Meet Ritchie & Emily

Location: Southington, United States

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Hi! We’re Emily and Ritchie, a couple who has spent the last 13 years building a life together that is equal parts warm, chaotic, and full of love. We are so grateful you are taking the time to get to know us. Emily is a Project Manager at an insurance company and Ritchie works in Investment Finance, which means between the two of us we are pretty good at planning ahead and handling the unexpected. What we are even better at is showing up for the people we love. We have built a life in the suburbs that revolves around good food, great company, and a home that has never once been too quiet. We have the world’s loudest cat, Fitz, and his very sweet and much quieter sister Piper. During the week, we play in a volleyball league during the nice weather, and Ritchie can be found watching sports while Emily is reading a romantasy novel! We started dating in college when Emily was going to be a senior, and Ritchie, a sophomore. We were in the same co-ed Honors Fraternity called Phi Sigma Pi. We met not only each other in that group, but also some of our closest friends to this day. We dated for 7 years before we got engaged and ended up having an offer accepted on a house in the same week!

We found out we were pregnant with Madeline the day after our one-year wedding anniversary. Ritchie was watching the World Cup final and Emily walked downstairs and said the words that changed our lives forever! We had a short-lived conversation about whether we would have to name our child Messi. Madeline is now a hilarious almost three-year-old and obsessed with her mom and dad. We have loved watching each other grow into our roles as her Mama and Daddy. Ritchie is patient, kind, and the kind of girl-dad that makes your heart full just watching them together. Emily makes up roughly one song per day to keep Madeline busy and entertained. When Madeline was in the NICU, she wrote a version of “Oh My Darling Clementine” replacing Clementine with Madeline. It is a song that celebrates Maddy for being brave and strong and reminds her just how loved she is. We have sung it to her every single night since, and recently Madeline started singing along. More verses have been added on – it turns out that 3am, when all you want is sleep but a baby is keeping you awake, is a surprisingly creative time.

Our friends describe us as the “mom and dad” of our group. We were the first to have children in either of our friend groups, with a fast follow of ten children born in our circle since Maddy came into the world. Madeline constantly wants to FaceTime and see photos of all her friends. She is gentle and patient with all the babies, and all she wants to do is help take care of them! Once she holds a friend’s baby, it is very difficult to get her to want to do anything else. She just sits there so proud and loves to “read” them books and sing songs.

When it comes to family, ours is loud, loving, and shows up in full force. Ritchie is the oldest of 3 boys, and Emily is the youngest on her side with two sisters and one brother. One of our favorite traditions is that Emily’s family moves their holiday celebrations to other days so that nobody has to choose between their in-laws and our core unit on big holidays. Emily’s family has six grandchildren, all four and under, so we always welcome Ritchie’s family to come help tame the circus when we host at our house. This past Christmas, Ritchie’s mom showed up with glow sticks from the 1990s that somehow still worked, and all the kids ended up in the garage dancing to EDM versions of their favorite songs with the lights off. It was a hilarious and memorable baby rave. Our families have blended together so many times now that gatherings feel incomplete without both groups present.

We came to surrogacy after a pregnancy that changed our lives in ways we never anticipated. Emily’s journey with Madeline was filled with love and complication in equal measure, and while it brought us our greatest blessing, it also meant that carrying another child was no longer possible. Surrogacy is the path that leads us to the family we have always dreamed of, and we are so hopeful and grateful to be on it. To our future surrogate, we do not take lightly what you are considering doing for our family. We are committed to being transparent, communicative, and respectful of you and your wishes every step of the way. We anticipate building a connection with you that will last past delivery and into our child’s life. Knowing that you are the kind of selfless person who would consider going through this journey with us is enough for us to know we would be so lucky to have you in our lives! This child will be loved not just by us, but by every loud, wonderful, warm person in our village, and that village cannot wait to meet them. If you want to see the baby rave videos, or just learn more about us, we are open books. We would love to get to know you and your family and start building this journey together. Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know us.

With so much hope and gratitude,

Emily & Ritchie

—-LETTER TO SURRO—-

Dear Future Surrogate,

I am not even sure how someone can start a letter like this one so I am just going to start with saying thank you and telling you a little about who we are.

My name is Emily, and I am a mom to the most vibrant, opinionated, ice-cream-obsessed two-year-old you’ve ever met. Madeline came into this world after a pregnancy that tested every part of me. I had vasa previa, placenta previa, a blood clot, and a surgery that ended with a hysterectomy I was not at all prepared to have. I spent the last month of my pregnancy in the hospital, knowing my baby would arrive early at 34 weeks via planned c-section. The main concern the doctors were preparing for was underdevelopment of Maddy’s lungs. The moment Maddy let out a well-developed cry when she came out, we both fell apart. It wasn’t until after she came out safely that we realized anything else was going wrong. I was so focused on willing her lungs to develop that I hadn’t stopped to think much about my own safety and survival. When the doctor told me mid-surgery that I might need a hysterectomy, I looked at Ritchie in complete shock. Madeline spent 8 days in the NICU and came home strong. I came home grateful and changed. It was hard to register I was coming home with a baby but not a womb to carry a future child.

What got me through that month in the hospital was my village. I had visitors every single day, and I love knowing that every person who showed up for me then continues to show up for Madeline now. My husband Ritchie was my rock through all of it. The day of my surgery, he spent four hours alone in the NICU with our daughter, making sure she was okay while the nurses kept him updated on me. His first day as a dad set the tone for the dad he was going to be. We were experiencing the best and scariest day of our lives at the same time, just not together. One moment that was lost to me this time was the ability to hold or touch my child on their first day. That is one of the things I am most looking forward to doing with this journey – while I am so grateful that I am here at all to hold my child now, I have always wanted to experience that moment more than anything.

The grief of knowing I’ll never carry another child sneaks up on me in the strangest moments and I am thankful that it’s not as heavy as it once was. After Maddy was born I went to therapy, and one of the biggest things I took away was that two emotions can exist at once. That joy and grief can sit right next to each other, and both belong. I sobbed with my sister when I realized I probably wouldn’t need the fully-loaded purple Honda Odyssey I’d been dreaming about since I was old enough to have a dream car — I was going to call it the Blueberry. I’ll never feel a first kick again, or try to capture an active baby on video only to have them go completely still the second I hit record. But I still have the joyful parts of my pregnancy to look back on. I ate ice cream almost daily claiming it was a craving, but honestly I just love ice cream and now Madeline does too.

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