He was 43 years old when Helene Roberts experienced something strange. Since she was a child, she had been in charge of people and, suddenly, she had no one to take care of her.
“I felt a bit worthless. I wondered what to do to stay busy. I wanted to be productive and not just go to work. What I can do? I asked myself, how can I help others,” she says.
This reflection, heard in a telephone conversation, is expressed while enjoying a few days in Florida. She calculates out loud. “We have come ten on vacation.”, She certifies her.
Today, at the age of 62, she has four children, eleven grandchildren and granddaughters and shares the joy that next June she will be a great-grandmother.
“I can't imagine someone without children. Family is very important to me. My mother died at 29, when I was little, only five years old, and this brought us very close, ”she recalls. They resided in Pennsylvania.
There were four sisters who took care of each other because the father went to work. He, who married a widow who brought another three children, was determined to have a boy and he got it.
This wife also passed away. His father got married for the third time. And there were two other stepbrothers in the home. "There was no money, we played and we grew up on the street," she stresses.
At ten years old, before and after school, she started working taking care of three girls, for $45 a week.
He finished high school in 1978, got married that same year, and in 1979 had his first child. At 16 months the twins were born and after two years the little one arrived.
Then he devoted his attention to his father, until he died. Her children grew up and, despite his work activity – of course, helping others as a nurse's aide – she entered into an existential crisis.
She heard from friends who couldn't have children, while she had given birth easily, in the most natural way.
“I liked being pregnant, carrying a child and doing it for those who couldn't. It's fantastic, ”she underlines.
Being a surrogate mother, a legal matter in the United States, did not raise any ethical issues for her. "No, why?" she questions. “It's not my DNA, I just carried them inside, as if I were holding them. It was just my belly, my uterus to grow her embryos until delivering the babies, ”she adds.
He did run into an obstacle. His age. Despite being a good parturient, from the age of 40 they do not allow you to be a surrogate mother.
He was not discouraged. She consulted online and sent her application with her information. And, to her satisfaction, she received a positive response within two weeks.
"They accepted me because, although I was 43 years old, my health was very good, I was very active," she argues. He played ice hockey, roller hockey, fished, and hunted with a bow and arrow.
They subjected her to physical, psychological, mental, financial tests. She passed all the tests. “They reviewed my entire life and I assure you they knew more about me than I did myself,” she laughs.
He had divorced, a circumstance that qualifies as a positive situation for this work. He explains that a husband can be afraid of the pregnancy and, said discreetly, there is no availability to satisfy him.
In her family they encouraged her, "everyone was moved," she says. Her children were beginning to have children "and they knew how important this is." One of her went to the war in Afghanistan (he is now in Florida with her) and insisted that he always be under her medical care.
When her youngest son had celebrated his 22nd birthday, she had her first surrogate birth: twins.
The complicity with this Manhattan couple arose immediately. This couple had recently adopted a child and wanted to have only one child. But there were two of them, a boy and a girl.
Then he received another call. This other couple, also from New York but not residing in the city, had tried it seven times, not liking the surrogate mothers.
Helene did convince them, a lot. Once she gave birth to her child, they asked her to repeat. The woman had been an only child and she did not want that for her child. “I told them that, at 45 years old, the doctor had to give the go-ahead and that they hurry up,” she remarks.
She gave birth to another child at the age of 47. And she finished her mission. “I was blessed to help two couples who are my other families,” she clarifies. They congratulate her on her mother's day and she has met the children, who, as she aspired to do this service, are in homes where they are cared for by her. That's why she preferred stable partners to act as a surrogate.
He lives in a small town in the Allegheny National Forest of Pennsylvania, next to the river, in the middle of nature. She remarried. He suffered a serious accident working with violent people. One broke his back.
They retired her a couple of years ago. She has regained mobility, she walks, although she assures that she is not the same as she was before her. That does not prevent her from going fishing and hunting with her bow and arrows.
“I just hope – he confesses – that I have improved someone's life and I think I did”.
