Georgie and Jamie Crawford have opened up about welcoming their second daughter, Tahlie, via surrogate.
The couple are currently in Georgia, after their baby girl was delivered by their surrogate this week. It has been a long-road leading up to her birth, something Georgie has been very open and honest about.
The pair had embryos created in 2017, after Georgie was diagnosed with cancer. Their daughter Pia was just seven months old at the time, and the influencer still had to undergo further treatment, so expanding their family was put on hold.
However, they decided to try for another child, and matched with a surrogate in late 2021. The couple’s embryo transfer was meant to take place at the start of 2022 after they matched with a surrogate. However, due to the rising political tensions in Ukraine, where their surrogate was based, they decided to put this on hold. When war broke out their embryos were lost in the country, until they were rescued and taken to safety. Georgie and Jamie decided to re-start the process, this time in Georgia, and announced they were expecting in April.
Opening up about the lengthy process, Jamie and Georgie released a special episode of the Good Glow podcast, from Tbilisi.
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“We’re here today we’re in our apartment in Tbilisi, my mom and stepdad Joe are here holding down the fort with our two girls. I think that’s the first time I’ve said that,” Georgie began.
“We’ve had an incredible time as I said, we feel so supported by you guys but also by our families. My mom and Joe flew out all the way to help support us and have made everything over here a lot easier.”
The podcaster got candid about her experience welcoming a child via surrogate, saying: “I didn’t give birth to Tahlie myself, so this has been a very different week with a newborn to what I was used to. I had a C section with Pia. I was very emotional, very tired. So it is very different.”
“And I just wanted to say that I’m in good physical health going into this journey and I know how lucky I am to feel well.”
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Jamie also shared how surreal their journey was, calling baby Tahlie a ‘miracle.’
“Tahlie really is a miracle, because her story, as you read has been pretty colorful to this point. If we go back to 2017 when the embryos were created, the fact that we even got to do that in that time period.”
“So there was a month between when you had your surgery and then when you were about to go into chemotherapy that we could potentially do an egg retrieval and fertilization and create the embryos. But it had to match with your cycle. And, that’s the first miracle that it did match with your cycle,” he said.
As Georgie added: “I suppose when the doctor said to me, ‘we recommend you doing some IVF’ I was like ‘what?’ Pia was seven months old. I’d just been diagnosed with cancer. I was like, ‘I can’t like that’s way too much. I’ll be fine, like I’ll be grand. We’ll sort it out, everything will be fine with my fertility’ and you were like ‘Georgie I really think that we should do it.’ So I just followed your led. I trusted you. You are my husband.”
“We went in, we did the egg retrieval. It was really successful. And I remember you saying to me, ‘this is the first bit of good news, the tide is changing. Yes, you have a cancer diagnosis. Yes, everything’s falling apart but the egg retrieval was successful. We have some embryos. We got to hang on to this good news now and kind of set sail with the momentum of that bit of good news.'”
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Continuing on Georgie shared how Rosanna Davison was a big inspiration for the couple, as she shared her surrogacy journey when welcoming daughter Sophia in 2020.
Explaining: “As I said, I didn’t think that I’d ever use those embryos. I just never believed that would be my story. But I got familiar with Rosanna Davison’s story and her sharing so beautifully and generously her journey in Ukraine, and it was September 2020. I remember saying to you, ‘I think this could be an option for us. If Rosanna Davison did it, you know maybe we could too.'”
“I knew nothing about surrogacy. So the fact that she shared that like, first of all brought me so much peace because I took pressure off myself because I was nervous to carry again myself. Not that anyone advised me not to but because I was diagnosed so soon after having Pia, I knew maybe physically I could do it, but I didn’t feel like mentally I could.”
“So Rosanna gave us some hope.”
Sharing how they started the process by contacting their surrogacy solicitor Annette Hickey.
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The couple began the process, settling on Ukraine as the location for their surrogacy journey.
“Many couples have paved the way in Ukraine. It felt for me that the lines were very clear, the surrogate mothers were the priority. They were really well looked after, it felt safe. So we went for the option of being matched in Ukraine. And it took much longer than we expected,” Georgie explained.
Tension began to build in the region, but the couple were still hoping for the best.
Saying: “We were matched with a beautiful surrogate mother called Alina. It felt like all our dreams were coming true. We were matched on Christmas Eve. Just felt like this was the start of our next chapter. Anyway, things became more and more serious. And because it was during COVID. I had an event that I was speaking at online on Thursday night. Our embryo transfer was to take place on February the 21st, which was the following Monday.”
“I went off I did the event, and I came back in and you were pacing up and down and saying ‘the embryo transfer can absolutely not go ahead.'”
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With Jamie adding: “To get to that point, it was really difficult. Obviously, we had gone through a year’s worth of paperwork and so much stuff to get to there and you know, had bumps in the road and it was just exceptionally painful to say we can’t do this but like for me, there was no choice. It was too much of a risk.”
“And then unfortunately, three days later the war broke out.”
“Ultimately that was the right decision but it was a very difficult time and then obviously at that time, we were worried about our surrogate mother, her welfare, our embryos, all the people we’ve been working with which is a lot solicitors, agencies, clinics, like we knew a lot of these people. So to have to stop everything and then go into this unknown period of what we were going to do was horrendous.”
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Continuing: “We had been in touch with the agency. They had assured us that the embryos were safe, and then you know a couple of weeks later, we got sent a picture of the embryos in the boot of a car getting on the Ukraine-Slovakia border.”
“And the amazing embryologist put the embryos in his car and drove them across Ukraine and into Slovakia to safety where they stayed and this is you know, the other element of the miracle. They were safe and we were assured that they would be safe and would stay there for as long as we needed them to be there.”
After the pair made the tough decision to move their process to Georgia, under the advice of their surrogacy solicitor.
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But the embryos still had to be transferred there.
As Jamie explained: “At that point, the embryos were shipped back to Bratislava, went on the train to Berlin, another train to Paris, a plane to Ankara in Turkey and then arrived here in Tbilisi, and within three or four weeks we were doing an embryo transfer.”
After they matched with their surrogate mother, and Georgie expressed her gratitude to their surrogate, and explained why they have not revealed her identity.
Saying: “We’re not going to talk about her surrogate mother because obviously, she has her own life and privacy but she is amazing.”
“She has her own family, her own children, and she wants to give a gift to a family. So she chose us and we went on the journey. I love her, she is incredible, and we had conversations, at scans. She’s so kind, beautiful. Just I can’t say enough about her.”
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The mum-of-two continued: “So Tahlie arrived on Monday. And we haven’t stopped staring at her since, I feel so many endorphins every time I look at her. It’s like this physical rush of love within my body which I was really scared that I wouldn’t. I was worried…. that was all pre-baby arriving?”
“So I was worried that that would be the case for me, Thankfully, it wasn’t and I remember when Tahlie was born she was put on oxygen for two hours because she so teeny tiny five pounds seven ounces and we did have to kind of wait downstairs.”
Jamie added: “That was a bit of a worrying period.”
Georgie continued: “We have been on an absolute cloud ever since. Yes, it’s been hard. The nights are long, all the usual things. I’m not going to give you a fairy tale version of it. There has been difficult moments, the worry, the stress, but I do feel like we are privileged.”
She also offered advice to those interested in surrogacy, saying: “I just want to say safe and ethical surrogacy, stay off Google, contact surrogacy solicitors. Irish Families Through Surrogacy are doing incredible work and giving safe advice. So just make sure that you go down that route.”
