News & Updates from I Want To Put A Baby In You!

David and James were united by love after meeting online in 2008. What began as a friendship slowly became a strong committed relationship that continues to grow. For the past six years they have been building a solid foundation for their future. As the years go by, they have created an amazing relationship that is unique and priceless by working together, sharing experiences with one another, mutual trust, understanding and love. While on their journey to parenthood, they experienced significant ups and downs, before finally bringing their beautiful Nia home.

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Mohsin Zaidi is an award-winning author and a criminal barrister. His coming-of-age memoir, “A Dutiful Boy,” explored growing up queer in a strict Muslim household in Britain. The memoir was named Book of the Year in The Guardian, GQ and New Statesman. Mohsin also won both the prestigious Lambda Literary Award and the Polari Prize in 2021. Mohsin is an advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, BAME representation and social mobility. He sits on the board of Stonewall and is listed by The Financial Times as a top future LGBTQIA+ leader. Mohsin cannot wait to be a parent and for the chance to pretend he will do things entirely differently from his parents, before realizing they were right about more than he knew.

Dalia Iskander is a Medical Anthropology Lecturer at UCL. Her specialist research areas include the body and emotion; childhood and gender; and health related decision making. She and her husband recently had a child, and this experience has made her think differently about pregnancy and parenthood. Dalia comes from a British-Egyptian-Christian background and lives in London with her family.

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Kristin was born in Marlton, New Jersey and moved 9 times, including a stop in Denver where she discovered her love for performing at 11 years old. Creating shows in her driveway at a young age, she always knew she wanted to bring her creations to audiences everywhere. She was full of dreams and life and did everything in her power to make them come true.

Kristin and her husband started a non-profit organization in honor of their daughter, London Quinn, who was stillborn at 39 weeks in July 2021 through surrogacy.

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Jeremy Hodges has worked for the San Diego Zoo for 19 years. Much of this time was spent as an aviculturist in Hawaii where he managed a captive population of some of the most endangered birds on the planet. He currently works as the lead zookeeper for the veterinary hospital of the zoo. He throws exceptionally fancy and delicious dinner parties. He has introduced the family to raising chickens, bees, rabbits, and finches.

Alan was raised in Colorado and earned his BS degree in Microbiology from Colorado State University and his MD degree from Harvard University. He completed residency in General Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. He enjoys working in both graduate medical education and as a psychiatrist specializing in treatment resistant depression and addiction medicine. He serves as the family handyman, plays guitar and piano, and collects antique stereoscopic viewing cards.

Ian Jenkins earned his MD from the University of VA and completed residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard University. Since 2004 he's served as a hospital doctor and faculty at UC San Diego Health, where he leads patient safety initiatives and teaches a medical school course and clinical practice to students and resident physicians. He's been active in healthcare quality on a national scale with his professional society and has given over 100 invited talks around the country. He writes as a hobby and published a memoir on his unique family, "Three Dads and a Baby," which made the news, podcasts, and morning shows on five continents. He's currently working on a hospital medicine memoir, "How to Die," and a young-adult romance, "Romeo and Julian." His home- made pizza is excellent.

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Kayla Weidner, a six-time egg donor, currently works as the Egg Donor Coordinator at The Genesis Group. Since joining the Genesis team, she has had the opportunity to connect with many other young women, share personal experiences, and guide them through the process of being a donor. Kayla has a passion for helping the LGBTQ+ community and has exclusively donated to gay men. Her experience as an egg donor and her three years in the industry have changed her life. Kayla looks forward to continuing to help others grow their families.

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Born and raised on the big island of Hawaii, Ashley Mareko knows the value of “ohana” (family), whether by blood or friendship. This strong tradition has been a guiding principle to Ashley as a 4-time(!) surrogate and through a career providing support to the surrogate community and intended parents. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves making a difference in people’s lives.

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Ralph Tsong has primarily practiced assisted reproductive technology law since 2016 when he started Tsong Law Group. Ralph is licensed in California, Illinois, Washington and Arizona. Prior to practicing ART law, Ralph was a labor and employment lawyer with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (now the California Civil Rights Department) and California Department of Industrial Relations. Ralph also was an attorney at Legal Aid Society of Los Angeles, the Asian Law Alliance, Wilson Sonsini and Littler.

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Sunshine Hanson is a driven and pragmatic mama, 3x gestational surrogate, and co-founder of Surrogacy Is alongside her amazing husband, Kyle. (And, as you may have guessed, her story is just as unique as her ever-changing hair!) She was a high school English teacher when she embarked on her first surrogacy journey, and she soon discovered that what the experience was lacking was both advocacy and direction. After working for two very different agencies, she realized that every agency (like every surrogate!) is unique, but some agencies are decidedly better than others! That’s where Surrogacy Is first began.

Built on the foundations of intention and community, Sunshine and Kyle brought Surrogacy Is to life and soon partnered with Casey Bojorquez to create the team and mission that’s thriving today. Sunshine currently lives in Georgia with her family. When she’s not guiding surrogates and sharing pieces of her story online, she can be found floating in the pool with her daughter or trying a new spot for brunch in Savannah!

Casey Bojorquez is a big-hearted wife, mama, two-time surrogate, and both Co-Owner and Vice President of Surrogacy Is… Which really means she’s the go-to lady for anything and everything related to surrogate connection and community. Casey joined forces with Sunshine and Kyle at the end of 2020 with the goal of providing a more comprehensive surrogate outreach and community focus to the company. Since the start of the partnership, she’s shifted the entire direction of Surrogacy Is and created a space where surrogates are truly advocated for and supported—every step of the way. When Casey’s not making waves for surrogates, she can be found spending time with her family, at the beach, or trying a new hiking trail!

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Dr. Julie Bindeman graduated from the George Washington University and is the co-owner of the practice Integrative Therapy of Greater Washington, a private psychotherapy practice located in Rockville, Maryland. As a result of her own reproductive story, she pursued post-graduate training in the field of Reproductive Psychology, where she actively writes, lectures, and presents on the topic. She has been on several committees for the Mental Health Professional Group of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine including serving as Chair of the Continuing Education Committee and a past chair for the Social Media committee, and a member of the Antiracism Task Force.

Dr. Bindeman is a member of a variety of organizations that are focused on Maternal Mental Health. She was appointed by the Governor of Maryland to serve on the Maternal Mental Health Task Force representing psychologists in the state. In 2014, Dr. Bindeman was honored to receive both the Woman Who Dared Award conferred to her by the National Council of Jewish Women and the Volunteer of the Year Award from the Maryland Psychological Association. In 2021, she was honored to receive Division 31 of the American Psychological Association’s Karl Heiser Award for advocacy. She authored a chapter in the book, “Psychological and Medical Perspectives on Fertility Care and Sexual Health” (Elsevier, 2021) as well as the book, “Prenatal and Preimplantation Diagnosis: The Burden of Choice” (Springer, 2015). Dr. Bindeman is the editor of a forthcoming book that will be published by Springer about Abortion.

Dr. Bindeman is a Certified Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapist and received her training in 2017 from EMDR of Greater Washington. She retrained with the Institute for Creative Mindfulness and is an approved consultant who did her training under Dr. Mara Tesler-Stein. Dr. Bindeman became an approved consultant under Dr. Tesler-Stein as well. She knows EMDR to be a powerful modality that creates real and lasting change within people.

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Dr. Sunday Crider started her infertility profession after finishing a PhD in Cell Biology and Biochemistry from Texas Tech University. She worked as an Embryologist at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, as well as New England Medical Center in Boston, before coming back home to Texas to build two IVF programs as Laboratory Director. She has also served as off- site Director for New Directions Fertility Center in Phoenix and Cryobank America in Dallas.

Leaving the clinical environment in 2013, Dr. Crider began consulting in the surrogacy field as Chief Scientific Liaison, Case Manager, and co-owner of a surrogacy firm. Recognizing the need to offer a more personalized approach, she launched The Surrogacy Consultant in 2019. Between her IVF and Surrogacy years, she's been a part of building thousands of families.

Ethics in the surrogacy community are one of Dr. Sunday's top priorities. She is a member of the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy (SEEDS), where she has acted as Vice President since 2021. During that time, she has served on the Standards Committee, drafting, and implementing guidelines and standards for surrogacy and egg donation.

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Anne Judge, DNP, WHNP-BC, ARNP is a Nurse Practitioner at Seattle Reproductive Medicine (SRM). Anne has worked at SRM since 2007 and has both a personal and professional connection to the field of reproductive medicine. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Washington, where she completed an honors research project on paternal infant attachment. Passionate about women’s health, Anne initially worked as a labor and delivery nurse, until her personal experiences with infertility inspired her to make a career change into reproductive medicine. Anne obtained her graduate degrees from Frontier Nursing University. She obtained a Master's and then Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees as a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner in 2016/2017, with a doctoral project on fertility care for patients with obesity. Her other professional interests include the psychological components of infertility and male factor infertility. Anne also supports outreach efforts to increase community awareness of fertility assessment and fertility preservation. She is one of the creators and co-hosts of The Whole Pineapple Podcast, which focuses on wellness and fertility.

Ruby Booras is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner at Seattle Reproductive Medicine. She received her BSN from Montana State University and her DNP from the University of Washington. Ruby is a board-certified American College of Lifestyle Medicine Diplomat and is the creator/co-host of The Whole Pineapple podcast, which focuses on fertility and whole-person wellness.

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Stephanie is the Founder & President of Family Match Consulting–a world-renowned fertility consulting firm specializing in finding egg donors, sperm donors, and surrogates for clients. Stephanie, the first of her parent’s three adopted children, long carried the desire to help other hopeful parents start their families; a call that intensified when she found herself in the throes of infertility. Ultimately, it was IVF that helped Stephanie achieve her dream of becoming a mother to two children. With more than 20 years of experience in the industry she’s so passionate about, Stephanie has given the gift of family to more than 3,000 parents who were struggling with infertility themselves.

Because of her personal background and decades-long experience working in the field, parents often ask Stephanie for guidance when talking to their children about their birth stories. Born from the desire to give parents the tools to talk to their children about the many ways families can be made, Stephanie teamed up with Alana Weiss, her best friend of almost 25 years and a mother through IVF, to co-author the children’s book, “From the Start: A Book About Love and Making Families.”

From the Start is an inclusive and heartfelt love letter to children born through the help of adoption or fertility treatments such as IVF, sperm/egg donation, or surrogacy.

Through age-appropriate language and sweet rhyming prose, Levich and Weiss weave together themes of hope and gratitude to highlight the special roles fertility doctors, donors, surrogates, and adoption play in helping hopeful parents start or grow their families.

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Kathryn J. Go, PhD earned her doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania in molecular biology and has been the director of a laboratory for assisted reproductive technology since 1984. She has been on the faculties or an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, Medical College of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson Medical University, the Experimental College of Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts and is currently a teaching associate at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Go is the director of the In Vitro Fertilization Laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and is happy to be contributing to both patient care and the education of the next generations in clinical science in the company of a terrific team of embryologists, nurses, physicians, and administrators at the Brigham.

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Lauren Makler is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cofertility. She previously founded Uber Health, a product that enables healthcare organizations to leverage Uber’s massive driver network in improving healthcare outcomes through patient transportation and healthcare delivery. Under Lauren’s leadership, the business helped millions of patients get to the care they needed. Prior to that, Lauren spent the early years at Uber launching the core business throughout the east coast and led the company’s first experiment in healthcare, national on demand flu shot campaigns. Lauren’s winding road of a fertility journey led her to believe that everyone should have the opportunity to freeze their eggs –and that there should be better access to egg donors. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their miracle baby girl.

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Jessica is the past Chair of the Walk of Hope in Colorado, a fundraiser for RESOLVE: the National Infertility Association, which raises awareness and provides support for those experiencing infertility. Jessica has personally walked that long road and shares an update regarding her journey to parenthood… five years after our initial podcast recording with her.

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Diana Thomas is the Founder and CEO of The World Egg and Sperm Bank. After having to find her own egg donor in the early 1990s, and successfully becoming pregnant, fertility specialists began approaching Diana asking for her help in finding egg donors for their own patients, at a time when only one other egg donor agency existed in the U.S. She quickly discovered that there was a desperate need for a company that understood empowering recipients with information about egg donors, and the emotional sensitivity to navigate through the process of involving another person in their reproductive life.

Through her own personal experience, she created a company that catered to the needs of intended parents as well as brought the best quality of care to egg donors. For over 25 years, Diana’s egg donor agency, that evolved into The World Egg and Sperm Bank, has matched thousands of donors and couples nationwide and internationally. In 2004, she was one of three partners to start the first “frozen” egg bank in the world. Since then, The World Egg and Sperm Bank has increased egg donor options by shipping vitrified (frozen) eggs and sperm to recipients’ doctors around the globe, and as such, removed many geographic and emotional barriers for those who hope to one day have a child of their own.

The World Egg and Sperm Bank is the only egg bank worldwide that focuses solely on egg and sperm donors, and the only bank that has full operational control in its own state of the art facility to manage all donor cycles, retrievals and egg and sperm freezing from one lab, and one location. This is a unique powerful benefit in managing quality control, and the data outcomes reflect the focus and efforts to continually improve pregnancy outcomes.

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Meet Brian Rosenberg, founder of Gays With Kids and creator / head coach of GWK Academy, the only-one-of-its-kind App designed specifically to help gay and queer men become dads. 

Brian has more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, but his real passion has been the creation of Gays With Kids, the one-stop destination for gay, bi and trans dads and dads-to-be.

Brian and his husband Ferd became first-time dads in 2009, creating their family through adoption and surrogacy. At the time, there were few resources available to help queer men become dads, and even fewer for those who already were, so they launched GWK in March 2014.

Together since 1993, the secret to this couple’s longevity is Ferd’s prowess in the kitchen and Brian’s great appreciation for anything his husband cooks!

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Ryan Ferrante is a Reproductive Law attorney with a unique perspective on the intersection of infertility, gestational surrogacy, and the law. His practice is focused on the representation of intended parents, gestational surrogates, and donors in all collaborative reproduction matters. Twice an intended father himself in a gestational surrogacy arrangement, Ryan has intimate awareness of the challenges each one of his clients faces when trying to have a family. His own family’s infertility experience led him to RESOLVE for support, which he found in the collective voices of volunteer advocates, from all walks of life and every corner of the country, asking for help in the form of real change. Ryan is among the hundreds of volunteer advocates who speak to the U.S. Congress about the need for increased access to care for infertility. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the Volunteer Committee for Federal Advocacy Day with RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association (“RESOLVE”).

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Ryan is a proud graduate of Ohio University and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. Ryan resides in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, with his wife Lyndsie, son Eddie, and daughter Josie.

Lisa Rosenthal has over thirty years of patient advocacy experience in the fertility field. After her personal infertility journey of six and half years, she wanted to give back to the community and help improve accessibility of affordable, comprehensive services. She was determined to help others undergoing fertility treatment and has done so through working for Patient Advocacy groups. Lisa serves as Treasurer on the Board of Directors at Resolve New England and is a member of the Affordable Families Coalition and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

 Lisa is also the teacher and founder of Fertile Yoga, a research-based program (lead author on research accepted by ASRM), designed to support all people on their quest for their families through gentle movement and meditation, Ladies Night In, and other peer support groups. Lisa has authored over 1,400 blogs on the topic of reproductive health. She also was lead author on a research paper on the effects of COVID on fertility patients, accepted by ASRM in 2021.

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Adrienne Black is passionate about surrogacy and helping grow families in a heart-based, ethical, and exceptional way. Adrienne has been involved in surrogacy for over 20 years. Besides her original profession as a midwife, she has also been a surrogate (four times for three families, resulting in six babies!), a legal assistant in a surrogacy law firm, and the last 11 years as an agency owner.

Adrienne founded and runs the largest online group for surrogacy professionals in the world, and is actively involved in the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, and other local family-building organizations.

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Lila Newberry Bradley is a partner in the law firm of Claiborne|Fox|Bradley|Goldman, which focuses its practice on family building through adoption and assisted reproduction. Lila is a Fellow in American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the Georgia Council of Adoption Lawyers. Lila attended the University of Georgia for both undergraduate and law school. 
Lila is the former director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation’s Children’s Law Programs where she worked with volunteer lawyers to provide pro bono legal representation for children who were in foster care or were the subject of high-conflict custody disputes. Lila continues to have a special interest in the legal issues surrounding children in foster care, and she provides training to foster parents on how the law and the court process can ensure that children’s rights and interests are protected.

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