by


Infertility can devastate the strongest of women, including Adrienne Arieff, a successful media and communications pro, writer, and San Francisco native. But Arieff chose to deal with her fertility issues in a remarkable way, hiring a surrogate in India after reading about the growing popularity of India's "reproductive outsourcing" in The New York Times and watching an investigation into the hot topic on Oprah. Now the mother to 3-year-old twins, Emma and India — who are the biological children of Adrienne and her husband, Alex, but who developed in the womb of an Indian woman named Vahina — Adrienne has chronicled her unique journey to motherhood in the fascinating book The Sacred Thread. "Since surrogacy is controversial, I was nervous to tell anyone in the beginning, but now I'm chanting it more than ever," Adrienne says, citing the growing interest in surrogacy sparked by celebrities like Giuliana Rancic, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Nicole Kidman. "Beautiful things come into this planet in many ways." I talked to Adrienne about the challenges of infertility, of traveling across the world to undergo IVF, and of trusting another woman to carry her children. Keep reading for more of her amazing story.