We are international IPs (1 Scotsman, 1 Dutchman living in the Netherlands) who lived in Canada for a number of years, and that is when we started this journey. We’ve been together for over 8 years after we met through a mutual friend, at a dinner in Edinburgh in October 2013. At that time, Emiel lived in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paul in Edinburgh, United Kingdom – Emiel had come over to visit for the weekend but we hit it off immediately and have been together since. Quite early in our relationship Emiel moved to London, United Kingdom with his work as a banker, whilst Paul worked in professional sport in Scotland, as a Physiotherapist and Medical Manager. This meant that our relationship involved lots of travel to spend our weekends together, around various sporting fixtures. However, in 2017 Paul was offered a job in Montreal, just after we got engaged. We decided that it was a good time for a life adventure and a chance to settle in one place together and so headed to Canada.
We live now in the Netherlands, returning to Europe during the pandemic after Paul’s job ended. We’ve recently bought our home here, and now that we have such a settled home-life and are both well established in our careers we have the chance to grow our family and feel that we really need to focus on making this possible. Of course we’ve been trying for years (), but realise that it just won’t happen without help from some incredible people, to give us a chance of becoming parents ourselves.
A key characteristic of both of us is the strength of our relationships with our families. We both have older sisters with children, and are very close with them. Our sisters have jointly performed our wedding ceremony in July 2019, which made it so much more personal and special! We have both also long held the desire to have children but it has seemed something intangible and largely impossible – as a result our two cocker spaniel dogs, Murphy (11) and Indy (8) are very much loved and well taken care of. As we got to know each other better and our relationship developed we both felt that together we could create the environment suitable to perform one of life’s most important roles: raising a child.
Paul:
I was brought up in a small coastal town in Scotland called North Berwick, in a family of 4 with my older sister Lisa – a pretty little harbour town where my Dad still lives, with lots of opportunities for a growing kid. Good at school, I also played rugby, swam competitively (was senior club champion) and learned to play the bagpipes – by the age of 11 I was playing in the local town band, and did so for 12 years, including becoming the Pipe Major at the tender age of 16. My rugby progressed and I was selected to represent the region of my school, then once I moved to University, for my district. At University, I studied Physiotherapy – a fascination with the human body combined with the desire to help others, and potentially to work in sport meant this was a perfect fit. By age 21 I had graduated with my degree in Physiotherapy, and I started working in professional soccer aged 23. I loved the nature of the work, the variability to each day, and the sense of achievement from winning and supporting a team that sport gave me. A desire to grow professionally led me to undertake my Masters degree in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy in Perth, Western Australia – primarily for the course itself, but also for the life experience. After I finished my studies, my Mum came to Sydney for a holiday to join me, and after she returned home I took myself off on a road trip across the country in a camper van. It was an incredible experience with lifelong memories!
I’ve been privileged to travel quite extensively in life and through work and this continued when I returned to a job in Professional Rugby, which over 11 years led me to work with my National Team at both the Rugby World Cup and also the Rio Olympics. I also progressed through roles to become the Head of the Medical Service for Scottish Rugby. In 2017 I was offered a job in Montreal, Quebec with Cirque du Soleil as our Performance Medicine Director, so moved to Canada (and, technically, ran away with the Circus)! I now work with Amazon, managing the health of their staff across Europe.
I describe myself as decisive, with strong empathy, critical analysis and a sense of justice and fairness. Aside from my work, nature is very important to me, particularly how we are impacting the earth, and treating animals well is a strong priority for me too; there’s also just a little bit of an inner geek in me which keeps me fascinated with gadgets and technology (and many, many audiobooks). I am never happier than when I’m exploring outside with Emiel and the dogs, in a quiet place surrounded by nature (though the occasional sports event can push that close).
What Paul loves about Emiel:
Emiel is handsome and very funny, always making me laugh and pushing me to try new things. He is super smart, supremely organised, highly sociable and has a great knack for making people feel good about themselves. I know he will be an incredible father!
Emiel
I was raised in a small coastal town as well, called Muiden, close the capital of The Netherlands (Amsterdam), in a family of four with one older sister, Suzanne. As a small kid I could often be found in the car dealership and workplace of my grandfather, the passion for cars has never diminished! Living at the coast I joined the Sea Scouts aged 10, for 8 years I went there every Saturday afternoon, sailing the Ijsselmeer in spring, summer & fall, sanding and painting the boats in winter. Every summer there would be a one-week camp where I learned to cook, tie sailing knots and sleep in a leaking tent. After completing primary school in the village of Muiden, it was time for secondary school in the city of Bussum, a short 11 kilometres away by bike through the Dutch grasslands, be it sunshine, rain or storm. My dad being an engineer, my mum having worked at the Technical University (that’s where my parents met) and my sister being trained to become an engineer, I was bound to become… an engineer, albeit in Delft, a different city than my dad and sister. As the Dutch have conquered the water for centuries with very impressive waterworks I decided to study civil engineering. At university I found the love for sports, first and foremost skiing, running and fitness. The life at university was good, I took on various side jobs, board of study association, student member of the Faculty and assistant to the Professor. Time flew by and aged 26 I graduated as Civil Engineer.
As much as I enjoyed studying engineering, I discovered over the years that I wanted to work in a different environment. After completion of my studies I moved to Amsterdam and started working for the largest bank in the Netherlands, ING Bank. I had an amazing 14 years there in which I completed more study, held assignments in Brussels (Belgium) and London (United Kingdom) to experience working and living in different cultures with a different language. Eventually I moved to London with ING, until I resigned to come to Canada with Paul. In Montreal worked in the finance department of CGI, a Canadian software company. When the pandemic turned our (professional) lives upside down in Canada, I reached out to my former colleagues at ING in the Netherlands who gladly had a role for me, and I have been back there since October 2020.
Looking back at my youth and life as a young adolescent I feel privileged by having grown up in a supporting family, with loving, caring and understanding parents who would allow us to find our own path whilst keeping an eye out. I’ve always felt supported, never pushed. Unfortunately my mother is no longer with us, having passed almost 8 years ago. She very much lives in my heart, and my friends who’ve known her tell me they can very much see her in me as a person.
I would describe myself as very energetic and sociable person, making connections and maintaining friendships over time and distance. I love to be around people, cook and eat together, travel and explore, laugh and be amazed by the world around us. This makes my professional life fun as I basically get people together, make them understand each other’s point of view, solve problems and get things done. It hardly feels like work!
On weekends on holidays I love to get out, explore the world with Paul and the dogs, make up for the days spent inside at a desk.
What Emiel loves about Paul:
When I met Paul I instantly fell for the deep voice with a beautiful Scottish accent and his captivating smile. Paul is thoughtful, caring and has a great energy that lights up the room the moment he walks in. He is decisive, good at putting things in perspective and very good at getting things done. Paul is my tower of strength and wherever we are, with Paul I feel at home. I’m sure he’ll be an amazing dad!
We have chosen to work with an ovum donor and a surrogate because we would like to share a genetic link with our child/children. Our hope is to be able to bring up our child in a very loving home, supported to grow and find their likes and loves, and stimulated both in physical activity but also languages (Dutch, English, French), music, and the lifelong pursuit of learning, including about the world around them. This child would have 5 cousins and we would want them to be very close, as we have been with our own siblings and cousins. They would have 3 grandparents who are fit and well, and two doting aunts (and uncles) to share family time with. If we were successful in having one child, it would be a consideration to have another as the bonds we’ve had with our own siblings are very much valued.
After conversations with our specialist, and with the wellbeing of the surrogate and any future child in mind, we decided to seek single embryo implantation only rather than multiple, and we also undertook Pre-implantation Genetic Screening to increase the chances of a healthy pregnancy and baby. We have been blessed that our incredible donor has helped us to create a significant number of embryos, some of which were selected for PGS-A testing.
We currently have 12 embryos – of which 3 PGS tested and implantable and a further 9 non-PGS tested.
We started working with a wonderful surrogate but after some medical complications for her and a brief pregnancy that miscarried in early 2021, we have been advised that it is best to work with a different surrogate. And so we are seeking the next step on this journey, and search for the remarkable woman who would choose to gift us something immeasurable by becoming our surrogate. Is that you?
Please have a look at the picture with our two adorable dogs 🙂
We think surrogacy is perhaps the greatest gift a person can give to another. Therefore we would like to provide all moral support possible during this very special period in all our lives, and be part of the process and progress. Needless to say there needs to be a balance between sharing and privacy; we will respect the Surrogate’s wishes in this regard. But for sure we would wish to be in contact, on friendly terms, and be sensitive and reactive to issues arising.
Further details in terms of costs and expenses to be discussed between us.
In terms of relationship with our surrogate – we would wish our child to be able to know them, as part of knowing their own story, but how this would unfold in life seems hard to predict now. It is very much our preference to meet someone incredible who adds to our lives also, as we might with them, but this is not something which we can just choose to happen and so simply we say we are open to seeing how this feels and develops from both sides.
We hope you will consider supporting us on this journey, and if you would like to know any more, please do reach out. Many thanks for taking the time to read through our story.