Before the Match: When It Doesn't Work Out — Mallory's Story

Season 1, episode 5. In this episode, Kayla sits down with Mallory, a two-time matched surrogate from Atlanta who, despite two full journeys, medical screenings, and multiple embryo transfers, never carried a pregnancy to delivery. It's one of the most emotional conversations of the series, and Kayla says as much going in — Mallory has been part of Reproductive Options since its earliest days, back when Kayla was personally her case manager and the company was still a one-woman operation.

Mallory walks through her first match in detail: a pregnancy that looked promising on early testing but turned out to be a pregnancy of unknown location, requiring a D&C that found nothing, followed by a round of methotrexate that pushed her timeline back three months. A second transfer with the same couple failed outright, and when the intended mother unexpectedly became pregnant herself, the match quietly fell apart under the weight of a newborn, a C-section recovery, and the uncertainty of a second ongoing pregnancy at once.

She then describes her second match, with a new intended father, including a positive test that turned out to be a chemical pregnancy — and the sting of learning he'd broken the match before she'd even had a chance to process the loss herself. Throughout, she and Kayla reflect on what it really means to be "committed to the process" rather than just the outcome, and why every intake conversation about the steps of surrogacy should also be honest about everything that can go wrong along the way.

The episode also carries an almost unbelievable thread: how Mallory first learned about surrogacy through a neighbor who, it turns out, once carried twins from an egg donation cycle Kayla did years earlier — a small-world coincidence neither of them realized until they were already mid-conversation about it.

In this episode:

• The reality of a pregnancy of unknown location, a D&C, and methotrexate treatment
• Why a smooth first transfer isn't guaranteed, even when everything looks right medically
• What it means to lose a match through no fault of your own — twice
• Why Reproductive Options wants surrogates committed to the process, not just the result
• A wild coincidence linking Mallory, her neighbor, and one of Kayla's own donor cycles

Mallory never delivered — but as she puts it herself, she's still a surrogate. This is her story.