Not my blood and bones, but my heart and soul

This is the fifth instalment of a six-part series, Be Fruitful: Fertility Journeys in Modern Jewish Lives, which explores the complex and sometimes taboo journey to parenthood in the Jewish community.

On the very day our surrogate was giving birth, my Jewish mother booked herself in for an elective hysterectomy. You need not have read Portnoy’s Complaint nor watched Woody Allen to relish the Jewish mother/son ironies.

As I prepared to cut the umbilical cord, my mamma was removing the womb that brought me into the world. My therapist had a field day. Dual loyalties and Jewish guilt infused themselves into both medical drips. At one point, I did not know whether to stay with the surrogate or take a call from Cabrini hospital. Needless to say, I spoke with the brave surgeon who sought to please my Polish mother.

Our first-born Matteo was born in frosty Canada after three-and-a-half-years in gestation. It was a long winter of infertility. We shlepped 31 eggs from Melbourne, endured two different surrogates and made numerous heart-breaking attempts. Rome was not built in one day, but I doubted whether our Romeo would be built at all.

But we kept on spinning the IVF roulette wheel. At last, our tadpole was the size of a lime. He was 12 weeks old, and I felt like we had just won the existential lotto.

But all the logistical odds remained against us. Matteo was due at the height of COVID lockdowns and flight cancellations. We were living in Israel at the time. On the day we were supposed to fly out, Ben Gurion airport was closed. We needed special ministerial approval just to secure two seats on an emergency flight to Frankfurt. Nothing was certain. We did not even know whether the EU would allow us in through customs to collect our luggage. The pandemic and surrogacy red tape had turned us into bureaucratic warriors. It felt miraculous just to land in sub-zero Canada.