EDWARDSVILLE — For Kristin Stahlheber, being a surrogate for her sister is literally a labor of love.
Stahlheber, who lives in Edwardsville with her husband Luke and their three children, is eight months pregnant with her niece.
The baby girl is the child of her sister, Megan Glassman, who lives in Plainfield with her husband Ryan and their 4-year-old daughter.
Stahlheber volunteered to become a surrogate when heart problems prevented Glassman from having another child.
“This is what love looks like, and this is what we do for a sister or anybody who needs help,” said Stahlheber, whose due date is July 29. “All four of us — myself, my husband, my sister and her husband — have grown closer because of this. My husband and my girls have really stepped up with helping me out.”
Stahlheber and her husband, who have lived in Edwardsville since 2007, are both veterinarians, with Kristin Stahlheber working at Heartland Veterinary Hospital, in Edwardsville, and Luke Stahlheber working at Northgate Small Animal Hospital, in Collinsville. They have three girls of their own, including an 11-year-old daughter, Hannah, and 8-year-old twins, Heidi and Emily.
Glassman and her husband, meanwhile, lost their first baby in 2016 at 20 weeks when the baby didn’t have a heartbeat. She got pregnant again about six months later with their daughter Kaylee and that was a high-risk pregnancy because of the previous loss.
“The pregnancy was fairly normal, and the baby was fine, but when I delivered her, I went into heart failure and my heart was functioning below 25 percent,” Glassman said. “The day after my daughter was born, I had heart surgery and I stayed in the hospital for a week to recover.
“I was put on heart meds for about six months and I left the hospital with a defibrillator vest. That was not fun, but we dealt with it.”
Over the next two years, Glassman went to four different cardiologists to see if it was safe for her to get pregnant again.
“A doctor who is the head of cardiology at Northwestern (University) did a cardiac MRI on me, and we were able to see that my heart still had more scarring than anticipated,” Glassman recalled.
“He told me that the risk of me getting pregnant again would probably be one of three results: I would either need a heart transplant, I would end up on a respirator or I would die.”
Glassman was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM), which is a weakness of the heart muscle that begins sometime during the final month of pregnancy through about five months after delivery, without any other known cause.
“My husband and I decided that we needed to try other options (to have another child), whether it was adoption or surrogacy,” Glassman said. “It was somewhere in there, where we were trying to decide what to do, that Kristin told me she wouldn’t mind carrying my baby for me and that she had been wanting to do that for a while.”
As it turned out, Stahlheber had already given thought to becoming a surrogate, but she never imagined that it would be for her sister.
“Seven years ago, when my twins were one, I heard about a friend of mine who hired somebody to be a surrogate for her,” Stahlheber said. “As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘This is something that I’m supposed to do,’ and I’m supposed to help some family in this way. I thought it would be somebody I had never met before.
“I talked to my husband about it and he wasn’t supportive of the idea at that time because we had 1-year-old twins and a 3-year-old, and (he thought), ‘We can’t handle that right now,’” she recalled. “That did not change at all how I felt. The years went on and I never wavered in the knowledge that I was supposed to do this, but I never shared that with anyone other than my husband.”
A few years later, Stahlheber’s sister was the one who needed help, and her desire to be a surrogate suddenly turned into a family affair.
“The day I told my husband about the doctor visit that she had, and he told me, ‘I think you’re supposed to do (surrogacy) for them,’ I almost fell out of my chair,” Stahlheber said. “It was at the point where we were ready to do it when we needed to do it.
“After my husband and I had that discussion, I called my sister and told her that I wanted to be a surrogate for her,” she said. “She had no idea I felt like that, because I had never told her. I told her that we are done with having our family, but I would (have the baby) for her and do it with an open heart.”
For the sisters and their families, that decision was just the start of the surrogacy journey.
“Once we decided that was the route we were going to take, there was about two years of the actual process, including the psychology visits, the legal stuff and the medical stuff,” Glassman said.
“Surrogacy is not an easy process, but COVID made it a lot harder. It led to some difficult decisions for the four of us, but it has definitely brought us closer together.”
Since her sister’s cardiology team was at Northwestern University, near Chicago, Stahlheber worked with the reproductive medicine team there.
“We started that two years ago, but because of Megan’s heart, she was not able to go through the regular medication protocol,” Stahlheber said.
“We went through the IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle and ended up with only one embryo, which was disappointing because you normally like to have five, six or seven.
“We got our clearance on March 10, 2020, and then COVID hit, so we had to wait a couple of months until Northwestern could start doing procedures again,” she said. “Last summer, we did the embryo transfer in June and eight days later, you get a blood test to see if it has taken, but the test came negative (meaning that Stahlheber wasn’t pregnant). That was so devastating and sad for me and my husband, and on top of that I’m grieving for my sister and her husband.”
The setback was only temporary, though, and the news for Stahlheber and Glassman would be much better the next time.
“We took about a month to talk about things and met with the cardiology team again, and they said we could try it one more time with the same medication protocols, but that would be the last chance,” Stahlheber said.
“They did it last September and again got only one embryo,” she said. “We were hoping to have a backup plan (with multiple embryos), but in October I started all of my medications. In November we did the embryo transfer, eight days later we did the blood test and this time it came out positive.”
After 10 weeks of visiting with the doctors at Northwestern, Stahlheber switched to her own doctors. Glassman and her husband go to some of the appointments when they come to Edwardsville, and if they can’t be there in person, they do the appointments via Facetime.
The baby will be delivered at Anderson Hospital in Maryville.
“Megan and Ryan will get to come here, and they have OK’d that all four of us will be in the room for delivery,” Stahlheber said.
From Glassman’s viewpoint, having her sister as a surrogate is an ideal scenario.
“For me, just knowing how she was with her other pregnancies, she was the perfect person to carry our baby,” Glassman said. “You obviously have to trust your surrogate and I know that she has the best diet and follows all the rules.
“If it was a random person, I don’t know if I could trust them. That made it so much easier for me.”
Around January, Stahlheber told her children that she was pregnant and was carrying her sister’s baby.
“You think, ‘It’s such a complicated thing and how are we going to tell the kids about this?’ but we kept it pretty simple,” Stahlheber said.
“We said this baby is from Aunt Megan and Uncle Ryan, and I told them it’s like I’m baking their cupcake in my oven and I’ll give it right back to them when it’s done.
“We’ve been very clear from the beginning that it is a baby cousin and it’s not a brother or sister,” she said. “They think it’s really fun and they’re old enough to participate, so every week we read through what’s happening with the baby and they like to feel her kick. They also like to see all the ultrasound pictures.”
With Glassman having a younger child in daughter Kaylee, the process of explaining her aunt’s pregnancy might seem even more complicated. But circumstances made the explanation a little easier.
“We used the cupcake analogy or the kangaroo carrying the baby in the pouch,” Glassman said. “Our daughter is 4 years old and her mom (me) hasn’t been pregnant since she was born, so she doesn’t know any different. For her, this is 100 percent normal. She obviously doesn’t understand the surrogate process, but it’s normal that her aunt is carrying the baby for us.”
Kaylee talks to her little sister.
“Every time we’re together, she says, ‘Aunt Kiki is having our baby’, and she’ll put her hands on my tummy and she’ll ask, ‘Can baby sister hear me?’ ” Stahlheber noted.
“I can think she has a pretty decent understanding that this is her baby sister, and she’s growing in my tummy for now, but when she comes out, she’ll go home and live in her house.”
Illinois is one of only 12 states that are considered surrogacy friendly, which has made the process smoother for both women and their husbands.
“Legally, Megan and Ryan have already filed paperwork to say that this is their baby,” Stahlheber said.
“In the other 38 states, the baby would belong to the surrogate and you have to go through adoption afterward.”
Glassman said they are lucky to be in Illinois.
“There is still a lot of paperwork and red tape, but I can’t imagine it being more like it is in many states,” she said. “It’s been an amazing process. We’re thrilled that we’re going to have a baby girl in our arms, and that she is coming from my sister.”
As Stahlheber prepares to give birth to her niece, she recommends surrogacy to any woman who is thinking about it.
“It’s an amazing journey,” Stahlheber said. “It’s wonderful to be able to help in a situation that had looked very sad and scary. For women like Megan, who can’t have a baby for whatever reason, it’s a beautiful option.”
Glassman, likewise, urges women to consider the surrogacy option.
“I’m all about genetics and it was very cool that there was an option that we could still have our own baby with our facial features and personality traits,” Glassman said. “Adoption still would have been great, but I wanted to try surrogacy first.
“For anyone who wants to do it, you just have to find someone that you can trust,” she said. “Otherwise, it could be a very difficult process. But with my sister, I don’t ever doubt that she is doing the right things. When you do something like surrogacy, you’ll have a bond forever and we already had that, but now we’re adding to it.”
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