Sharing the Gift of Life
Jamie Thompson, a 'Test-Tube Baby,' Is Doubly Blessed: She Has Loving Parents and a Caring Surrogate Mother

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 4, 2008

On the day that Jamie Robyn Thompson was to share her 14th birthday celebration with family and the woman who gave birth to her, a movie spoofing surrogate mothers as trashy opportunists opened, and the news was rife with stories of infertile women "outsourcing" childbirth to poor women in India.

Kim Kovacic, Jamie's surrogate mother, is none of those things. And at Il Fornaio restaurant in Reston recently, there were balloons, presents and a "Happy Birthday Jamie and Kim" ice cream cake.

Fourteen years ago, Kovacic, a married, middle-class mother of three, signed a $15,000 contract with Carol Van Cleef and Doug Thompson, now of McLean, to carry the embryo that their sperm and egg had created in a petri dish. On her 35th birthday, Kovacic gave birth to Jamie. The two families, without a second thought or a hint of awkwardness, have celebrated together every year since.

In technical terms, Kovacic was a "gestational carrier" for Carol and Doug, the "intended parents." Kovacic, 49, short and easygoing with an impish sense of humor, and Van Cleef, 52, a tall, willowy, self-described type-A partner in a major law firm, couldn't be more different. But theirs is an intimate bond of flesh and bone, forged in science and the ancient yearning for a child that society has yet to find the words to describe, much less understand.

Kovacic, who lives in Herndon, brought two of her own daughters to the birthday dinner. The girls gushed about movies and bands and teased Jamie's 17-year-old brother, Peter. Jamie, sitting between Kovacic and Van Cleef, mentioned that she would be singing soprano in her upcoming chorus concert.

Kovacic looked at Van Cleef and raised an eyebrow. "I know she didn't get that from either one of us, did she?"

Kovacic has been Jamie's "special friend" at preschool. She has attended her graduations, school performances and confirmation. She babysat for her as a child. But the one thing she clearly isn't is Jamie's mother.

"I feel a special bond with her, and I'm very proud of her, but I don't feel like she's my child. It's kind of hard to explain," Kovacic said. When she was pregnant with Jamie, people indignantly asked her how she could give her baby away. Indeed, the body produces powerful hormones during pregnancy to help ensure that a mother bonds with her infant.

But in Kovacic's mind, she was giving Carol and Doug their baby back. "I would tell people, well, when you babysit kids, do you want to keep them?" So clear was Kovacic that the baby she was carrying was not her own that she lined up an infertile couple in the Midwest who would take the baby if Carol and Doug backed out.

"You could have grown up in St. Joseph, Michigan," she teased Jamie at dinner, nudging her with an elbow.

" Greaaaaat," the teen said, rolling her eyes.

Surrogate motherhood has been around since at least biblical times, when Sarah gave her maid, Hagar, to Abraham to have a child for her. By the 1980s, surrogate mothers typically used their own eggs and were artificially inseminated with the sperm of the would-be father. But the result was sometimes messy. In the late 1980s, in one of the first legal challenges involving surrogacy, Mary Beth Whitehead changed her mind halfway through her surrogate pregnancy and wanted to keep the baby. The ensuing court battle over the parentage of "Baby M" played like a Greek tragedy.

Today, most surrogates are implanted with the genetic embryo of an infertile couple or with a donor egg. Although there have been a few high-profile celebrity surrogacies -- for Dennis Quaid, Angela Bassett and Joan Lunden, for example -- the practice accounts for less than 1 percent of all births by assisted reproductive technologies. And because the procedure is relatively rare -- and condemned by some religious traditions -- many people aren't sure what to think. "When people find out I've had a surrogate baby, their reaction is, 'Wow, you seem so normal,' " Kovacic said.

Some states ban surrogacies in which a surrogate would use her own egg. Others, including New York and Utah, ban surrogacy altogether, as do many countries. In the District, Jamie's contracted birth would have been punishable by a $10,000 fine and a year in jail. But in California, Massachusetts and Maryland, a surrogate carrying the genetic child of the intended parents can waive her parental rights while pregnant so that the intended parents' names are on the birth certificate.

Under Virginia law, passed in 1994 just weeks before Jamie's birth, surrogates must be married and can carry only the genetic child of married intended parents. Agencies are prohibited from recruiting surrogate mothers, which is why all Washington area matching services are in Maryland. And, to avert baby selling, the law allows Virginia surrogates to receive payment only for ancillary living expenses. Genetic mothers can have birth certificates reissued with their names after delivery by filing DNA tests, as Van Cleef did.

Tired of the ambivalence, the Hollywood movie stereotypes and the media coverage that seems to report only when surrogacy goes wrong, Kovacic and Van Cleef wanted to share their story as a counterpoint.

"There's no shame in it," Van Cleef said. "And it provides an opportunity to have a family in a way that you envisioned a family."

Their story began May 23, 1990, when Van Cleef almost died giving birth to her firstborn, Peter. Hours before, while she was in labor with Peter, she and Doug had decided they wanted three children. But complications arose, and doctors had to perform an emergency hysterectomy. Van Cleef had the presence of mind to ask them to spare her ovaries. "As they were wheeling me back to the recovery room," Van Cleef said, "I thought, 'Hey, I can still do a surrogacy.' "

She spent the next three months in bed, bonding with her infant son and calling around the country to find out how she could have another child with a surrogate.

About the same time, Kovacic was delivering her first surrogate baby in one of the first surrogate births in Virginia. Kovacic had been appalled by the Whitehead case and, blessed by three easy deliveries via C-section, decided that she wanted to help someone who was unable to conceive. She went through an agency in Maryland and was paid $10,000 to carry another couple's child.

She viewed her pregnancy as another part-time job -- she has worked for the same pediatrician for almost 30 years. And the money helped, as her then-husband's hunting store struggled. But the money is something she still feels guilty about.

"To be honest, I wish I could have done it and not taken money for it," Kovacic said. "It's like when you give someone a gift, you know they're going to love it, and you can't wait to see the look on their faces when they open it. That's the ultimate."

Her friends were not surprised. Kovacic is the kind of person who bakes cupcakes for her roommates on the maternity ward after they return home, volunteers for everything and, as her children were growing up, enforced "Random Acts of Kindness" Fridays.

But she has never seen the first surrogate baby nor heard from the parents again, other than receiving a note expressing that they would be "forever grateful."

So Kovacic wasn't sure what to expect when a recruiter in Maryland put her in touch with Van Cleef. Van Cleef wasn't sure either, but the two instantly liked each other. And they took it from there. In October 1992, each began hormone injections to get their cycles in sync. Each made her way to the Genetics and IVF Institute in Fairfax at 7 a.m. every morning for blood drawing and sonograms. Kovacic's daughters called them her trips to the "egg man." And in August 1993, on the second try, Kovacic became pregnant with Carol and Doug's child.

Lisa Kovacic, 22, a senior at the University of Virginia, remembers the startled looks she got when she told people matter-of-factly that her mother was going to have a baby but that she wasn't going to keep it.

"I remember my mom, from day one, explaining how she wanted to give someone something big," she said, "And what better gift can you give someone than a child? Their child."

Van Cleef accompanied Kovacic on most of her doctor appointments. She was there for the sonogram that showed that the baby was a girl. The two began talking frequently on the phone, and Van Cleef's mother threw a shower for them. When the baby was born, Van Cleef was the first one to hold her.

"I got to feel like a father does when a child is born," Van Cleef said. Before leaving the hospital with their daughter, Carol and Doug gave Kovacic a necklace with a gold heart.

From the earliest days, Van Cleef made sure that Jamie knew where she came from. She would show her pictures of the two women and ask "Where's Mommy?" Jamie would point to Van Cleef. She'd ask, "Where's Jamie?" And Jamie would point and say, "In Kimmy's tummy."

At the birthday dinner, Jamie laughed when she recalled being asked one year at summer camp what made her special. The only thing she could think to say was, "I'm a test-tube baby."

The facts of her birth are not something Jamie thinks about much. "I can't really remember how I felt about it when I was younger, but now that I'm older, I can see from my mother's point of view how much she wanted a daughter," Jamie said. "It helps me realize, it doesn't really matter how I was born and that my mother didn't actually carry me. But it does matter that I am here. I am born."

For Jamie's baptism, Van Cleef's father, a Methodist minister in New Jersey, wrote a poem, "Love Child." It hangs framed in the Kovacics' family room. He writes of Van Cleef's search for the "proper vessel to carry the precious seed." At the end, he calls Jamie:

A "child of parental yearning

Offspring of Science's light

Gift of God's grace

You shall forever be to us

No less a miracle

Than all the wondrous acts the Scriptures tell."

And so, in the din of the restaurant, as an unknowing and uncomprehending world looked on, Jamie the miracle baby and Kovacic blew out their birthday candles.