Bryn Mawr can bring people together in unexpected ways

“Looking for a referral for a gestational carrier.”

That was how Amy Carroccia ’10 opened the message she wrote on Facebook, cross-posting it on both SupportMawrters and Mawrters & A.R.T., which focuses on infertility. It was August 14, 2024, and she was at the end of her rope.

“I was quite desperate,” says Carroccia, whose post offered an account of her and her husband’s nearly seven-year quest to have a baby — through IVF, multiple rounds of failed embryo transfers, an ectopic pregnancy, and the stillbirth of their son, Gino. Following two final attempts at egg retrieval — both failures — she wrote in that Facebook post, “the three embryos we have left are the only hope we have for a biological child.”

By the time she appealed to her fellow Mawrters on Facebook, she and her husband, Carlo, had been searching for a gestational carrier, or surrogate, for a year. They had tried word of mouth through family and friends, as well as an agency that recruits surrogates, which was a bust. Two potential candidates were rejected by their clinic.

“Lots of people told me to try social media, but I told myself I didn’t want to look for someone for something this important online,” says Carroccia, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and works part-time in property management. “It was my sister, who’s a Smith grad, who pushed me to post on Facebook. She said, ‘Doesn’t Bryn Mawr have some closed groups that are only for alumni?’ It felt scary, but I thought, What have I got to lose? Let me just see if there’s anyone out there who would, out of the goodness of their hearts, consider this for us.”

It was luck that Kirsten (Kemp) Huskey ’06 happened to see Carroccia’s post the day it went up. “I don’t go on Facebook much, but I went on that morning to post on our local Buy Nothing group because I had junk I wanted to get rid of,” says Huskey, who lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and works in finance and regulatory compliance with her husband, Billy. “Amy’s post was front and center, and it was so moving. It just stuck with me throughout the day.”

Carroccia’s story prompted Huskey, who has a son, 6, and a daughter, 8, to contemplate her own good fortune. “We were so blessed to have had very easy times getting pregnant and very easy pregnancies, deliveries, and recoveries,” she says.

Huskey also knew a bit about the surrogacy process thanks to an acquaintance who had been considering it. “I thought, why not reach out to Amy and get more information,” says Huskey, who got a thumbs-up from her husband before sending a text.

Within 24 hours, the two were on a FaceTime call.

“We found so much that we had in common; I felt like she was already a close friend,” Carroccia says, noting that they were both math majors and had the same professors, and both enjoyed baking and the same television shows.

That call clinched it for both, and just two months later, Huskey was flying to Charleston for a round of medical exams to make sure she was a viable surrogate candidate. Also a requirement: an in-depth psychological evaluation for both Huskey and her husband. (In a wonderful coincidence, the examining psychiatrist turned out to be yet another Bryn Mawr grad, Piave Pitisci Lake ’92.)

 “I thought, What have I got to lose? Let me just see if there’s anyone out there who would, out of the goodness of their hearts, consider this for us.”

Huskey, who goes by the nickname “Kiki,” says that at first some of her family members were taken aback by her decision to carry the child of a woman she barely knew. “But that changed after they met her,” she says. “My mom came with me to Charleston for the embryo transfer, and after meeting Amy and Carlo, she said, ‘Yep, I totally get it. They need their baby.’”

While it was a mostly easy pregnancy for Huskey, a late-stage complication required that she deliver baby Gianna in a scheduled C-section. (The delivering doctor, Manuel Ferreira, a 2005 graduate of Haverford College, made it a Bi-Co affair.) Carroccia and her husband spent the two weeks leading up to the January 20th birth, and then much of February, staying with the Huskeys.

“I don’t know if there’s another family that would do this in the way they have,” Carroccia says. “I cried when we left Pennsylvania, and Kiki was like, ‘You do know that I’ll see you again.’’’

That a Facebook post actually made her biggest dream come true still stuns Carroccia, who bought matching enamel pins with the Mawrter slogan “Done is Good” for Huskey and herself. (The countless steps of the complex surrogacy process reminded her of completing a rigorous Bryn Mawr semester, she says.)

“It took a long time for the whole realization of the pregnancy to hit me,” Carroccia says. “I think part of me was very guarded, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up because I’d experienced so much loss. It didn’t actually feel real until she was born. We are overjoyed. It’s the best feeling!”