I was born in Hong Kong. I immigrated to Canada at the age of 12. I grew up in Markham. I went to University of Toronto for medical school and did my residency at Western University. I moved to Kapuskasing because of work.

Anne was born in the Philippines. She went to nursing school at University of San Carlos. She then started working as a nurse at Cebu City. She did an extra year in health care administration at Canadore College at North Bay. I met her here and we quickly fell in love. After a short courtship, we got married in 2019. Anne originally was just going to be in Canada for 1 year to finish her program. However, there are always surprises in life. Anne is helping me in the office. She has been busy raising our daughter as I do work a lot. One of us has to stay home more. Since I work so much, Anne has been gracious enough to take on most of the duties in the home. She currently only works part time.

I was at Hong Kong for twelve years before coming to Canada. Since I grew up in Hong Kong for part of my childhood, I can speak Cantonese. I can also read and write in Chinese. I immigrated with my family to Markham, Ontario in 1995. It was a bit of a challenge at first but I did manage to adjust to the new life. I would say now I know English better than Chinese. I have a sister who is 2 years older than me. She is also a family doctor and she stays at the Greater Toronto Area. She is married and has one son. My parents are still living at Markham.

Anne was born and raised at Cebu City. She had 7 siblings. Tragically, her sister died shortly after birth. Her eldest brother also passed away recently due to a heart attack. Her parents and five of her siblings are at Cebu City. Anne’s brother is at Brampton. Anne was raised in a pretty Catholic environment. Anne can speak English, Tagalog and Visayan.

After we got married, we got pregnant right away. During labour, Anne was fully dilated quickly. Unfortunately she pushed for a long time and the baby did not come out. Anne at the end needed an emergency C-section. We were hoping to try for a vaginal delivery the next pregnancy so we waited nine months before trying. To our surprise, we were not able to get pregnant for a very long time even though it was so easy the first time. After trying for 1 year with no success, we started seeking medical help. We were referred to see a fertility specialist who found out I had low sperm count. We were told IVF was the only option for us. We did one round of IVF in April 2023. We did do preimplantation genetic screening. Seven embryos were made. A few weeks after the IVF, the fertility specialist tried to put an embryo into Anne’s uterus. It was then discovered that Anne had a huge scar from the C-section. The scar made it impossible to put the embryo in. It was also likely because of the scar after the C-section that we cannot get pregnant anymore.

We live in the small Northern community of Kapuskasing. I wanted to practice family medicine in a rural area. I originally moved to Kapuskasing because of work. Anne moved to Kapuskasing to be with me. We think Kapuskasing is a nice place to raise a family. It is quiet. Everybody knows everyone. There are good schools. It is a bilingual community. My children likely will learn French growing up here. There are also different outdoor activities that are easily available.

I work a lot. I sometimes joke that work is my hobby too. I play the piano but I have been so busy working I have not had time to go back to this hobby. I hope that I can teach my own children piano down the road. I like to read about history and religion.

Anne likes to cook and do crafts. She also enjoys playing table tennis and badminton.

We hope that we can teach our children Chinese and Visayan, though we understand it can be a challenge as there are not many Chinese and Philipino people here where we live.

We are hoping to develop a long term relationship with our surrogate. We will be forever grateful to her altruistic act in helping us to expand the family. We feel it is our duty to cover all her expenses. We also plan to support her in whatever ways she want us to do. We can zoom in with her during her prenatal appointments. We will be present during the delivery process. We will be available to provide emotional support during the entire pregnancy process and after.

We hope to develop a close and long term relationship with our surrogate. We want her to be part of our child’s life forever as the birth mother. We will update her on all of the child’s major developmental milestones. We hope the surrogate will be able to celebrate all of the child’s birthdates with us. We hope we can regularly meet with her both during and after the pregnancy. We will forever feel indebted to our surrogate for giving us the gift of life.