Swee and Gigio

Our Story

Hello! We are #SWEEGIO (this was our wedding hashtag and literally now a coined term lol) – we’re fun loving attorneys, kind of an oxymoron, I know I know – who spend wayyy to much time together (we own a law practice together!) but luckily we have our puppy when we get sick of each other. 

Let’s backtrack, we got married in 2016 and at the time I foolishly assumed that it may take a year to have a child so I waited until Fall of 2017 to get off birth control hoping by 2019 we’d grow our family.. unfortunately, we made one too many visits to a fertility clinic in 2019 instead. Shortly thereafter, we were told my husband didn’t have quality sperm and to move on quickly. We put him on lots of supplements and miraculously his sperm improved! We tried 4 IUI’s before moving on to IVF. We underwent 4 IVF egg retrieval’s and now the issue seemed to be my egg quality– so I jumped on the trend- and did all the fad diets, supplements, holistic medicine, you name it! No luck. We made a few embryos but all 4 of my transfers ended in chemical pregnancies or failures. We were told the only way we could have children is using donor eggs. Finding an Indian donor in the U.S. proved challenging so we ventured to India and pursued a donor egg cycle.. we finally had some embryos and thought this was it!! We heard babies heartbeat and it was surreal. Shortly after that, I was rushed to the ER in excruciating pain – unfortunately, my first miscarriage. I don’t know what it was, but my gut was telling me to try one last egg retrieval and see what happens.. so I did. And miraculously got 3 beautiful baby boy AB quality and PGT normal embryos!!! I rushed into another transfer, heard the heartbeat and dejavu, I miscarried again at 7 weeks. It was truly heartbreaking. At this point, we knew in our hearts that the best chance of getting one of those miracle embryos earth side would be with someone else, a loving angel surrogate!!

Our Interests

Interestingly we don’t like many of the same things, but I believe that’s what makes us perfect for each other! I love to hike and am a social butterfly. We joke that I’m our social calendar and my husband keeps the water running.. my husband loves sports! He will play basketball with any amount of sleep every Sunday morning, religiously. It’s inspiring, actually. We both love to travel and are definite foodies!! We will try anything once and even though we have a knack for adventure, (the coolest thing we’ve did was swim on top of a waterfall at Victoria Falls in Africa!!!) you can catch us binging Netflix most Friday nights!! We’re pretty easy going and enjoy spoiling our king of our house, Kobe the cockapoo. We cannot wait to make him a big brother!! 

Extra Information

 
  • Names: Swee & Gigio
  • Location: West Windsor, NJ
  • Number of embryos: 2
  • Agency: N/A
  • Surrogate Compensation: High ($35,000-$45,000)

The Biggest Ask Says

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine provides the following recommendations for evaluation of gestational carriers (i.e., many fertility clinics will require the following for their gestational carriers) :

  • Carried at least 1 child without complications
  • Fewer than 3 deliveries via c-section 
  • Body mass index in between 19 and 32
  • No smoking, abusing drugs, alcohol or prescription medications
  • Not receiving welfare, public housing or cash assistance from the government
  • Has a stable home life with emotional and child care support
  • No mental health conditions requiring the use of medications within the last 6 months (including depression)
  • No criminal record
Watch the following video to review the Medical and Psychological Clearance procedures that surrogates must complete.
 

No one likes to talk about surrogate compensation, but it is an important factor in any surrogacy agreement. The following is how we classify high, medium and low compensation (excluding the value of any benefits). Many factors affect surrogate compensation including surrogate experience (e.g., has the woman been a surrogate before?), whether the surrogate is signed up with an agency and surrogate preferences.

  • Low = surrogate compensation less than $20,000
  • Medium = surrogate compensation between $20,000 and $40,000
  • High = surrogate compensation greater than $40,000

You can learn more about how much surrogates get paid in our surrogacy guide’s module: “How much does surrogacy cost?”.

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