From the aisles of Dollarama, a bond has been formed between two local surrogates.

On a sunny summer day, Nicole Fehr took to the local store to pick up a few things for her and her family; while there, Fehr found something she wasn't expecting. She overheard a shopper sharing a similar journey to the one she was on. A unique journey she thought she was on alone in the area.

Larissa Rodgers was leaving the shop when the cashier began chatting her up about her pregnancy. Fehr's ears perked up as she overhead Rodgers tell the cashier she was a surrogate.

"Then we got talking. We actually went outside because we were holding up the line and talked for about 30 minutes," laughed Fehr as she recalls accidentally making Rodgers' husband wait in the car. "It's like we were meant to meet because we were on the same journey, and I've never heard of a surrogate in this area, let alone two at the same time."

Once they caught up, both women learned the facts about each other. Rodgers, who is from MacGregor, is carrying a baby girl for a family in Guatemala with a due date of March 8, while Fehr, who lives in Portage la Prairie now but is originally from New Jersey, is set to give birth, also to a baby girl, on February 18 for a family from Toronto.

Rodgers describes the process of getting a couple to surrogate, like a dating app where you find the right fit through an agency that profiles yo

"So, you sign up, you pick your intended parents, and then the agency will send my profile to them to see if they want to match," she continues. "Everything is always done through the surrogacy agency. They got us in contact with each other. We had a Zoom meeting. So, you can either decide to match with the intended parents after that or decide they're not a good fit."

On the other hand, Fehr took a unique route of finding the family first and then going through the agency to match up.

"I was supposed to do surrogacy before COVID with the US person, and then COVID shut the world down. I was legit supposed to go the week that COVID happened, and the fertility clinic in Winnipeg shut down. Last year, I was ready to get this ball rolling. Meanwhile, after the pandemic, the lady I was supposed to help had her circumstances change, and she was no longer looking for a surrogate. So, I just made a post on a surrogacy website. I got hundreds of emails and text messages from parents looking for a surrogate. I was just overwhelmed. A lot of people were messaging me, and a lot of people had amazing stories. My intended parents had a website where I was able to look at their story, and it just tugged at my heartstrings, because my intended mother has a heart condition. She chose that it wasn't safe for her to carry a baby. She also used an egg donor because she didn't want her baby to get her heart condition. My hormones weren't even out of whack then, and I was crying." 

Fehr says from there, she contacted the couple's agency to make sure she could match with them.

"They gave me options to talk to other couples. But I was like, 'Nope, this is the couple I want; I want to carry their baby.'"

Many may think that this could be all about the money for these two; however, in Canada, laws around surrogacy state that the surrogates cannot profit from the process.

"Back in the day, some older gentleman decided that poor women were selling their bodies to have babies for people. So, they thought that people were just having babies to make money. Meanwhile, to do this, you have to have a background check. You have to be able to pay for all this stuff in advance before you can even be reimbursed," notes Fehr.

It's not about the money for these two women. In Canada, surrogates cannot profit from the process. Both Fehr and Rodgers are doing it to help give others what they already have: a family. 

"We've had five children, my husband and I, and our first one passed away to SIDS (Sudden infant death syndrome) in 2006. She would have been in Grade 12 this year, and we had four boys after that. Pregnancy-wise, all my pregnancies, labours, and deliveries went well. So, that's kind of why I wanted to do it, because I know what it's like to lose a baby, and I couldn't imagine not being able to have my own baby," says Rodgers.

file photoLarissa Rodgers and her surrogacy family.

"You want to help build a family for somebody else. This is my fifth pregnancy, but I've had four of my own. They all went smoothly, with never any complications. And I've always seen struggles. I was a nurse in the States, I've seen people struggle to get pregnant, which was never a problem for me," Fehr told PortageOnline.

file photoNicole Fehr poses with her surrogacy mother.

Both women say they have heard the question, 'What's your emotional connection to the baby? Will you be able to give the baby up?' 

To which they both answer, 'Yes, it's not my baby!' 

(As per Yale Medicine) - Surrogate mothers are impregnated through the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this process, doctors create an embryo by fertilizing eggs from the intended mother or an egg donor with sperm from the intended father or a sperm donor.

"We aren't genetically related to the babies in our tummies, but there can be surrogates that do traditional surrogacy that uses their own egg," adds Rodgers.

They might not be related to the baby they are birthing, but both women look forward to meeting these surrogate babies, which they compare to a Kinder Surprise; you don't know what is inside.