Meet Our Intended Parents
Explore these heartfelt stories of families hoping to grow
Meet Jordana & Lewis
Location: Vancouver, BC
Hi, we are Jordana and Lewis and our children are named Aurora and Avery. We are filled with hope to find and admiration for a woman who would share the gift of surrogacy with us. Here is a little bit of our story of how we came to be looking for a surrogate.
Lewis and I met right after high school and we fell passionately in love. Early on, we talked about all the children we would have. We were lucky to have found ourselves in a city where most people want two children because we both wanted 6! At 19 years old, we didn’t yet know all that was involved in raising children. Today, we would like to have a family with three or four kids.
I fell in love with Lewis’ strength, character, work ethic and protective mentality. Even though we lived in the city, he was such a survivor and I fell in love with his ability to work the wild, build shelters, cook amazing food, work hard and be strong in all circumstances. I knew that if we were ever faced with a threatening situation, Lewis would help me and my children get through it. He fell in love with what he says is my open heart and intellectual mind. He always said I was a Puritan with a pure heart and Puritan aspirations…although I was far from both! But there has always been a spiritual quest in me that has changed over the years. I pursued God. Sometimes that meant fasting. At other times, it has meant meditation, yoga, ten-day silent retreats, herbal medicine and learning to live with loss. While we were eager to have children already, we first sought to get our careers in order. Lewis, an entrepreneur as he was, soon started his own construction company. He is now a master of the trades! Framing, formwork, waterproofing, electrical, plumbing and the list goes on. He is passionate about problem solving, foundations and craftsman style construction.
I found my first calling and became an attorney, eventually running my own small firm specializing in injury, human rights, employment and family law, which I did for almost 10 years. I have been slowing down my practice as I focus on my vocation as a parent and to homeschool my children part-time. We want to have time to pursue our passions together, live our values, volunteer as a family, spend more time in nature, and do everything ourselves! I also have another calling, one that is brewing within me. When the time comes to work outside the home again, I know it won’t be law again, but something deeply feminine. It will be in service to beauty, cultivating inner peace, and promoting community and culture.
As we progressed in our professions and approached the time when we planned to have children, a number of things got in the way, including a few years where we had to really work on our relationship and ourselves as individuals. Those years were difficult, but in the end, we were both forced to find the best in ourselves, let go of parts of ourselves that weren’t working, heal the pain in our lives, and find new paths for our relationship. Unfortunately, we didn’t know we were facing infertility either, but it soon became very obvious. I suffered tremendously from it, as I had already wanted children since my mid-20s. Every month, sometimes every day, was hard to bear for a very long time. But once we were told to do IVF, things got better. We were lucky enough to conceive our quirky little girl, Aurora, on our first attempt. She is now 4 years old. As soon as she turned one, we tried to conceive again and were blessed with a sweet son, Avery. Aurora was the most adorable big sister. Most of the time she helped us take care of him and is famous for her chokehold. Whenever someone said Avery was cute, she would put her arm around his neck and say “No!”. My baby! If she thinks he is in danger or walks away from me, she wraps her arms around him protectively. She is very strong and doesn’t mess around! Avery is a lot like his daddy. He is obsessed with tools and equipment. He is now two years old and is awesome at puzzles and building things. When Avery turned one, we tried to conceive again, but that year proved to be very difficult with many losses. Finally, we decided to use donor eggs as my IVF attempt was unsuccessful, but our doctor encouraged me to try again and we agreed to make one last attempt with my own eggs. Miraculously, we conceived twins.
Suddenly, it felt like all our dreams were coming true after so many years of infertility. We couldn’t believe that we were going to have four children like we had always wanted, because, at that point, four no longer seemed like a possibility. I was extremely sick during this pregnancy and suffered a lot at times, but it was worth it. At some point in the second trimester, I felt well enough to start celebrating our babies. Our kids were absolutely thrilled. In fact, before Aurora knew I was pregnant and had no idea we were trying for a baby, she told me she was really hoping for two more babies. It was kind of like a sign of synchronicity and I suddenly felt like I could have twins. Practical as she is, when she found out about the twins, her first exclamations were that we would need another crib, and then she fixated on this idea of how all four kids could take a bath together. Avery loved jumping to the Stompe the Bear song and said he would play it for the twins because they would love it. He also wanted to make them smoothies. Sometimes we would clap in our house about when the twins arrived and imagine how we would live with them. Those were the most exciting days of our lives.
We were able to celebrate Christmas with the twins in my belly. I look back on it now as a special time with them. I cherish the gifts we received for them at Christmas, as we would never have been able to receive gifts for them after they were born. During the holidays, I got very sick with the flu or covid. I asked my doctor for help and she said there was nothing to worry about, but something didn’t seem right. On January 9, I was admitted to the hospital and found that my gestational sac was coming out of my cervix. We were told that our situation was urgent and they decided to operate immediately. However, it was then postponed several times for almost a day. I was placed in an inverted position and experienced what I thought was the worst day of my life with my severe illness and inverted position. An operation was attempted, but the waters broke and we were told that the babies would be born and die. The babies were in no hurry to be born…but I ended up giving birth to our little boy, who breathed in his daddy’s arms for a few minutes before he died. He looked exactly like his daddy. My heart breaks for that. No one prepared us for the possibility of saving our second twin, but my dear husband did some research during those two days in the hospital and discovered that sometimes a twin can survive. The doctor then agreed with him and said that this could only happen if my cervix closed on its own after birth. Miraculously, I was one of the 5% of women whose cervix closed on its own! But at that point, the next doctor came in and wanted to induce the birth of the second baby. She became angry when we said, “Wait, we’re trying to keep our other baby.” It was such a horrifying experience that I felt like I was already in another world and had to make decisions. She then told us that I could die or get sepsis, that I would be in the ICU, that I would need a hysterectomy and that I would be very sick. She didn’t want to try to save the second twin and said that no one really knew how to do that. In my condition, I knew I had to live for our living children and our baby girl was induced. She fought for ten hours. I sometimes regret that decision, but I don’t think the doctors gave us a choice. No one had given me any anti-biotics when I arrived at the hospital and by the time we were able to save our second baby, it was too late because of infection. It’s hard to live with this. Our little girl was born and also breathed for a few minutes in her daddy’s arms before she died. I held her in my arms, but I suddenly felt like I was dying or something and started screaming. Then I had a life-threatening fainting spell: I passed out and threw up at the same time, and my jaw locked up. I fell forward off the bed and no one reacted except my husband, who rushed to me and caught me. I had vomit foam in my mouth and he thought he was losing me that day too. He opened my mouth and a nurse sucked out the vomit. The nurse later told us that he was like a seasoned medical professional. I always knew that about him. He would help us through anything.
When I came to, there was a placental emergency and blood loss. People started hitting my belly and telling me to scream or cough to try to get the placenta out. It was also horrifying. My little girl had just died in our arms. I had almost died and now they were hitting me and I thought I was going to die again. Two more days passed during which I suffered oxygen and breathing problems, heart problems and blood loss. I lay awake during those nights choking in my sleep and using an oxygen mask. Our hearts were broken. We held our babies when we could. We touched our babies, we sang to them, we cuddled them, we looked at them in awe. They were beautiful, perfect, healthy. They died because my body could not hold them.
Our immediate family and children came to meet our babies in the hospital. We knew our children had to meet the babies they had loved and looked forward to meeting. It was one of the hardest things in the world to see my daughter walk into the hospital room completely downcast about her babies. Eventually, the kids warmed up, held their babies and took pictures with them. Aurora picked up the clothing tags from the floor while Lewis dressed the babies and took foot and handprints with the children. Aurora turned them into mementos and asked that they be stamped as well. We are learning to live with this loss. We know that we need to cherish our babies and remember that they live in our hearts now. We will always miss them and we will always feel sorry for them. But little by little, their memories also bring us some joy and little Avery and Aurora help us with that. Blessed children know how to celebrate life so well. They love to pray thanks for our twins and the short time they were in our lives. They love to draw pictures of the twins, especially on special occasions, so I end up with pictures of the twins, even if they can’t be in our photos. They like to remember them. Sometimes the children also express grief, which is extremely painful.
We decided that we would still like to have another child and give our children the opportunity to share in the joy of having a baby. We look forward to many years of playing in the backyard, spending time at our extended family cottage in the Okanagan, cooking as a family, living together self-sufficiently, growing food, building things, learning, travelling and serving together.
Although it seems like an incredible thing to ask, we hope to find a woman who would share the gift of surrogacy with our family. We would be so honoured by such a gift. We look forward to the relationship that will come from this spark of generosity. What a sacred thing it is to create a new life and to do so with the help of another person. It’s really impressive to know that some people are willing to give in this way. We will do everything we can do to support our surrogate. We will be there in our hearts, in our words, in our bodies, in our actions. We will be there in times of joy and in times of difficulty. We will always honour our surrogate and the special thing she did and welcome her and her loved ones into our lives and into our home.
These are some of the other people that would be in our child’s life outside our immediate family. My mom is second only to us in terms of relationships with our children. She has been my wise guide through life. She adores babies and is the most devoted grandmother. We visit my parent’s home at least 2 times a week sometimes for babysitting or for dinner or for the afternoon. We are blessed to have someone who is always there to help if we need. Her gentle, but firm creative parenting is a constant source of learning for us too. Her grandchildren all adore her and she has so many silly traditions she has to do with them each time they arrive or say good bye, like grabbing their “beaks” and eating them or flashing flashlights at them through her window to say good-bye. They will tolerate even the most annoying cuddles, kisses and tickles from her! My Dad is a steady and fun, wise and hard-working presence in our children’s lives as well. He likes to take the kids into the yard and show them how to rake leaves, grow plants, eat vegetables out of the garden and touch and admire plants in the neighborhood. The kids love going into his yoga room and blasting a variety of rhythmic Indian and other music and banging on the Punjabi tabla drums with him. It’s hilarious to see them bouncing around the room with him.
Lewis’s parents are a steady source of love and knowledge and they influence us to appreciate art and beauty, the simple things and the natural things. They love foraging in the local woods, gathering their own berries and fruits and making preserves and soaps. They are historians, intellectuals, Classical music afficionados, travelers and nature lovers. We are always welcome at their home for dinner, a walk in nature and a great discussion. We are also welcome at their homes away from home in Greece and in a rustic cabin in Ontario.
Our siblings and their kids all play a huge role in our lives. Our children are blessed to have a number of cousins close to their own age to play with at family gatherings and on holidays. Our siblings have been our best friends and we hope this carries forward for our children. My sister brings her early childhood education skills to the table with my kids, always generating new craft and other activity ideas. She is a regular attendee of our various field trips to local parks, gardens, museums and whatnot.
My extended family all live within a short drive from our home. I am very close to many of my cousins and buddies with the rest of them. There are 21 of them! Many of them have children too so over the course of the year there are numerous different meet ups. Some nieces and nephews are older and are great role models for our kids. Some will be younger than our kids and will offer our children the opportunity to care for those younger than them. We regularly visit my Dad’s mom and my Mom’s parents who are all in their 90’s and still living independently! This gift we cherish. Their love and wisdom continues to guide us.
Lewis’ extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins and nieces and nephews live in other parts of our country and the U.S. They share love through cards and gifts and phone calls and visits when possible. We are always welcome at their homes if time allows for travel.
The most important holidays for us are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the month leading up to it, New Years Day, Easter weekend, Thanksgiving and all of our birthdays. These we all celebrate with our families. Additional days that we take time to participate in are Remembrance Day, International Baby Loss and Infertility Day, Earth Day, the Summer and Winter Solstice, Vasakhi, Chinese New Year. We like to learn about holidays in other cultures and particularly find Seder meaningful to join in with.
We wish to note that we may still try to conceive on our own, but are committed to the surrogacy process. Our doctor has advised that I may still be able to get my own embryos from IVF, but they would most likely only succeed if they are transferred fresh and this would have to be done very soon, possibly before a surrogacy arrangement could be made. This all depends also on whether I can get surgery or not to fix my cervix and whether I can handle further procedures and pregnancy. We have 4 donor egg embryos and are ready to proceed with surrogacy!
Finally, we wanted to share our tribute to our twins: Macinnes Peter, (370 grams), and Aislinn Annaliese, (340 grams) Dhahan Pierce, born and passed into our arms on January 11, 2022. They had such a will to live and kept breathing against all odds, giving us at least a few minutes to love them before they left.
They were named in honour of their father’s Scottish/Celtic heritage and our growing appreciation for Celtic wisdom and connection to nature. Macinnes was Lewis’ former clan name. He looked exactly like his father, even though he was so small. At least when I want to see his face, I can look here.
Aislinn (pronounced Ash-lyn), refers to a mystical vision in which a spirit being, an otherworldly sky woman, appears to a heroine. The heroine then longs for this Aislinn, which leads her to seek to serve the world in the most profound way. Aislinn looked like a fairy with big eyes and huge white eyebrows and lashes. She was from another world. She will guide my quest.
The middle name, Peter, comes from Jordana’s maternal great-grandfather, Peter Loewen, who lost his family and his life to the terror of Stalin. To remember the struggle against the tyranny of all kinds and for justice and protection of the persecuted.
The middle name is Annaliese, after Jordana’s maternal great-grandmothers, Anna Loewen and Louise Stobbe, for their enduring legacy of survival and memory of love, for creating a pattern of love and grace in their descendants. As refugees and single mothers, our Matriarchs, for bringing Jordana’s extended family to this promised land.
Our four hearts are in love with our babies. They had already become our lives. We throw ourselves into the hands of God and Mother Earth to grieve, to heal, to allow our abyss to transform and flow with love, to cherish every moment with our family, our friends and fellow human beings, the animals and this earth.
“This is how you should view this ephemeral world: a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.” The Buddha
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