nots. So after sending all that information to them, they then had me take a crazy test. Sorry for the pun, but I felt crazy after taking the MMPI test. 575 questions asked in 5 different ways, T or F. I could have sworn I was going to fail it due to the fact of pure nervousness. So once I passed all that, they then matched me. OH BOY, talk about impatience. That was the longest week of my life. I was so excited to get the email with the subject line of, "Potential Match" So I read the profile and could not have fallen in love with a couple faster. Their story touched my heart. EVERY surrogate will say that and knows what I mean if you have experienced that portion of your journey. If you haven't, then look forward to falling in love in a way that you will never experience otherwise! Once we were matched, the fun really started.