This is the sound of an unborn baby's heartbeat.
We all know having a baby is an extensive process, but could you imagine having a baby
for someone you barely even know?
That's exactly what this woman, Kalen Fiedler, a brave mother of two who lives in western
Pennsylvania did in the summer of 2016.
Kalen was a surrogate mother for a couple in Oklahoma.
She gave birth to Gabriel Alexander Davis on June 23rd, 2016.
This is the story of Kalen Fiedler and the gift of motherhood.
Alright, so in college actually, I developed a really close friendship that I now call
the girl, my sister, and she got married, like I don't know, nine years ago, and struggled
with infertility from the moment they started trying.
At that time, I really, I was too young, I was out of state.
I didn't think of this process, but as, obviously when I moved back home, as we started
hanging out, I had Gavin at the time, I could see the pain that it caused her to kind of
be around those people that had children.
It's when you have a child, it is truly a love that you never thought you could experience.
As much as you want to shake him and just, you love him unconditionally through everything,
and it was hard for her.
We actually struggled as friends for her to be around.
Even though she was Gavin's godmother, I hated to see the pain in her eyes for her
to not have a child.
Myself and my husband really kind of promoted ourselves to like, hey, well, Katelyn can
carry a child for you, how do you want this process to go?
It was jokingly, but I honestly would have done it for her.
A couple of years ago, when obviously Laura denied me being of help to her, I went through
an agency, started looking for someone that would want me as a possible surrogate.
I applied, and I really did not think that I would be picked.
I mean, you think this is a common practice process, and it's not.
Is there any financial incentive, is there anything like, obviously that's not the reason
why you're doing it, but can you talk about that a little bit?
Yes, you do get a stipend or a supplement a month.
You get a certain amount for vitamins and the cost of fuel to go to doctor's appointments
in the time, and then you do get a lot for just caring.
And that amount I know can be large.
I'm sure people that are very wealthy would pay a lot more money.
Because I was a beginner, I was set at the lowest amount possible, and I think it's fine.
Yes, I would not have been picked if I would have said money was my incentive here.
I mean, you can't do it.
You can't quit your job to do this.
But it is nice because I am putting forth a lot of effort or missing things with my
family that I would be doing if I didn't have a child.
So it's nothing that I'm going to retire on.
It's great that I can pay off a school loan with it.
But no, it's nothing that's crazy about.
So you kind of touched on this.
How does the surrogate process work?
Once you were able to do this, how did it all?
The family reaches out to you.
You're connected with a coordinator.
And this agency, this woman, Jenna, is her name.
She's wonderful.
She calls you and says, hey, I have a family for you.
You want to continue this process.
I actually was in the process of almost like getting in vitro before the family kind of
dropped off the face of the earth, like literally didn't hear from them.
We had done all the paperwork.
We had met them twice.
They had taken us to New York City, like wind and dined us.
And then we didn't hear from her.
So that kind of couple obviously didn't work out.
But within like a month, our counselor reached out again and said, hey, we have this other
couple.
They live in Oklahoma City.
They're not really sure about the distance thing.
What would you like to kind of be on an interview with them?
And it's a phone interview.
We talked.
We gave basic facts about us.
Ask a few more questions that maybe the application didn't ask.
But within a week, we were all on board, ready to go.
They flew me down to Oklahoma City and I met with their doctor.
They wanted it to be down there, which made sense because she and he had their eggs and
sperm obviously in that facility where I would get the transfer down there and then everything
else would remain up here.
So that morning I wake up ready to go.
I go into this hospital room and they tell me the process and it's just literally this
little tube, like so, so, so tiny, attached to what looked to be like a needle.
And they just insert it and they say, hey, there's two little embryos that are going
to kind of attach.
And out of those two, hopefully one take.
So a week and a half later, I got to take a pregnancy test and I was pregnant to kind
of go back to the whole process of like literally it happening.
It is not my egg and it is not my husband's sperm.
I think that would change the process a little bit because that would be a piece of us.
This is all them.
I'm just holding on to him, taking care of him, loving him, and my family is doing the
same.
Like my oldest one, you know, comes and still touches my tummy and says, is the baby awake?
And, you know, is he moving?
Oh, mommy, you might be hungry because he's hungry, you know, but he also understands.
He knows that this isn't one that's going to be coming home with us like his younger
brother did, but the family has been great by saying, oh, Gavin, you're going to be
a big cousin again.
We're going to need your advice.
We're going to need your help.
And I think that's made it even better situation.
My mother-in-law wants to be there at birth and love on this baby as if it was hers.
They've said that we're cousins, we're aunts, uncles.
It's been great shockingly because, you know, I think sometimes we think our families are
so old school and I think my parents were hesitant just because they knew that it was
of course affect me.
But I've taken such a positive stand for this that so far my mental health hasn't come
in to like question as to like, you know, oh, I want to keep him, it's different.
All right, so you kind of touched on this, but are there any fears going into this,
you know, on your end and your family's end?
There are.
Okay, I fear, I mean, you have that fear that something seriously could happen and then
I'm doing it all for somebody else.
But because I've had two healthy pregnancies, I hope to God that this one's a good one.
But so far I've tried to remain healthy, I've tried to remain, you know, at an average normal
weight as the doctors say.
The medication at the beginning makes you crazy, like, your hormones are going wild
and I'm sure my husband wanted to strangle me at times.
And it's, um, no, I'm okay, I, you know, I hope the doctors will be just as good as
they were with my first two, um, so no, I'm okay, I'm okay.
I think everything will go well and I just have to think that, you know, this baby is
going to an excellent home, that these two are so deserving of it, um, so I have, you
know, I can't think of, I can't think of those negative freak chances that something bad
could happen.
And I think you already mentioned this, is it a boy or is it a girl?
It is a boy.
His name is Gabriel Alexander.
Gabriel, we said, was good because it would go well with his cousins Gavin and Gunnar,
so, um, you know, we threw that in there.
He will be born June 22nd-ish, if all goes well, and he doesn't come any earlier or later,
which I hope not, um, so a summer baby.
So next Tuesday, the 21st, Katie, the mom and her mother Betsy are flying up so that
Katie can be here, at least for early labor or, you know, if Gabriel should come on time,
and you know, to have her mom as a support system is great to have her with her.
We plan to throw a little surprise baby shower for Katie that night, that Tuesday night,
and the 22nd, the following day, is my 40th week, you know, due date, so we do have a
doctor's appointment that day, and hopefully Katie can meet Dr. Malik.
The baby shower that I threw, it was a complete surprise, so do you have no idea?
No, we came into town and traveling just wears me out, makes me really tired, and so I was
sitting there on the plane with my mom, who actually knew about it.
I didn't know she knew about it, but we were traveling together, I thought I should go
take a shower and go to bed, and Cailin said, let's like go out and go do something at five
or five thirty, when you get in, I thought, okay, I'm tired, but we'll go to dinner,
do something, and then I walk in, and there's a barn, and people, and it's just full, and
huge surprise, and the fact that they threw a shower for me, when she's the one doing
all this, was just a testament to how well she treats us, and how excited she is for
us.
There's no, you know, jealousy, or frustrations, or hard feelings, or anything, she's just
purely excited for us, and has shared this joy and excitement with us, which, once again,
we couldn't have asked for anybody better.
So take me like, step by step, like, what happened yesterday?
Well, it was a whirlwind, it starts with my mom, and I got into town, we just had our
shower and our little party, we wake up the next morning, Cailin has been telling us,
you know, she didn't feel anything, she thought it was going to be at least a week before
she gives birth, so we actually took her out to lunch, and we had lunch with Cailin and
some of her family members, and we're sitting there, and she said, it's not today, I wish
I could make it happen for you, and we were okay with that, we thought, okay, we'll be
patient, we happened to have a doctor's appointment that same day, just so I could hear the heartbeat
in person, and he said, well, let's go ahead and do an ultrasound, you know, while we're
doing this, and they did the ultrasound, realized the fluids were low, the amniotic fluid, which
protects the baby, and all of a sudden they said, you know, we're going to induce, and
we said, it's great, you know, what, in a couple days, and Dr. Mellie said, no, we're
inducing tonight, and so, all of a sudden the first thing I do is get my phone out and
text Andrew, and I said, you need to book a flight now, and literally, I got that question
to you at 315 Oklahoma time, and your dad and I were on a plane that pulled away from
the gate at 617 Oklahoma time, and we had nothing planned, the whole thing I'm thinking
is, how much of this travel have I screwed up, because I did it so fast, and like, how
many mistakes have I made?
And then from there, I get a knock on my hotel door at one o'clock, he and my dad are in
town, and we try to get sleep, we don't really sleep much at all, she went that night, and
they kind of started the slow induction process, but in the morning, that's when things started
happened so quickly, we had to go run and get some court documents, and a few things,
we come back, and all of a sudden, we go to the room, and things are starting to go, Andrew
stayed behind the curtain, and she let me be in there with Kyle, her husband, and her
and the doctors, and it went really quickly, she was brave, she didn't show any sign of
distress, even though I'm sure it was the most painful thing, with an 8 pound, 11 ounce
baby coming at me, but she was doing a great job, and before we knew it, we saw him crown,
and he was out, and I got to cut the umbilical cord, and hold him in my arms for the first
time.
And then obviously yesterday, the big day was for everybody here, obviously for the parents,
but for you guys as well, can you explain how yesterday went for you guys?
Oh my gosh, yes, when they called us into the room, I can't explain really well, but to
see my daughter holding her child in her arms, just remarkable, you know, you get choked
up, we cried, happy tears, he's just perfect, I mean, I'm a grandmother, so now I can say
this, he is the most perfect child in the world, but it's amazing.
So Andrew, you kind of mentioned about how, like it was so stressful, like not being here
right away, like how did that, like obviously it had to have been quick, how, you know.
Well I mean, I just, I called my father and I said, okay, so they said they're in Deuce
right now, I said, if I can get his flight out tonight, can you get out tonight?
And he said, in his typical calm fashion was, okay, yeah, whatever you come up with, we'll
make it work, and he's off at work, and I'm at work, and we just find the last flight
we can get out on, and fortunately everything synced up, we had like, by the time we got
to the gate, at our changeover, we had like five minutes to wait, a few more, because
it was delayed a few minutes, but we only had about five minutes otherwise, before boarding,
and got here and got in a car, and she came straight up here, but it was, it was really
exciting, and I'm sitting there thinking about something, either, so they've induced either,
she's going to deliver like this evening, I'm not going to make it, or it's going to
probably be like tomorrow evening, it's either going to be like four hours, or 30 hours,
and I was completely wrong both ways, because it was like 15 hours, I was totally wrong
on all fronts, but I was just really glad to be able to be here, that was our only concern
with me staying behind waiting, was would I not be here in time for my son to be born,
and I did not want to miss it, and fortunately, it all worked out, that's what Madison
Jackson said.
It's just like being in Oklahoma, it's like being in a tornado, because we thought it
was moving slow, and suddenly I get a call that said, get on a plane in a couple hours,
and I'm sitting at work doing something completely different, and between running to an airport,
fighting the traffic, getting here at one in the morning, and then even then in the
morning, it's like, hurry, get there, it's coming quick, so it was a tornado, great
outcome.
This started actually a long time ago, when I was 18 years old in college, I woke up and
the whole left side of my body was just numb, and the doctor, they came to me and I found
out that I had MS, which is pretty young to get it, but I kind of went through the process
of grieving the fact that I have a disease that I'm going to have to deal with, that
was chronic my whole life, I'll have to deal with, and I did okay with that, but then about
four years ago, after Andrew and I got married, we started talking about kids, and we went
to my neurologist, and the treatment that I have been going on has been fairly aggressive
to get my symptoms at bay, but I think that was probably the hardest thing about this
whole disease is to find out what a risk it is for me to carry a child, not that I can't
conceive a child, but to carry a child a risk to me and my child, and we just decided it
wasn't worth putting a child at risk, or myself, or you at risk for that matter, it just wasn't
worth it.
We found this agency that basically matches people with surrogates, and we were matched
with a couple, and we were starting to get a little frustrated because it just didn't
work out, and they stopped answering our calls, and then, just as we were about to give up
and go to a doctor route, or a different route, our agent called us with Kalen's name.
I wanted to give it one last shot to see if we're compatible with this person, we started
to talk to her, and it was just instant, our connection with her was instant, we told her
our story, my health, her goal, she told us her stories, and we just felt this connection,
and really since that moment on this connection of motherhood, and her teaching me through
her sense, and how she parents her sense of motherhood, and what it's like to give a
part of yourself towards somebody else, and I think she does that as a wife, as a mother,
and she did that for us.
The selflessness of her is just incredible to us, and we couldn't have asked for anybody
better.
Kind of touched around on it, so what would you say to the people that have a negative
view of it?
I think if anybody has a negative view to it, I think I would say what they need to understand
is this isn't just a process used by supermodels that are trying to preserve their figure for
the fall collection.
I think that's kind of the image that a lot of people have, is that it's about vanity,
and it's not.
It's about health, it's about life, that's the thing to understand is that it's not
a e-entertainment type thing, it's about love more than anything, it's about loving
this person before they're ever even a part of this world, and knowing that they need
to be here, and you need to find a way to bring them into this world one way or another.
I think the stigma, I don't fully understand it, I feel like it's uncomfortable or awkward
or how could you trust somebody to do that, but I think that's what our faith is about,
stressing others, but we're able to trust Kaelin because she wanted the best for us, and we
wanted the best for her, and I think we're in a unique situation because we have that
mutual respect, and she's my hero, and she really is, to be able to give us this gift
without asking what's in it for me, or what ifs type questions that she was just purely
excited for us, and I think if it works correctly and people really take the time to research
it that if you find the right person that's compatible with you, it's the purest kind
of human love and selflessness, and I think it's remarkable what she's done, and I think
the story is inspiring rather than, like I said, weird or awkward, I don't think it's
that way at all.
To me, more than anything, this process has meant the opportunity for our family to grow
and the opportunity to protect our family, and that's one of the biggest things I've
always been told was that a husband and father's job is to protect your family, and doing this
I feel like the most allowed us to grow and protect our family at the same time, and it's
just meant the world for me, because it's Kaylin's giving us a part of protection for
you and for Gabe, but that I couldn't provide, and so they just meant the world to me because
I couldn't give that to her, I couldn't create that protection that she did.
There is still so much controversy and, you know, questions and almost a negative aspect
to the surrogacy procedure that I wanted to share, you know, that there's so much good
that's going on right now, like my life has literally changed with this process, and the
fact that I can educate those that, you know, don't know anything about it, kind of are
ignorant to the fact, and, you know, maybe help those that would like to do it, but still
have, like, some stipulations, you know, this is my story.
There really aren't the words to express all we've ever wanted was to be parents, and she
made that possible, but more than anything, the fact that she took such good care of our
son, not only made this rehab, it took such good care of him and allowed us to protect
Katie's health and give us this family that we've always wanted, I just, obviously I'll
always be grateful for, but I don't think I'll ever really be able to put into words
the way that I feel and the amount of gratitude that I have, because I don't think the words
honestly exist.
I've told her before, and I'll continue to tell her that every time I look into Gabriel's
eyes, you know, she's a part of this.
She might not be his biological parent, but she's a part of him, she's a part of us,
she's a part of our family, she's not, you know, some friend, some business partner.
She's a part of us.
Kaylin, I'm an English teacher by trade, but there are no words, no words adequate enough
to express our gratitude, and I think your family's support, the fact that our families
have been able to come together, I don't know that this would happen in every circumstance,
the support, the loving, but you, you have been at the epicenter of this, and our family,
you will forever be in our family's hearts for this blessing, this gift from God that
you have made possible.
There's the family you're born into, and then there's the, that we always talk about the
family you're born into, and then the family you find, and I think there's the family that
finds you, is the part we don't want to spend, and she's part of the family that finds us,
you know, and I think that's something that, you know, you always talk about the endless
friend, they're like family, and Kaylin and Kylin, they are family, they always will be.
