Koen and Barbara

We are Koen and Barbara from Calgary, Alberta, and we have been married for 17 years.

I’m a former teacher and love to read, travel, cook and go for walks in nature. In September 2023, I became a mom to our miracle baby girl.

I was diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve and stage four endometriosis with invasive fibroids in my thirties. IVF did not work for us, and I never was able to get pregnant. Our fertility doctor explained to us that the only way we would ever have children would be to use an egg donor and surrogate.

We reached out to Her Helping Habit, a Canadian based known egg donor agency. Katie, the owner, was wonderful and knowledgeable and we were able to find our egg donor from the international database.

We met our egg donor online and instantly clicked. We knew right away that she was the one. We had a lot of similar interests, and we loved her personality.

During this time, I started researching surrogacy in Mexico. There were so many agencies and they all promised to be matched within a couple of months. We knew this was the way to go.

Through Katie, we met our fertility clinic, Fertilidad Integral, who are based in Mexico City. We met online and felt so comfortable about doing IVF in Mexico City with this great clinic. Our doctor was very kind and extremely professional as well as knowledgeable.

We also got introduced to Gestacy, a surrogacy agency based in California but with an office in Mexico City. The owner spoke to us online and we had a good feeling about him and his agency. What we loved about Gestacy was how they took care of their surrogates and that we were able to have a very open relationship with our surrogate via WhatsApp.

In April of 2022, Koen went down to Mexico City to do his part and our egg donor did her egg retrieval at the same time. We PGT-A tested our embryos and came out with 8 excellent graded embryos. During this time, we also met with our coordinator, Bety, from Gestacy. Koen met her at the hotel he was staying at, and I joined in via FaceTime. We instantly clicked and she told us that one day she would love to be a surrogate for a couple.

The following day, I received an email from the owner of Gestacy letting us know that Bety would love to be our surrogate! We were ecstatic! We started all the legal paperwork with our lawyers in Mexico City as well as our surrogacy lawyer in Calgary. This part took some time.

Finally, in December 2022, we were able to move ahead with the preparation for transfer! On January 13, 2023, our little embryo was transferred into Bety and then we prayed. We were on pins and needles for 10 days. Then Bety took a pregnancy test on day 10 and she was pregnant! We couldn’t believe it! Finally, after 8 years of infertility! We were, of course, cautiously optimistic. The ultrasounds were done at the clinic, and we were able to FaceTime into them. Hearing our baby’s heartbeat was so amazing.

In April 2023, we traveled down to Mexico City to spend time with Bety and her family and feel the bump! We had a wonderful time. We got to see our daughter on the ultrasound in real life and it was so wonderful.

We moved down to Mexico City on August 29, 2023, and our beautiful baby girl was born on September 15, 2023. It was the most extraordinary feeling. We are so grateful to our beautiful and amazing surrogate Bety, as well as our wonderful egg donor.

We communicated with both our surrogate and egg donor daily and while we were in Mexico for a couple of months to get the legal paperwork finalized, we were able to spend many days together with both. It was magical.

I hope what others will take away from my story is to never give up. Even if it is so hard and you are in the trenches of infertility.

Don’t lose hope. There are many different avenues that one can take to have their beautiful baby.

💚 Sponsored in part by First Response Canada

This 1 in 6 story is proudly supported by First Response Canada, whose commitment to fertility awareness and education helps us amplify real voices and real journeys. Together, we are changing the conversation around fertility in Canada—one story at a time.