How a Community Came Together to Help One Cancer Survivor Become a Mom
When cervical cancer survivor Tamika Felder welcomed her son Chayton, his arrival marked the end of a path to parenthood that had taken more than two decades and involved the generosity of people across the fertility and surrogacy community.
PEOPLE shared Tamika's remarkable story, including how Family Match Consulting founder Stephanie Levich became involved in helping Tamika and her husband, Rocky Campbell, find a path forward.
A Cancer Diagnosis Changed Her Plans for Motherhood
Tamika was just 25 when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her treatment required a radical hysterectomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. Although she explored fertility preservation before treatment, insurance would not cover it and there wasn't enough time to pursue it.
For years afterward, Tamika carried the loss of the future she had imagined for herself. She eventually married Rocky and came to believe that becoming a mother might simply not happen for her.
Then an extraordinary offer changed everything.
One Act of Generosity Led to Another
Ginny Marable, a fellow cervical cancer survivor whom Tamika knew through the cancer community, had been able to preserve embryos before her own hysterectomy. After Ginny and her husband, Sean, welcomed twins through surrogacy, they offered to donate their remaining embryos to Tamika and Rocky.
Suddenly, the possibility of parenthood was back.
But having an embryo was only one piece of the process. Tamika and Rocky still needed a gestational surrogate and a way to manage the significant expenses involved in pursuing surrogacy.
After an independent search for a surrogate didn't work out, fertility attorney Rijon Charne connected Tamika with Stephanie Levich and Family Match Consulting.
Stephanie was moved by Tamika's story and by the generosity that had already brought her so far. She began reaching out to colleagues throughout the fertility and surrogacy community to see who might be willing to help.
The response was immediate.
Brooke Kimbrough of Roots Surrogacy agreed to waive her agency's fees. Charne provided her legal services pro bono. Other professionals stepped in as well. Within hours, more than $90,000 in services had been donated to help Tamika and Rocky move forward.
What began with one family's decision to donate their embryos became a much larger chain of people choosing to help.
And Then Came Chayton
More than a year later, Tamika and Rocky's surrogate gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Chayton, on November 21.
In a coincidence that made an already meaningful day even more special to the Family Match Consulting team, Chayton was born on Stephanie's birthday.
Months later, Tamika traveled from Maryland to Los Angeles with Chayton and met Stephanie and Brooke in person for the first time.
The story is a powerful reminder that there is no single way a family is created. Chayton's path to his parents included cancer survivorship, embryo donation, surrogacy and an extraordinary community of people willing to help another family reach the finish line.
As Tamika told PEOPLE, she hopes sharing her experience encourages others to remain open to the different ways parenthood can happen.
Sometimes the path to a family looks nothing like the one you originally imagined. That doesn't make the family waiting at the end of it any less yours.
