Earlier this year, the Midwifery Group Practice (MGP) at Mount Isa Hospital celebrated a heartwarming milestone with the birth of baby Miley, the first child delivered via altruistic surrogacy under their care.

Miley was born 19 January 2024 to loving fathers Mitchell and Matthew Croese via surrogate and Mitchell’s stepsister, Rebecca Greaves.

With six-month-old Miley thriving with her dads in NSW, it’s a poignant reminder of the extraordinary lengths this family went through to welcome their precious daughter into the world.

Mrs Greaves was in discussion with the soon to be fathers and the egg donor, who was actually her sister Melissa, for a couple of years to begin the process for IVF treatment before the family even attended their first meeting with the MGP.

“It’s great that in this day and age the technology exists so my stepbrother and his husband can have a baby, the process was long but totally worth it in the end,” Mrs Greaves said.

MGP midwife Jenna Evans was impressed with the level of preparation the family had already done to start the procedure.

“They had already begun the counselling sessions and written up the contracts an surrogacy agreement, before finally completing the insemination which unfortunately all needs to be completed in Brisbane,” said Ms Evans.

Thus begins the story of Miley’s conception which was a lengthy medical, legal, and financial process.

Altruistic surrogacy requires an obstetric report for the surrogate and both the surrogate, egg donor, and the recipient parents go through an independent psychological assessment.

It's also a financially onerous process as intending parents have to reimburse their surrogate for "reasonable surrogacy costs" which can include medical costs, IVF rounds and counselling.

“Once the insemination was complete in Brisbane, we had to do plenty of internal preparations as we knew this wouldn’t be a standard procedure,” said Ms Evans.

“For instance, we needed two separate rooms in maternity and two midwives, one for the fathers and bub, because the baby is still a patient, and one for the surrogate.

"I would like to acknowledge our doctors and obstetric team in particular Dr Elena Kreimer who also arranged telehealth sessions with the family and fathers to allow them to discuss any obstetric questions before they arrived in Mount Isa for the 20-week appointment and the weeks prior to the birth."

There was also Mrs Greaves’ immediate family to consider, with two children of her own and a husband.

“It was surprisingly easy to explain to my kids what was going to happen over the next few months, that I was essentially growing their future cousin inside my belly. Thankfully I had my husband’s full support for the whole process and during the birth,” Mrs Greaves said.

On top of this there were multiple discussions with the legal team to ensure Miley could be discharged with the fathers, as typically newborns can only be discharged with their mothers or the legal definition of a dad which, on paper, would have actually been Rebecca’s husband.

“We are very lucky we had dedicated executives and directors on board as we had to get special permission to expand the number of persons allowed in the surgical theatre for the caesarean birth normally it’s just one support person and medical, but we had; two midwives, an obstetrician, anaesthetist, paediatrician, a support person (Rebecca’s husband) and the two fathers,” said Ms Evans.

While many may struggle with the prospect of birthing a baby and not being that baby’s parent, Mrs Greaves was not concerned.

“I knew what I was getting into and because there’s no direct genetic link to myself, knowing through the whole process that I'm doing it for the two people I love, this baby was never my child,” said Mrs Greaves.  

“I am very grateful I had the best team possible through the MGP and I felt so supported, there was zero judgement.”

Fathers Mitchell and Matthew are incredibly grateful to the MGP team and encourage anyone planning to have a baby to discuss their options with the team.

“The MGP were fantastic, caring, thoughtful, and simply unfaultable. We were so grateful to midwives Jenna and Jasmine, and if we could do it all over again with the same midwives we would,” said Mr Croese.

While surrogacy births are not common, they are increasing across Australia as same-sex couples or couples that have difficulties conceiving learn more about the process, and the MGP team is here to help if anyone has questions.