We have been married for ten years, and had been going out for a long time before that! As we said at our wedding in Nerja, Spain, we would say we are like a cronut, two halves that are completely opposite in everything, but just go together. We met at a Tae Kwon Do class and have been together since (over 22 years in total). Although, it turned out that we actually had “met”, before we “actually” met. When we had just started dating, we were talking about birthdays and I told him about my my 21st birthday, which was at an all you can eat Mongolian Barbeque restaurant. I’d been greatly offended by a chef saying to me ‘Wow, this is your third time up for food!’ Fearghal turned to me and said ‘that was me’, and it was apparently meant to be a compliment. So really, we had met two years previous, but never connected. We are so blessed with two beautiful sons, who bring us joy and tantrums, Lucas (6) and Alexander (3).

We both come from loving families, I have one brother and Fearghal has a brother and two sisters. We were both very lucky to have been given a great start in life and our parents have always been incredibly supportive. As grandparents, nothing has really changed , except that now when they say they are coming to visit, they really mean just to see the grandkids. We are all close-knit and see and speak with them as often as possible.

We have always wanted to have three children. Having tried for a number of years to conceive naturally, we eventually decided to try IVF. On our first attempt we were successful with twins, but lost one early on in the pregnancy. However, we were thrilled that the pregnancy did give us our first child, Lucas. The same thing happened during our second attempt a couple of years later (two embryos were transferred, but we again lost one early on), and we were blessed with Alexander (who goes by “Xander”).

When we decided to try for a third child we had one failed frozen round and one ectopic pregnancy. Actually, it was just a few days after the ectopic that we were given the ok to start again, when out of nowhere, a CT scan picked up a little slow growing neuroendocrine tumour on my pancreas at a very early stage. I had surgery to have it removed, and while the operation was a complete success, we were informed that the walls of my womb had been weakened by the procedure, and it would be too high risk for me to carry myself. We hadn’t thought that this would be a likely consequence, so we were pretty devastated by the news. When we heard about surrogacy, and how established it is as an option in Canada we were overjoyed that our dream might still be possible.

I work in marketing for a bank, and Fearghal is an economist, who mainly works on business cases for public sector projects. I love to play tennis and Fearghal plays five-a-side a couple of times a week, when he hasn’t pulled a muscle. Of course, the kids keep us almost fully occupied these days, between playdates, Irish sports (GAA), swimming and french lessons! I think we have explored every pet farm in Ireland at this stage. I lived in Montreal for a year in 2002 and we both love to travel and bring the kids to experience new cultures and countries.

We understand the altruistic nature of surrogacy in Canada, however we have sufficient savings set-aside to ensure you are financially supported and comfortable throughout our journey together.

This journey will be one of the most important we take in our lives, and we also understand the importance of it to you and want you to feel as comfortable as possible. We are quite relaxed about the level of contact during and after the pregnancy – although of course during the pregnancy we would like to at least keep in touch to be informed about the progress of the pregnancy, and would be keen to hear about your own situation. If you would like to have a more meaningful relationship, we would be very happy about that too. We like the idea of a big extended family and have friends in many different countries; in fact one of our son’s has a Godmother living in the UK, and the other has one in Kerry (ok, that’s still in Ireland, but it’s quite far from Dublin, in Irish terms at least). So, after the birth we would be delighted to continue our relationship as it would be nice for our future child to know their birth story, but we will respect any wishes you may have.