By DEB BENTLY

Staff Writer

“I think the takeaway is that we all have the opportunity to get creative in the opportunities we have to be kind,” says Liz Stiernagle, guidance counselor for the past five years at NRHEG secondary. “The world is a hard enough place; I believe each of us should find our own way to give to others.”

As acts of kindness go, some might view Stiernagle’s as somewhat over the top: she served as a “gestational carrier”--what some might call a “surrogate mother”--by carrying and delivering a baby for a Twin Cities couple. The baby, a girl, was born this past August.

Stiernagle, 32, has been married to husband Matt for eight years. They have two children, Kinley, 3, and Everson, 5. As a couple, they had decided they did not wish to raise any more than two children.

“I know of some couples who were unable to have children,” Stiernagle says, “and I’ve seen what heartbreak that can cause.

“One day I started to wonder whether there was anything I could do to help.”

Her curiosity was strong enough that she went online to find out more about being a surrogate mother; she came across the Surrogacy Center, a Twin Cities agency that specializes in the process. What she learned was inviting enough that she requested a list of “qualifications” the agency provides for folks like herself, those willing to consider being gestational carriers.

The list was a page long and included fairly obvious elements such as being in good health and within a certain age range, but also included lifestyle and mental health items.

Since Stiernagle met the listed criteria, she spoke with a representative from the agency. “I asked, ‘Is there a need for this?’” she recalls. “The answer was, “Oh, yes. There’s a huge need. There are far more intended parents than there are gestational carriers.’”

Hearing that, Stiernagle decided to complete an application.

Even with her degree in child and human development, and even with master's degrees in clinical mental health and school counseling, Stiernagle was impressed by the length and “depth” of the booklet-sized application form. Something that particularly took her by surprise was near the end. “I flipped open a page and it said, ‘Choose which plan you would like to be paid under.’”

Until that moment, Stiernagle admits, the idea of being paid to act as a gestational carrier had not entered her mind. She remembers back to her college days when she had told herself she should adopt a child someday for the sake of providing a good home for a child whose life would otherwise be filled with turmoil. When that didn’t work out, she says, the idea of helping a couple who would otherwise remain childless to become parents seemed like a way of bringing some good into the world.

Perhaps it was that altruism which helped her follow through with the next steps. As the approval process continued, she and Matt had to undergo a background check. Questions addressed their income, their family backgrounds, their lifestyle choices and interests. “We had to put together what you might call a family profile,” Stiernagle remembers.

The application process began in November of 2021 and continued through January of

2022. Once she and Matt had been accepted, information about them was shared with the Twin Cities couple interested in becoming parents. First the intended parents, then the Stiernagles, had to approve working together.

“Then there was this Zoom [online] meeting where we could all get to know each other,” says Stiernagle, who mentions that representatives from the Surrogacy Center also took part, guiding the group through a set of considerations to be taken into account.

Stiernagle’s strongest memory of the meeting though, was the excitement and anticipation shared by the intended parents: an otherwise unachievable dream was on its way toward being realized.

That meeting took place in April of 2022, five months after Stiernagle first began the application process. An agreement was reached that Stiernagle would become the gestational carrier; after further paperwork and evaluations, she met the intended parents in person for the first time that September. The transfer of an already-fertilized egg occurred in November; the baby was born in August of 2023.

“As the process moved along, it was nerve-wracking to think that here I was, planning to experience pregnancy again,” says Stiernagle. “But there was a lot of joy in knowing how excited the parents were.”

As the pregnancy progressed, Stiernagle says she made a point of sharing milestones with the parents. She sent photos of the “baby bump” as it began to grow. Once the baby began moving, she shared videos of her stomach as it stretched and moved.

With the Stiernagles and the Twin Cities couple all waiting for delivery day, it was somewhat frustrating when the due date passed without any excitement. In fact, it was close to two weeks past the due date when an induced birth was scheduled. Thanks to that predictability, not only Matt, but both intended parents were present as labor began.

Since one of the parents had training as a nurse, he was actually able to receive the baby as she was born.

At the end of the day, Stiernagle and Matt went home, leaving all elements of the baby’s care to the parents.

“The question I am asked most often,” Stiernagle recalls, “is whether it was hard to give the baby up.

“But I never thought of the baby as mine. I had no genetic connection to it. I knew from the beginning that this child belonged to someone else.

“I was a vessel, not really a ‘mother’ in the classic sense.

“I felt really good, after the baby was born, to be able to go home and take a long nap, with no newborn to take care of.”

Asked whether she would consider being a gestational carrier again, Stiernagle says she would. The difficulties and discomforts of pregnancy were demanding, of course, but she balances those against the feelings of intended parents whose hopes and dreams go unfulfilled.

“I know I would have been devastated,” she comments, “if I had not been able to have children.”

The love, enthusiasm and joy she saw from the intended parents during her first experience, she says, would encourage her to consider doing it all again. Her husband, Matt, she says was also very accepting of the experience. “He tells people who ask that it’s all up to me,” comments Stiernagle. “He says I’m the one who does all the work.”

Stiernagle says she is glad that, even though she began her journey to become a gestational carrier without much knowledge, and even though it turned out to be a three-year process, she is glad she followed through.

“First and foremost,” she says, “we never know what others are going through. I think we should all take a look at who we are and what contributions we are capable of making.

“And then we should take whatever steps we can to help make the world a better place.”