On what should have been her wedding day, Lucy Koops sat in a sterile hospital room and was told her uterus had to be removed. It was the shattering conclusion to a three-year battle with infertility: a gruelling odyssey that included two miscarriages, a stage two Asherman’s Syndrome diagnosis, five surgeries and multiple failed rounds of IVF.
At the centre of her trauma was a cervical triplet ectopic pregnancy (CTEP), a condition so rare the odds are almost immeasurable. After emergency surgery for the CTEP, Koops had begged her husband to try one final round of IVF. She fell pregnant with a daughter, Millie, only to tragically lose her to a stillbirth at 18 weeks.
When the doctor delivered the news that a hysterectomy was now a medical necessity, Koops, 36, felt a strange wash of relief. “Ultimately, the decision was taken out of my hands,” she says.
But in the back of her mind, a seed of hope remained. It was a promise made years earlier by the friend who has been by her side since childhood: “Ashleigh had offered to be a surrogate.”
Ashleigh Raper, 38, has been a constant in Lucy’s life for as long as either can remember. They met through Ashleigh’s sister, Sophie, their trio becoming inseparable through years of ballet classes and sleepovers. Their families holidayed together; they still share the tradition of decorating the Christmas tree every year. The bond is so deep that Ashleigh’s daughter, Ava, was six before she realised Koops wasn’t a blood relative.
So, when Koops was in the thick of her struggle, Raper didn’t hesitate. One day in mid-2023, she simply told her friend: “I’ll have a baby for you.”
In Australia, commercial surrogacy is illegal. Those who choose this path must do so for altruistic reasons, receiving no financial compensation beyond medical and travel reimbursements.
Sitting down after their Sunday Life photoshoot, Raper and Koops are at ease as they recount how Koops’ daughter, Mia, who snoozes peacefully in her mother’s arms throughout our interview, finally arrived.
“It was a genuine offer, but if I’m very honest, I never thought I’d actually have to do it,” Raper recalls of telling Koops she’d be her surrogate. “I thought it was good for Lucy to know that there was a back-up.”
As a mother of two (now aged 10 and 12) who had experienced easy pregnancies in her 20s, Raper saw it through the lens of a “big sister” problem-solver. “The rational part of me thought I was a really good candidate for Lucy,” she says. “In the end, it was a no-brainer. In terms of, I could sort this for Lucy, I could help and I could fix this.”
It took the removal of her uterus for Koops to finally accept the offer. “It definitely took me a long time to come to terms with doing surrogacy,” she admits. “I wasn’t willing and ready to give up. I tried everything under the sun to fall pregnant.”
“I told her, ‘Of course, I’ve made this commitment to you,’ ” says Raper. Her husband, Ben, was supportive from the start. The only variable was Raper’s high-pressure career as Network Ten’s political editor. They agreed to wait until after the May 2025 federal election.
In the meantime, they did the counselling sessions required for surrogacy under NSW law, and had the legal documents drawn up. Just two weeks after the re-election of Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, Raper came good on her promise. Within a month, the transfer was complete. Raper was pregnant.
Raper describes the pregnancy with a degree of resigned matter-of-factness, and stresses that more than anything, she just wanted to look after the child for her friends. “There’s an amazing responsibility that comes with carrying somebody else’s baby and I really felt the weight of that, but I was also very busy,” she says.
For work, Raper travelled with the PM to the US three times over the course of the pregnancy (Koops jokes that Mia had “been in the cabinet room with Donald Trump” before she was even born). Says Raper: “It coincided with a stressful time career-wise for me and Lucy’s trust in me was unbelievable.”
For Koops, it was hard dealing with the guilt of watching her friend go through the sickness of a pregnancy she couldn’t control. “I often really worried about Ashleigh,” she admits, adding that the only real sticky moment was when Raper got peeved with her constant calendar invites for appointments. “I didn’t realise Lucy was so organised,” says Raper, who describes herself as “super chaotic”.
It was just so nice to sit in Lucy and Josh’s house, watch them with their baby and think, ‘Wow, I did this.’
Ashleigh Raper, who was a surrogate for her best friend, Lucy Koops.
When the delivery day arrived, the plan was simple. Koops and her husband, Josh, would wait at Raper’s parents’ house, just two streets from the hospital, until things got serious. “I didn’t want to be watched while I was in the early stages of trying to get myself into labour,” Raper explains. “So we figured we’d message them when it started getting to the pointy end so that they were there for the birth.”
Mia, however, was in a hurry. At 4:55pm, Ben texted Koops: “I think we’re on, come up, they’re getting the OB.” Less than 10 minutes later, a second text: “Hurry.”
“We jumped into Ashleigh’s dad’s car, he was racing us to the hospital,” Koops remembers. “He pulls us up at the door, not even on the side, just front on and he’s yelling at us to run.” They burst into the birthing suite just as Mia arrived. Raper looked up at her best friend and simply said, “Sorry.”
“In hindsight, it’s probably the worst thing you could say!” Raper says, laughing.
“I just remember I collapsed on top of Ashleigh and my instant thought was, ‘Are you OK?’ ” Koops says. “And she was like, ‘Yes, yes, the baby! We don’t know the gender yet.’”
The nurses wrapped the newborn so the parents could discover the gender themselves: a girl.
While the hospital staff were supportive in the room, the aftermath highlighted gaps in the system. Despite Mia being conceived from Koops’ egg and her husband’s sperm, the law lists the surrogate as the legal mother until a Parentage Order is granted. Koops faced immediate hurdles, from not being shown how to feed and wrap Mia to the logistical nightmare of adding her to her Medicare account. This is why Koops now advocates for regulated surrogacy reform to protect both the intended parents and the surrogates from legal limbo.
“I don’t believe that it should be there with a big price tag on it,” she clarifies, adding that she thinks the current system pushes people into desperate situations, such as going overseas for surrogates, which is unregulated and expensive.
Additionally, Koops says introducing regulated commercial surrogacy might provide a layer of protection for both parties that doesn’t currently exist. “At any point until the Parentage Order comes through, the birth mother can decide she wants to take the child,” she says. Conversely, theoretically if Koops had decided she didn’t want the baby, she wouldn’t have had to take her.
Today, the bond between the two women is stronger than ever. In the days after Mia’s birth, Raper went over to Koops’ home and sat in the living room, watching her friend feeding her new baby. “It was just so nice to sit in Lucy and Josh’s house, watch them with their baby and think, ‘Wow, I did this,’ ” Raper recalls, tears welling in her eyes.
For Koops, the years of trauma have finally been eclipsed by a profound sense of peace. “Friends have said to me that, since having Mia, I look so amazing, and I honestly think it’s because I am relieved,” she says. “I have her now. I don’t need anything more. She’s here.”
For miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death support, call 1300 308 307.
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