The below story was written by our Gestational Carrier Kristie in Pennsylvania. She has recently celebrated her fourth(!) surrogacy and wants to share her birth story with all of you.
Sunday May 4th, 2025 it’s a typical day, I’m 39w2d pregnant with a surro girl. This is my 6th pregnancy/birth, all of my other pregnancies have been born right around 39w3d and 39w4d, so we are on high alert for labor! But there really hasn’t been any signs.
I spent the morning going to Walmart, I did some cleaning, some laundry, just kept busy the past couple of days. My fiancé and I had plans to go out to dinner with the baby’s parents at 6pm and my fiancé wanted to go a bit early and spend some time in the “casino” they have at this restaurant so we arrived around 4pm.
6pm
Right before 6pm I start to feel nauseated, not the “I’m going to be sick” nauseated but just not feeling right and I’m probably not going to eat dinner. I also noticed that my typical Braxton Hicks contractions had like a crampy feeling to them in my lower belly which had occurred the entire two days prior (on the Friday after my midwife appointment) and nothing came of it then. I really had zero other inklings that labor was near, even those signs aren’t a guarantee.
Shortly after we sit down for dinner with the parents, everyone is chatting and making bets on when she will arrive. I said, “I feel like it’ll be tomorrow” (on 5-5-25) and announced that I noticed it felt like she was “in my butt” today. But having done this several times before, I know it’s not atypical to feel that way, especially for being 39w2d weeks pregnant. She’s getting big and we’re running out of room so makes sense she’d be super low.
I ended up eating two small pieces of pizza and a few sweet potato fries. The nausea subsided.
It was getting chilly and we were seated outside. We got up to go our separate ways for the night around 7:20pm.
7:20pm
The parents have been staying at an Airbnb near the hospital since that Friday so they could remain close by which is better than their typical 3.5-hour drive away from me. We started walking to exit the restaurant and I felt a small pop. I took a few more steps and then felt a small amount of warm leaking. I stopped and everyone looked at me.
“Either I just peed myself for the first time ever, or my water just broke.” I said.
I stopped by the bathroom on the way out to evaluate the situation. The liquid was clear and pretty wet, but I didn’t want to waste hours in the hospital for a false alarm. I told the mom that I could go home and use the amnio swab I have. I explained that if it turns blue, we will know it’s my water and we can head to the hospital shortly after.
She agreed and we started walking to our cars, however as I’m walking more fluid is coming out and I’m realizing this has to be amniotic fluid.
Almost instantly, I start having pretty strong contractions that didn’t have an actual pause between them, they’d just get less intense before ramping up again. I looked at my fiancé and said, “this is about to go really fast and hurt really bad.”
Contractions are more intense from the get go if your water is broken.
I text the mom right away letting her know we are just going to go straight to the hospital and I told her to meet us there. I didn’t want to waste the extra 30 mins to run home and then run to the hospital. It would be my luck to have baby in the car even though we were only like 15 mins away from either location.
As we are on the way to the hospital the contractions are getting stronger. With each one, more fluid is coming out and it’s undeniably my water. I had to stop walking twice from the car to the hospital entrance because the contractions were now too strong to walk through.
7:37pm
We walked in at 7:37 according to the visitor sticker my fiancé was given. It has only been 17 minutes since my water broke. They sent us straight up to L&D and apparently, everyone was in labor that day and they didn’t have a room. We get put into this tiny triage room but I immediately tell the nurse, “this is going fast.”
The nurse puts me on the monitor to listen to the baby and has the midwife come in to do a swab to make sure my water broke and to check my progress. I’m “only” 4cm dilated but I’m 100% effaced and 0 station. And we confirmed that yes,100% my water broke (as if it wasn’t obvious.)
If you know anything about labor and birth (especially when a multip who has a history of precipitous birth) being 100% and 0 with ruptured membranes often means it’s going to be fast. But both the midwife and nurse just left the room, leaving me to labor alone. There was a sense of zero urgency, I wasn’t even hooked up to an IV. No cup of water, no gown, they definitely thought they had time.
I’m just standing beside the bed, leaning into my fiancé’s chest and squeezing the hell out of his hands. He is everything I never knew I always needed in a partner during labor. (My ex husband was not like that.) He kept rubbing my back, distracting me in a good way, kissing my head and just being super attentive to me. This poor guy has never seen labor/birth before and im taking him on the wildest example of how it can be. Going 0-100, all natural, I’m cursing and saying “we aren’t making it to that labor room!” Because the nurse kept saying one was getting cleaned at the moment..
8:15pm
20 minutes go by and it’s probably about 8:15 pm now–45 mins since water broke. I’m being loud, it hurts and I’m feeling nauseous, hot, I’m having the shakes, feels like I have to poop, literally ALL the signs baby is about to be born. The nurse comes back in and says “let me know if you feel differently or if you feel any pressure.”
I’m thinking, is this your first time seeing an unmedicated spontaneous labor?! Because everything about this (minus the 4cm) is absolutely showing that I’m in transition about to have this baby.
“I’VE BEEN FEELING DIFFERENT SINCE I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GOING TO BE FAST!” I shout, as the next contraction begins. “Get these underwear off of me, she’s coming now!”
8:25pm
It’s now 8:25 pm and that finally prompted a response. She called the midwife to come check me again, I was complete but had a small area of cervix left. The midwife told me I needed to get into the bed and told me not to push until that area of the cervix was gone.
I tried to do as she asked but one contraction later I was pushing and she checked again and said, “ok it’s gone now, you’re good!”
It’s now 8:30 pm, just 1hr and 10 mins since my water broke.
I got on my knees leaning over the back of the bed in a chair position. Baby’s mom sat down at the foot of the bed and when it was time the midwife and the mom caught the baby together.
Her head came out but her shoulders didn’t immediately follow. Hospitals practice one step births which is annoying, but I push hard despite not having a contraction. I could feel tugging and pulling trying to get her out, and I couldn’t move positions because of it. After a few seconds I shout “stop, just let me move!”
“OK, you do what you need to do” said the midwife as she stopped and let me trust my body. I put my right foot up on the “seat” of the bed positioning myself in a kneeling lunge and pushed again. This time with a contraction, and I instantly felt her turning. She twisted right out with minimal assistance after that.
Time of birth 8:39 pm (phew!) born just one hour and nineteen minutes after my water broke. Now I laugh because I thought my previous labor was quick at just 2.5 hours. (But that’s a wild story for a different day.) Overall I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
She’s Here!
Mom got to be the first person to touch her baby, dad got to cut the cord. Thankfully we had the best photographer who got there in time to capture all the beautiful chaos for us because I spent the entire time with my face buried into my fiancés chest or in the back of the bed. We stayed in the tiny closet triage room for two hours before they did the baby’s assessments and we got shipped over to separate postpartum rooms.
Watching mom and dad meet their baby and their reactions was just so incredible . It absolutely melts my heart and fills me with so much joy. I’ve done this four times as a surrogate now, but this feeling will never get old.
Because of her quick arrival she did experience some facial bruising that first day but she was still born at 7lbs 6oz and came out 19.5” long–perfectly average in size and she is oh so cute!
I was able to get discharged and go home the following morning and they all were discharged two days postpartum in the afternoon and made it home safely to start their new adventure.I’m pumping and shipping milk to them and love getting updates/pictures. Baby and parents are also doing great!
I feel so lucky and blessed that I’ve had 6 essentially flawless pregnancies and easy, uncomplicated births. It’s definitely something I’d do forever if I could because it’s the best feeling helping others make a family.
