Baby James Burho | Miracles Happen | An Arizona surrogate Story

Hello World. Meet Baby James. He is a miracle….and has such an amazing story!! I have known his mommy since my days at Wells Fargo and have kept in touch over the years. I loved watching God unravel His plan for her life, even when things did not seem like they should happen the way they did….there is ALWAYS a plan!! I was incredibly honored to capture his parents love store HERE on the beaches of San Diego. When Heather asked me to capture some photos of their precious baby boy, there was no saying NO….I could not wait to hold him!!! He is perfect.

Here is his story told by his mommy:

Life is crazy sometimes. I met JB in high school; we dated briefly before he went off to college and we didn’t see each other for 17 years after that. When we reconnected in 2015, sparks flew and we eloped after 4 months of dating.

My friend Nina and I knew each other in high school as well, but through our church. We attended church camps and many events together, until eventually life took us in different directions. We lost touch for about the same amount of time, roughly 15 years, before reconnecting and discovering we shared a love of running.

If you had told my high school self that one day the three of us would make a baby together, I would have told you that you were nuts. I’ve known since I was a teenager that I would never be able to carry a child and was never sure whether having a biological child would be an option at all. JB has dreamt of being a dad his entire life, so I know it was hard for him to learn that I may not be able to give him a biological child. We started down the road of exploring our options were shortly after we got married.

Around the time that we were working with a fertility specialist to create and freeze embryos, we were also living in an RV full time and traveling the country. As timing would have it, Nina sent me a message on Facebook about wanting to train for a 50k trail run and that we should do one together. After some logistical planning, we settled on picking her up in the RV in Sacramento, CA, road tripping to Bend, OR, and doing the Flagline 50k on Mount Bachelor.

First, we had a total blast during the road trip. Nina and JB hit it off right away and Nina was an RV life natural, so many laughs were had that weekend. And while Nina and I were out on the trail for 7+ hours on the day of our ultra run, the subject of our journey to have a child came up (it’s a lot of time in the woods together, you’d be surprised how many topics you can cover and songs you can sing!). Nina kind of nonchalantly said she’d consider being a surrogate for us. Wait, really? After the race, we didn’t think too much of it. But after a visit to Phoenix a few months later and a dinner with Nina and her kiddos, the conversation turned more serious. She started to do more research on the subject and the wheels were in motion.

I’ll fast forward the details a little from here, but Nina lives in Phoenix, AZ and we live in Portland, OR. There were many trips to bring her to Portland to meet with our doctor, lots of hormones, calls with lawyers, and tons of logistics to get through. We transferred our first embryo in June of 2018 and it didn’t take, which was devastating. Then in October of 2018, we transferred the second embryo. 8 days later we got a positive pregnancy test! It was nerve-wracking and thrilling to get through the first trimester and then to get to watch her belly grow, feel the kicks start, and to really plan for a baby. Nina was the best surromama we could have ever hoped for; she had an easy pregnancy and stayed super active the entire time - she was doing Crossfit the day before she gave birth!

On June 18, 2019, Nina was scheduled for a C-section at 39 weeks. JB and I were in Portland until about 4 days before then and were just crossing our fingers that the baby didn’t try to come early. Everything went exactly to plan and the doctors let the both of us in the delivery room that day. As Nina lay on the table and we anxiously sat near her head, we eventually heard the cries of our son for the first time. We were immediately in tears. The doctors cleaned him up and handed him to us, he was absolute perfection at 7 lbs, 2 oz. We held him with tears of joy in our eyes while we stayed with Nina during the rest of her procedure. Our love and gratitude to Nina was already overflowing as she moved through the pregnancy, but once our son was born, the new love we had for this new little baby extended to her. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe, but she forever changed our lives and we’re beyond grateful to her.

We have a unique and wonderful connection to Mama Nina that we’ll always have. We got Baby James back to our home in Portland about two weeks after he was born. We’ve been settling in as a new family of three and truly could not be happier.