71| Lara's road to Motherhood: IVF, Ovarian Tumours & the gift of Surrogacy.
In this deeply honest and emotional episode of Love Patty, we sit down with Lara, a nurse and midwife, to explore her extraordinary journey to motherhood. A journey that included early pregnancy loss, failed IVF, and a diagnosis of Stage 3B borderline ovarian tumours, ultimately resulting in a total hysterectomy, oophorectomy and salpingectomy. Lara opens up about the unexpected challenges of surgical menopause, including osteoporosis, insomnia, rage and debilitating sweats, and the profound impact these changes had on her physical and emotional wellbeing. But Lara's story doesn't end there. When carrying her own baby was no longer an option, Lara's journey to motherhood continued through surrogacy, with her beautiful surrogate, Dr Nat, an OBGYN and colleague who works alongside Lara.
Dr Nat's pregnancy journey came with its own significant challenges, including hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a retained placenta and a postpartum haemorrhage, potentially associated with placenta accreta. Lara shares the decisions they made around antenatal and postnatal care, including choosing a private midwife to support them throughout this extraordinary experience. We also talk about baby Izzy's time in the Special Care Nursery (SCN), and the six months of administration and legal processes that followed her birth to establish Izzy as Lara and Luke as their legal daughter, including navigating changes to birth certificates, a day in court and a visit to the consulate.
This episode is a powerful reminder that the journey to motherhood can be complicated, heartbreaking and completely unexpected. It's about the people who walk beside us, the medical teams who support us, and the love that makes it all worthwhile. Lara gives a heartfelt shout-out to the many colleagues, surgeons, fertility specialists and lawyers who played a role in their journey. A special thank you to Natalie and Lucas, for allowing us to share their part in this story, too. A raw, vulnerable and incredibly important conversation about fertility, women's health, surgical menopause, surrogacy, birth trauma, the complexities of legal parenthood and the many different paths to becoming a family.
Love, Patty. xox
