ABC News correspondent Rebecca Jarvis finally has the family she envisioned for years: she and husband Matt Hanson have welcomed their second child — a boy — via surrogate.
“When I pictured our family, I always thought of my family … as one of two kids,” Jarvis said Wednesday on “Good Morning America.” Finally realizing her ideal family, however, was far from easy, she said.
The Emmy-winning journalist and podcast host revealed that she and Hanson opted for surrogacy after facing infertility challenges.
“It has been a very long road for us,” she said.
In a Wednesday column for “Good Morning America,” Jarvis, 42, shared that her first pregnancy with daughter Isabel, now 4, was a complicated ordeal of finding doctors “all over the city” and involved constant appointments. Jarvis eventually got pregnant with Isabel after seven rounds of IVF, she said.
In hopes of having a second child, she and Hanson began their efforts two years ago. After Jarvis suffered through a miscarriage after another round of IVF, doctors suggested that surrogacy was best the way to have another child.
“That was hard to hear in a way, at the time,” she said.
“We’d never considered that,” Hanson added.
Even after Jarvis started her surrogacy journey, Hanson said his wife worried whether she would have a true connection with their baby because she didn’t carry the child herself. Hanson said a friend told them she will know “how a dad feels.”
“[Surrogacy] doesn’t diminish your love for the child, it doesn’t diminish your love for the family you’re building … you just have a different perspective,” Hanson said.
The couple welcomed baby Leo last week, they revealed during Wednesday’s “GMA” broadcast. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Jarvis expressed love and gratitude for her surrogate “because there’s no way this would’ve been possible without her. It was truly magical.”
“GMA” co-host Michael Strahan — who recently returned to the desk after a weeks-long absence — asked the spouses why they wanted to be so open about their pregnancy and infertility journey.
Jarvis replied: “We also really wanted to give other families hope and to make people feel like they’re less alone on this path.”
The World Health Organization reported in April that 1 in 6 people worldwide experience infertility, which can affect both the male and female reproductive system.
“The sheer proportion of people affected show the need to widen access to fertility care and ensure this issue is no longer sidelined in health research and policy, so that safe, effective, and affordable ways to attain parenthood are available for those who seek it,” said WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the time.
