This Mom Couldn't Carry a Baby So Her Best Friend Became Her Gestational Carrier

(Photo: Twitter / @redbookmag)Nicole Barattini has been battling an autoimmune disease called [...]

By Sarah Halper

babies
(Photo: Twitter / @redbookmag)

Nicole Barattini has been battling an autoimmune disease called thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) since she was 16 years old. TTP forms tiny, potentially dangerous blood clots throughout the body, Cosmopolitan reports.

After she got married in 2010, she learned that carrying a baby could be life threatening. The medication she was on could harm the unborn baby and if she stopped her treatment it would also leave her at risk.

Barattini and her husband Kevin wanted to start a family and considered adoption, but the process was too expensive. Instead, she decided to freeze her eggs. Her doctors informed her that her embryos were healthy and the disease was not genetic. But, the couple had to find a woman to carry their child.

"We had heard stories that sisters carried and mothers carried [eggs for women who could not carry], but I don't have a sister and my mother is over the age [to be able to be a carrier]," Nicole says. "We just did it [froze my eggs] for precautionary reasons and hoped for the best."

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In New York, paid surrogacy is illegal and it was too expensive for them to find someone out of state. Their attorney informed them that they could use a gestational carrier as long as they do not get paid.

Many of Nicole and Kevin's friends offered to help and be a carrier, but none were healthy enough for the job according to her doctors. By late 2015, the couple finally found their carrier, Lianna Fives.

Lianna and her husband Shawn were longtime friends of the couple, but were focusing on growing their own family before they offered to help Nicole. After the Fives had finished having their children, Lianna was up for the carrier job.

Lianna's first try with Nicole's two embryos was unsuccessful, but by July 2016 she was pregnant.

She gave birth to Nicole and Kevin's two healthy twins, Dominic and Luciana, on February 10.

Nicole hopes her story will show other mother's who can't carry to never give up hope. "There are people out there like Liana that will do it out of kindness — and it's easier to find them than it seems," she says.

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