Jessica sold her story to the Sunday Mirror.

Sunday Mirror

 

'I gave birth to one twin, my mum had the other.'

Jessica contacted us from Indiana, in America, wanting to know how to sell her amazing surrogacy story. Jessica had eight miscarriages, then her mother offered to be a surrogate for her. But just as her mum conceived, so did Jessica, and Jessica ended up with twins. Jessica's story was sold to the Sunday Mirror, where it appeared in the centre pages. It was also sold to Pick Me Up magazine.

 

 

 

 

Do you have a pregnancy story you would like to sell to a women's magazine or newspaper? To sell your pregnancy story, or to sell any other story, contact us now. Fill in our story submission form on the right, or call us direct....

 

 

 

 

 

'I gave birth to one twin.. hours later my mum had the other' - THE MOST AMAZING SURROGACY CASE EVER

 

Byline: By SARAH ARNOLD and HANNAH BARR

 

THEY share the same birthday, have identical eyes, button noses and cheeky smiles.

Brother and sister Serenity and Owen Bryne could easily pass for twins.

Except Serenity is the daughter of 28-year-old housewife Jessica. And Owen's mother is Jessica's MUM Diane.

Together they are the product of an astonishing tale of surrogate motherhood.

Diane, 46, was artificially inseminated with sperm from her son-in-law Eric.

Days later, after years of trying and failing, her daughter Jessica became pregnant naturally with husband Eric.

And months later, mother and daughter gave birth to their babies just hours apart in the same hospital.

"When I look at Serenity and Owen I feel like pinching myself," says Jessica.

"After so much heartbreak, and so many years trying and failing tohave a baby, I still can't believe how lucky I've been.

"Our situation is far from conventional but when the two children are 16 in 12 years time, we plan to sit them down and tell them everything. It will give them a great story to tell."

In fact, when the pair start school in September, Jessica plans totell the teachers that they are twins...to avoid the inevitable flood of questions about their true relationship.

Which, to put it mildly, is a touch complicated. Apart from the motherdaughter relationship and the surrogate birth, Serenity is Jessica's natural daughter while half-brother Owen is Serenity's uncle.

From a very young age, Jessica looked forward to motherhood. She met her husband Eric, 35, a factory worker, on an internet dating sitein 2000 when she was 20, and they quickly fell in love. Three monthslater, Jessica was pregnant, and although it was an accident, both she and Eric were delighted. But their happiness was short lived.

"Two weeks later, I had excruciating pains in my abdomen," says Jessica. "Eric rushed me to hospital and I was told I had an ectopic pregnancy, where the fertilised egg had implanted outside my uterus in the fallopian tube. I had to have emergency surgery to remove both the foetus and one of my fallopian tubes.

"It was devastating because as well as grieving for the baby we'd lost, we worried about the fact we now had a much smaller chance of conceiving. But this trauma bought us closer together.

We got married a month later and continued to try for a baby."

Four months after their marriage, Jessica fell pregnant again, butmiscarried after four weeks. This was to become a depressing recurrence for the next two years, when Jessica had another seven miscarriages.

"We both underwent tests and everything was shown to be fine with Eric," says Jessica. "I was given fertility drugs as the eggs I was producing weren't as viable as they should have been.

The doctors reassured me that miscarriages are very common and we should keep trying.

"I took the drugs for two years, alongside having the miscarriages.

It was awful. I felt as though I was stuck on a horrendous emotional rollercoaster.

I'd burst into tears at the sight of a baby on television. Eric held it together and was incredibly supportive.

Since my teens my only aspiration was to be a mother and it broke my heart that this seemed to be impossible.

"We felt we'd have to give up on our dream of having a family," adds Jessica. "I've got three sisters and none of them or my mother hadfertility problems. It just all felt so unfair." But Jessica was thrown a lifeline in February 2003 on her 23rd birthday.

Her husband threw her a party at which her mother, Diane Ship, handed her a card. Inside, Diane wrote that she wanted to offer her services as a surrogate.

"I burst into tears in front of the whole party," says Jessica. "Iwas simply amazed. Eric, my mum and I all hugged tightly. He was over the moon... the offer came as a total shock to him too."

The couple - from Sellersburg in the US state of Indiana - visiteda fertility doctor. They were told they couldn't use Jessica's eggs because their poor quality would limit the chances of success.

Instead, it was suggested by the doctor that perhaps Diane, an insurance broker, could offer her daughter her own egg.

They were talked through the process of home insemination. "As we left the clinic, I felt a little overwhelmed by it all,' says Jessica. "I had presumed we'd be using my eggs. But it didn't feel odd to think of my mother getting pregnant by my husband - I trusted her implicitly and I knew the only reason she was doing it was for me. She told me from the very beginning that she would see this child as her grandchild, and I knew with three grown-up children she had no desire for a baby of her own."

The trio decided to go ahead using Diane's eggs. She artificially inseminated herself and conceived after just two tries.

"I was absolutely over the moon when mum told us she was pregnant," says Jessica. "Eric and I went out to dinner to celebrate and sat and talked about baby names all night. We started painting the baby's nursery. We were beside ourselves with excitement. Neither of us would ever have guessed then what was about to befall us.' A month after her mother broke the news of her pregnancy, Jessica started to feel sick and lethargic.

"I told mum I had sympathy symptoms of her pregnancy," says Jessica. "But after a couple of weeks, when I still wasn't feeling any better, mum told me perhaps I should take a pregnancy test myself. I was beginning to wonder, so I went and got a test straight away. When thetest revealed I was pregnant, far from feeling pleased I was actually devastated.

I assumed it would end in heartbreak as all my other pregnancies had done, and I didn't want anything to ruin the lovely feeling I had over the child mum was carrying. I went to my doctor to make sure it wasn't another ectopic pregnancy, but even when he told me it wasn't,I still believed within a matter of weeks the baby would have gone. I'd never carried a baby past five weeks before."

At six weeks Jessica went for her first scan, again expecting to be told the baby had died. Instead, she saw a heartbeat on the monitor.

"Eric and I were over the moon, but we vowed not to tell anyone apart from mum until I got to three months. We couldn't dare to believeit would all be OK.' There were complications, but Jessica did not miscarry and at three months told her friends and family about her pregnancy. She says: 'When we made the official announcement, mum started laughing and said, 'Well, you've always wanted twins, now you're getting them."

When Jessica was 32 weeks pregnant, she travelled to her mum's home ready for the birth of the surrogate baby. But after feeling unwelland being admitted to hospital, Jessica was told her pre-eclampsia had worsened and she would have to be induced. Then, unexpectedly, hermother, who was not due for another week, went into labour.

Both women attempted to have a natural birth, but after four hoursdoctors discovered that Diane's baby was in the breach position and she had a caesarean birth. Jessica was able to hold her son while shewas still in labour. "As soon as Eric and I saw Owen we both thought'That's our son' and burst into tears," says Jessica. "I threw my arms around mum and said thank you, thank you, thank you, even though Iwas in the middle of agonising contractions myself."

After a labour totalling 18 hours, Jessica also had a caesarean. Serenity and Owen were born just 14 hours apart, and lay side by side in the hospital's maternity ward.

"Words can't describe how happy we were," says Jessica. "Eric and I loved them both exactly the same from the moment we first laid eyeson them. We noticed straight away that Owen looks exactly like Eric, and Serenity takes after me. We couldn't believe we finally had a perfect family."