Kiwi surrogate mum makes brother and sister-in-law’s parenthood dreams comes true

Rebecca Haworth (right, with husband James and holding Jack, 16 months) gave the gift of parenthood twice to brother Tim Guptill and his wife, Ashlynn (both left, with Vera, 4), after their first daughter, Grace, was stillborn. Vera is holding a framed image of Grace's footprints. Photo / Michael Craig

Auckland mum-of-three Rebecca Haworth gave her then-US-based brother and sister-in-law Tim and Ashlynn Guptill the gift of parenthood when she offered – twice – to be their gestational surrogate after their daughter was stillborn. What followed was a triumph of selflessness, determination and luck between two couples on opposite sides of the Pacific, and amid a cancer diagnosis and a pandemic. Now the loving parents of their “little miracles”, the Guptills have pledged to pass the gift of life on to another family. Cherie Howie reports.

Sometimes, after the last meal of the day’s down the hatch, the little hands and faces have been wiped and the plates and cups cleared away, Ashlynn and Tim Guptill find themselves playing with their kids.

It doesn’t matter which game’s been chosen, what dance move’s on show or which toy’s been grasped.

Seldom are such occasions in the photo collections of childhood, immortalised above words like “first” or “meets”.

Nor do they reliably show the frustration and tedium that trails preschooler parenting like the head cold of a toddler in winter.

They’re simply ordinary moments of family life that unfurl in the few minutes of time each day Canadian author Orlando Battista once described as “the best inheritance a parent can give”.

“As a family, it’s nice sometimes after dinner just playing together,” says Ashlynn Guptlll of the early evening amusements with Jack, 16 months, and 4-year-old Vera.

“Jack loves to dance, he’s quite an entertainer. Vera, she loves playing family, she’s constantly directing everybody and letting them know what she wants them to do.

“And when they settle down, when they’re sitting next to each other and Vera will put her arm around Jack, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is what you hoped for. What you wished for’.”

Jack and Vera Guptill with a framed image of their stillborn sister Grace's footprints, which is included in all family photos.

Seven years ago the couple – married in 2010 after American Ashlynn and Kiwi Tim met at a United States summer camp three years earlier – lost their first child, a girl they named Grace, when she was stillborn two days shy of 23 weeks’ gestation.

What had been an otherwise straightforward pregnancy in Guptill’s homeland turned deadly when, five days after announcing they were expecting, the mother-to-be developed severe pre-eclampsia, where persistent high blood pressure can threaten the health of mother and baby.

“Five days after that, [Grace] was here. It was quite a fast and furious situation.”

Thousands of kilometres away in Auckland, things were also moving quickly.

Within a couple of days of her brother and sister-in-law’s loss, Rebecca Haworth told her husband James she wanted to be their gestational surrogate.

A gestational surrogate is a woman who carries and gives birth to a baby conceived via IVF using the fertilised egg of another couple. A traditional surrogate uses her own eggs.

Their family were complete, and she was still young enough for more pregnancies, Haworth says.

“I said, ‘If Ashlynn is sick, if there’s repercussions for her being as sick as she’s been while being pregnant and having Grace, I’m gonna offer to carry a baby for them’.”

Ashlynn Guptill (left) was told she could die if she tried for a second pregnancy after developing pre-eclampsia and losing her first daughter to stillbirth. But the US teacher and her Kiwi husband, Tim Guptill, are now parents of Vera, 4, and Jack, 16 months, after Tim's sister Rebecca Haworth (right) was their gestational surrogate. Photo / Michael Craig

Guptill was sick. She gained 22 kilograms of fluid in the 10 days before Grace was born – and then lost it in 24 hours. Her organs were shutting down and she was later found to have markers for autoimmune and hereditary blood clotting conditions.

She was also warned there was an 80% risk of severe pre-eclampsia, and that it was likely to begin earlier were a second pregnancy to occur, Guptill says.

“[The doctors] were like, ‘You could die’.”

Hearing the dire prognosis, Haworth’s mind was made up.

“I said to my husband, ‘I’m going to offer to carry for them’. This is within a week of their daughter being stillborn. And he just said, ‘Fantastic, I’ve been thinking the same thing’.”

‘The wonderful year of 2020′

Life cannot be replaced.

Understanding the couple’s grief, Haworth’s next words were on paper.

“I wrote them a letter, and [my] mum took it over when she went to help. I wrote, ‘Read this when you’re ready to consider expanding your family one day. This [surrogacy] is something we’re more than happy to do for you when you’re at that point in your journey’.

“Then they could read it when they were ready, as opposed to me bombarding them with it days after it happened.”

Rebecca's Haworth's selfless offer to be a surrogate for her brother and sister-in-law Tim and Ashlynn Guptill is shown in this photo announcing the first pregnancy, which led to the birth of Vera, 4.

Seven years and two kids later, the family often use humour to “mask how monumental this is”, Guptill says.

“Not many people get to experience this gift, and to not only offer to do it, but to do it twice – and through four attempts.

“It’s so beautiful, and our grieving process has been so bittersweet as well. Just finding happiness and sadness and gratefulness. We yearn for our daughter who’s not here and we’re just so grateful she has two younger siblings, and they get to live for her.”

For Tim Guptill, who Haworth says will sometimes joke, ‘Well, that’s for having my kids’ after doing a small favour, his sister’s decision was “surprising, but also not”.

“She’s very selfless and always wants to help people. We like to joke about things but there’s no way of actually repaying her.”

Two years after the loss of Grace, the Guptills were ready to accept Haworth’s offer.

For prospective parents unable to carry a child themselves, finding a surrogate is the first, and usually immense, task they face.

But it’s also only the first step in a process that, depending on where you live and – or – how much money you have, can be long and challenging.

In New Zealand, commercial surrogacy is illegal. Intending birth mothers, as surrogates are known, can only be reimbursed for reasonable pregnancy-related expenses.

Money wasn’t an issue for Haworth, who didn’t want to be paid.

But under the almost 70-year-old laws that govern surrogacy in New Zealand, the practice requires approval from the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology, a ministerial committee whose remit includes determining the fate of applications for assisted reproductive procedures.

Under the rules intending parents must have a medical condition that prevents pregnancy or makes it unsafe, have unexplained infertility and have not become pregnant from other treatments.

Surrogacy arrangements using donor eggs are also considered for gay men.

Intending birth mothers must also be assessed as being capable of a safe pregnancy and birth, and should have finished their own family.

Meanwhile, intending parents must legally adopt the child when it’s born, even when it’s biologically theirs. This process, overseen by Oranga Tamariki through the Family Court, can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Lobbying by people such as surrogacy matchmaking organisation Love Makes a Family co-founder Christian Newman led Labour to introduce the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, but progress has been delayed by the change of Government and a redrafting to incorporate Law Commission recommendations.

Submissions on the redrafted bill closed on September 18 and are now with the health select committee, says a spokeswoman for Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee.

Avoiding the adoption process wasn’t possible for the Guptills, with busy working mum Haworth’s only non-negotiable that she give birth in New Zealand.

Rebecca Haworth with Vera, the niece she carried as a surrogate for her brother and sister-in-law, on the first anniversary of the baby's conception via IVF.

But it soon became clear it’d be cheaper and quicker for conception to take place in the US, the now 41-year-old says.

“We weighed up the choices and with the ethics committee process, it was actually just in the way-too-hard basket to do it here … because I must’ve been 35 when we started talking about it and [I knew] we didn’t have heaps of time on our side.”

As a teacher, her sister-in-law also had “very good health insurance” in the US, making the IVF process cheaper even with the couple having to pay for flights and some of her medical expenses, Haworth says.

Guptill, 38, estimates the total cost of having their children through surrogacy, including the adoption process required by New Zealand law, was about NZ$75,000.

“We were really lucky we had the financial means to make everything work. Not everybody has that opportunity.”

Also fortunate was Haworth’s job – her dad is her boss at the family’s aluminium joinery company.

“That’s why I could say to him, ‘So I’m going to America next month to get impregnated, but you’ll be able to cover for me, eh?’”

The couples signed a surrogacy agreement that included custody arrangements if the Guptills died before their baby’s birth, and whether Haworth or the baby’s health should come first if there were complications in the pregnancy.

Ashlynn Guptill and daughter Vera with newborn Jack last year.

Prioritising Haworth’s health over the baby was their own bottom line, Guptill says.

“Rebecca and James had believed very strongly, and through their faith, that the baby was a priority, not Rebecca.

“And we saw it from the perspective of you guys are parents to three children, and you’re doing us the greatest favour in the world to help us grow our family – if this pregnancy needs to end because your life is in jeopardy, we end our pregnancy, not your life.

“Rebecca wasn’t very happy about signing that.”

In July 2019 the Kiwi mum flew to the US for tests required by the couple’s fertility clinic, Reproductive Associates Delaware.

The process included a 90-minute psychiatry appointment to “make sure I wasn’t going to run away and keep the baby forever”, Haworth says.

The clinic also spoke to James over Zoom before approving the surrogacy, with an IVF transfer of an embryo created from her brother and sister-in-law’s fertilised egg planned for October.

The Haworth and Guptill families (from left) Tim Guptill, Ollie Haworth, Ashlynn Guptill, James Haworth, Rebecca Haworth, Amie Haworth and Kenji Haworth with Vera Guptill, 4, and Jack Guptill, 16 months. The framed image of Grace's footprints that Ashlynn holds is included in all family photos. Photo / Michael Craig

But in August, the Titirangi-based couple faced a health bombshell when James, 45, was told he had leukaemia.

“We were like, we’re not going to tell anyone because we don’t want to change anyone’s opinion on what’s going to be happening”, Haworth says.

“It soon became apparent we couldn’t not tell anyone, because that’s cancer. But he’s alive and kicking, and he’s fine most of the time.”

At the couple’s insistence the transfer went ahead, failing, before a second transfer the following February was successful, Guptill says.

“And then we all know what happened in the wonderful year of 2020.”

‘Hello, we’ve been waiting for you’

Covid-19 happened. Borders shut, countries told their citizens to stay home, schools, businesses and workplaces went online, and a baby grew inside her aunt’s womb.

As others baked sourdough, Haworth baked a baby.

“When we told our children what we were doing, I said, ‘I’ll just be cooking the baby – I’m the oven to make the baby get here safely.”

Now teens, the Haworth kids – then aged 8, 10 and 12 – took it in their stride. The eldest nicknamed her future cousin a “sousin or bousin – a sister cousin or brother cousin”.

The oven analogy got another run when people questioned how Haworth would be able to “give up the baby”.

“I just said, ‘It was never mine to begin with, I’m just the oven carrying it’.’

Meanwhile, her husband of 22 years enjoyed raising the eyebrows of well-wishers who thought the couple was expecting their fourth child.

“[Someone] was congratulating him and he said, ‘Thanks so much. It’s not mine, it’s her brother’s’.

“It was fantastic for the shock value of telling people. And we were not going to hide it, we want to normalise it.”

Tim and Ashlynn Guptill (foreground) in a socially distanced reunion with their Kiwi family while in managed isolation after flying into New Zealand during the pandemic for the September 2020 birth of daughter Vera.

A month before Vera’s birth, the Guptills saw Haworth’s bump for the first time while behind two fences at a managed isolation hotel in Mt Wellington.

“Rebecca said, ‘Here’s your baby, it’s ready for you’. You just want to Kool-Aid Man [burst] through the fences and give her a hug, but you couldn’t.”

Rebecca Haworth introduces her brother and sister-in-law to the baby she carried for them as a gestational surrogate. The meeting took place on opposite sides of two fences at managed isolation after the parents-to-be flew into New Zealand from their US home before baby Vera's birth in September 2020.

Two weeks later their healthy baby girl was born and immediately placed in Guptill’s arms.

“You’re still grieving the loss of our first daughter and you’re celebrating our second child, but it’s just such a bittersweet dance.

“I’d thought for years about how I’d feel if we were able to have another biological child born. Would I be inconsolable, would I be in shock? And honestly, that moment was so calm for me, everyone was very calm and it was beautiful.

“I held her and said, ‘Hello, we’ve been waiting for you’.”

A final gift

There was never any doubt a second pregnancy would be attempted – Haworth had promised two live births and she had no intention of breaking that.

“Right before Rebecca birthed Vera, she looked at me and – I’ll never forget it – she goes, ‘So when I come to America for the next transfer …’, Guptill says of the delivery room conversation.

“And I said, ‘Oh Becky, you’re so kind – we haven’t even had [this baby] yet].”

After another transfer failed, Haworth became pregnant with Jack a year after Vera’s birth.

He was born in June last year.

Tim and Ashlynn Guptill with their son Jack, who was born via surrogacy in June last year.

While she cried with relief when Vera was born, went through a 24-hour bout of the “baby blues” a few days later, and loves both kids, Haworth says she has never felt maternal feelings towards them.

“No offence to them, but it’s any baby. I have no desire to go back to the baby years. It’s also amazing how little time you need to recover [from birth] when you’re not actually looking after the child.

“It’s fantastic – I highly recommend.”

Vera knows – and Jack will one day, too – that “Auntie Becky brought you into this world”, Guptill says.

“[We say] ‘You were also an embryo, which means you hung out in a freezer for a while, and we show her the videos and pictures [of the IVF].”

Rebecca Haworth with a newborn Vera in 2020.

The little girl – and again, one day, so will her brother – also knows the little tiny framed footprints included in all their family photos belong to her stillborn sister who’s “not here, but who we live for”.

“They are tiny miracles, all three of them, because without science and our fertility clinic and surrogacy, they wouldn’t be here. It started with Grace, and she led us to them.”

There may be one more miracle to come.

Like the woman across an immense continent and even greater ocean who twice helped their dream of parenthood come true they, too, want to share the gift of life, Guptill says.

They’ve offered their sole remaining frozen embryo to her closest friend.

The woman is still considering whether to accept.

If she doesn’t, other friends without children may decide to, Guptill says.

It wasn’t an easy decision but one born of realism, and gratitude.

“You know [if it works] there’s that piece of you that won’t be with you. But we’ve made peace with that.”

Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.