Meet Our Intended Parents
Meet Clarence & Stephen
Location: Queensland, Australia
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G’day, we’re Clarence and Stephen. We live on the sunny Gold Coast, down under Australia. We have a gorgeous daughter, Marley, from a previous journey in Canada and are now on a new journey to find Marley a sibling.
When we speak of our Surrogate, we speak of her as one of our best friends. Best friends speak often, treat and rely on each other. It would be the same with our Surrogate. Her gift to us of carrying our child to birth is extremely generous and profound. The least we could do is for her gift of life she so kindly helped us to achieve, is to be a special Aunt in our child’s life. An Aunt so special, she gave birth to our child.
When we dream of becoming Dads, we picture a commitment. One that brings lots of love, tears and laughter. With it comes challenges and being tested in lots of different ways. But above all this comes the hope and reward of raising beautiful humans. We also dream of our own parents becoming grandparents and the happiness and pride the child would bring. They will be an important daily part of our children’s lives.
The children will be so loved by so many people. Not only the grandparents but the aunts and uncles, cousins (13 at last count) and of course our best friends, of whom we have a Godmother. We have lots of women surrounding us, eager to be a female influence in the child’s life. It takes a village to raise a child and we are blessed to have just that.
Ever since we became a couple, we have shared our want to become a family. Of course there are physical challenges and the reality of its limitations but we stumbled upon the idea of surrogacy and suddenly the challenges were no longer significant. We are now ready to make it happen. We attended a Growing Families conference in Brisbane, Australia and that gave us so much information and we absorbed it all like a sponge. That is how we learnt of Canadian surrogacy and it became an obvious place to start. We see Canada as a stable, safe and reliable country that shares so much in common and resonates with us Australians. Additionally, Canada boasts world experts in fertility and a supportive government for people like us to make the journey easier. Clarence has also been to Canada and has friends there. From this conference we met Leia Swanberg of Canadian Fertility Consultants and Cindy Wasser from Hope Springs Fertility Law. Through these ladies we got to know Scott Swanberg at Egg Helpers, whom assisted us with finding an egg donor.
Steve and I have been together for 7 years and married for 5. We wanted to ensure we had some time to grow and understand each other to ensure we were fully committed to having children. We are actually two opposites which fit well together to complement each other. We believe we have all aspects of life covered between us when it comes to helping our child grow and develop their lives.
Christmas is important to us and we would be so excited to share with our children the meaning of Christmas and the festivities. Christmas to us is more than gifts, but rather a time of family, being together and being grateful.
When this baby is born, we plan to be home together in the first month or so. This is the accepted norm in Australia as fathers are entitled to paternity leave. This is also a great time to be together to support each other and start a routine. We will have intimate and invaluable help from our parents and they are very eager to lend a helping hand. We know all too well there will be sleep adjustments, juggling household cleaning and chores, and adapting to the baby’s ever changing needs. Having had experience with our first-born, we feel even more equipped and ready.
After the birth of our child, it is important to us to remain in touch with our Surrogate. We think it is only right to give updates and allow her whenever she would like to say hello to baby. We would certainly like to make trips back to Canada so the child would know where they were born and meet their special Aunt. We also hope that their special Aunt could visit us here in Australia. Though the distances may separate us, we imagine we would still keep in touch, just as we do with our friends who live internationally.
As the children grow up and start to ask questions, we would love for the Surrogate to remain in their lives as their special Aunt that carried them and gave birth to them. It is important for them to understand where they came from. Having two Dads will inevitably raise questions and to have contact with their special Aunt will be reassuring.
A typical Friday night for us would be Steve at work cooking away as a Chef and Clarence just chilling at home after a long week of Sonography. Too old for parties! We do occasionally catch up with friends, especially on special occasions. We spend a lot of time with Clarence’s Mum who lives just a suburb away.
The things we would fear or be anxious about when it comes to surrogacy is the lack of communication and/or miscommunication. Being a world apart in distance and time zones could be difficult for both of us. We believe it is something we can overcome.
Steve speaks plain old English but Clarence speaks some German and Mandarin. Popor (Grandma) will want to share her heritage and teach our children some Mandarin. She will proudly teach her culture, with it will bring lots of delicious food. We would love our children to be at least bilingual in whichever language they show interest in.
We would also encourage our children to be musical and allow them to learn an instrument. We would love for our children to be exposed to lots of different co-curricular activities so that they can find their passion and be open to new things. Living near the beach, learning to swim is a must and babies are taught water safety from as early as 3 months of age.
Our beautiful egg donor has blessed us and between us we have some 40 embabies sitting on ice. We can’t wait to give one a chance to become another beautiful human being.
Please reach out to us if you have any other questions. We look forward to meeting you and getting to know you.
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