Steven and Jamie live in Winnetka, Illinois, just north of Chicago. They were married in 2017, and began their journey to fatherhood a year later. They welcomed their son in 2019, and were instantly smitten. (Read their original feature here.) Two years later, their daughter joined the family, and they were equally as smitten. But their desire to grow their family didn’t stop there. Here is their twibling journey in Steven’s own words.

What is a twibling journey? It’s when each dad’s sperm source is used to create one of two embryos using two different eggs from the same donor. The embryos are carried by two different surrogates.

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Our twibling journey was one of the most seamless that we’ve had so far. I wanted to have our family complete before I turned 40. When we talked to our surrogacy agency, they informed us that in order to do twins, we would need to contract with 2 separate surrogates because they were transitioning away from implanting twins. We did not expect the timing to line up and figured we could have babies a few months apart from each other, but we were willing to be flexible.

We lucked out shortly after – our agency had 2 surrogates (@just.2.storks) who were best friends looking to carry simultaneously. They had already been screened and were ready to go. They unmatched with their previous intended father due to the poor quality and low quantity of his embryos, and we matched instantly.

From that point, it was a whirlwind. They came up to Chicago to have the embryo transfers and were in adjoining rooms. Jamie and I jumped from room to room to be with them for the transfer. The girls brought pineapple because it is supposedly good luck; clearly, the pineapple worked because both transfers were successful and two pregnancies were confirmed.

If you’re considering a surrogacy journey, start with GWK Academy.

Coordinating with the hospital was pretty easy – the biggest hiccup we had was when we were told that one of our surrogate’s insurance plan wasn’t going to be accepted at the hospital. So we had to get a separate policy for her so both women could deliver at the same hospital.

13 is our lucky number, so we were excited to learn that the twiblings were due on January 13th. We wanted to do whatever we could to make that date a reality, even scheduling inductions for both babies the night of the 12th. Sure en, we knew we wanted to push to make that date happen. We scheduled inductions for both girls on the evening of January 12th, and, sure enough, they joined our family on the 13th!

In the hospital, the girls were put in “Jack and Jill” connecting rooms, so we were able to travel freely between them. There wasn’t a lot of activity the night of the 12th, but we got a text from Kayla’s husband around 5:30 am telling us to get over to the hospital. Remi was born a few minutes after 6am, and Beckham arrived soon thereafter at 7:24am. And our family of four became a family of six.

Looking back, we were extremely fortunate in that all four of our surrogacy journeys were easy. We did have one miscarriage, but we still consider ourselves to be incredibly fortunate.

I highly recommend working with an agency and having the right legal guidance, as so many things differ from state to state. We have not yet received our kids’ birth certificates, but know they will come with both Jamie and me named as their legal parents. To top it all off, the kids were born exactly one month before my 40th birthday, so we consider it a huge success!

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Congratulations Stephen and Jamie, and thanks for sharing the story of your twibling journey! Follow Stephen here: @sja.213

If you’re considering a surrogacy journey, start with GWK Academy