BEN & GREG - Your Pregnancy Choices

Hello! We’re Ben and Greg. We’ve been together for over 15 years (since 2008) and married now for 3 years! We first met in college as freshman. After a year of being friends, we started dating and have been together ever since. We’ve lived together in Washington, DC, New York City, and Johannesburg, South Africa – and we are excited to have now settled in Jersey City. We enjoy exploring Jersey City as well as being able to jump into Manhattan for all there is to see and do. Jersey City is a great place to have young kids with lots of parks and schools. We have a 3-year-old dog named Debbi who currently gets all our love and attention – but we know she is excited for a future human sibling. We’ve always wanted to be dads and are so excited to be at this stage to begin growing our family through adoption. We have so much love to give, as does our amazing extended family, and we’re really excited to give that love to a new addition to our family.

About Ben

Age: 36

Job Description: Marketing professional in the consumer healthcareindustry

Hobbies:

Cooking, particularly discovering new cookbooks and making dinners for family and friends
Peloton Spinning classes
Mid-century modern antiquing and touring architecture from the period
Long walks with our dog, Debbi

Fun facts

Ben loves to cook and during their Covid isolation made almost every recipe in Alison Roman’s cookbook, “Nothing Fancy” – except for desserts because he does not like to bake!

About Greg

Age: 35

Job Description: Public health specialist in the philanthropic sector

Hobbies:

Aviation, including learning about different types of airplanes and airlines
Travelling to learn about and experience different countries – have been to more than 60 different countries
Hiking in the woods and getting out into nature
Long walks with our dog, Debbi

Fun facts:
Greg studied abroad in Mongolia (in between Russia and China) where he lived with herder families in the countryside. On a given day, he was herding goats along the river with his host brother, learning how to speak the Mongolian language, or interning with the U.S. Embassy that’s based in the capital city. He credits his time in Mongolia with helping him to decide to work in public health, because he believes that everyone has the right to a healthy future.

Our Lives

Our life together is busy, rewarding and filled with good food, long walks and park visits with our dog as well as quality time with friends and family. We both keep busy with our 9-5 jobs and value hard work, dedication, and a strong work ethic. After work, we like to unwind at home while cooking dinner, discussing the ups and downs of the day, planning our next getaway, watching our favorite TV shows, and spending time together and with friends. Most of our closest friends live around the country, in Washington DC, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Boston. So, while we don’t get to see them as often as we like, we try to stay in the loop with video calls and frequent messaging.

On the weekends we like to explore new restaurants in Jersey City or New York City and also plan weekend trips to visit our niece and nephews. For us, Sunday is an important day to plan for the week ahead, get groceries, and do stuff around the house. We also enjoy traveling and try to visit a new country every year. Most recently we traveled together to Mexico City, Corsica (an island off France) and Buenos Aires! We’ve enjoyed looking up the best kid-friendly trips as we think about traveling with our child in the future.

After living in Washington, DC and New York City, we both took new jobs (and a bit of a risk) and moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. It is truly eye-opening to get to live in another country and was one of the most influential experiences of our lives. We made great friends – who we are still close with today – and shared many great experiences, including: climbing sand dunes in Namibia, enjoying South Africa’s many wine regions, and exploring new hobbies like wheel throwing pottery!

Our Family

As our siblings have started to have children, we’ve enjoyed being an important part of our niece’s and nephew’s lives and have very much enjoyed seeing our own parents become grandparents. It has been such a fulfilling experience and has really encouraged us to grow our family.

We’re both very close to our immediate families and see them at least 1-2 times per month. Greg’s family lives in New Jersey while Ben’s live in both New York City and Massachusetts. It’s great that no one is a flight away, and we can drive to see them whenever works for everyone.

Family traditions often revolve around holidays including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We also try to do at least a week-long vacation with each of our families per year, mostly beach time in the warmer months of the year. Both of our parents live near the ocean, so in the summer, we spend lots of time at the beach and having big meals around the dinner table.

Both Ben and Greg benefited from close relationships with their grandparents, and they look forward to prioritizing that as they raise their own children.

Final Thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to get to know us. While there is only so much that a written profile can communicate, we hope you know that we will always love, advocate, and support a child in our care. We cannot express how excited we are to grow our family and bring a new life into our loving, warm, and vibrant world. We can’t begin to understand how hard this decision is for you, but we sincerely appreciate you considering us.

– Ben & Greg