Rosanna Davison’s surrogate Anastasiia Berezan has told how she wanted to have another child for the couple just weeks after she gave birth to their first baby.
Anastasiia gave birth to Rosanna and Wes’ first daughter Sophia in November 2019.
And just over a month after she had given birth, Anastasiia called Rosanna and Wes on New Year’s Day and said she would love to give Sophia a sibling.
Speaking to Irish Country Magazine, Rosanna said: “We’d had such a great experience with Nastia, we asked the clinic would she ever help us again in the future.
“We didn’t expect to hear anything so soon because she’d just given birth but she messaged me on the 1st of January 2020 to say Happy New Year and she said, ‘I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that I would love to give you and Wesley a sibling for Sophia.’
“I remember bursting into tears and thinking this is the best news ever, it was the first day of the year and I felt so reassured because she had been so kind the whole way through,” she said.
But in an incredible twist of faith, Rosanna got pregnant naturally with identical twin boys, Oscar and Hugo.
Rosanna said it was “nerve wracking” watching Anastasiia give birth to Sophia and she felt strange just handing her cheque afterwards.
“It was a quick labour and birth and I remember afterward Sophia was taken to be weighed and cleaned, and I just turned to Nastia and cried ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’.
"I just remember thinking, if there is ever anything we could do to repay her...It doesn’t feel right that we would just hand her a cheque and be on our way, it doesn’t feel personal enough.”
Rosanna and Wes never thought they would see their surrogate again until two years later, Anastasiia was forced to flee her home in Kherson in Ukraine.
Ms Berezan is living in an apartment in Dublin owned by Rosanna’s parents, with her daughter Milana (5), her partner Katya, and their husky Layla.
Rosanna said: “The day of the invasion I was just in utter shock and disbelief. I felt sick with worry for her,” she said.
"Wes and I turned to each other and said we have to help Nastia. What she did for us and our family, she gave us the greatest gift you can give someone and now we have to help her.”
Through the help of a translator, Nastia recalled the day the war started.
“My dad called us at 6am, it was so early we missed it but when he called again he told us to collect some things- warm clothes documents, money and to leave our apartment."
"We decided to go to Katya’s grandmother's place because she has a basement so we took some food and things and Milana, Katya, Layla and I spent the first week in her basement.
"The first week was very scary, there were a lot of explosions. We went to the market and the prices were three or four times higher than before, it was very frightening.”
Nastia and her family then decided to flee her hometown of Kherson, and their long journey to Ireland began. It wasn’t until mid-April that they managed to catch a flight to Dublin.
"When I was in Poland Rosanna said to me ‘you are welcome to Ireland, we are waiting for you here’, but we didn’t really understand how to get from Poland to Ireland plus we had a dog so the situation was complicated.”
They managed to get as far as Germany, and then Rosanna’s father Chris De Burgh put them in touch with a friend of his, who was a pilot in Germany.
"If they didn’t have Layla it would have been quite straightforward to get them onto a plane and to Dublin but it was the logistics of trying to get a husky onto a plane,” Rosanna said.
"I contacted the Department of Agriculture, we had to organise a crate for the dog, appointment with the vet- it was a big logistical challenge. Nastia was great; she must have just been exhausted at this point.”
Since arriving in Ireland, Nastia’s daughter is now getting ready to start primary school in September, and her partner Katya has a job as a chef in a nearby hotel.
"I’m very grateful [to Rosanna and Wesley] for everything they have done,” Nastia said.
"I cannot even find the words to describe how it was when we arrived here. Since the first day they have helped us a lot.
"I helped them some time ago and now they are helping me. We are very lucky that we know such people as them.
"I hope we will always be friends.”
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