I love sharing the story of the creation of my modern-day family because I want to open up the conversation on the different ways families are made. For my husband and I, our unique path to parenthood spanned the course of 13 years and involved IVF, miscarriages, international adoption, and surrogacy, resulting in our wonderful family of five children. Every step of the way was challenging but also so rewarding. Along the way, we learned some invaluable life lessons along with the true meaning of parenthood.  Our journey to start our family began immediately with IVF/ICSI....

At Circle Surrogacy & Egg Donation, we work with incredible women every day who are ready to become mothers and have chosen surrogacy as their path to parenthood. To fully understand what it means to become a parent through surrogacy, we spoke with a handful of parents through our program to determine what qualities a person can embody in order to have as successful of a journey as possible. We received beautiful responses, each highlighting the resiliency of not only women who become mothers through surrogacy, but also those who have struggled with infertility and have demonstrated the...

When Eran Amir started building his family, he decided he wanted to pursue surrogacy. But when he started the process of finding an egg donor and a surrogacy agency, he found the process to be time-consuming, complicated, and expensive, even though it was completely worth it in the end.  That’s why he created GoStork, the only all-in-one online platform that allows intended parents to find, compare, and connect directly with fertility providers - helping them save time, effort, and money as they make more informed decisions about their future. It is the resource he wished he...

In early January 2019, my husband, Seth, and I decided that it was time to start our own family. We met in graduate school in 2013 at the University of Maryland. Very shortly after meeting each other, Seth moved to Ann Arbor, and I moved to Montreal. It can be hard for two academics to find jobs in the same city. It took 5 years, 23 train rides, and 46 plane rides, but in 2018, we eventually both got jobs in Saint Louis. We were relieved and grateful for the opportunity to live in the same...

Our story began in 2016. We stepped off the plane from our honeymoon, and we were informed of bad news about my grandfather. He had just found out he was terminally ill with cancer and was given a year left to live. We were devastated. Our plans to wait to try for a baby quickly changed. We wanted to start right away, as my grandfather’s biggest wish was to meet his great-grandchild.  Once we began trying, I thought it would happen right away. I mean that’s what they tell you in health class, right? Well, it...

Unique fertility journeys more often than not begin when an individual or couple decides to start a family. But what about when the journey starts at the age of 16? When you have no serious partner, no plans to start a family, and no one like you to turn to? That is the reality of those diagnosed with MRKH—my reality. Like many other women with MRKH, I was diagnosed after I hadn’t received my menstrual bleeding. My mother took me to her gynecologist, who referred us to a specialist to do a sonogram. I remember...

We had two of the biggest grins on our faces, walking through the two glass doors of our fertility clinic on a cold Tuesday morning. After checking in with the front desk, we sat down on a comfortable set of chairs next to a table with current magazines and a live orchid. Once we got settled waiting to be called in for our consultation, we scanned the room. Besides being the only pair of guys amongst a sea of presumably straight couples, there was something else that was different. The room felt somber and sedate. The...

Being a mom is hard. But becoming one, that was even harder. Cankles, hemorrhoids, fear-factor-type cravings at weird hours of the night, I wanted that. Vividly, I had envisioned the litany of profanities that would fly out of my mouth in transit to the hospital during childbirth. But none of that happened. I would never see double lines from a pregnancy test of my own. Instead, those double lines would be from another woman. Two women, actually.   Hey ma! My parts are broken. For us, infertility was a huge punch in the lady bits and...

Anyone who knows me knows that secrets are not my thing. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything in my life that not a single person knows. But for many years in my mid-twenties, my secret birthday wish was “Please let me find the man I am going to marry” or “Please let this be the year I get married."  I'm not a superstitious person. The real reason I never shared this wish with anyone was that it felt so at odds with the very essence of myself. I am an extremely independent and goal-oriented...

When people find out that I have carried five children as a three-time surrogate (yes you counted right, two sets of twins plus one), I usually get one of two responses: “Oh that is amazing, I could never do that.” Or “Oh that is amazing, I have thought about being a surrogate before.” Although most people respond that they couldn’t be a surrogate, usually either because they had horrible pregnancies or they would become too emotionally attached to the baby, it surprises me how many have actually considered it. It takes more than a heart for...