Melbourne-based Rhiannon Stevens already has three children of her own, but that didn’t stop her offering to become a surrogate to her brother, Clinton, and his partner Callum, after they tied the knot in 2012.
“I’ve always said that when the time came, I’d help Clinton to have a child,” Rhiannon told news.com.au. “It felt like the most natural thing in the world to offer to be his and Callum’s surrogate.”
Clinton and Callum initially explored adoption and international surrogacy but both processes proved too difficult.
Rhiannon became pregnant with their first daughter, Zara, in 2014 after a successful embryo transfer involving a donor egg and the couple’s sperm.
“After Zara was born, it only took me three months to offer to go again,” Rhiannon says. “People always ask me how I knew I’d be able to hand over the baby I’d carried for nine months at the end. I always tell them that it’s because I always knew I was carrying my brother’s baby. Not mine.”
Just three weeks ago Rhiannon gave birth to Clinton and Callum’s second child, a daughter named Aiden.
“Zara and Aiden are both beautiful girls, but I am very happy in my role as their aunt,” she says. “Clinton and Callum are absolutely wonderful with kids and helping them to become parents was a dream come true for me. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Before becoming Clinton and Callum’s surrogate, Rhiannon was required to have multiple counselling sessions and the trio spent a year finalising legalities and signing a contract.
