Eric Portenga and his husband, Kevin O’Neill in the LGBT group. Since their marriage in 2016 they have been researching about having children.
They were unable to have children together, so they resorted to surrogacy. Their surrogate, Maureen Farris of Akron, Ohio.
Maureen is a teacher, she has a 5 year old son with her husband. While Maureen and her husband, Jeremiah Currier, decided not to have more children, she “prefers to be pregnant” and is considering becoming a surrogate for other couples.
Before starting, everyone came to an agreement on some ground conditions. Kevin or Eric would fertilize donor eggs, and they would then be implanted into Maureen via in vitro fertilization (IVF). The parents requested that Maureen be a member of their family and be involved in the girls’ lives even though she would not be the girls’ biological mother and had no parental rights.
The year 2021 will be remembered as a whirlwind for both the couple, Eric and Kevin welcoming identical triplet daughters on September 9, 2021.
“Just before we got on a video call with Maureen, to be there for the first ultrasound (at six weeks of pregnancy), Eric jokingly said, ‘Imagine it’s twins.’” recalls Kevin. “And I was like, ‘It’s not, because the chances of being twins are less than 5%.’ And then, yep, identical twins.”
During a further sonogram six weeks later, followed by a visit to a reproductive endocrinologist, they discovered that their soon-to-be foursome would actually grow to five.
When she was 35 weeks pregnant and gave birth by cesarean section (cesarean section), sisters Parker, Robin and Sylvie entered labor. The girls and their anxious fathers made the lengthy trek back to Ann Arbor following an 18-day stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they started their lives together.
While IVF required several attempts before becoming pregnant, Maureen was lucky and got pregnant the first time. Everything went very well, and when in the muscle Maureen detected 3 active heartbeats.
It’s a rare event, there were approximately 3,100 triplet births in 2019, says Stephen Bacak, DO, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, who delivered the triplets.
Dads for three months now, Eric and Kevin have settled into a daily routine. Parker, the oldest, reliably eats and sleeps on schedule. Kevin says Robin “is the fiery one” who is either calm or screaming. And Sylvie, the smallest, makes cute squeaky noises when she sleeps. Kevin jokes, “We’re experts at diaper changing now.”
Maureen is delighted that her surrogacy has made Kevin, Eric, and their daughters’ lives happier for all time. She beams, “I feel like I assisted my best friends in having their baby. “I adore the girls with all of my heart, and I’m so happy that their fathers are there for them.”
