She Carried for Families. Then She Built Something to Carry Thousands More.
After personally carrying and delivering nine surrogate babies for five families, Emily Westerfield founded Carrying Dreams - a full-service surrogacy and egg donation agency - turning lived experience into a mission that now reaches intended parents and surrogates across the United States and internationally.
There is a version of the surrogacy professional the industry has come to expect: someone who entered from the administrative side, learned the process from manuals and policy documents, and built a business around a market opportunity. Emily Westerfield arrived from a different direction entirely. She arrived through her own body - through three pregnancies of her own, then nine more for other people's families, through embryo transfers and hospital rooms and the particular weight of handing a newborn to parents who had waited years for that moment. The agency she founded, Carrying Dreams, is the place where all of that experience finally found its largest possible reach.
The authority behind that company is not borrowed. Westerfield became a gestational carrier after having three children of her own. What began as one opportunity to help another family became a defining chapter of her life. She ultimately carried and delivered nine surrogate babies for five families, including two sets of twins, and returned for sibling journeys - meaning she was trusted by the same families more than once. She has also experienced miscarriage and pregnancy loss herself, which means she understands not only the joy this work can produce but the grief and vulnerability that can accompany the desire to have a child.
As more people began reaching out to her for guidance, she recognized something important: there was a physical limit to how many families she could help by carrying. There was no limit to how many she could help through everything those pregnancies had taught her. That realization gave life to Carrying Dreams.
The education no textbook could provide
Westerfield is candid about where her expertise comes from. The medical process, she has said, was something she learned. But the deeper education - what intended parents need when they are terrified, what surrogates need when they feel overwhelmed, how complicated relationships become when you combine pregnancy, money, medicine, legal agreements, distance, expectations and very large emotions - that came from living it.
Nine surrogate babies across five families, including two sets of twins and multiple sibling journeys, produced an understanding of third-party reproduction that no credential program replicates. She has experienced embryo transfers, navigated relationships with intended parents, walked through difficult moments and stood in hospital rooms at the moment families were formed. She has also sat with people when there was nothing she could say to fix what they were going through.
That accumulated knowledge - medical, emotional, logistical and, at times, heartbreaking - is the foundation on which Carrying Dreams was built. Today the agency serves intended parents throughout the United States and internationally, providing education, screening, matching, coordination and ongoing journey support.
Building an agency on honesty
The philosophy at Carrying Dreams is built on a principle Westerfield states plainly: families do not need someone telling them what they want to hear. They need someone willing to tell them what they need to know. That commitment to candor shapes how the agency approaches every part of its work, from initial conversations with intended parents to the screening of gestational carriers and egg donors.
Westerfield describes surrogacy honestly - as something that can be beautiful and also expensive, emotional, complicated, unpredictable and frustrating. She believes both things can be true at once, and she considers it her responsibility to say so. Sometimes support means telling a potential surrogate that this journey may not be right for her. Sometimes it means helping intended parents remember that the person carrying their baby is still a human being with her own family and life.
The agency's egg donor program has grown to more than 110 donors and continues to expand. Westerfield has personally helped hundreds of intended parents and gestational carriers navigate their journeys. Her work and story have been featured in national and international media, including TODAY, NBC News, People, Newsweek, Women's Health, Yahoo Life, HuffPost, Telemundo, The Independent and other outlets - platforms she views as opportunities to educate, dispel misconceptions and reach someone who may be wondering whether becoming a parent is still possible.
The turning point that changed everything
Westerfield identifies a single realization as the pivot point of her career: understanding that her greatest contribution to this industry might not be another pregnancy. It might be everything those pregnancies had taught her. Instead of helping one family at a time through carrying, she could build something capable of helping hundreds of families through her experience.
Growth has brought its own lessons. She has spoken openly about the mistake of believing that caring deeply meant carrying everything herself - that every message had to be answered by her, every problem solved by her, every journey held to her personal standard by her alone. She has learned that meaningful growth requires trusting people, building systems, setting expectations and allowing talented team members to bring their own strengths to the mission.
She has also been clear-eyed about the complexity of the industry itself. Surrogacy and third-party reproduction exist at the intersection of medicine, law, insurance, finance, ethics, public policy and emotion. Laws change. Policies change. Medical requirements change. Navigating that environment while staying grounded in the agency's core values - education, transparency, ethical family building, experienced guidance and compassion - has required her to build around what she will not compromise rather than around what is easiest.
What comes next
Westerfield's vision for Carrying Dreams is straightforward: more families, more surrogates, more egg donors, more intended parents who finally hear that there is another path. She wants a larger team that shares the agency's values, more speaking and conference opportunities, and a stronger voice in the conversations shaping the future of fertility and third-party reproduction.
The goal, she has said, is not simply to become bigger. It is to help more people while getting even better at how the agency helps them - to grow substantially without ever becoming so large that people stop feeling seen. She is equally direct about what she refuses to let growth erase: she never wants an intended parent to become a file number, a surrogate to feel like a uterus, or an egg donor to feel like a profile number.
Behind the business owner, the surrogacy expert and the media presence is, as she describes it, still simply a woman with a very big heart who believes helping create families is part of what she was put here to do. Her husband Max and her three children have been part of this life alongside her. The work that began with one woman's desire to help another family has grown into something capable of helping hundreds. And by her own account, they are nowhere near finished.
This profile is reported from publicly available information and materials provided by Emily Westerfield. Nothing in this article is presented as a quotation unless it appears in quotation marks with attribution.