Rosanna Davison admits she was ‘horrified’ by surrogacy at first

The former Miss World and her husband Wes Quirke welcomed their first child, a daughter named Sophia, via gestational surrogate in November 2019.

The couple made the decision to go down the surrogacy route after Rosanna suffered several miscarriages. However, this wasn’t an easy choice to make.

Speaking to Newstalk’s Life and Leadership podcast, Rosanna explained that she found it difficult to think about another woman carrying her child in Kiev, Ukraine.

“I was really grappling with the idea of another woman being pregnant with my child thousands of miles away,” she said.

“I felt horrified at the beginning of another woman having my pregnancy, so I just felt it would be easier to take the human relationship element out of it and follow the commercial surrogacy side.”

The 38-year-old said that she and Wes opted not to have a relationship with their surrogate Anastasia, choosing to only receive updates about the baby’s condition.

“Every couple of weeks we got the scan results in, it was all I was interested in, was the baby’s growth and development. Obviously, I had, and still do have enormous gratitude for Anastasia and everything she has done for our family,” she said.

“She stepped in when we needed her most and gave us a baby, but I did find it difficult to imagine her carrying my baby over there.”

But Rosanna later asked for a picture of Anastasia when she reached the 20-week milestone.

“She had sent over through the agency a picture of her showing the baby bump, and I just remember feeling such sadness that I wasn’t carrying this child. That my body wasn’t able to create this life,” the beauty queen, who is the daughter of singer Chris de Burg, said.

Rosanna and Wes also share twin boys, Hugo and Oscar, who were born in 2020 after the couple experienced a “fertility miracle”.