She’s currently back on our screens for the second series of HBO’s amazingly successful ‘And Just Like That’. But did you know Sarah Jessica Parker was one of the original celebrity surrogacy pioneers?
She’s most famous for her iconic role as journalist, Carrie in ‘Sex & the City’ who along with her friends, now a group of middle aged women, have fun living in New York.
‘And just like that’ is the sequel to the original American romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star, an adaptation of Candace Bushnell’s groundbreaking newspaper column, famous for it’s portrayal of the sexual liberation of women.
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) the narrator and main protagonist, had each episode structured around her train of thought while writing her weekly column “Sex and the City” for the fictitious paper, the New York Star.
A member of the New York glitterati, she was a club/bar/restaurant staple known for her unique fashion sense, living in a studio apartment in an Upper East Side brownstone.
Stanford Blatch, a gay talent agent from an aristocratic family (played by Willie Garson), was Carrie’s best friend outside of the other three women.
The series was such a hit it was nominated for 210 awards, winning 55, and it still airs in syndication worldwide, inspiring two feature films, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010),
But while at the height of her fame, not everyone knew that Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband actor, Matthew Broderick were struggling with secondary infertility.
Parker had her first child, James Wilkie, naturally in 2002, but she and Broderick had difficulty conceiving again, and tried in vitro fertilization (IVF) for several years, but were unsuccessful.
In 2008, when Parker was 43 years old, they decided to use a surrogate. They had considered adoption but were keen to have their own child, so worked with a surrogacy agency in Ohio, finding a surrogate mother named Michelle Ross.
Ross was 26 years old and had already given birth to one baby. She carried Parker and Broderick’s twin daughters, Marion Loretta Elwell Broderick and Tabitha Hodge Broderick, who were born on June 23, 2009.
Parker was very brave by chosing to be honest and open about her experience with surrogacy. She has said that she wanted to share her story to help other couples who were struggling with infertility. She has also spoken out about the importance of surrogacy laws and regulations.
In a 2009 interview with Today, Parker said, “I think it’s important for people to know that this is an option. It’s not the only option, but it’s an option. And it’s a beautiful option.”
Their story has helped to raise awareness of surrogacy and the challenges that couples face when they are trying to have children.
They gave their daughters interesting middle names, Elwell and Hodge, which came from Parker’s mother’s family, which she discovered while researching her ancestry for the first episode of the tv series Who Do You Think You Are?, which originally aired March 5, 2010.
In the appearance she also discovered she had ancestors involved in the California Gold Rush of 1849–1850 and in the Salem witch trials of 1692.
With their bigger family the couple decided to buy two houses in Greenwich Village and combined the townhouses they had purchased for $35 million on West 11th Street in 2016.
After extensive renovations they now have their dream home as well as dream family..
Apart from their dream life in New York, they also spend considerable time at their second home near Kilcar, a village in County Donegal, Ireland, where Broderick enjoyed his summers as a child.
