Thad Eldredge and his wife, Michelle, desperately wanted to be parents. They were investigating adoption options when they decided to try one last time with infertility specialist Dr. William Schoolcraft. “It was important to me to be a dad,” Thad Eldredge said.
After extensive testing, Schoolcraft informed the Eldredges that they would need a gestational carrier, popularly known as a surrogate mother, to create a child together.
When their faces fell, Schoolcraft studied them.
“Do you want to be pregnant or do you want to have kids?” he asked.
Today, the Eldredges are the parents of twins Sam and Kate, now nearly 3 years old.
“I remember holding them when they were only the length of my forearm,” he said, looking fondly at the twins in the Eldredges’ Summit County home. “Before they were born, it didn’t really seem real, even when I was looking at the ultrasounds. Maybe that’s a guy thing. Then, when they’re out, they took on a different meaning for me.”
His eyes fill when he tries to describe the emotional chaos following the twins’ birth. Sam, born first, was healthy. But Kate had flipped, wrapping the umbilical cord around her tiny body. She was born via cesarean section and spent a month on supplemental oxygen.
“It was an anxious time for us,” Eldredge said.
The twins are blond, energetic and enormously devoted to each other.
“They’re always together,” Eldredge said. “When one’s out of the room, the other goes looking . . . until they find each other.”
— Claire Martin, The Denver Post
