Allow us to introduce our Intended Parents Blake & Laurie from Texas.
We are excited and hopeful as we embark on this journey to expand our family with the help of a surrogate! Laurie is a graphic designer who works as the art director of a national non-profit, where she gets to channel her passion for great design into recruiting and fundraising for young adults who choose to serve a year or more in public schools supporting students. Blake is a college professor of public affairs—he has a love for research that can advance smart education policy through facts, and he enjoys teaching the next generation how to use the same skills to improve society in their areas of passion.
We have been married for ten years and welcomed our first child in 2019 when Laurie was 35 years old. At week 36 of Laurie’s pregnancy, our daughter was diagnosed with intrauterine growth restriction. The following week, monitoring showed a placental abruption that brought us up to L&D, and then fetal distress during early labor led to an unplanned c-section. Our daughter was delivered healthy at 4lbs, 12oz, but Laurie suffered from postpartum depression and anxiety after the traumatic delivery experience. Due to risks of recurrence, additional risks from our more “advanced” ages, and Laurie’s recovery from her delivery, we are seeking a surrogate to safely grow our family.
Together, we love to travel, play games, and spend time with family and friends. We love to cook (and eat): Blake and our daughter bake challah for Shabbat or make pizza together most weeks. Laurie is a native Louisianan, and since moving to Houston, we enjoy driving to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras with her family. Blake is originally from southern California, and we love visiting the west coast a couple of times a year to see our family and visit the beach. We both have large extended families who are supportive and loving, and flexible work dynamics that allow us to adjust our schedules around family time. On Laurie’s side, our daughter has many older cousins, and on Blake’s side plenty of similarly aged cousins and younger ones who would all be great friends for a new baby.
We have one wonderful five-year-old daughter, who is loving kindergarten and can’t wait to be a big sister. Our daughter shares her mom’s creative spirit, and after school, she can usually be found illustrating and crafting at her art table for hours on end. She loves being read to (and is starting to read to us), dancing to Taylor Swift, and riding roller coasters. She often plays “mom” or “family” with her dolls, giving birth or showing off her new baby and taking care of them.
We also share our home with Sophie, our friendly 10-year-old dog, who we adopted shortly after getting married in 2015. She is incredibly gentle and patient with kids. Something most people don’t know about Sophie is that she is perfect and actually grows more perfect every day! She has been with us through so many phases of our life together, and we cherish her dearly.
This is our first journey into surrogacy, and we are excited about the potential to build a lasting friendship with our surrogate should the surrogate wish to do so. We are open to staying in touch after delivery with updates, pictures, and texts, but would follow the surrogate’s lead regarding the shape of our post-delivery relationship. We plan to be transparent with our child from birth about how they came into the world.
We hope for a match that feels natural and comfortable for both our surrogate and family, ideally feeling (eventually) like a longtime family friend. We will look for open and clear communication—we will want to stay in the loop along the way and be fully informed about any challenges so we can problem-solve together. We hope for a surrogate who is committed to living a healthy, pregnancy-friendly lifestyle following their doctor’s advice on types of food to increase or avoid, medications to avoid, and caffeine and alcohol consumption. It is important to us that our surrogate has a wonderful support system of her own and that she can lean on them and us for emotional or logistical support.
If you (or someone that you know) think that we might be a good match, we would love to hear from you! If you are not already registered, please register and/or reach out at www.Createahappyfamily.com.
We look forward to meeting you!