Edouard and Alexis

Medical Information:

General Health:

We are both in good health and we don’t smoke, nor have any addictions (except maybe Alexis with chocolate). Edouard regularly goes to the gym to keep healthy and to yoga classes to relax, while Alexis cycles to go to work every day (even when it’s raining or freezing) and tries to go swimming when he has time. For several years now, we have worked to improve the quality of our food, prioritizing organic produce that we buy at our local marketplaces, we have significantly reduced our meat consumption, and we cook as often as possible not to consume processed food.

Fertility Information:

We have 13 good-quality, euploid (PGTa-tested) embryos. Our embryos were created from a Canadian known donor. We believe 13 embryos is a great number and we do not anticipate the need to create additional ones (of course we will if necessary). On top of our 13 euploid embryos, we also have 4 non-tested embryos we could use as a last resort.

Fertility Clinic:

Victory Reproductive Care (VRC) Windsor, ON

Why are you looking for a Surrogate?

We have been discussing and reviewing our options to create our family 5 years ago. We attended several meetings and events about gay parenting options and in particular, surrogacy. We’ve also met with numerous gay parents who have done surrogacy journeys. We also are member of the French association of gay and lesbian parents (APGL) which helps and guides us in the process. All of these actions helped us determine that the Canadian system is the best path forward for our journey to becoming fathers.

Tell us about your family & loved ones.

Our parents have known for many years now that both of us want to be parents one day. We told our parents as soon as we decided to start our surrogacy journey in Canada in 2023. Every time we meet, we always take a moment to update them about the latest news or developments with our surrogacy journey. Since day one, all our family members strongly support us in our journey to becoming parents! Our parents, who already are grandparents, are yearning for more grandchildren!

Edouard has 2 younger sisters, Alexia and Charlotte. Alexia is a mother of two little girls: Edith, born in May 2023, and Albane, born in March 2026 (who is Edouard’s goddaughter). Edouard and his sisters are very close and they both support us in our journey, and can’t wait for us to become fathers. Alexia, in particular, would love her daughters to have cousins to play with them!
Alexis has a younger brother, Lucas, who lives in the South of France with his wife and 2 kids: Mila (Alexis’ goddaughter) and Leo. Although they don’t get to meet that often given the distance, they often speak on the phone and we try to pay them a visit in the South when possible. Lucas can’t wait to share his fatherhood tips with us!

We both have numerous friends and almost all of them already have children of their own. We meet them very often and love playing with their kids and taking care of them. They frequently ask us about our surrogacy journey and fully support us. They are impatient to see us become parents and believe we will be terrific fathers!
Edouard has been discussing our surrogacy journey with some of his colleagues, and especially with 2 of them: one is a father through surrogacy in Canada, and another is currently in a journey in Canada too. Alexis also has a few colleagues who are aware of our surrogacy journey and are so supportive, regularly asking for updates or latest developments.

Would you like to attend appointments with your Surrogate?

Ideally, we would be happy if we were able to attend some of the obstetrical appointments of our Surrogate, by video, if agreed by her and by the clinic. But we would of course understand if she prefers that we do not attend these appointments, or only some of them. We hope to travel to meet our Surrogate in person during the pregnancy. We would like to be there for the 2nd or 3rd ultrasound.

What are your thoughts on termination of a pregnancy due to genetic abnormalities or complications related to the pregnancy?

Our embryos are PGT-A tested, so that should eliminate most of the risks that the fetus would have chromosomic abnormalities. We would also be favourable that our Surrogate undergoes NIPT testing and/or a nuchal translucency test as these tests are very reliable, safe and non-invasive. We would thus only consider conducting an amniocentesis if the results of the latter tests were non-conclusive or if the doctors were to consider it advisable or necessary.
Still, we would consider termination of pregnancy if our Surrogate’s health or life is at risk or if the fetus shows medical signs of illness or anomaly (including cases of chromosomal abnormalities). We want to give the best chances to our child and we consider this starts with his/her health.

If the Surrogate becomes pregnant with multiples, how would you feel? How do you feel about the possibility of selective reduction being recommended due to a multiple pregnancy?

Our clinic VRC only transfers one embryo at a time, which limits the risk of multiples. Yet, if the transferred embryo was to divide, we would consider selective reduction if doctors believed it would be too risky for the Surrogate or for the pregnancy.

Are you vaccinated for Covid-19? Do you have a preference for a Surrogate to have been vaccinated for Covid-19?

We are both vaccinated for Covid-19. As regards our Surrogate, we would trust our clinic’s opinion regarding vaccination.

What kind of relationship do you want to have with your Surrogate during the pregnancy?

We hope to discuss and agree with our Surrogate on the kind of relationship she wants to embark on with us. We hope to have a close and warm relationship with her during the pregnancy, without being too intrusive.

Do you want to be in the delivery room when your child is born?

We would love to attend the birth of our child in the delivery room to be able to live that precious moment, however we believe our Surrogate should decide who she would like to be present during delivery and we would perfectly understand if she prefers us not being there.

What kind of relationship do you hope to have with your Surrogate after the birth of your child?

It is important for both of us that our Egg Donor and our Surrogate be known and be willing to stay in touch with us after the birth, and later on, be ready to meet with our child if he/she wishes. As we did with our amazing Egg Donor after the donation, and if agreed by our Surrogate, we would thus like to maintain contact once the baby is here, sharing important moments of our families and preparing for the day when our child wants to know more about her and, maybe, meet her.

Would you be open to a home birth?

We would prefer birth takes place at the hospital/clinic as we do not want any risks for the Surrogate and baby’s health.

Are you open to midwifery care?

We will follow our Surrogate's preference. If she opts for midwifery care, we would however expect her to consult a physician if there are any risk or concerns/complications  identified during the pregnancy.

Would you like your Surrogate to provide breastmilk?

We would be happy if she wishes to in the weeks following birth before we can travel back to France, but this decision will entirely be up to our Surrogate and we will fully understand if she prefers not to.

What will you tell the child about the Surrogate, and the circumstances of their birth? If the child asks to meet the Surrogate, how will you feel?

We both strongly agree on the absolute necessity for our child to be fully aware of the process that led to his/her birth and to allow us to become his/her parents, as soon as he/she will be able to understand. With this in mind, we have already started to prepare a scrapbook with pictures and important steps of our journey, that we will give to our child when he/she is old enough.

If the transfer is unsuccessful, will you want to try again? If so, how soon after?

If the transfer of the 1st embryo is not successful, we would ask advice from our clinic and, if agreed by our Surrogate, we would like to try with an embryo of the other intended father. We would hope to do another transfer as soon as our Surrogate feels ready and is medically able.

If this surrogacy journey is successful, would you want to complete a sibling journey? What do you envision that looking like? (timeline, same Surrogate etc.)

We would love to have 2 kids so we would indeed love to have siblings if our first surrogacy journey is successful! We would consider it ideal if our second child can be carried by the same Surrogate, if she agrees to, of course.

What are your plans for childcare once the child is born?

We want to be able to spend as much time possible with our newborn! For that, we will use our paternity leave (28 days). Then we will use the newly introduced parent leave (2 months for each parent), probably one at a time. We also anticipate that we will use the additional parental leave which currently can last up to 3 years.
Both of us would also have the possibility to take paid days off (Edouard currently has a cumulative stock of 60 days of paid vacation he can take upon request).
The institution Alexis works for is currently considering granting the same parental leave regardless of the parent's gender.
We will likely have a childminder at home, to assist us before our child is able to go to nursery and then to elementary school. We also both have the possibility to work from home on a regular basis, which will allow us more flexibility and to cope with unplanned situations.
We also know we will definitely be able to count on our family to give us a hand when necessary!

What does a typical weekend look like for you?

When we are in Paris during weekends, we typically start by going to our local farmer’s market to buy our weekly groceries. We enjoy wandering in the city to discover places we have never been to (Paris is really a great city for that kind of activity!).
We also enjoy meeting friends in nice bars and restaurants nearby and having a cultural moment during the weekend- going to an art exhibition or a drama performance, concert or ballet to the opera house.
Most of the time, we would however not spend our weekend in town. We would typically go to Edouard’s family country house, located not far from Paris. Edouard’s sisters and nieces are also there most of the time, which is great to share family moments. We really enjoy taking care of the kids, spending time in the garden, going for walks with Edouard’s parent’s dog Oscar and enjoying fresh air! We also sometimes go to Alexis’ hometown, Lyon, located in the South of France. We take this opportunity to spend time with his parents, go cycling in the vineyards, and spend time with some of his old friends.

What are some of your interests/ activities?

Edouard is a real nature defender and loves wandering in the woods and always picks up trash he finds on his way and is quite active on social networks to raise awareness. He is also very involved in organizing social events at work (such as sightseeing walks in Paris, exhibitions etc.) He is also passionate about History, geography and politics.
Alexis is quite creative and has a strong interest in arts. He practices pottery, loves to cycle, read and frequents museums and theatres.
We both enjoy meeting with our friends and family, and share good meals (French cliché!) We also like cultural activities (museum exhibitions, theatre, ballets) and often go hiking. We really like travelling, discovering new cultures, meeting foreign people (we try to make a 2–3-week travel abroad once a year, most of the time to an island).

Fun Facts:

• Food definitely plays a major role in our lives, and an entire day can be organized around food and new restaurant(s) to try! We both are very much open to discovering different/new types of food and we love going to restaurants in our neighbourhood to try new tastes and types of food. It really is impossible to name one dish in particular, yet Edouard tends to prefer savory food, while Alexis is an absolute fan of deserts!

• Edouard was born on July 14, 1989, France’s national day and on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. His mother received a letter from the President of the Republic of that time, François Mitterrand, for that special occasion. For many years, he used to believe the celebrations on that day were specially for him!

• Alexis is very skilled at preparing cakes, and during the Covid lockdowns, he used to bake almost one a day! He really likes to bake on the weekends, and always enlists our nieces to assist him!

• Since Covid, we tend to use our bikes as our main means of transport. We use them on a daily basis to go to and come back from work, and we’ve also done cycling weekends and vacations. We took our bikes for a 500-km trip along the Loire River and enjoyed it so much we would love to renew the experience as soon as possible and are looking forward to doing it with our children one day!

• Edouard is very organized and spends a lot of time tidying everything up, packing our things in several boxes; but everything is classified according to his logic and Alexis never finds anything he is looking for!

• Alexis has probably the worst sense of direction and used to be very bad as a co-pilot and we have often ended up kilometres away from our destination! Thankfully, Edouard has a much better sense of direction and always gets us where we need to be.

• Every two years, we organize a weekend together in June, for the anniversary of our first encounter. We do not go to a random place but chose a town or region who’s name matches the number of years we've been together: we went to the French town of Troyes (pronounced like “three” in French) for our 3rd anniversary, to the Italian region of Cinque Terre (‘Five Lands’) for our 5th anniversary and to the seaside town of Sète (pronounced like “seven” in French) in the south of France!

• Just three months after we met, Alexis was planning to attend a meeting organized by a French association to present the different ways for same-sex couples to build a family. Alexis had not informed Edouard about his meeting, and he just said he was not available that evening. We had only been together for a few months, after all! But Edouard kept asking, so Alexis finally admitted it was about same-sex parenthood but Edouard found it a really great and interesting idea and… we ended up going together! We were by far the "newest" couple in the room. Most of the other couples present that evening had been together for many years! The meeting turned out to be very helpful and gave us a great start in our surrogacy journey.

• We have a common passion for antiques/vintage markets and shops and if we pass by one, there is a 99% chance we buy something. As a consequence, our apartment is full of all sorts of objects that remind us of where we purchased them.

• We have been writing a diary since the beginning of our journey to relate all important moments since our decision to start a surrogacy journey in Canada, including pictures. For the moment, we write it for us not to forget moments or small details, but what matters more is that we do it for our future kids, as a testimony of how their birth was made possible and how desired they were.

“Our story started in June 2018 when we met in an open-air bar on the shores of the Seine River that flows through Paris. We immediately got along very well and fell in love quite quickly! We had been living in the same area of Paris and started spending a lot of time together and decided to move in the same flat mid-2019, almost a year after our first encounter. Spending the Covid lockdowns together in our apartment was an important test for our relationship, and in fact it strengthened us as a couple! We thus decided to enter into a civil union mid-2022 and we celebrated it with all our friends and family in the same place we had met 4 years before!
Edouard (aka Doudou) has always lived in Paris. He studied political science, history, economics and finance and holds a bachelor’s degree in human sciences and a master’s degree in Corporate Strategy and Finance. He was lucky enough to live abroad twice during his studies, first in Canada (Vancouver) in 2009-2010 (and he really enjoyed it!) and then in Singapore in 2012. He has been working for the French government for the last 10 years, in the field of energy regulation. He is a very sociable, definitely an extrovert who enjoys being surrounded by those he cares for and making them laugh! He is very close to his parents and sisters and has a real passion for his two nieces Edith (born in May 2023) and Albane (born in March 2026). He is also very jovial and loves to learn new things. He has a great love for nature and is particularly committed to protecting the environment and animals. He is with no doubt the most organized and rigorous guy in the couple. He's also a very good cook!
Alexis (aka Loulou) is from a small rural village in the Beaujolais region, near the city of Lyon. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history of art and a master’s degree in law. He has been working for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as political adviser on culture and heritage, and has been working for the United Nations agency for culture (UNESCO) in Paris since 2021. While more introverted, he is a very joyful guy who likes meeting with his friends regularly. His relatives have always been able to count on him for both the good and difficult moments in life. He is also very creative and artistic and his knowledge on the History of art movements is truly impressive!
We share a common sense of humour and are fond of nature and animals. We however have a big difference in character: Edouard is kind of an early bird and is very active and energetic in the morning, while Alexis may snooze the alarm clock for hours. On his side, Alexis can stay awake very late in the night, in particular to finish a great book. We realized this could very well turn out to be a valuable asset once we have a baby!”