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Womb Mates
Like many young couples, Sean Dawson and
Shannon Bourbonnais grew desperate to have a child.
Unlike most, they used a surrogate mother
By Vanessa Richmond
"I KNOW I'LL BE A MOTHER," Shannon Bourbonnais
used to tell her friends. “I just don’t
know how yet.” After she suffered a miscarriage
in 2001, at age 28, Bourbonnais, who teaches French
at York House School, embarked on a regime of positive
thinking, massage, special diets, drugs, charts, acupuncture,
Chinese medicine, fitness programs and vitamin supplements.
She also did hundreds of hours of Internet research.
After “trying” for a year after the miscarriage,
she and her husband, Sean Dawson, a phys ed teacher
at an elementary school, made their first appointment
at an in-vitro fertilization clinic. There are three
IVF clinics in Vancouver, and Shannon chose Genesis
mostly because of its previous success rate. In the
summer of 2002, she started taking Synarel, to suppress
her cycle, then Pergonal and Gonal-F, to stimulate her
ovaries to release eggs. In the fall, Dr. Albert Yuzpe
removed ten of her eggs and, using Sean’s sperm,
created three viable embryos.
Shannon’s uterine lining was too thin to support
the embryos, it turned out, perhaps because of the post-miscarriage
D & C (dilation and curettage) procedure. So they
delayed the transfer, and for the next year doctors
monitored and treated her uterus lining, starting with
uterine therapy (in which a kind of balloon is inflated
to stimulate tissue growth). By now, Shannon was used
to rushing off from school for treatment that once would
have seemed daunting and invasive. And while dealing
with the monthly disappointment, fertility drugs (one
of which stimulates menopause and gave her night sweats)
and regular tests, she was teaching full time, acting
as head of the French department, working on her M.
Ed. at UBC, and teaching workshops to teachers across
the country.
Finally, in the fall of 2003, doctors transferred one
of the previously frozen embryos to her uterus. After
two weeks Shannon prepared herself for the phone call
from the clinic, but she already knew the results of
the pregnancy test. “I know all the signs so well
now,” she said. Already, friends were privately
starting to refer to her quest as “optimistic.”
The next year, 2004, doctors did three more transfers,
collecting a total of 34 of Shannon’s eggs that
year and making 12 viable embryos. In the final transfer,
in October 2004, in a highly unusual move, they transferred
three embryos at the same time. After they all failed,
she said to Sean, “OK—do you want to adopt,
or try surrogacy?”
“Let’s try surrogacy,” said Sean.
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The idea of
surrogacy appeals to many women, but follow-through
is another matter. In all, five friends offered
to act as a surrogate.
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Shannon was thrilled that he too wanted
one last go at having their own genetic child before
looking in earnest into adoption. And she was doubly
thrilled when, in January 2005, her younger sister,
Crystal, stepped forward and offered to carry their
baby. An esthetician in Winnipeg, Crystal, then 22,
had a baby of her own, which made her a good candidate
in the doctors’ eyes. In March, the sisters met
with the staff at Genesis. The meeting went well, but
a week later Shannon still hadn’t heard from Crystal.
“I’m just not sure,” Crystal said
hesitantly, when Shannon called. Overwhelmed by the
complexity of the procedure, she had also heard horror
stories about the fertility drugs she would have to
take.
The idea of surrogacy appeals to many women, but follow-through
is another matter. In all, besides Crystal, five friends
offered to act as a surrogate. “Actually,”
said the first, when Shannon phoned to take her up on
it, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve changed
my mind.” The second decided to wait until after
her next child. The third backed out because she worried
about the effect it might have on her own family. A
fourth offered right after the birth of her own child,
but changed her mind because of a bout of post-partum
depression.
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