It is our true belief that family is the greatest gift of all. A gift that comes via many different and unique paths on the road to parenthood.
It is through listening to many unique stories that we find the strength to discover our own voice and tell our own story.
DockATot will be sharing a collection of pregnancy and parenting journeys to enlighten, inspire and encourage others to find their own path to parenthood.
We had the pleasure of hearing about the beautiful couple Josh and Jack and their road to surrogacy. We were incredibly inspired by their story and are delighted to share their journey with you today.
Don't worry, this won't be the last that you'll be hearing from the delightful Josh and Jack!
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Hi! We’re Josh and Jack, known on Instagram as @the_sydney_dads.
We’ve been together for six years and married for two. We live in Sydney with our cat named Jules, and our dog named Alfie. Jack serves in the Royal Australian Navy and Josh works for the NSW Government.
We knew very early in our relationship that we would love to have children one day - we just didn’t know how!
In 2017 we were living in Canberra and began researching our options to become parents, including fostering, adoption and surrogacy. We stumbled across Growing Families (formerly Families Through Surrogacy) and decided to attend one of their conferences in Sydney. The conference provided us with invaluable information and cemented in our minds that surrogacy was the best option for us to start a family!
A speaker at the conference told us that we should join the Australian Surrogacy Community Facebook Group. The group supports Australian and New Zealand residents who are either intended parents considering surrogacy, parents through surrogacy or women who are either considering surrogacy, are pregnant with a surrogate child, or have already acted as a surrogate. We joined the group, introduced ourselves and began engaging and learning. The Australian Surrogacy Community is a wealth of knowledge and experience, providing a space for people to share their stories and advice. In April 2018, we decided to take a break from our journey to parenthood and focus on our upcoming Wedding.
Following our wedding in November 2018, we decided to refocus our attention on starting a family. We joined the Australian Surrogacy Community again and reintroduced ourselves. Shortly after posting in the Australian Surrogacy Community, Fiona (our surrogate) sent Josh a message - unbeknown to us at the time, this was the beginning of a life long friendship and our journey to become parents.
On 8th June 2019, following months of daily messages, phone and FaceTime calls, we ventured up to Newcastle to meet Fiona and her daughters. On this day, Fiona gave us a gift with a card that said “The decision is now yours to make, my offer is genuine and true. I would love to be your surrogate and grow a baby just for you!”
After we got over the shock of Fiona’s incredibly generous offer, we spent a lot of time with each other and growing our friendship. During this time we sourced our donor eggs from The World Egg Bank in the United States. This was a long, stressful and expensive process, but following much deliberation we finally chose our Egg Donor.
In late 2019 we started seeing our IVF Specialist, Surrogacy Counsellor and our Lawyers drafted our Surrogacy Agreement. After spending months ticking boxes, juggling logistics, attending appointments and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, we finally got approval from the Ethics Board at our IVF Clinic to go ahead with the surrogacy!
Our IVF Specialist tracked Fiona’s natural cycle and transferred one of our two embryo’s to Fiona in July 2020. Everyone talks about the dreaded two-week-wait between an IVF transfer and the pregnancy confirmation blood test, but until you’ve been through it nothing can really prepare you for the mix of emotions you’ll go through (not to mention it’s the longest two weeks of your life).
On Monday, 27th July 2020 we received the news that would change our lives forever - WE’RE PREGNANT!
Fiona is currently 25 weeks pregnant and we are due in early April 2021!
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We are thrilled to let you know that Josh and Jack will be sharing more of their pregnancy and parenting journey with us over the coming months.
If you'd like to be the first to hear their updates, please sign up to our e-newsletter.
Josh and Jack chose the beautiful 'Painted Spots' DockATot Deluxe+ for baby Bowman-Pinnock. We can't wait to see their little one lounging in their DockATot!
Beautiful 💚💚
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Daragh McCallum
January 31, 2021
congratulations Josh & Jack, I am so very pleased to read of your journey and positive experience. I am excited to hear about the safe delivery and your future as a growing family.