Dear Prospective Surrogate,

First and foremost, thank you! Thank you for being brave and generous and for answering the call to help others become parents. Thank you for considering meeting us, and possibly choosing us as your intended parents.

My name is J. I grew up in Taiwan in a large traditional Asian family with four other siblings and I am the youngest of five. My parents were of very modest background when they were growing up in Taiwan. Despite not having much formal education beyond a few years of elementary school, my dad was determined to give his family and children a comfortable life by working extremely hard, first as an apprentice at a tailor shop, and subsequently worked his way up to eventually own his own small clothing business. My dad and mom worked tirelessly at their business until their retirement about ten years ago, supporting all five children to go through college, and went on to receive advanced degrees. 

Throughout my entire childhood, my strongest memories are my mom and dad showing me around their workshop, working with their clients while also trying their best to give my sisters and brothers and I a warm, welcoming, and supporting family life in which we can grow up and choose our own adventure. 

My own adventure took me to the U.S. to join the PhD program at Cornell Medical College in New York. C, my husband, and I met at the school, and we got married in New York City towards the end of our graduate student lives. After finishing school, we moved from New York to Boston where we both started our professional career. Soon we felt that Boston was such a wonderful place to work and meet new friends and grow a family – that we decided to plant our roots here for the long haul. We have been living in Boston for more than 10 years now, sharing our lovely home with two cats, Garlic and Potato, whom we adopted when we first came to the city. 

Ever since we moved to Boston, C and I have been planning to grow a big family to share our lives. Family life played such a central role in my upbringing, surrounded by my loving parents and close-knit circle of siblings and relatives. I always pictured that at this point in my life, we would have two or three young kids we share our lives with. We would struggle balancing work and busy taking care of them, but also having lots of rewarding experiences doing it. We would grow with them, learning new things and gaining different perspectives while also trying to impart our own knowledge and values to be part of their characters. For example, C and I love traveling, and we have been making plans of big family road trips to various National Parks or exciting vacations in Europe or South America with lots of memorable moments, and come back home with many family photos and souvenirs for everyone.

To me, perhaps having kids goes much more than just having a warm and loving family lifestyle, although that is a huge motivation for me already. I believe we only physically live a short life on this earth, but our lives come from a long line of mothers and fathers, and by passing on a piece of us to future mothers and fathers, we are living a life that is larger than just ourselves. Both C and I are scientists by our professional training and we often try to imagine what the world would look like 200, 500, or even 5000 years from now. None of us can live to see what that distant future can bring. But I think it is somewhat reassuring, or perhaps romantic even, to think that we can have some shade of us to live and thrive and experience whatever future can bring. I truly believe it gives a much deeper meaning to our current lives. Thinking like this may sound a little unrealistic, but to me this is the way of life. It gives me great comfort that our lives should be more than just our own little piece, but rather, it fits into the more majestic puzzles of the universe.  

As you might have guessed, our journey to be parents has not been a smooth one. We struggled for a while to get pregnant. Less than two years ago, I had a miscarriage from a natural pregnancy, which was a very painful and emotional experience. We have been working with a team of excellent doctors and nurses with IVF procedures. I did two frozen embryo transfers in the past few months, each started off promising with positive pregnancy tests but eventually ended with miscarriage. With each procedure, we felt that we were moving a little bit away from that warm family life and our vision of the world. We have since consulted many family and friends, and searched inward many nights and days, and came to the decision that we want to seek help from a generous and kind surrogate to help us with our journey. That path has led us to Family Maker. The team and owner have given us so much help and guidance, and also hope. It is our hope that you can give C and I your consideration, and choose to be part of our journey towards a fuller, more fulfilling and rewarding life! 

Best,

J + C