Surrogate Mom Gives Zim Couple Joy
Article featured on: www.herald.co.zw
Written by: Phyllis Kachere Deputy News Editor
Having been together for 10 years, six of them as a married couple, Mr Patrick Goredema and his wife Enitan have suffered the agony of realising that she is unable to carry a pregnancy.
Coming from a society where bearing children is viewed as the essence of family life, the Goredemas have not only suffered the agony of realising that she may never be pregnant; they have both suffered the tag of being a societal pariah due to fertility issues.
In an interview, the Toronto-Canada based couple narrated their agony on how they had to distance from some of their friends as the expectation for babies grew.
A few weeks ago, the couple was united with their son who was born in April through a surrogate mother in Georgia. They failed to witness his birth as Georgia closed its borders due to Covid-19 lockdown a few days before they could travel there in March.
Last weekend, the couple, together with their baby flew back to their home in Canada.
Harare-based specialist gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Tinovimba Mhlanga said surrogate motherhood is a practice in which a woman (the surrogate mother) bears a child for a couple that is unable to produce children the normal way, usually because the woman is infertile or is not able to carry through a pregnancy.
While Mr Goredema has a child from a previous relationship, his wife had never had one.
“Some of our friends would constantly check on when the babies would start coming.
“It became an agony to constantly be asked, when are you guys going to have a baby? Because of the pressure that was creating on us, we decided to distance ourselves from them. And that was painful,” said Mr Goredema.
Mrs Goredema said they dated for four years before they got married.
“We obviously started trying for a baby soon after marriage and, a year, later, I could not conceive. We tried in vitro fertilisation (IVF — this is a process where an egg is combined with sperm outside the human body.