Issue 01: Let's start at the beginning…

Saturday June 16 2018

Since I’ve told my friends and family of our surrogacy plans, I have been met with 100 per cent positivity. On telling them that I’m writing a column about it, hmm, about 75 per cent, until I go over the pros (we don’t need cons when we’re forming an argument we want to win), at which point it invariably increases back up to 100 per cent. So why? Why chat so candidly to thousands of strangers about the state of my ovaries? (They’ve expired, just so you know).

For starters, it serves a very important purpose. The telling. You know when you go on holiday, you get back to work and someone says: “How was your holiday?!” And you grin, and tell them with a post-holiday sparkle about how great it was, and yes you do have a little tan don’t you, and the food was AMAZING. Then the next person asks and before you know it you’ve told the same story to 40 people, your grin has downgraded to a smile and you’d rather talk about how to find your ideal macronutrient ratio. (I don’t care how, btw.)

Now, imagine having to keep everyone up to speed with your latest news; you’re pregnant, but not pregnant. Yes, really, it’s amazing, isn’t it?! But again and again to all the people who might want to know over a nine-month period. This kind of solves that problem with bells on, right? There will be no explanation necessary when I go off on maternity leave with a flat stomach, sinking a bottle of prosecco, and come in a month later to show off my son or daughter.

Second, while I was ill with cancer — the mother of all reasons for needing a surrogate — I wrote a blog about keeping as much me as possible during my treatment. Initially it was just to give me something to do, but it quickly became a bit of a lifeline. A mutually beneficial support network. I helped a ton of women know that life with cancer is still a life, and that if you colour in the parting of your wig with eyeliner it makes it 80 per cent more realistic. They helped me feel as though I was not alone, I had a purpose and I could do and get something good out of my bad situation. This is pretty similar, but with a much more positive starting point, and with all my own hair.

I would also have this incredible memoir to show my future child. How amazing (and let’s be honest, helpful) would that be? Here, kid, this is what, why and how. They would know that they were so desperately wanted and so loved right from the start of the long snaking queue for the world’s most emotional rollercoaster.

The journey is complicated and unpredictable and overwhelming and amazing and, yes, I don’t yet know the ending, but the ending will be the way that it is, whether I write about it or not. At least the cathartic nature of diarising every fascinating bend or unexpected U-turn gives me a whole other outlook. If laying it all out can help anyone else as it helps me, then, please, I would love to take passengers.

Also, and this is a big one. My mum and dad read The Times. Hi, Mum! Hi, Dad! Hi, everyone! So you’re all up to speed? One cancer survivor, GSOH, requires one healthy and incredibly generous womb to embark on the project of a lifetime. Literally. The Mother Project. Let’s do this.