Getting to know BB: Nicky Reid, Client Manager

Nicky is a Client Manager for Brilliant Beginnings. As part of our ongoing series, she shares a little about what brought her to surrogacy and working with us, and about her life outside as a mum.

Getting to know Nicky

Hi! I’m Nicky. Mum to 3 very boisterous boys. The eldest is 11 and plays football for a local team. The middle child is 8 and loves karate, he is quickly progressing through the different grading levels and hopes to teach karate one day. The youngest is 5 and loves gymnastics, already achieving 4 badges and certificates! I am so proud of each of them!

If you didn’t think having 3 boys was enough, we also have a dog called Apollo. He is a Rottweiler-Lurcher cross, and we got him as a 9 week old puppy. He has grown loads and is now very much a “teenager”, getting into lots of mischief.

I stumbled across surrogacy when I was looking at egg donation, and applied thinking that they’d never want to take me on being too old (40 at the time). I was lucky enough to be matched with incredible intended parents who already had a little boy through surrogacy and were really keen to complete their family and to have a sibling for him.

We had our first embryo transfer in the summer of 2021 which unfortunately failed. A few months later we tried again with a DET (Double Embryo Transfer) and initially had a positive pregnancy test and saw one healthy baby at the 8 weeks scan. Unfortunately the 12 week scan bought heartbreaking news that we had a missed miscarriage. The intended parents had no embryos left at this stage, and after careful consideration I decided to step back from being a surrogate and received great support and counselling to help me through this tough time. I am still in regular contact with the IPs and although have not achieved our end goal, have found 2 wonderful friends.

While getting to know my IPs, a position became available as a Case Manager at Brilliant Beginnings, I jumped at it and am so excited to be lucky enough to have joined the team. Now, as a Client Manager, I work mostly with intended parents, taking them through an Surrogacy consultation in the early stages of their research into surrogacy, then through set up and continuing to check in with them while they are waiting to be matched with a surrogate, whether here in the UK or in the USA.

Once a surrogate has gone through screening, I then get to match her with intended parents, which is wonderfully fulfilling and also sometimes nerve wracking, hoping that the match will work. Once the matching process has been navigated and the teams have started to get to know one another, I support them so that they have everything in place ready to start the next step of their journey; clinic fertility treatment and embryo transfer. My support doesn’t stop there, I continue to check in with the teams throughout every stage until their dreams of creating their family come true. I love what I do and look forward to helping so many other intended parents and surrogates on their own journeys.