Jen Atkin with her son.Photo: Jen Atkin / Instagram
Jen Atkin is loving being a mother to her son River.
Since then, the Ouai and Mane Addicts founder, who celebrated her first Mother’s Day (“I’m now a part of the club,” she raves), continues to speak in support of surrogacy after she and Rosenthal had a positive experience with their surrogate who carried their son River.
“For me in this journey that Mike and I have gone through, I really wanted to share it because I feel like there are so many isolating moments in motherhood. I just wanted the kids who were adopted or the kids who came through surrogacy — or there are so many different complicated circumstances — I wanted to just be really honest about our decision to freeze embryos, which we did back in 2015,” Atkin shares about her path to parenthood. “At the time I was 36, and I was going into my regular gynecological checkups, and they were warning me that, sadly, our biology isn’t really caught up to, I think, the lifestyle of a career-driven woman. And so, we decided to do egg retrieval and freeze embryos then, and I talked openly and honestly about it. It upset me during the process about how costly it is, and how most employers don’t help cover this cost for women.”
One thing that she no way expected, or thought was normal, was welcoming a child during a pandemic. “This was her first time,” Atkin says of the surrogate experiencing carrying someone else’s child. “We didn’t realize that we’d be going into lockdown, but we wanted to make sure that we were close enough to be able to go to appointments. Then COVID happened, and it became a very complicated journey because we weren’t able to go to most of the appointments. But she did an incredible job calling us, FaceTiming us in. We felt like we were really a part of every step of the process.”
Atkin, who says the surrogacy process was a “great experience” overall, would “definitely recommend it to anybody who’s having a hard time conceiving,” adding, “It’s been incredible. I’m happy I did this.”
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Not only was surrogacy a journey with many ups and downs, first-time parenthood has also been an eye-opening one for Atkin.
“I waited so long that I think it’s just been so much joy, and then week two happened. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what did we do?’ Week two was hard for both Mike and I. It’s the identity crisis. You realize this is much more responsibility than a dog,” she recalls.
“I was psychotic about his name. I have a list, again, from the 15 years working in a salon. And I was like, ‘Oh, God, I really want my son to have a strong 1920s actor name.’ So, I kept thinking Rock Hudson, and so he was Stone Hudson for three months before he was born,” Atkin shares of wanting to name her firstborn after the popular 1950s actor.
“He was going to be Stone Hudson Rosenthal. And in the hospital, we were doing a meditation while we were waiting for his arrival, and Mike was like, ‘Babe, if we name him Stone, his initials in elementary will be Stone R. He’ll be Stoner.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what are we going to do?’ So, his dad actually picked his name, and [River] was one of our backup names. He’s a Pisces boy, water. Once we saw him, we were just like, ‘This is River.’ It just worked, and he’s such a River. It’s a really, I’m happy he’s not Stoner.”
source: people.com
