Ukraine: Impossible choices for surrogate mothers and parents

On the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Svetlana found it hard to believe that what she was watching on the news was really happening.

With the help of the surrogacy agency, Emma got in touch with two other parents who had surrogates in Ukraine. They found a bus that would take the three women and their 10 children on an 18-hour trip to the Moldovan border. More than 2,000 children are born through surrogacy every year in Ukraine, the majority to foreign couples. The country has around 50 reproductive clinics and many agencies and middle-men who match couples - known as "intended parents" - to surrogates.

The company has been grappling with whether to move the babies out of Kyiv to a safer location in western Ukraine, but transporting them in a war zone also carries risks.Nastya was saving up to buy a house in Kharkiv, where she lives with her two young boys, and coming to the end of her second surrogate pregnancy. When the war broke out she was only weeks from her due date and went into labour to give birth to twins a few days later.

When Emma envisages the family she wants, she thinks of the drive from her home in Canberra to her parent's place in Sydney. She imagines looking into the back seat and seeing a gaggle of children. Instead, she has one. "It just feels like a hole in my life," she says. With their first surrogate, two attempts at pregnancy didn't take, causing further heartbreak. When they were matched with Svetlana and she got pregnant right away it felt like the battle was finally over.

"The past few days have been unbearably traumatic in what's already been a traumatic year," Christine says. Now they are working hard to get to know each other, using Google translate. "Yesterday, we had a discussion about our spiritual beliefs, whether we believe in clairvoyance and all those things. It's not just all about pregnancy," she says.

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