Through surrogacy, two pregnant Alberta women are helping friends start a family

When they went to school together in Edmonton more than 20 years ago, Adelle Stelmaschuk  and Shanyn Wertz weren't especially close.

But a twist of fate has brought them together as surrogate mothers for a childhood friend and his partner who want two babies. Both women are 32 weeks pregnant. 

The babies, a boy and a girl, will grow up in Taiwan with their dads Jeffrey Ngan and Kevin Tsai.

"Our friendship has exploded," Wertz, 40, says of her relationship with Stelmaschuk, also 40.

"It's kind of like, 'What did we miss out on? We could have been solid.'"

During the early days of the pandemic, Ngan reconnected with Stelmaschuk, whom he hadn't seen since university nearly a decade ago.

Although the two occasionally stayed in touch through social media, Ngan had no reason to believe his school friend would offer to help him fulfil his dream of building a family.

But she did – and not long after, Wertz heard about it through a mutual friend.

She reached out to Ngan, offering to be a second surrogate.

Ngan and Tsai have been together for six years, and before the pandemic, the two decided they would start a family through surrogacy.

"Both of us have always known that we wanted kids," Ngan said.

The couple knew they wanted to have biological children and ideally raise them at the same time, which made it difficult because they would need to find two surrogates.

This situation – with two pregnancies for one family at once – may be unusual, but gestational surrogacy is not uncommon in Canada. The advocacy group Surrogacy in Canada Online estimates that more than 400 surrogacy arrangements are made each year.

Over the years, with the increase in celebrities opting for surrogacy and online rhetoric about the fertility method, it has become an option for more couples facing infertility.