Dear Prospective Surrogate,

Thank you for being the hope for families likes ours who are not able to conceive any more children on our own. We are M and R with our two-year-old daughter L. After undergoing emergency hysterectomy due to undiagnosed placenta accreta during L’s delivery in 2020, I am unable to bear any more children on my own.

We first met each other in Australia in 2005. M, who grew up in Australia, was a local university student and R was an exchange student from the US. We started dating before R returned home in December of 2005. After a two-year long-distance relationship, we decided that we were young, crazy and in love enough that M moved to Florida and we got married in 2008. Since we were quite young, we enjoyed many years together before deciding to have kids.

During our time together, we moved to Seattle, Washington to enjoy the beautiful scenery, good food and cooler weather. We lived in Seattle for about four and half years hiking the mountains and forests, exploring the city, drinking the best coffee, and adopting two cats. Eventually though, we started to un-enjoy the cooler weather that happened to be around for eight months out of the year, so we decided it was time to move back south. We made it into a two-week road trip driving across the country, stopping at national parks, and landed in Atlanta, GA.

We got pregnant with L in 2019. I had a smooth pregnancy with no complications other than the morning sickness in my first trimester. L’s due date was late April and the whole family was ready to meet their first grandchild. I was induced at the hospital and delivered L on May 1st. After delivering L, the midwife had had a lot of trouble delivering the placenta, I had very heavy bleeding. I needed to undergo an emergency operation to stop the bleeding and received two units of blood transfusion. Even then, the bleeding had not stopped, so there was no option but to undergo hysterectomy.

In the moment, I was only concerned about staying alive to not let R become a single dad. I had to be here for L to watch her grow up. I am so grateful that my OBGYN was able to make that difficult decision, in order to save my life. I still text her updates about L.

I come from a family of three girls (me being the oldest) and R comes from a family of three boys (he is the middle child). So, for R and I, it has always felt natural to have more than one child. We would like to give L the opportunity to have a little brother or sister. She is such a funny, caring, empathetic and loving child who will be a great big sister.

Becoming parents has been the most amazing, beautiful, gratifying, and fun chapter of our lives. It has been so fun and rewarding to watch our little girl grow up while exploring the world around her. R has developed a habit of becoming emotional and tearing up when seeing L learn new things. He never knew he had such leaky eyes! R and I have re-fallen-in-love with each other as we’ve watched each other be such caring and hardworking parents for our daughter.

Our family spends a lot of time together and we love going to our local park (or splash pads during summer), visiting the zoo, going shopping (mostly groceries), cooking meals and baking sweets at home, doing housework together, or just simply hanging out in our back yard or watching tv and lounging around.

We hope our families can develop a natural relationship, and would like to be involved as much as you feel comfortable. Pictures of the sonogram and Facetime during doctor’s visits are important, but we would also like to check in to see how YOU are feeling. I hope we can text each other like friends do, over the course of the journey and afterwards. We have PGT tested healthy embryos ready to be transferred. We look forward to meeting you and your family soon!

With Sincerest Gratitude,

M + R