CLEVELAND — From the beginning of their relationship in 2008, Courtney and Hue DeLuca knew they wanted to start a family together one day. For Courtney, one of 36 first cousins, and the son of a woman who has nine siblings, the importance of family was always front and center.
“That's how I fell for Courtney was how much he loved his family, and he knows that my family is everything,” said Courtney’s wife, Hue DeLuca. “And so we knew having our own would be so important for sure.”
The couple was married in 2010, and by the summer of 2012, they had been trying to have a baby for about a year. Having no luck, they sought out a reproductive endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic. They underwent three IUIs, none of which were successful, then moved on to IVF. During their fourth round of IVF, Hue became pregnant, but not for long.
“Unfortunately, all my pregnancies never stuck, so we've been pregnant probably five times now,” Hue said. “Overall about 10 rounds of IVF at least, I think I stopped counting.”
The long road of doctors appointments, procedures and flickers of hope, followed by a devastating loss, wore on the couple, who described their journey as a largely silent one.
“It was more, almost just heads down, just kind of keep your head down and we just told each other move on to the next step, move on to the next phase, what's next?” Court said.
“I remember everything I was doing at every miscarriage, and I would blame myself,” Hue said. “The things that you say to yourself when you’re feeling so defeated, it’s just awful.”
The couple went through the process to become eligible for adoption, but the pandemic put a pause on their plans. They also began discussing looking into the option of surrogacy.
Hue remembers March 2020, not only the beginning of the pandemic, but her last miscarriage. At that point, she remembers preparing to accept the reality that perhaps their vision of parenthood and having children may need to change.
“I think we were just going to say, ‘You know what? If it's just Courtney and I, it’s just Courtney and I,’” Hue said.
Lending support throughout the couple’s struggles was dear friend Bridget Baum. Bridget and Hue recall their first meeting and the way they instantly connected during a work interview. Moving to Ohio from Chicago with her husband and one-year-old, Fiona, Bridget met Hue at her very first job interview in the area.
“We just immediately hit it off really well and just had this 90-minute conversation, it was supposed to be like a half an hour,” Baum said. “And we just talked and talked and talked and it was super comfortable. It was also, it was personal, but we were really on the same page with the job as well.”
Bridget and Hue laugh at the memory of the company recruiter poking her head into their interview, asking if Bridget needed to feed the meter outside as their conversation continued on. Bridget ultimately took the job, and Hue made it her mission to show her around Northeast Ohio and make the new environment feel like home.
Bridget and Hue grew closer, their families connecting as well, Bridget noticing just how natural and loving Hue was with her daughter, Fiona.
“It was this amazing thing. You don't always know how your friends will interact with your kids, and some people are more inclined toward kids than others. And she was just like, ‘I'm going take her and I'm going to just go walk around with her,’” Bridget said of Hue. “She would just do anything Fiona wanted, and Fiona found that out pretty quickly.”
As the friendship between the women grew, so did Bridget’s family. Bridget and her husband Scott welcomed their daughter Lana into the world.
“I felt very aware of that at the time that I got pregnant with Lana, that I knew this was something that you wanted also,” Bridget said. “And I wanted to be really sensitive to how you would feel about it and how I could kind of share it with you.”
“I think you were again, just trying to stay reserved about it, but you were happy when we both could express happiness,” Hue said, remembering how it made her a little sad to know that her friend seemed apprehensive to express her excitement over her pregnancy.
At home in Pepper Pike with her husband, Scott, Bridget recalls how grateful she was to have two smooth pregnancies with both of her girls.
“When we decided to start trying for our first, we had a really easy time. It was like the first time we tried, we got it and we were really excited,” Bridget said. “So it was a really good and smooth experience with pregnancy. So I was really comfortable, I wasn't sick.”
After Fiona and Lana, the couple felt their family was complete, and that they would not be having more children. But while they knew their family was done growing, Bridget had the feeling that she “wasn't necessarily feeling done with pregnancy.” In the back of her mind, was her best friend’s struggle.
“I kept coming back to knowing that Hue wanted a child and wasn't able to get there,” Bridget said. “They had been through a lot of things, and we had talked pretty openly at that time about their experience, kind of considering adoption and going through all of the IVF process. And I had really constantly had this feeling in my mind of, ‘I wish I could do something and could I do something?’”
Bridget kept considering the idea of acting as a surrogate for Hue, bringing the idea to her husband one evening when they were getting ready for bed.
“I just thought it was, I mean, the best gift you could possibly give somebody and I was proud of her to even think about it, let alone move forward with that idea,” Scott said of his wife’s idea. “We thought it's also a great lesson for our kids, and just being selfless, even though they might not realize it now. When they're older and they can really see what their mom did, it's going to be a great lesson for them.”
“He was really my biggest confidant in that. And I was just really grateful all along that he was really supportive. It wasn't like, ‘Well, how's that going to impact us? Or how's that going to impact me?’” Bridget said. “He didn't really see any negative side of it. It was only ‘Wow, that would be really amazing and Hue and Court really deserve that.’”
After about a year of careful consideration, Bridget brought the idea to Hue one day over lunch.
“What it came down to was I felt close enough to her that she would trust me enough to say, ‘Yes, I would want you to do this,’ or ‘No, I wouldn't want you to, and here's why.’”
“In the middle of eating guacamole, she goes, ‘Have you ever thought about surrogacy? And would you let me do it?’ And I just remember crying into the guacamole, it was one of the most surreal experiences,” said Hue.
The experience was made even more surreal by the timing of Bridget and Hue’s conversation.
“The same week that we were looking into surrogacy and contacting some agencies was the same week that Bridget reached out about having lunch,” said Court.
While Hue and Court were excited and grateful for the offer, they were also aware of the impact this would have on the Baum family and the potential risks.
“I met with Scott and kind of tried to talk him out of it,” Court said. “I tried to say, ‘Scott, look, your wife's important. You have two young girls that you have to take care of. You have to take care of your family as well. You know, we're great friends and I'd never want something to happen to Bridget.’”
But Bridget and Scott were undeterred, wanting to support the DeLucas in their journey to growing their family. Ultimately, both families decided to move forward with the surrogacy process together. The process was extensive, involving multiple therapy sessions, questionnaires, medical exams, and, least pleasant of all for the group, those “gut-wrenching” worst-case scenario conversations with lawyers.
“Essentially you have two attorneys representing both parties to say, let's paint the worst picture possible,” Hue said. “And so the questions that we had to answer together or collectively were pretty dark.”
“The entire process, I think, brought Hue and I together. We're fighting a common challenge, throughout the entire journey,” Court said. “And then obviously bringing Scott and Bridget in was kind of the same thing. You struggled together, you overcome together. And, you know, it definitely strengthened our friendship and our family.”
The families also wanted to share the process and their journey with others, hoping to help other families facing their own fertility challenges and start a dialogue and conversation around surrogacy and family. With the blessings of both families, Bridget began writing about her surrogacy journey in a blog, documenting their shared experiences.
Ultimately, the process was successful, and Bridget was able to carry Hue and Court’s baby. From doctor’s appointments, to “too much information” text message updates, which Bridget and Hue both insist were never, in fact, “too much,” Bridget and Hue navigated the surrogacy process together.
“It was such a special thing to, you know, enjoy that pregnancy and feel that bond knowing that I would have another baby in the world that would be connected to me, but also to know that it would be your baby,” Bridget told Hue. “It's like I was bonded with him in a way that was because he is yours and because he wasn't mine.
While Bridget said the feeling of carrying someone else’s baby was “impossible to predict,” the families expressed gratitude at how smooth the process was for everyone involved. Bridget said the entire pregnancy, she understood she was carrying Hue and Court’s baby, something she was also able to communicate with her two daughters to help them understand what was going on.
“There was never any like, ‘why isn't he coming to our house or anything like that,’” Bridget said of explaining the pregnancy to her girls. “So I think they were really able to handle it and conceptualize it, and I was really impressed by that. I just, you know - kids are so surprising sometimes with what they can handle.”
Finally, in January of 2023, baby Roman arrived, Hue, was always at Bridget’s side, holding Bridget’s leg for delivery.
“I will never forget just the ability to see that,” Hue said of witnessing the birth of her son. “I, you know, was probably one of the first people he got to see aside from the doctor.”
“I felt such a huge sense of relief. I was like, we did it. I felt so - I was so proud of us. I just was like, he's here,” said Bridget. “It really felt like this huge goal that we had had for so long and it was finally achieved. And I watched them put the baby on you and I was just like, this is it. This is what we had talked about for years, honestly.”
With baby Roman, Hue and Court finally had the child they had been trying for more than a decade. But their family grew in more ways than one - the DeLucas now count the Baums as family, too.
Hue and Bridget also reflect on the power of their blog posts along the way and the feedback they received from other women, sharing their pregnancy struggles and triumphs, and asking questions about what they went through.
“It was the most life-changing experience I’ve had was to open it up, we actually have women saying to me, I wish I would've helped my friend or my cousin or my sister the way that, you know, and they didn't have that perspective,” Hue said. “I also had women that just said, ‘I wish I looked into surrogacy.’”
Now, at home in Rocky River, Hue and Court, alongside Hue’s mom, care for baby Roman, practicing tummy time, and greeting neighbors on their walks around the block.
“The first smile that you get out of him in the day just kind of lights your world up, and there's nothing, nothing like it,” said Court.
“We make the most of every day that we have with him because it’s a gift, for sure,” said Hue. “I won't discount our journey, the ups and downs, but seeing him makes it so worth it.”
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The video above previously aired on 3News on May 7, 2023.