Photos capture mom's reaction to seeing her child born via surrogate
One mother's difficult journey to complete her family ended with the gift of surrogacy and touching photos captured the exact moment she met her new son.
Kim Overton wrote about her three-year journey on her blog, Solo Starter.
Overton, who was diagnosed as having fibroid tumors in 2005, was able to give birth to her 4-year-old son, Dylan, after a surgery. When she decided she'd like another baby, she thought another surgery would do the trick.
She was wrong.
"I was fiercely determined to have a second child one way or another," said Overton. "For a year and a half, my patience was tested. I experienced false alarm after false alarm, and I waited on too many negative pregnancy tests. But I didn't want to give up."
Overton's doctors eventually forced her to face the hard truth.
"They told me that the fibroids within my uterus walls could very well be the reason why a pregnancy wasn't sticking (in addition to my age)," said Overton. "With this news, my hope for a second child was nearly crushed."
It was then her thoughts turned to surrogacy.
"Obviously, I had so many questions," said Overton. "Who would be a surrogate for me? How would the whole thing work? What really was surrogacy? And, more importantly... when could we get started?"
However, a conversation with her cousin led her to her surrogate - her cousin's daughter, Cydnee.
"I don't know exactly what my cousin said to her daughter after our conversation, but later that night, Cydnee, like an angel, called me and said she would be more than happy to help. She would be my surrogate," said Overton.
However, the process was filled with some challenges.
"After two unsuccessful transfers of embryos from my eggs, I nearly gave up," said Overton. "I didn't want to keep going through this over and over again. The emotional toll was becoming too much to bear. But after a lot of thinking, meditating, and praying, I decided I was going to give it one more try."
Finally, Cydnee was confirmed pregnant, but a week later, the pregnancy was gone.
"That was one of the hardest parts of our surrogacy journey. The extreme ups and down," said Overton.
Overton gave it one more try and on July 27, 2015 she received the "best news ever" - Cydnee was pregnant again.
The experience was documented by Leilani Rogers, a birth photographer from Austin, Texas, where Overton and Cydnee live.
"I was panicking, wanted to do skin-to-skin as soon as he was born," Overton said. "It was all happening so fast. It only took a few minutes for Cydnee to push him out."
At the time she gave birth to her older son, Overton was a single mom or "Solo Starter." It was during the surrogacy process she met her now-husband, who himself has a son.
"I had known him for about a month when he asked me if I wanted to have a second child," Overton said. "I told him that we had just transferred an embryo to my surrogate the day before. He was thrilled." She said she knew then that he was the one.
Overton wants people to know that just because she did not carry Oliver, she feels the exact same love for him as she does for her other son. "The experience," she said, "was all positive. There is no negative, There is no deficit."
