Today we have Jo, and Jess Wong, mamas to Addison June. Read more about their amazing family, their experience with IUI and how they are adjusting to life with a newborn below!

Introduce yourself, your wife and family. How did you meet?

We are the Wongs: Jo, Jess, and our baby girl Addison June (AJ). We met four years ago at work; more specifically at the water cooler of all places. I had just started at the company, while Jess had worked there for almost a year. Jess was my office crush, who I thought was completely out of my league. I hoped that maybe one day we could be friends. The last Saturday of the quarter, the office had a mandatory work day. Jess had planned on getting drinks with some coworkers afterwards and invited the new girl. Little did we know that day was going to change our lives forever. We spent the next 12 hours together bar hopping around San Diego and have been inseparable ever since.

Congrats on your beautiful baby girl! For lots of new couples, dreaming about your future babies is such a wonderful thing. Who started talking about babies first and when?

Thank you! We both come from big families so we talked about wanting babies pretty early on in our relationship. However, it was not until after we got engaged, we actually discussed it seriously. Jess brought up wanting babies in the future with no specific time frame, but I wanted to start a family with Jess as soon as possible. We were looking at donors before we even got married so once we tied the knot, we only waited a few months before trying.

Can you share your IUI journey with us?

We decided Jess would carry first and I would carry second so we wanted to find a donor that represented both of our ethnicities and personalities. We found the perfect donor on California Cryobank who was half Filipino and half Caucasian with a mix of our individual personality traits. It was as if he would have been our child if we were able to conceive! Once we had our donor, we researched local fertility clinics and made an appointment with Reproductive Partners in San Diego. Our initial appointment was purely focused on Jess' health history and making a plan for our IUI journey. Jess is young and healthy so we all decided to try to get pregnant the most natural way possible. We ordered a few viles of our donor sperm to be sent to the fertility clinic and Jess began checking her ovulation. Once Jess was in peak ovulation, we contacted our doctor who scheduled an insemination for the next day. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful our first two tries. Before our third try, we had another conversation with our doctor to see if there was anything we could do to control when Jess ovulated. Our doctor recommended a trigger shot, which would trigger Jess' ovulation so we would be able to know exactly when Jess ovulated. Taking this trigger shot, would give us the best chance to inseminate exactly when Jess ovulates. I gave Jess the trigger shot on a Friday night at 9 pm and we scheduled her insemination on Sunday at 9 am. Three days after the insemination, Jess started to have strange food cravings and was extremely tired. She took a pregnancy test about a week later and a positive pregnancy sign showed. We were ecstatic!

How is motherhood in these early days?

Motherhood definitely has its ups and downs, but it really is the best thing to ever happen to both of us! When other mothers tell you that you instantly fall in love with this little human being, it is 100% true. We miss her while she's sleeping and cannot get enough of the smiles and laughs. Having a child during a global pandemic has been a little scary, but COVID has actually been a blessing in disguise for us because I have been able to work from home everyday. We are so lucky to still have our jobs as we know many people have not been as fortunate as us. It has been difficult not seeing friends and family as much as we would have liked, but we are both able to spend so much quality time with our girl. Jess is a rockstar taking care of AJ during the day while I am working and we take long walks together during the evenings. We love being moms!

Name up to three other small businesses/brands that you love.

We love Baby Tula, Bibs pacifiers, and Little One Shop Company.

Anything else you’d like to add?

We would love to be a resource for other lesbian couples trying to start a family and would be happy to answer any questions. Along with that we would love to get connected with other families out there like ours!

And finally, where can we find you?

Instagram: @Wongyywong and @jo.el.wo