Hellobee

This past week, an article about the Starfish family was released by Cosmopolitan magazine on their website. The story was written over the course of several months as Cosmopolitan interviewed me, Mr. Starfish, our surrogate and her husband, about both pregnancy experiences. I know I’m obviously biased, but I’m so thrilled with how the piece turned out and I’m especially grateful that we have a detailed record of this amazing experience to show our girls to explain the circumstances of how they were born five weeks apart. You can check out the article here. (I should mention that we allowed Cosmopolitan to use our real names for the stories, so I guess my cover is now officially blown!)

Before I ever ventured down the surrogacy path, I really worried about how people would react. I had a lot of anxiety about telling coworkers, and more conservative family members and friends. When we decided to disclose the pregnancies on Facebook in January, we were nervous. How would acquaintances react? Would we be judged for not adopting? Would people think we were weird?

The image we used on Facebook to announce the pregnancies. Photo credited to James Currie.

But one of the biggest positive surprises of our surrogacy journey has been the overwhelmingly positive reactions that we have received. Instead of judgment, I have found most people to be very empathetic about our long and challenging road. Most people are extremely excited for us, and want to hear more about our story and happy ending. Once our pregnancy announcement post went up on Facebook, one of my sorority sisters had the same reaction. But she was in a unique position of getting our story publicized, for she worked at Cosmopolitan magazine! I received a message from her one day asking if we’d like to participate in an article. After checking with our surrogate to get her take, we said, “Hell yeah! Sign us up!”

We were put in touch with Michelle, the writer of the article and Kathleen, Cosmo’s photography guru. Our surrogate and I first spoke to Michelle in March over the phone individually. I think we were both nervous, just because we had never done something like this before. But Michelle made things easy – immediately I felt like I was talking with an old friend. She was so easy to talk to, positive and excited for us. The photography coordinator likewise made things easy – both our surrogate and I had friends who were professional photographers and Cosmopolitan was open to working with both of them for the article’s photos. This was awesome because we were already so comfortable with our friends and thus got great photos from them, and because we were thrilled with the idea of our friends getting such great exposure for their talents.

A behind the scenes shot of our friend and photographer James Currie snapping Lilly’s birth photos.

The next month, we spoke to Michelle again, but this time we included the husbands. I’m so happy they approached things this way because it is really neat to get the male perspective on the experience in the article.

The men. Mr. Starfish on the left, our surrogate’s husband on the right.

The last time we spoke to Michelle was one week after our second daughter’s birth. The story was published just a few weeks later. One morning I was in the middle of a double-feeding when I saw a text from our surrogate telling me the article was up. I’ve never wanted the girls to finish their bottles quicker than that moment because I was so excited to read the piece!

Reading it, it feels completely surreal. It doesn’t feel like my life at all, but rather some crazy lucky couple. It’s funny, when I first faced infertility I felt a similar out-of-body feeling, almost like I was watching my life as an outsider because I couldn’t accept that the horribleness of infertility was my fate. It’s odd that the feeling has come full circle, with me now not able to believe that things are so good.

Feeling amazed…
Photo by Sweetly Cherished Photography

In the days following the story, we were shocked that several different media outlets picked up the story. We truly had no idea that this could happen. We laughed as we got texts from friends and family members as they saw our story picked up by various online news sources; we even saw one where the story was translated into a different language!

Of course, with so much exposure comes a certain aspect of public judgment. For my own sanity, I have not read any online comment sections. Although Mr. Starfish tells me that most of the reaction has been good, there are naturally a few negative comments and I think it’s better if I just avoid opening myself up to any of that.

On the flip side, the most amazing thing about the article is that it is exposing many people to the idea and gift of surrogacy. I’ve loved reading through all of the positive compliments and comments that are directed to our surrogate through the many Facebook links to the story. She deserves every ounce of them (and more!).

Our wonder-surro moments after delivery.
Photo by Sweetly Cherished Photography

And one of my favorite comments came from a grade school friend who said that reading the story has made her consider becoming a surrogate herself. On the other side, I’ve had two acquaintances reach out for more information on pursuing surrogacy as intended parents because they’ve been told they cannot carry a child the traditional way themselves.

So there you have it, the story of how my newborn baby girls were featured in a Cosmopolitan article before their official birth announcements even went out! I think they are very lucky girls, and we look forward to reading through the article with them for years to come…