Finding more love and new meaning in parenthood

THE PARENTS: Blair Hinderliter, 41, and Nico Hinderliter, 38, of Collegeville

THE CHILD: Hannah Herrera Hinderliter, born Jan. 22, 2023

HER NAME: Herrera was Nico’s last name before the couple married, and they liked the triple-H initials.

They watched the sun melt over the beach on New Year’s Eve 2016, and they watched it rise above the San Francisco Bay on the first day of 2017, and in between, they talked about their relationship: This is serious. What comes next?

Blair and Nico had been dating for about a year. At the start, neither was seeking a committed relationship. “But when we found each other — fate, destiny, or magic — it hit us like a truck,” Nico says. “We thought: What is this? What have we stumbled upon?”

Nico was guarded in a way that only piqued Blair’s interest. Blair impressed Nico with his smarts and maturity. They’d been making the one-hour commute between the Napa Valley and San Francisco almost daily, and Blair was weighing a new opportunity: to move back to the Philadelphia area and take over his family’s food distribution business with his brother.

Nico said yes. “We both quit our jobs, packed up our lives, and got on the road,” he says. Traveling with the puppy they’d adopted from a street fair, they wound from Disneyland to Sedona, the Grand Tetons to Mount Rushmore, Chicago to Philadelphia, where they settled into a Rittenhouse Square apartment.

The next milestone was their engagement, in Rome; Blair proposed to Nico, who promptly reciprocated. They celebrated with a cruise around the Mediterranean. It took a little over a year to plan their wedding — a small gathering on the top floor of the Kimpton Hotel Palomar — while simultaneously building a house in a new development in Collegeville.

“This was all part of the plan,” Blair says. “We knew that we wanted to get married, eventually wanted to start a family, and have more space than our apartment in Philly.” Nico had always wanted to be a father, and Blair says the idea “grew on me” as their relationship deepened.

Meantime, the culture was shifting. “Getting married, having a family: I think for both of us, those were a distant, future ‘what if,’ ” Nico says. “As the country progressed and legalized gay marriage, as surrogacy and egg donation became more mainstream, all those distant dreams suddenly became very real and obtainable.”

They considered adoption, but Blair, 39 at the time, worried about how long that might take and whether there would be disappointments along the way. Instead, they pursued surrogacy, researching a few agencies before choosing one in New Jersey; they opted to work with a fertility clinic in Stamford, Conn.

They wanted an experienced surrogate, since they were newbies at parenthood. They also hoped for a someone who lived between Massachusetts and Virginia, so they could drive to be at the birth.

Seeking an egg donor “was like the weirdest online dating ever: looking through these profiles, at what they look like, at their whole medical history,” Blair says. The donor they chose impressed them because she was in graduate school and all four of her grandparents, in their 80s, were alive and healthy.

In June 2021, the fertility clinic retrieved the donor’s eggs and fertilized them — half with Nico’s sperm and half with Blair’s. They froze five viable embryos; the two strongest ones were girls. But COVID-19 had slowed the process of seeking a surrogate, and the agency wondered if the men would expand their search field as far as Texas.

But in September 2021, they got a call: We have a match. Shannon Napierkowski, who had been a surrogate twice before, had three teen daughters with her husband and lived in Hatboro, on the same road where Blair’s mother grew up.

The men talked with Shannon and her husband by phone. “It seemed like the stars aligned,” Nico says. Shannon recalls a similar feeling: “I felt like we hit it off during that call. They were so easygoing. They had a lot of questions; they seemed so invested and so curious about the process.”

The first embryo transfer failed. The second worked. And during her pregnancy, “they were with me every step of the way,” Shannon recalls, taking turns attending prenatal appointments, texting several times a week.

Blair remembers his astonishment at the anatomy scan. “They go through every organ and every bone. All the cells know what to do, how to build a little human.” Nico felt stunned at the seven-month ultrasound, when the scan showed a clear image of their daughter’s nose, lips, and chin. They framed the picture.

Meantime, they learned parenting basics at Main Line Family Education — how to diaper, swaddle, and burp a newborn; how to do infant CPR. They brought Blair’s parents along to the classes. They also worked with a couples counselor for six months before the birth, discussing discipline, money, core values, and how they would tell their daughter her origin story.

In the movies, Nico says, birth happens quickly. In reality, it was a long day of waiting at Jefferson Abington Hospital, where Shannon was induced. “Shannon was a rock star,” Nico says. “She didn’t groan or sweat or yell. It didn’t get active until about 10 p.m. when the doctor said, ‘OK, I think it’s time to push.’ We heard [the baby] cry. They called us over. That’s where it began for our family.”

But that’s not where it ends. The couple continue to be in touch with Shannon through texts and FaceTime; they send pictures of Hannah and are planning a cookout with Shannon, her husband, and their daughters in the spring, once the baby is fully vaccinated. “I certainly do think of them as family,” Shannon says.

Nico says he feels complete — ”like the missing piece is finally there.” And for Blair, parenthood has meant a sharp shift in priorities. “My No. 1 priority now is to provide for Hannah. I wake up and don’t even have to think: What is my main goal for the day? That is it. Everything has a bit of a new meaning now.”