Inspired - Full issue

Marcia Huber and Eleanor Gorman
After Marcia Huber watched
her sister Eleanor Gorman
suffer through the grief of
failed IVF attempts and
miscarriages, she offered
to carry Eleanor’s child
through pregnancy as a
surrogate mother. The
resulting journey took them
on an emotional whirlwind
of fear, hope, love and,
ultimately, joy.
Eleanor Gorman lay on the sonographer’s
patient table, a cool gel upon her stomach,
the ultrasound device rubbing over her skin.
Her husband Andrew stood beside her. The duo was
ecstatic. They had just married, Eleanor was already
pregnant and their life together was full of promise.
Smiling at each other they watched the hazy form of
their unborn child appear on the ultrasound screen.
Excited they glanced at the sonographer. Her face
was stern. Where a heartbeat should have sounded, a
heavy silence screamed back at them. “I’m sorry,” the
sonographer said shaking her head. Their tiny baby
had died in Eleanor’s womb.
“It was just horrific,” Eleanor remembers. The
miscarriage was the start of a seven-year battle to
produce a child they so desperately wanted. Their
journey took them to lows from which they feared
they’d never recover – times when grief pierced their
very souls with a weight near impossible to bear. Yet,
they persevered. And when Eleanor’s sister Marcia
Huber offered to carry Eleanor’s child as a surrogate,
they dared to hope once more.
Today, with son Arlo who Marcia carried through
pregnancy, Eleanor feels like the luckiest mum in the
world. Watching his face while he sleeps, grasping
his tiny hands in hers, Eleanor feels like her heart
could burst with the love she feels for her child. But
surrogacy is not an easy gig. How did they reach
this point? How did Eleanor cope with someone else
carrying her child in their womb? How did Marcia deal
with handing over the life she’d nurtured?
QUEST FOR PARENTHOOD
After their initial miscarriage Eleanor and Andrew
craved parenthood more than ever. In her evermore
desperate attempts to conceive, Eleanor tried
acupuncture, she went gluten free, she gave up
coffee, she did her best to manage stress, and she
visited doctors and specialists. Finally she found
a specialist who diagnosed her with Asherman’s
Syndrome, a condition caused by the scar tissue from
the curette she’d endured after her miscarriage.
The condition was preventing her falling pregnant
again so the scar tissue was removed with surgery.
Above left Marcia (left)
acted as a surrogate
mother for her sister
Eleanor’s child Arlo.
Opposite page New life.
MARCIA HUBER AND ELEANOR GORMAN 31