Over the past few years, I have felt like my body and I have not been working in unison. As many times as my husband and I tried to conceive a child, the more my body rejected the idea. After three miscarriages and four IVF attempts, I was ready to give up the idea of ever raising my own baby. Depression began to take over me.

However, our infertility doctor presented the final option available to us, which was surrogacy. Initially I had rejected this option because I wanted to experience pregnancy. Since pregnancy didn’t seem possible, we decided to try surrogacy.

We found a surrogacy agency that screened surrogates (just like they do with egg donors) to ensure that they were healthy, had been pregnant before, had the same views and values about pregnancy as us, and were emotionally and physically ready to carry a baby for another couple.

We choose a surrogate and began the nerve-racking wait to see if she conceived. After an initial success, I was overjoyed to know that both my husband and I had managed to conceive our own child–even if the baby wasn’t growing inside of me.

Over the next nine months of waiting, we bonded with our surrogate and considered her a close friend. Our darling little girl was born 6 lbs 7 oz one month ago. Parenting is better than I imagined. Best of all, our little girl has her Daddy’s eyes.