The Unexpected Mother: A Surrogate Mother, Caught Between Science, the Law, and Humanity (Full Circle) - Softcover

Ring, Susan A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0692785469 ISBN 13: 9780692785461

Publisher: Full Circle Press, 2017

Synopsis

O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE’S TOP TEN CHOICE – “The Story That Was Only The Beginning.” A POWERFUL, CHILLING, TRUE STORY ~ Inside the life of surrogate mother Susan Ring, a single mother of two, who learns upon her second journey (with the same intended parents as the first successful journey) at ten weeks she is pregnant with triplets. The parents don't want triplets and demand a selective reduction to twins.Susan respects their wishes and goes through a traumatic selective reduction to twins. Weeks later, they inform her they don't want the twins and order them to go to social services. Susan refuses to comply and prepares to fight for the twins in a California court with no biological ties. It is a story of hope, love and letting go. This honest memoir raises the challenging ethical questions that redefine motherhood, and what it means to be a mother in today’s complex world of infertility. It recognizes how far advanced science has come, and how the law is lagging far behind. Above all, it is a story for our times. Also Featured In --People Magazine, Surrogacy Nightmare Whose Babies Are They? March 14, 2016-O, The Oprah Magazine Four Mothers, Two Fathers, and an Army of Lawyers December, 2003-O, The Oprah Magazine Top 10 Choice as “One of the most talked-about stories” in O’s Ten Year History May, 2010 -Dr. OZ, 2016 –Dr. Phil 2010-DER SPIEGEL MAGAZINE, Germany 22/2008-PBS Bloodlines, Technology Hits Home 2002

About this title

About the Author

Susan was born by the ocean in Oceanside California, the youngest of three children. A fourth sibling came with her mother's next marriage.

After high school she went to college, but yearned to be flight attendant and escape into the big blue sky to see the world. Instead, she fell into the office maze known as the corporate world. She married and settled in Lakewood, California. After her two sons were born, motherhood made her feel successful, but her marriage was failing. 

Disillusioned with marriage in 1999, she divorced and moved to the south bay of Redondo Beach, California and set out on her own as a single mother. She fulfilled a personal calling to become a surrogate mother to eight babies (a singleton, twins, twins, singleton and twins again) for five different families during the entire decade of her forties. 

After her unbelievable experiences, she had three memoirs to write but first, she'd have to learn how to write. Oh, the world of learning how to write! After numerous rejections (too many to count) and thirty-one or more first shitty drafts later, she wrote for herself. The writing career she dreamed about as a little third grader was born. 

Susan met her second husband, Paul in late 2010 at a time in her life when she was ready to be a partner in marriage and woke up to what her life had to offer. Paul never had children. Being a natural non-conformist at fifty-two years of age, Susan knew the infertility world intimately, and they got pregnant. On that warm July day in 2013, their daughter Annie was born, and Susan lost her life. What everyone thought would be the end, was really just the beginning. 

She resides in Orange County California and continues to write everyday with her husband, daughter and two very interactive cats. Her two boys have flown the nest and now live in Los Angeles, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Full Circle Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0692785469
• ISBN 13: 9780692785461
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272