Not the mama

May 11--In the belly of a Burlington woman, hope is growing. A baby boy, actually, but hope, too.

Hope is due to arrive in late August, when Summer Marnin is expected to deliver the child Stacey and Chad Baker of West Des Moines dreamed about for most of their almost 10-year marriage.

The baby they despaired of as one miscarriage became two, then three, and finally, with the loss of twins, five.

The son they had, at last, given up on ever having.

"It's hard for me to believe I'll hold my baby. ... I'm hoping the grief starts going away, and lets the joy out more." Stacey Baker, West Des Moines

On this Mother's Day, Stacey Baker is able to envision finally celebrating the day as a mother. And it's thanks to someone they didn't even know before the second miscarriage -- a single mother of two and their in-home dog-sitter who has come to be the closest kind of friend.

"Summer and her girls are our family now," Stacey Baker said. "They have done something for us we can never repay them for."

For Marnin, offering to be a gestational carrier was an easy choice. While she had two smooth pregnancies, the Bakers had nothing but heartache. They deserved another chance at having a baby.

"If I know anybody in the world who'd be great parents, it would be Stacey and Chad," Marnin said.

At 25 weeks, farther into a pregnancy than the Bakers have been before, the joy they feel is cautious, and mingled with grief. They have learned not to count on anything where becoming parents is concerned -- a lesson driven home a month ago by the discovery their son's twin had been lost.

In a checkup Wednesday at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, everything looked good and the Bakers and Marnin were all smiles as they displayed a strip of ultrasound images.

Smiles made possible by one woman's selflessness.

"Even if we don't get a child," Stacey Baker said in an expression of that cautious joy, "our lives are forever changed by what she's done for us."

For all the horrible things humanity is capable of, Chad Baker said, Marnin and her daughters, 16-year-old Liana and 15-year-old Oralia, are proof there still are people "who light up the planet."

Support from family

As Stacey Baker tells it, it was Liana Marnin's observation one Christmas about how unfortunate it was the Bakers didn't have a child to share the holiday with that got Summer Marnin thinking about surrogacy.

When she consulted her family, Liana was all for it. Oralia, not so much.

"For me," Summer Marnin said, "that was the end of it."

Also not so sure at first was Summer Marnin's mother, Linda Huppenbauer, who was afraid there would be too much attachment and letting the baby go could be difficult.

That concern has dissipated as the pregnancy has progressed. Meeting the Bakers helped sell it, too.

"I am very proud of my daughter," Huppenbauer said. "This is a huge, huge selfless act she is doing."

For the Marnins, the pregnancy truly has been a partnership, Summer Marnin said, and would not have happened without the girls' agreement. Both teens have had to step it up around the house, especially in light of a move to Burlington last winter, to keep their mother off ladders, away from cleaning chemicals and nowhere near the cat litter box.

Liana said her mother has been great raising two daughters without their father, even during lean times. She was excited from the start about the prospect of her mother sharing that gift with the Bakers, who she said "deserve miracles." It took some time, but eventually, Oralia also came around to the idea of her mother carrying someone else's baby.

At first, Oralia said, it was "weird," and she didn't like the idea of having to explain to friends why her mother was pregnant, but not with her brother or sister. Like her grandmother, getting to know the Bakers helped.

"They really do deserve this," Oralia said.

Everything but a baby

The Bakers, who met in 2003 when she came along with a friend to an office barbecue won by a co-worker of his, had their first date on her 29th birthday. In October, they will celebrate their 10th anniversary.

She is a registered nurse with a master's degree, and after a decade working for an insurance company soon will return to health care as a floor director at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines. He is an accountant now working as controller and chief accounting officer for an Ames-based renewable energy company.

By most measures, they are living the American dream, with a nice home, big families, great friends, good health and opportunities to travel.

But a house built with children in mind has known only the pitter-patter of visiting little feet.

Now 40, Stacey Baker was 32 when she had the first miscarriage. Doctors assured them it was not uncommon, and to keep trying. Then they lost the second. Keep trying, they were told again. Fertility treatment could help, and became a necessity when Chad Baker was diagnosed with testicular cancer -- twice, the second time more aggressive than the first -- in 2010.

There was one more miscarriage before they tried invitro fertilization, a costly procedure not covered by her insurance. But it was a choice between that and being childless. So they implanted two embryos, saw two heartbeats and in October 2012 wept again when both hearts stopped beating not even 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

In the meantime, family members and friends were having babies.

"I was sad for me," Stacey Baker said. "But I was happy for the people I loved."

A month after their latest miscarriages, a woman described by the Bakers as "an old friend," volunteered to carry a baby for them. But insurance for a gestational carrier would have cost as much as $60,000, and that was if everything went perfectly. With no guarantees, the cost was too much to bear.

So, in March last year, "we decided we were going to be at peace," Stacey Baker said. Instead of children, they would continue to dote on their dog, a 10-year-old black Labrador retriever named Daisy. But it is because of Daisy the Bakers now are counting down the weeks till a baby, at long last, comes home.

Marnin started watching Daisy when her aunt, then the Bakers' regular dog-sitter, had a last-minute conflict and couldn't sit with Daisy during a trip.

That was more than six years ago.

"It's almost like she was brought into our life for a reason," said Stacey Baker, who met Marnin and started infertility treatments the same week.

You've got mail

Having arrived at what they expected to be the end of their pregnancy saga, the Bakers decided to get away that May with a trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Marnin, who by that time had become Daisy's regular sitter, was scheduled to stay at the house.

"The day before we left," Stacey Baker said, "I got an email from Summer asking 'How old can you be to be a surrogate?' "

The email arrived as a bolt from the blue, completely unlooked for. It was an offer that might be described as akin to a well-liked housekeeper's sudden pledge to donate a kidney.

There was a client/customer relationship there, and it was built on a great amount of trust, though they were not so close as they are now, Stacey Baker said. They saw each other only infrequently because the Marnins primarily were around when the Bakers were away. Summer Marnin said they visited while Chad Baker was sick with cancer, and the Bakers helped when the Marnins moved from an apartment to a house.

Stacey Baker's struggles with fertility weren't a secret, but the entire history wasn't known, either.

"I just knew they were trying to have a baby and it wasn't working," Summer Marnin said. "They stayed so strong through all of that. I'd have been just broken."

Sending the email was a risk.

"I could have gotten mad," Stacey Baker said. But she didn't. And neither did Chad Baker, who said he felt they had to look into the possibility.

The fine print

Unlike their first try with a gestational carrier, insurance was a viable option this time -- thanks to coverage Summer possessed -- to cover the cost of prenatal care and delivery. Marnin isn't footing any part of the bill, which was a must. She also isn't being paid, even though her lawyer told Marnin there could be a big payday in what she was offering to do.

"She didn't want anything," Stacey Baker said.

A contract between the Bakers and Marnin covers everything from who gets to make decisions related to the pregnancy and transfer of the baby to the Bakers after delivery. Once she gives birth, her part is done. Stacey and Chad will be Mom and Dad.

"It's their baby," Marnin said.

Being a gestational carrier is different from being a surrogate mother. In the latter, the woman carrying the baby also is providing the egg. That's not the case with "Baby Baker," as Marnin called him.

"It's not any of my DNA," she said. "Just my uterus."

As friends of the family, she may be "Aunt Summer," but that is all. Liana and Oralia both look forward to meeting their new "cousin."

The pregnancy, and the story behind it, were announced in a YouTube video featuring the Marnins that has been viewed nearly 22,000 times.

Chad Baker called the positive comments on the video, especially those from people also dealing with fertility issues and a history of miscarriages, gratifying.

"Those are some of the wins," he said. "It's much bigger than just us."

Getting pregnant

Using an anonymous egg donor and sperm banked during Chad Baker's cancer treatment (at 39, he's cancer-free), five embryos were made. The morning of the implant in January, Marnin decided to put in two, surprising the Bakers with a decision that would loom large in the weeks to come.

Following four months of daily progesterone injections ("My poor kids. I can't believe they survived," Marnin said of all the hormones she was on.), both implants were successful.

Due to their move, prenatal care also moved, and would be at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington instead of in Des Moines. During an ultrasound appointment in early April at Great River Women's Health, the Bakers experienced something new: Two healthy heartbeats.

"We'd never seen that," Stacey Baker said. "That was a happy, happy day."

Grief returns

The loss of one of the babies later in April came as a shock, and came after the Bakers started to allow themselves to be optimistic. They ordered two cribs. And registered for two babies. At 18 1/2 weeks, the heartbeats were strong. Then a blood test showed the strong possibility of spina bifida in one or two fetuses. That prompted an ultrasound at 20 weeks.

"Those nine days were very difficult," Chad Baker said.

The days didn't get easier with the discovery of just a single remaining heartbeat. The grief of loss returned. Learning they were having a boy was not celebrated as it might have been.

"It should have been the most joyous day of our lives," Stacey Baker said, "and we came home and cried all night."

And until last week's follow-up ultrasound, the prospect of having a severely disabled child was a significant worry, and though they never would consider terminating the pregnancy, thoughts did turn to the challenges of rearing a child with a disability.

That fear has been alleviated. But not the pain.

"Losing one of the two, it hurts," Chad Baker said. "It's really sad for us. It still stings. But it doesn't take away the other side, which is awesome."

Grief and joy are competing emotions, he said. There is fear, Stacey Baker said, in being too optimistic.

"It's hard for me to believe I'll hold my baby," she said, adding: "I'm hoping the grief starts going away, and lets the joy out more."

Bouyed by a positive check-up, hope builds. Hope that does not yet have a name.

But that's OK.

There's a list.

Don't be just a face in the crowd. Be one of the 52 Faces, appearing each Sunday in The Hawk Eye. Everybody has a story to tell. Share yours or nominate someone you know. Email your suggestion to [email protected], or call features editor Craig T. Neises at (319) 758-8148.

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