‘Our relationship is stronger due to what we’ve endured’

A challenging six-year fertility journey ended with Georgia Harrison finally having her baby with the help of a surrogate in Mexico. She relates her emotional tale to Charlotte Cripps

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This past January, we were in the air, mid-flight, when our baby boy Sunny was born via surrogate in Mexico. It hadn’t crossed our minds that he’d arrive six weeks premature. It was a very stressful 24 hours. Our surrogate Aurora had signs of pre-eclampsia, and her condition had remained stable up until about four hours before we landed in Mexico City. But for the safety of both her and our baby, the medical team decided to deliver Sunny by emergency C-section. We were able to access wifi on the plane, so we received real-time updates, almost by the second, as everything unfolded.

Once we finally arrived at the hospital and saw Sunny, the flood of emotions hit us all at once; relief, exhaustion, fear, and overwhelming love. Seeing Aurora safe, and tiny Sunny so full of life, was indescribable. Sunny had to spend his first few days in the ICU. As Sunny was born early and all the legal paperwork had been filed based on his due date, we were stuck in Mexico waiting for the legalities to be finalised for a few months longer than we had anticipated. We were desperate to see friends and family, but we also appreciated that this was a precious time together, free from the usual distractions.

It has been such a journey to get to this point. I’d tried everything to have a baby over the six years since I met Duncan in 2019. I was 40 then - we’d been advised my ovarian reserve was too low to conceive naturally. After two unsuccessful IVF attempts using my eggs, we decided to use donor eggs. There’s lots of grief involved in facing the realisation that donor eggs were going to be our only option. But soon we had 12 good-quality embryos using my partner’s sperm. We prepared for embryo transfer expecting it to be a success. By that point, I was 41 and we had three frozen embryo transfers in our hometown, Manchester, but none resulted in a live pregnancy. Then we paused it and had tests.