Our Love Story
We would love for you to know about our love story and how we chose each other before you decide whether to choose us! We truly believe that our love story is a fairytale and now we just need your help to make the final chapter of our happy ending! We met in 2015, almost 10 years ago, at a wedding (we thought that only happens in movies?!?). We were seated at the same table, sparks flew, drinks flowed (we do like a good party in Ireland!!), and we instantly connected. Our families were both attending this same wedding so avoiding the awkward “meet the parents” situation down the line, we actually met each other’s family on the day that we met each other!! This is the magic that we believe drew us even closer together. Because, family has always been so important to both of us individually and now together. It is at the heart of us as a couple, literally from the day we met! Fast forward a few months, we moved in together (when you know you know!), fast forward again to 2017 – we got engaged in New York “with Emily’s Rock” at the “Top of the Rock”! And in true fairytale fashion, we got married in a magical Irish castle in 2019, reuniting both of our families back together again to celebrate our love story.
Our Family
Derek comes from a big family of 6 siblings and 19 nieces and nephews so far! In the early days of our relationship, the truth is that we spent more time babysitting and playing with them than the time we spent with each other! We were (and hopefully still are!) the “cool auntie and uncle”! As a result, we have always dreamed of having a big family of our own some day. No question. Emily comes from a much smaller family of 2 siblings and 2 nephews. Growing up, she always hated being the middle-child (middle-child syndrome does exist!) and she would have loved to have been a part of a big chaotic family (The Brady Bunch was a teenage guilty pleasure!), so Derek’s family was definitely one of the reasons which drew her to him almost immediately.
We both grew up in Dublin, Ireland but with one massive difference. Derek lived in the northside of Dublin and Emily lived in the southside of Dublin. If you know anyone who lives in Dublin, they will tell you about the light-hearted rivalry between both sides! Luckily, Emily got her way and true love prevailed..They now both live happily in the southside of Dublin and hope to build their family here in their forever home.
Our Journey to Grow our Family
We were so so blessed with our beautiful baby boy Jack in 2022, naturally conceived, carried and delivered. We were so excited that our journey to growing our family had began! Unfortunately, our fairytale took a long 2-year pause. Life really tested and challenged us as a couple and as a family..life really didn’t give Emily a chance to be a mother to our newborn. She was diagnosed with cancer just a few months after Jack’s birth. As the doctors discussed a treatment plan, Emily’s first question was in regards to her fertility. Cancer was secondary to her. But, as the tumour was so aggressive, there was no time to freeze eggs to preserve fertility. This completely shattered our dreams but our primary focus was now the cancer and saving Emily’s life. Unfortunately, another blow came a few months later when the chemotherapy and radiation did not completely remove the tumour. Emily had no other option but to have extensive gynaecological surgery including a full hysterectomy. Not being able to have her own biological child or being able to carry a child ever again was heart-wrenching for both of us but we were just so thankful that Emily was given another chance at life and to be the mother that she had always wanted to be, albeit different to what we had planned. Throughout our darkest days, Jack brought us life. He saved us and our family. He was our medicine. This actually gave us stronger hope to grow our family as it just proved more to us how much love we still wanted to and had left to give. Also, Jack deserved the gift of a sibling.
We decided to stay positive and focus on our other options. This gave us light at the end of a long journey. And this brought us to surrogacy. The day after the doctors told Emily that she was cancer-free, we spoke to an Irish lawyer and started the process. We could now focus on our dreams of growing our family again! Choosing surrogacy over adoption or other options was important as it still allows us especially Emily to be part of the process and hopefully connect with a surrogate where she can fully understand their pregnancy journey, having being on that journey previously. However, this also allows us both to understand the emotional and physical toll it will take on a surrogate. We will respect, love and appreciate our surrogate everyday throughout her journey and for the rest of our lives. We brought “our medicine” Jack into this world and now she will hopefully bring us “our miracle” into this world, to complete our fairytale.
Our Home in Ireland 🍀
We are lucky enough to have secured our forever home in a lovely, residential part of Dublin, about 20 minutes from the city centre. This is near to where Emily grew up with her family so some of our neighbours from her childhood are still living here to this day, making our home feel super safe and secure. We live in walking distance to a wide range of local schools, playgrounds and sports grounds. We spend most weekends visiting our families who are both within an hours drive of our home so they are never too far away. We are really lucky to say that we have a great, solid support network here at home and with our families so near. This is our forever home and we can’t wait to hopefully watch our children grow up here as Emily did when she was a little girl.
Our Occupations and Hobbies
Derek works as a Sales Manager and spends most of his work days travelling around Dublin selling company products and building client relationships..so he most definitely has “the gift of the gab”! But his ultimate passion is singing and playing the guitar. Since he was a teenager, he has written 100’s of songs to this day, all inspired by his real-life relationships and events. He currently plays in two bands. You can be sure that he will have plenty of material for more songs throughout and after this journey too! Emily works in Real Estate and was awarded her property license to allow her to sell and lease properties in 2022. Her ideal day off would be to watch home improvement shows or reality TV real estate shows on Netflix! To further add to her trashy TV addictions, her guilty pleasure is Home & Away! Who wouldn’t love to watch an Aussie soap based on a sandy, sunny beach while curled up under a duvet in cold, rainy Ireland! As the weekdays are busy with work, we both like to keep the whole weekend free for fun-time with Jack which usually involves visiting our families and hanging out / having sleepovers with his gang of cousins!
How we will Support Our Surrogate
We will of course financially support our surrogate as much as she requires but our main focus will be to protect her, to respect her and her body, and to ensure that she is comfortable with us. Living abroad, it would be nice to be “virtually present” at any scans or important doctor’s visits whenever possible through video calls. We would hope to travel over once throughout the pregnancy to meet her and to help her with anything that she needs so that she physically feels supported and a second time in the weeks leading up to her due date and birth. It would be a privilege and a dream to be present at the delivery however as both of us were present at our own delivery of our son, we completely respect her privacy and need for space if she would prefer. Regular updates via calls and texts throughout the pregnancy would be fantastic but again, we will take her lead on this when she is or is not up to feeling able to talk or to see us on calls. We have experienced this first-hand and understand that it is more than ok to have bad days when you do not want to see or speak to anyone! We know exactly the toll it can take on your body and mental health so we will not be causing any unnecessary stress by obsessing over small things or micromanaging any part of the pregnancy. A happy pregnancy means a happy baby!
We also want to physically support our surrogate in the best way that we can. We believe that we can do this by being open and honest from the beginning. We would like to discuss all of their current and potential future needs and requirements, even the not-so-nice but essential conversations about termination, selective reduction etc. We would want these difficult discussions to be had during the early stages with our surrogate so that we are all comfortable with possible future decisions. At the end of the day, we respect our surrogate so much and decisions about her body should be decisions that she is 100% comfortable with. As a woman and as a woman who has lost her reproductive system, Emily is very conscious and sensitive of how much procedures out of her control can affect a woman. We hope that we would never ever have to make these difficult decisions so we want to protect our embryos and the surrogate as much as possible by having all tests carried out beforehand. We understand this sacrifice and would not want the health of our surrogate to be affected or jeopardized in any way ever.
Our Relationship with Our Surrogate
We would love to get to know our surrogate and become friends as she will forever hold a special place in ours and our future child’s hearts. But, we also recognize that she has own life and family too so we will be completely respectful and conscious of her boundaries. As answered in the above question, during the pregnancy, it would be lovely to be virtually present where possible at important medical visits and we always want to be at the end of the phone whenever she needs whether it is for a moan about life or just a suggestion of a trashy TV show if she can’t sleep at night, we will always be here for her.
After the birth, we would of course like to be in contact but we will also be aware not to overload her too much either, knowing that recovering after birth is not easy either. Our long-term hope would be that we would love to share our new family with her and with technology nowadays we hope that will be even more possible. Of course, as the Irish greeting “Cead Mile Failte” (a million welcomes) states, our home in Ireland will always be open to her for visits! We would want her to forever feel appreciated and to know and to feel how grateful we are to her. We want to be completely honest and transparent throughout this journey so we would want our present and future relationship to be openly discussed amongst us all so that she is also comfortable throughout every step of this journey. Again, based on our surrogates comfort levels, we would be very happy to keep her updated on baby milestones, provide her an open invitation to any family events (we sure like to celebrate every single occasion here in Ireland!) and we would want to facilitate if our child ever wants to meet when they are old enough to understand and have questions.
We want Jack and our second child to know why this child was brought into this world through egg donation and surrogacy and show them just how much they were wanted and how much love their parents had left to give even in the worst times for us. We have already discussed and plan to talk to our son Jack about the life-changing events that occurred to Emily after she gave birth to him. We feel this is important so that he will know how strong his mother is and how much she fought to be present in his life forever. We hope that as Jack and his potential sibling grow older that these conversations will naturally lead also into the circumstances around Jack’s potential sibling’s conception and birth through surrogacy, which again we hope that by being honest with our second child, he/she will know how much he/she was wanted, so much so that their parents chose one of the only remaining options left to bring them into this world within days of Emily finding out that she was in remission.
A Final Message to our Future Surrogate
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for reading our very long, personal story but we truly believe that honesty will be the key to a successful sibling surrogacy journey for the sake of us, our son, our surrogate, our future child (hopefully) and without it we would not deserve to be chosen for this gift. Whether you choose to speak with us or not, you are the kindest, most selfless lady that we can imagine and we would be honoured to speak with you and to meet you if you choose us. We are in awe of the special, life-changing gift that you are hoping to give some lucky intended parent(s) and if that so happens to be us, then you will wholeheartedly change our lives, and our son’s life forever. We want you to be 100% happy with your decision as we are are giving this journey our 100% passion, love and commitment. As we said above, we were blessed with our “medicine” Jack to get us through extremely difficult times and make every single day brighter and now we hope to be blessed with our “miracle” to fill our hearts full of love and joy all over again.
Thanks so much for reading to the end! xxx