Jupiter Moms Give Back Through Surrogacy

Motherhood is a journey that, for some mothers, isn’t always an easy path. In today’s society, every woman knows someone who has struggled to become pregnant, 1 in 7 women will suffer with fertility issues and 1 in 4 women will experience a miscarriage.

Teresa Rockey and Leila Rodriguez know that journey well. Teresa had her own challenging journey but now is the mother of 3 boys via an egg donor and two surrogates. She met Leila 10 years ago, with two boys via IVF. These personal experiences and challenges led Teresa to found Family Formers, a personalized boutique Surrogacy and Egg Donation agency. Together they have helped hundreds of intended parents throughout their IVF, Surrogacy, and Egg Donation journeys. Surrogates and egg donors are essential for those who cannot create a family on their own.

Right now, across the country, there is a critical shortage for caring and compassionate gestational carriers. Intended parents are waiting on average a year to find their gestational carrier match. In addition to helping women achieve their dreams of creating a family, a first-time gestational carrier can expect to earn a minimum of $45,000 and an experienced carrier can earn up to $100,000. 

This compassion for helping other women allows for surrogates to be stay at home moms and contribute financially to their household.

Stephanie’s Story – “I Will Never Have a Baby without a Gestational Carrier”

“You’re meant to be a mother; it just takes time.” “Just take care of yourself and your health and you’ll get pregnant when the time is right.” “Try not to stress out about it and it’ll happen.” The amount of times I heard these phrases or variations of has become tiring.

My husband and I have been trying to conceive since 2018. In 2019 we had our first miscarriage. One of four women experience a miscarriage, so I believed it just wasn’t meant to be and I was the one out of four. After trying for 8 months, we finally were pregnant again. I had symptoms and was sure this one was going to stick. I couldn’t possibly have another miscarriage back-to-back. I was wrong.

We were back to square one tracking my ovulations and timing our intercourse. After 10 months and no pregnancy, I finally decided to see a fertility specialist. This is when I learned that I had a congenital malformation of my uterus, a unicornuate uterus. It’s half the size of a normal uterus with only one Fallopian tube. Meaning less blood flow and not enough room for the baby to grow and fully develop. My chances of carrying a baby to full term was 50/50, a flip of a coin. After meeting with multiple doctors the consensus was that it was not safe for me to carry, in my case the risks outweighed the benefits.

Why me? How could this happen to me? I was meant to be a mother. It’s not fair all of my friends who didn’t even want to get pregnant are able to experience it with ease. What did I do to deserve this? It became so hard to be happy for my friends and family who were all having their babies. All I wanted was for us to have ours. Then I fell into a darkness. My husband deserved to be a father more than anyone I knew. I first fell in love with him because of how good he was with children. In my eyes no one deserved a child more than he did. He chose to marry me and I felt now he was stuck with me and my deformed uterus and I couldn’t give him what he deserved most. I blamed myself. I isolated myself. I was hurt. I was lost.

Thankfully my husband didn’t see it that way. He assured me that I was his family and all that he needed. He pulled me out of the darkness and helped me realize we will be parents it just may not be the traditional way I expected. This was our journey and I had to learn to accept it and find positives rather then dwell on the negatives.

We came to the realization that with IVF and a gestational carrier we could have our baby who will hopefully have his sense of humor and my smile. A very tough idea to swallow for the both of us but we thank God for science and the women out there that are willing to make this possible for us.

If you would like to learn more about becoming a gestational carrier, call Teresa and Leila today at (561) 515-7744.