About Us Hello! We’re the Ratner’s! My name is Elaine, I am 34 years old. My husband William just turned 41. We were born and

About Us You never realize how hard it is to describe yourself until you have to. V and I met 4 years ago, he was

We are Julie and Stephen. We know it takes someone extraordinary to be willing to help others in this way. Because we are hoping for an experienced GC, we are offering $75,000.

I have always planned and dreamed of becoming a mother, even long before Stephen and I met and fell in love. I’m a folk country singer/songwriter and recording artist. In my time waiting to become a mother, I’ve worked as a volunteer court-appointed advocate for children in foster care and spent many years as a Make-A-Wish volunteer. While I’ve had an exciting music career, my greatest wish has always been to be a mom. With this in mind, I froze 28 eggs in my early 30s, way before egg freezing was the norm. Then I waited and hoped to meet someone as wonderful as Stephen.

Finally, 4 years ago, we met. Stephen works in finance, and he has a very artistic side that makes us a great match. We love traveling, cooking together, art, and spending time with friends and family (especially our nieces and nephews).
When we did genetic testing to prepare to thaw and fertilize Julie’s eggs, we found out that we had the unlucky, one-in-a-million odds of both being carriers of a rare fatal genetic disease. What?! We were immediately worried this would reduce our number of healthy embryos from my frozen eggs, but we stayed positive. After all, we were working with 28 young, healthy eggs. However, bad news hit us again when the lab made an error and destroyed the majority of the eggs during the thaw. It was a devastating shock after being told for a decade that I had enough eggs for at least 2 biological children. As a result, we were only able to get one precious embryo.

While undergoing a polypectomy to prepare my uterus for a transfer, it was discovered that I have an incompetent cervix. This coupled with a blood clotting disorder led to second and third opinions from multiple doctors that determined I would be unable to carry a pregnancy to term. It has been a lot to process this past year. On the bright side, the embryo we have is genetically PGT-A and PGT-M healthy and ready to be transferred. I have also undergone 3 egg retrievals this year (plus 2 rounds of ovarian PRP under anesthesia) and am about to undergo my 4th egg retrieval in hopes of getting more embryos.

We have had some tough breaks, but we remain hopeful that our dream of becoming parents is possible with the help of someone very special.

Preferences:
*Near West Coast states would be ideal since we are most concerned about your comfort in flying back and forth to our doctor in Los Angeles (but we are open to any GC-friendly states)
*Must be ok with termination being left up IPs- would only terminate if GC’s life was in danger or baby would be born incompatible w/ life or with very poor quality of life
*At least one previous uncomplicated surrogate pregnancy

My husband and I have been together for 11 years now, married for 6. We started our journey for a child almost immediately.
I have done many IVF treatments (double digits) for egg retrievals in order to create embryos, and I believe 9 transfers. At first we didn't test the embryos, and we had several chemical pregnancies. When we started testing, we learned we weren't producing normal embryos. We moved on to our first batch of donor eggs from a frozen bank. We were unlucky there and only created two embryos. Both implanted, and both again were chemical pregnancies. We moved on to a second fresh donor, and produced 8 normal embryos. We learned that I had endometriosis. I had a laparoscopy in 2019. Then covid hit, and we had to put everything on hold for several months. I did full immune testing and found that my body attacks the embryos and I also have APS, a blood clotting disorder that also affects pregnancies. We tried "kitchen sink" protocols adding all kinds of medications to try and fool my immune system, which caused me to lose my hair among other things – it was all worth it and we remained hopeful. Unfortunately, we had several more chemical pregnancies (6 in total) and one devastating MMC in late 2021. We thought that was going to be our baby girl, and after graduating our clinic a few days later at my first MFM appointment, I learned there was no heartbeat. We have had 7 losses using our own eggs and two donors.
We tried one more transfer as we put ourselves on a surrogate waiting list with worldwide, and that one completely failed, my only fail of a 5 day transfer (I suspect endometriosis came back and it is also possible I may have adenomyosis as well). We waited a year nd finally found a wonderful surrogate match who was approved by our RE. That transfer unfortunately failed as well, and our RE then recommended we break the match, which was devastating again to all of us. Our surro had two previous failed transfers and this being the third for a second family, he strongly recommended moving on.

We have two healthy embryos left. The rematch wait at our agency is at least 8 months, and we are hoping we might find someone on here that our story speaks too and who would be willing to work with our agency and ready to start much sooner. My husband and I are getting a bit older (I turn 48 this year) and we are really worried time is running out for us. We really so would love to have a family of our own and are grateful for anyone considering becoming a surrogate and helping people grow their families.