Melia Josephson gave birth to a girl last week. She is partial to baby girls,
she admits. But after carrying her for nine months and holding the child for
less than a day, she gave the baby away The reason: Josephson is neither
genetically nor legally the child's mother.
Melia Josephson is the ultimate human vessel. Her baby was conceived by another
woman's egg, fertilized in a laboratory, then transplanted to Josephson's womb.
The 7-pound. 3-ounce child, whose birth is to be publicly announced at a press
conference today was born at San Antonio Hospital in Upland on July 23.
Josephson thus became only the third known surrogate mother in the world to
deliver a "test-tube" baby.
The process by which the child was conceived - in vitro fertilization - blends
cutting-edge reproductive technology with the already controversial practice of
surrogate parenting.
Melia Josephson is a slightly built redhead whose palpable spunk, ready giggle
and all-American good looks trigger images of Gidget-even in her pregnant state.
A few days before the child was born last week, she and her husband, Mark, sat
in the den of their new Moreno Valley home near Riverside. As they talked their
own three children dashed through the house to the backyard where the
installation of a swimming pool was nearly complete.
Josephson is being paid $10,000 in installments for being a surrogate, and the
money is being used as a down payment on the pool. "The pool costs a lot more,"
she said, calling it a "gift to my family" for supporting her through the
surrogate process during the last four years. Some of those years were tense,
the couple admitted.
The IVF surrogate as she is called, is only "nurturing the baby for nine
months," explained Dr. Jaroslav Marik, the infertility specialist who performed
the procedure on Josephson. Genetically the child is completely the donor
couple's.
The center decided to start such a program when it was able to match in vitro
technology with a couple able to afford it. It eventually enrolled five
surrogate mothers, of which Josephson was the first to be successfully
impregnated, in October, 1986.
At first, Josephson said, she "felt like a baby-maker, a rent-a-womb." In
support-group sessions with other women participating in the program, she and
the others took the approach: "I'm just here doing a job."
When tests revealed she was carrying a girl, "it really hit home," she said. "I
hate to admit it, but I'm partial to girls. I started feeling attached. The more
she stayed in me, the more attached I became."
But in the week before she delivered the baby, she had no doubt she'd be able to
give up the tiny girl she nurtured for nine months.
"I'll be able to say goodby," she predicted. "But I want lots of pictures. I do
want to hold her. I want to do as much as the mother will let me those two or
three days in the hospital. Because once they are gone, they are gone forever,
and all I'll have is the memory."
Her time with the child was not measured in days but in hours.
As with all her pregnancies, she had an easy delivery. Labor had to be induced
since she was a week overdue. But "three good pushes, and the baby was born" she
said laughing the next day.
The baby's genetic parents, a woman 40, and a man 38 who live on the
Westside and asked not to be identified, had expected Josephson's hospital stay
to be longer. "But Melia was ready to go home the next day," said the mother,
and there wasn't any need to keep the baby at the hospital longer.
As she spoke over the telephone excited voices could be heard in the background.
"Yes," she explained, "we have a very active house."
She has a daughter, 15, and a son 17, from a previous marriage. She and her
second husband decided to have a child through the in vitro surrogate process
because although she had had a hysterectomy, they wanted another child. "We have
two kids that are wonderful," but it would have been "nice" for her husband "to
have had a child of his own."
"We personally have tried to protect our privacy through this whole matter,"
said her husband joining the conversation. "But we are interested in getting the
message of the in vitro surrogate process out."
When Melia Josephson became pregnant she received a five-page letter from an
elderly aunt "condemning me to hell," she said. She repeated her aunt's words
with pity in her voice: "If God wanted people to have children, He would let
them have children. Other people shouldn't be having children for them. This is
the road he sent them on, to be childless. He's trying to see if they can
conquer it."
Josephson says she and the rest of her family don't agree.
"God gave man the ability, to do this," she said, "and as far as I am concerned,
He is behind everything. If he gave man the knowledge to come up with this
technique, he must want it to happen. Whether people think it's right or wrong, I'm still
bringing a child into the world. That's what God put us here for, to bring His
children into the world".
- Surrogate Mother
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