Our journey to become parents through surrogacy began on the 28th May 2014. After finding Simple Surrogacy, it happened much quicker than we had imagined. The day after arriving in Texas we had arranged to meet Stephanie from Simple Surrogacy, within 2 hours we felt incredibly comfortable, not to mention excited and our process had begun. Both Richard and I provided sperm donations at our clinic and rushed back to our hotel room anxious to search their egg donation website, Simple Donations.  

Within a month we had found an egg donor with the assistance of great team at Simple Surrogacy.  Simple Surrogacy took care of the medical arrangements at our clinic and by the middle of October our egg donor had donated – we were so lucky to get 50 eggs! 

Whilst we were dealing with the egg donation we had also been matched with Laura our amazing surrogate whose debt we shall ever be in. As soon as we were matched with Laura and David we made a flying visit to meet them in person to ensure we were correctly matched. Needless to say the visit went incredibly well and the final piece of our process clicked into place.

On 15th December (incidentally our 6 year anniversary from the first day we met) we transferred two embryos, one fertilised by Richard and the other by me. I'm not sure who was more excited, by this time we were in daily contact with Laura, on the 23rd December, my birthday, Laura had woken in the middle of the night (US time) to take an early pregnancy test, the result - a faint positive. We were pregnant!   Over the next few days the two faint lines got darker and all of our excitement grew. Early in the New Year Laura had a scan and to our excitement and trepidation a twin pregnancy was confirmed.  During this time our co-ordinator Jennifer from Simple Surrogacy was liaising with hospital clinics, pharmacies, Laura and us to keep the process moving forwards without any stress. 

Over the next few months our relationship with Laura and David continued to grow, they visited us in London in April to have the 20 week growth and sexing scan. An amazing time for us all.  Like any complex process we had a few hic-cups which Simple overcame brilliantly. No one had realised that Laura was 1-16th Cherokee Indian, this group of people have special legal rights in America, the team at Simple jumped into action sorting out the problem within a couple of days so we would have no issues at delivery. 

On the 29th July 2015 our status changed from intended parents, to actual parents, our twins Grace and Oliver had arrived, weighing in at 7lbs9 and 5lbs. Unfortunately Laura went into labour very quickly and we missed the delivery although David had managed to FaceTime us. We jumped on a plane on 30th July arriving 26 hours after delivery.  We intended to stay in America for 3-4 weeks, during this time Simple Surrogacy helped us to organise travel documents, being on hand if needed. Our process couldn't have been simpler, naturally some luck has played a part however working with such a professional company and team was our big stroke of luck. On 20th of August we packed up our apartment, had breakfast with Laura and David, said our good byes, albeit emotional ones, and headed home.  Our journey took 14 months from start to finish and we couldn't be happier, we have 2 new babies and a whole new American Family who we plan to see in the New Year. 

The team at Simple Surrogacy took us effortlessly through the planning and what we hadn’t realised was the amount of  planning that went into the surrogate matching process from state to international laws.  We are now going through the parental order process in the High Court to get dual citizenship.

Needless to say if we decide to add a 3rd to our family we will without hesitation be back in touch with our amazing team in Texas, Simple Surrogacy. 

Ronnie Clark and Richard Shawyer