09/06/2025
Sault Ste Marie, Ontario
‘Wonderful thing’: Sault woman embraced opportunity to be a surrogate mother.
A local tow truck driver and mother of three, Merissa Dinner helped a man fulfill his dream of becoming a father.
The Sault’s Merissa Dinner is a firm believer in helping others.
In fact, she recently went as far as becoming a gestational surrogate mother in order to help provide a man with a child.
Traditional surrogacy involves artificially inseminating a surrogate with the father's s***m.
Gestational surrogacy — the more common form of surrogacy — involves in vitro fertilization (IVF), a process in which an embryo grown in a lab using the s***m and egg from another male and female is implanted in the carrier's uterus.
That means the baby is not biologically linked to the surrogate.
Dinner’s decision to become a gestational surrogate mother was fuelled by a desire to do a good deed after battling alcohol.
“Part of being sober is making amends and doing right in the world," Dinner told SooToday in a recent interview. "This was one of those things that I felt was a way to give back."
She has been in recovery for seven years.
After applying to become a surrogate through an agency and undergoing a series of physical and mental health tests, Dinner went through the IVF process at a fertility clinic in Toronto.
“I went through the procedure on the fifth anniversary of getting sober," she said. "That’s the cool part. It felt like a spiritual experience. It felt like God was telling me I was on the right path. Sometimes in recovery we talk about spiritual experiences and this was one of them. Not a lot of women get pregnant on the first try."
As a surrogate, she gave birth to a baby girl at Sault Area Hospital in May 2024.
“She's healthy and now 15 months old. I also had a midwife who was really wonderful,” Dinner said.
Dinner said she did not go through extreme postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth.
“In the beginning I was able to separate myself and say ‘this isn't my baby and I'm just doing something good for someone else.’ I delivered her and I breastfed her and I made that connection with her. The dad was very loving and let me spend time with her before he took her away. He stayed here for a month and I got to spend time with her, so I did not have that ‘she's gone’ feeling. I had good supports through the surrogacy agency.”
There were still some emotional challenges, Dinner said.
“Watching your baby get on an airplane after the birth and not knowing if she’ll ever come back was excruciating. But a friend of mine happened to be on the plane. She was watching and later told me she could see the man was a good dad.”
Dinner said she expects to see the infant again.
“The father and I talked about it and he is going to come back here with her to visit so that will be a lot easier. I have photos of her so I don’t feel cut off. She has big brown eyes and blonde hair. A lot of surrogates don't get the same communication. I feel very grateful for that.”
Dinner said she appreciates the support of friends and family in the Sault throughout the entire process.
Dinner, who has three children of her own and works hard in the male-dominated profession of tow truck driving, is looking forward to completing her Bachelor of Social Work degree at Algoma University in the spring of 2026.
“I'm pretty excited about it.”
She enjoys helping others who are battling addictions.
“I believe in people getting better and sharing my story, letting other people know that recovery is possible.”
Dinner said she recommends the surrogacy experience to any woman willing to go through with it.
“Definitely. I think that if you're a caring person and you go into it with the right expectations, it's a wonderful thing to do.”
