This is a truly bizarre and almost unbelievable story but it’s a very real nightmare for one woman.
Kirby is a doula – someone who provides non-medical support during pregnancy, labour and after the birth of a baby – and newborn photographer, but she wants nothing more than to be a mum herself.
After suffering 14 miscarriages, one of her clients offered to be her surrogate.
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But when the intended surrogate accidentally fell pregnant naturally, she assured Kirby the baby would still be hers – right up until the birth.
“I’ve lost everything, I’ve only got myself now,” Kirby tearfully told A Current Affair.
“You’re hurting,” A Current Affair replied.
“Yeah, but I don’t have any right to. It’s not my baby,” Kirby sobbed.
“You were made to believe it was going to be your baby,” A Current Affair said.
“Yeah, and that’s all, [I’m] not here to take people’s babies. That’s horrific. I know what it feels like to lose a baby. I would never put that pain into somebody,” Kirby responded.
It was supposed to be the ultimate gift from one woman to another.
“She [the birth mother] wanted me to have a baby shower. She said I’m not giving you this experience for you to not have all the experiences,” Kirby told A Current Affair.
“I would obviously go to medical appointments, pay for the appointments when I was there.”
But Kirby would never get the baby because of a backflip at birth.
A Current Affair spoke with the birth mother who was happy to share her side of the story but she can’t be identified for legal reasons.
“Yes, we were intending on giving her a child. We wanted her to have a baby,” the birth mother confirmed.
“We didn’t malicely go out to hurt Kirby and promise her all the world and, you know, strip it away.”
Kirby’s Gold Coast home is filled with reminders of babies.
She loves helping mothers capture special moments with their newborns.
“It brings me joy to bring families something that I should have had,” Kirby said.
“I have been trying for a child since 2012 with my now ex-husband and have been unlucky, suffered multiple, reoccurring miscarriages and then deemed infertile.”
Then she was given the offer of a lifetime.
“I met a family through my work. I was their newborn photographer to start with and I witnessed first hand and photographed her first surrogacy,” Kirby said.
“After that surrogacy, I was going through a loss and that’s when she gave me a card and offered to be my surrogate.”
“Yeah, I offered to be her surrogate,” the birth mother confirmed.
“At the beginning, you were willing to give her a baby for free, essentially?” A Current Affair asked.
“Yeah, absolutely,” she said.
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“Everyone said to me, how can someone give away a baby? Some people can do it and I had seen firsthand she could, and she was offering so why wouldn’t I?” Kirby told A Current Affair.
“What progress did you get up to?” A Current Affair asked.
“Yeah, a beautiful family in WA gifted us six embryos so we went through donor counselling with that couple,” Kirby replied.
But in the meantime, Kirby got a surprise call from the intended surrogate.
“She held up a pee stick and said, ‘you’re pregnant’, and that’s when I found out she had accidentally conceived with her husband and they just said, it’s real simple, we’re just skipping a step,” Kirby explained.
“I had three kids at the time. We did not plan this. You don’t plan on having, like being pregnant. There were a lot of factors that were behind it,” the birth mother told A Current Affair.
“We don’t have time. There’s no time. A baby deserves time.”
So Kirby and her then husband announced their good news to friends and family.
The couple fell in love with the baby girl at scans and ultrasounds.
“I couldn’t find anyone in Australia that had done this,” Kirby said.
“Then I called the Queensland adoption hotline and I was advised that adoption in Queensland is illegal, private adoption.”
So they engaged lawyers.
“We could do a parentage agreement and a consent order so the child would always be legally ours, however, she would have guardianship over the child and be able to access things like Medicare,” the birth mother explained.
And that’s how they proceeded.
“[The birth mother] gave me her car seat and all children’s clothes that she had, anything she had for little people left in her home, she’d given it to me,” Kirby said.
Kirby spent thousands preparing for motherhood, even naming the baby girl.
During the pregnancy, Kirby’s marriage broke down and she moved into an apartment by herself but she was assured the little girl was still hers until she tried to see her at the hospital.
“So the day of the birth, they went in for an induction, and I texted them at 5am wishing them well. I was asked not to be there at the birth,” Kirby explained.
“Unbeknownst to me, Kirby rocked up the next morning, knowing that she wasn’t meant to be at the hospital. Security were called, escorted her ass out of the hospital,” the birth mother told A Current Affair.
“Did your mind change when you gave birth?” A Current Affair asked the woman.
“No, no, it didn’t. The social worker turned around and said I don’t feel safe allowing you to hand over a child to her,” she replied.
“There were kind of cracks in the sense that with her divorce, she wasn’t maybe the best, in the best financial position.”
They hadn’t yet signed any paper work but that didn’t matter anyway.
“Even if they signed the agreement, both parties need to get independent counselling, they need to get independent legal advice, they need to prepare the agreement which outlines all the arrangements and once all of that happens, they need to go to court, but even then, there’s no guarantee that a court would make an order to allow the intended parents to ultimately be the parents of the child,” lawyer Richard Mitri told A Current Affair.
“In Australia, surrogacy itself is legal but it is highly regulated, it is very difficult to ultimately implement, no matter how the birth is conceived, there is still a good chance that if the birth mother changes her mind, the birth mother will be entitled to retain the child as her child.”
“Were you ever given an explanation?” A Current Affair asked Kirby.
“Other than child services has intervened,” Kirby replied.
“I’ve never spoken to anyone. No one’s come and looked at my home. Nobody’s called me. The social worker is still yet to call me back from said hospital that I was removed from.
“I did want to be a mum. I think this has really wrecked me.”
