By the time Lornah Fidelia decided to become a gestational surrogate, she was already raising three children as a single mother. Financial pressures and the emotional weight of raising children alone pushed her to consider ways she could better support her family.
“I had heard about surrogacy. I watch a lot of television and movies, so I was quite exposed to it.”
Around 2018, she began searching online, especially on Facebook, looking for people who wanted children but could not carry pregnancies themselves.
She laughs when describing her own fertility. “I’m too fertile. I can just sneeze and get pregnant,” she says. At times, she wondered whether this was a strange kind of burden. “I would ask God if this was a curse because there are couples struggling with fertility, and I have children and still can’t support them. But then I love children.”
Her curiosity soon turned into serious research. She began looking into fertility clinics both in Kenya and abroad, trying to understand how surrogacy worked.
A friend who was donating her eggs at the time introduced her to a doctor at a fertility clinic in Nairobi. The first consultation went well. Tests were done, and she was asked to wait for feedback.
The second clinic she visited, however, turned out to be different. She had been referred there by a friend, but it later emerged that the facility was run by quacks and was not legitimate.
During this time, another opportunity appeared unexpectedly. A friend shared Lornah’s contact with a woman who was looking for a surrogate. The two met up and took time to get to know each other and see whether they were compatible for the process.
Lornah Fidelia.
Photo credit: Pool
“Personally, I was looking for someone who was sure they were going to love the child,” Lornah says. She had already met other parents, but the connection did not feel right. This time, she felt comfortable moving forward.
Eventually, she agreed to be a surrogate and went to Nairobi IVF clinic for the medical process. Both she and the intended parent underwent several tests, including venereal and genetic screenings.
Meanwhile, Lornah had to prepare her body for the pregnancy. The doctors synchronised Lornah’s and the other mother’s menstrual cycles. The intended mother’s eggs were extracted during ovulation and fertilised with her partner’s sperm.
Lornah was put on hormonal medication, including injections and pills, for two weeks.
“They had to prepare my womb lining,” she explains. “It had to reach a certain thickness so that it could accommodate the embryo, the intended parent’s egg and sperm that had been created in the laboratory.”
Despite already being a mother, the preparation was necessary because this was not a natural pregnancy. “This is a scientific pregnancy,” she adds.
By the time the embryo was implanted, the fertilisation had already taken place in the laboratory two weeks earlier. Even before implantation, doctors carried out repeat scans to ensure Lornah’s womb was healthy and ready for the next step. The medication can sometimes cause cysts, and if cysts appear, the process has to stop.
“They cannot implant if you have cysts,” she says. “If they find them, they get you off the treatment and wait for the next menstrual cycle.”
Lornah says she felt calm throughout the process. Her main concern was practical rather than medical. If the pregnancy did not attach successfully, she would not receive payment. “I was very open-minded and had put all my eggs in one basket.”
Before proceeding, both she and the intended parent attended counselling sessions for two weeks. Later, with the help of the clinic’s lawyer, they signed a contract outlining their agreement according to Kenyan law at the time. The intended parent also agreed to support her financially throughout the pregnancy.
Still, pregnancy can bring emotional swings. At one point, when she was three months pregnant, Lornah experienced hormonal outbursts that made her briefly feel like she did not want to continue carrying the pregnancy.
Lornah Fidelia is a gestational mother of three triplets and a mother to four children.
Photo credit: Pool
The original agreement had been simple, only one baby, with compensation based on that understanding. But nature had other plans.
During the pregnancy, doctors discovered that Lornah was carrying triplets.
When the babies were eventually born, her name appeared on the birth notification as the birth mother. That meant the intended parents had to formally adopt the babies, a process that took four months.
Her water broke at 34 weeks. The three babies were admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Because they were in intensive care, Lornah remained at the hospital longer than was planned.
The babies were initially fed with formula, and another agreement had to be drafted allowing her to breastfeed and provide lactation support for about one and a half months.
During that time, the intended mother could only see the babies from a distance until they were discharged from the NICU.
She was later discharged from the hospital alone without the babies as per the agreement with the intended parents. After the adoption process was completed, the intended parents took the babies home.
Looking back, she says she has no regrets. “For me, I am just fine. I do not have that strong a bond with the babies,” she says.
Back in her neighbourhood, questions quickly began. People had seen her pregnant, but never saw her return home with babies. When she tried to explain the situation to a few neighbours, it created even more problems.
“I regret telling them,” she says. The stigma grew so intense that she eventually moved from that area. Her children were also affected. Some neighbours told them their mother was in the business of “selling babies”.
She later got married in 2021 and bore one more child, but her husband passed on in 2025.
Despite that painful experience, Lornah says she would still consider being a surrogate again for someone who wants children.
With the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill 2022 currently before Parliament, she believes the adoption process for surrogate births should be made simpler.
For both intended parents and surrogate mothers, she says, the journey is already complex enough. “Making the legal process smoother would make it easier for everyone involved.”
