Third-Party Motherhood : Families: Pregnancy is always a long and difficult wait for the expectant parents. When a surrogate mother is involved, it’s an even more difficult wait.

Kathy Wyckoff figured she knew all there was to know about surrogate parenting. Shewas a surrogate mother herself nine years ago, an experience that led her to found a surrogate brokerage business in San Clemente. Since then, she has matched infertile couples with surrogates, completing more than 50 successful births.

But then, Wyckoff and her husband, Tom Olivor, wanted their own child. By now unable to conceive, they decided to hire an experienced surrogate they knew from her company. Suddenly, Wyckoff found herself on the other side, as anxious as all her would-be parents at not being able to control the pregnancy of their unborn child.

“I had no idea,” she said. “Being the couple is so much more difficult than being the surrogate.”

Olivor, too, said he was on an emotional roller coaster until their surrogate, an unmarried Long Beach woman, delivered a healthy baby and they brought him home in August. “We took turns going crazy,” he said.

Since 1975, an estimated 4,000 babies have been born in surrogate arrangements in the United States, about half of them through a handful of programs such as Wyckoff’s--the Center for Reproductive Alternatives--that use the services of professionals like lawyers, doctors and psychologists. Most come off without a hitch: Fewer than 1% of surrogates change their mind and want to keep the child. There are no known cases of a handicapped child born in a surrogate arrangement.

Though rare, each contested case represents a contracting couple’s worst nightmare come true. In the well-publicized Baby M case, New Jersey surrogate Mary Beth Whitehead changed her mind and was eventually awarded visitation rights. Three years ago, a Chula Vista couple agreed to share custody with their Mexican surrogate.

And most recently, Anna Johnson, an Orange County surrogate, sued the couple who hired her because they allegedly did not give her sufficient support during her pregnancy. However, it is the first contested case in which the surrogate, impregnated through in vitro fertilization, has no genetic link to the unborn child.

Such cases also spur consideration of public policy for what is becoming an increasingly popular alternative means of procreation.

Many states have considered surrogacy legislation, and 16 have passed statutes, some providing misdemeanor penalties for engaging in a contract.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, those states that have banned surrogacy or declared contracts unenforceable are: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah and Washington.

Meanwhile, brokers report an increase in what is known as gestational surrogacy, as in the Johnson case. And they report many calls from “do-it-yourselfers”--couples, like the pair who hired Anna Johnson, who have found their own surrogate and are seeking further directions on how to proceed.

To Wyckoff, who runs a relatively small operation--10 cases a year--out of her home, such cases also serve to illuminate the pitfalls of unregulated surrogacy arrangements made by individuals without the benefit of programs such as hers that screen participants for compatibility and supply long-term psychological support.

Wyckoff first became involved in surrogacy 10 years ago. Married to another man, she was the mother of three children and living in the Midwest. She knew a couple who were desperately trying to have children but could not. Sympathetic, she tried to help them by researching alternatives. Catholics, like herself, they rejected surrogacy as immoral. But Wyckoff said: “The more I found out, the more I knew this was the right thing to do.”

Rather than giving “the gift of life,” she said she wanted to give the “gift of parenthood.”

Wyckoff contacted a doctor in the Midwest who ran the only program she knew of at the time and was artificially inseminated. The program required anonymity, provided no counseling and did not allow couples or surrogates to select each other, she said; they had no say in the matchups. Even her labor was induced, and Wyckoff has no idea what happened to the child.

Later, when an infertile couple she had met in the program asked her to help them meet a surrogate and make the arrangements, she agreed, and subsequent referrals marked the beginning of her business.

She relocated to Newport Beach, after a divorce in 1984 and marriage to Olivor, an architect.

After five years, they decided they wanted children of their own. But complications from endometriosis, and later an ectopic pregnancy, forced Wyckoff to undergo a hysterectomy after which she could not conceive.

By this time, her business was so well established she had repeat customers and repeat surrogates. Many of them, like Susie, had become personal friends who formed the core social life for Wyckoff, 36, and Olivor, 47.

They had particularly admired Susie, a 28-year-old civilian merchandiser for the Navy, for her strength and independence. She had given birth to healthy children twice before, once to a son who was adopted independently and once to a daughter for a couple in the program. They asked her if she would be artificially inseminated again, this time for them. She agreed.

“It doesn’t seem unusual to us,” Olivor said. “In 1980, it was a radical thing to do. In 1990, it’s not that radical a procedure.”

Following the procedure Wyckoff prescribes for her clients, they each obtained lawyers, signed contracts stipulating Wyckoff would adopt the child later, and attended psychological counseling sessions before the insemination.

Over the duration of the pregnancy and two months after delivery, they will pay her about $13,000. In general, the total cost to couples in Wyckoff’s program ranges from $27,000 to $29,000, with the additional money going to lawyers, psychologists and doctors fees and travel expenses. Wyckoff would not disclose how much she profits from each case.

During her pregnancy, Susie kept on working, and used the extra money for trips and a new car, she said.

Wyckoff and Olivor said they tried to hide their anxiety from her, in the belief that she would produce a calm child if she remained calm herself.

However, Olivor said switching from observer to participant was “emotionally wrenching.” At one point, Olivor, a fallen-away Catholic like his wife, said he was certain a handicapped child would be God’s punishment for having been involved in surrogacy: “That’s how crazy it got.”

Wyckoff was equally unnerved over the lack of control and often wondered if she shouldn’t have gone through another program other than her own. For instance, there was the question of whether the other surrogates would be jealous that the “Mother Superior” had played favorites by choosing one of them, a fear that didn’t materialize, Wyckoff said. Moreover, there was the nagging feeling that she had just been consistently “lucky” in arranging 57 successful births. What if this would be the one time something went wrong?

Wyckoff coached Susie during the brief delivery and cut the umbilical cord. She and Tom stayed at the hospital overnight and drove her home the next day. They stayed half an hour and left with the child. Later they sent a bouquet of balloons.

For Susie, who does not want to raise children of her own, it was basically a job, albeit a special one. “I kept that kind of an attitude,” she said. “I never got attached to the baby. Never thought, what if he was mine?

“Some of us are made to be moms, and some of us are made to do this.”

She said she will probably be a surrogate for another couple in the program in February.

“They’ve had some major hard luck. . . . I’ve been lucky enough to get pregnant the first time, have healthy 8-pound babies, lots of hair. Good babies.”

Indirectly, she’s also doing it for Wyckoff, whom she considers almost like a sister. “I see how Kathy feels the more time she spends with a couple and there’s no baby. I know I could step in and say, ‘OK, I don’t mind being pregnant,’ and everybody would be happy. Then that look would leave her eye. All gets right with the world.”

But she thinks she will quit the program when she’s 30. “I don’t want to be having kids the rest of my life.”

Rocking the sleeping baby named Michael, Wyckoff said her sympathies unquestioningly lie with Mark and Crispina Calvert, the biological parents of the child being carried by Anna Johnson. “I understood Mary Beth Whitehead and her desire to keep the baby. But it’s hard for me to understand where Anna Johnson is coming from.” (The baby boy, born last week, is now with the Calverts. Johnson is still seeking shared custody.)

In her program, surrogate candidates are screened for genetic history, mental illness and chemical dependency--and personality characteristics compatible with Wyckoff’s. Once accepted, they attend group sessions with counselors to help one another deal with thoughts of keeping the child and accept that the baby will belong to the contracting couple. “I’d never have a surrogate in a program without ongoing psychological counseling and the camaraderie of other surrogates. It’s essential.”

Even though her own surrogate said she did not need counseling after the birth, Wyckoff said she insisted, as always, “so they can resolve even the slightest thing said or done, so it won’t come back to haunt them.”

She and her husband see a big problem with the “do-it-yourselfers.”

“Do-it-yourself surrogacy is like wanting to go to Hawaii. You buy a yacht, and ask the broker, ‘Which way to Hawaii?’ He points and says, ‘That way,’ ” Olivor said. “It’s that kind of adventure.”

“It’s that dangerous,” Wyckoff added.

These days, surrogacy is more socially acceptable than when she started out, Wyckoff said. Whereas it was difficult to find mental-health or health-care providers 10 years ago, she has no problems today.

However, the industry, such as it is, has yet to organize. Wyckoff said there are very few successful brokers in the United States. Many fail because they don’t have the credentials or are too intent on making money, she said.

When brokers met two years ago in Denver to devise professional guidelines, the meeting fell apart because of disagreements, Wyckoff said.

For instance, some, like Wyckoff, wanted to limit surrogates to those with a history of uncomplicated births, a proposal others called discriminatory.

Even the successful programs aren’t necessarily alike, she said. Some insist on anonymity, some use balloon payments at the end.

Wyckoff said she continues to design her own business on the Golden Rule. “I try to treat the surrogate, and now the couples, as I’d like to be treated.”