We are Myriam (36 years old, pediatrician) and Marcel (39 years old, pediatric intensive care nurse), from Quebec City, and we have been together for 11 years. We met at the hospital back in 2012, when Myriam was still an intern doing a formation in unit where Marcel work. We learned to know each other over the year, and fell in love in 2013. We share the same love for children, and everyday, we are grateful for the occasion to help sick children and their families going through rough times. But right now, we are the ones needing help.
We have a perfect 3 years old son, Justin, and two Shiba Inus dogs: Syrah and Haïku (alias Haïkoukou). Justin is so smart, funny, playful and has lots of imagination. He also has an unstoppable energy, like, we don’t need to train at the gym to stay fit, we just have to follow him on a daily basis. As a couple, we are foodies, so we enjoy discovering new foods/restaurants and wines. We enjoy as much gastronomic food, than eating a poutine or a hotpot with family. Marcel literally has over 35 cooking books (believe me, I counted them). We are very open to new cultures/countries. We lived in France for a year in 2015 for work, and we loved it. We wish to transmit that love of traveling to our children and open them to the world.
We battle through fertility issues since 2018. Because my endometrium was not thickening, we kept starting transfer-cycles over and over again, without being able to reach the transfer moment. It took us over a year just to achieve two completed IVF transfer. All of this incertitude and deceptions made us feel so powerless. As a pediatrician, I am working in a nursery and it’s been so painful to witness all the happiness around, knowing it’s so hard and uncertain for us… but we managed to support each other in this battle and I think our couple is stronger for it. In 2020, I miraculously got pregnant with Justin, through our second transfer. After the c-section, we were told that our fertility issues would be over and that they fixed the issue. However, the following month, I had medical complications, and needed 3 additional surgeries in the following year. Now, the condition has stabilized, but a second pregnancy would be too risky for my health. We have 6 frozen embryos (day 5) of excellent quality in Montreal, ready to be transferred to TRIPOD in Toronto to complete our family as soon as possible.
After the baby is born, we will take a whole year of maternity leave as we did with Justin. Myriam will take around 10 months, and Marcel will take around 2 months and work part time after or will be a stay at home dad, depending on our needs. Myriam’s mom is very present, she has recently moved right next to us. We live in a friendly neighborhood, with mostly families with young kids, in a house that we built in 2019. Our neighbor is one of our friend and coworker, and Justin loves to play with their children of the same age. Also, Marcel’s cousin lives 2 streets away, so Justin also get to be close to his cousins. There is a great park down the street and a nice urban forest trail nearby where we like to take walks with Justin and the dogs. We also go to the marina nearby for walks with a view on the St-Lawrence river. We like to sit on a bench and share lobster rolls, followed by an ice cream, looking at the water. We spend a lot of time outside as a family and Justin loves to help with gardening. Marcel tries new varieties of vegetables every year plus the traditional giant sunflower. We swim in our pool and play in the sand box with Justin all the time. As Justin loves to run and dance, we often run after the dogs in the backyard, and dance to music whenever we feel it. We plan to raise our kids in a house full of love and respect. We wish to transmit our love of travelling to our kids, and to have them be openminded to the world.
About Myriam: She did a lot of dancing through my life, on a competitive level : modern jazz for 8 years, and then oriental dancing for 6 years. Being half Tunisian-half Quebecoise, oriental dancing allowed her to be closer to her origins. For her, dance is empowering and is a great way of expression emotions. She also has a sweet tooth and love cooking dessert (she couldn’t live without chocolate). She enjoys small things, as frotting her milk in the morning to try to do an art latté, even though it’s rarely a success! Marcel has been very supportive in trying to guess those drawings…
About Marcel, he has more of a salty tooth! He loves cooking new recipes while listening to a vinyl on his turntable. He also likes to relax doing a LEGO construction or a puzzle. He was also very sportive, as he ran a marathon in France and a few half-marathon. He’s actually treating an injury stopping him from running, so he trains in our basement gym. Following a travel in Japan, he became passionate of their culture, as much of their traditional tea; than for their dogs, as our dogs are a Japanese breed. He went to Japan, China and Nepal alone with his backpack. He grew up as a person through those travels and cannot wait to show some of those destinations to Justin.
We are amaze by the sense of devotion that you have, as surrogates, to volunteer for those journeys and we want to support that. We want to form a team with our surrogate and her family, by supporting them as much financially, than emotionally. We are respectful and very reliable people, so you wiould be able to count on us. Our financial situation is very stable, and we are ready for this journey.
We would like to find a surrogate with who we can have an open communication and we want to be an active part of the whole process. We hope to have regular contacts by texts or facetime, every week if possible, and adapt depending on the surrogate’s wishes. We would love to be present in visio for the appointments, and of course, be present for the birth. We would love to build a lasting friendship through this journey with our surrogate, if she wishes too.
In conclusion, we admire the immensity of the selflessness you have, as surrogates, to be part of these journey. We didn’t choose to have fertility issues, but you, you choose willingly to help couples like us in these hard times; and for that, we thank you so much. We really hope that we’ll find our soul-surro here, could it be you?