McDonald's Fries, My Mom, and the Tradition That Started a Movement

If you've spent any time in surrogacy communities online, you've probably seen it. Transfer day posts with a side of fries. Intended parents waiting anxiously by their phones, kept company by a McFlurry. Surrogates in clinic gowns, phone in one hand, fry in the other.

It's a whole thing now. A community ritual. A transfer day tradition that spans countries and agencies and thousands of families who have never met each other.

I don't think most of them know where it started. But I do. Because it started with my mom.

Joanne Wright. The beginning of all of it.

My mother founded Canadian Surrogacy Options in 1992. The first surrogacy agency in Canada. She built it from nothing, in a field that barely had a name yet, because she believed that families deserved help building the ones they dreamed of.

I grew up in this work. Surrounded by surrogates and intended parents and the particular kind of hope that fills a room when someone says "I'll carry your baby." By the time I was old enough to understand what we were doing, it had already shaped everything about how I see the world.

My mom had a thing about McDonald's. Specifically about taking surrogates out for fries and a milkshake after their transfer.

Was it science? No. Was it her genuine belief that a warm meal, a familiar comfort, and twenty minutes of just breathing after a medical procedure that meant everything could make a difference? Absolutely. She wanted them to relax. To laugh. To not sit alone in a car with the weight of what had just happened pressing down on them.

And then one of those transfers worked. And then another. And Joanne, being Joanne, made the connection out loud: "We're going for fries. It's lucky."

That was that.

Where it came from, if you really want to know.

Here's the part I hadn't thought about until recently.

Our dentist was 45 minutes away. Growing up, that meant a full family expedition every time. And Joanne, because she was Joanne, turned it into a whole thing. Afterwards, no matter what happened in that chair, we stopped at the McDonald's with the play place. Fries and a milkshake. Every time. Cold chocolate milkshake after a filling, specifically, because she swore it soothed the numbness.

Medical procedure. McDonald's. It was just... our family's formula for getting through something hard.

She brought it with her into surrogacy without ever making the connection explicitly. It was just what you did after something medical and important. You went and got fries. You let your body settle. You talked about something normal for a few minutes.

I only put it together recently. And it made me laugh and cry at the same time, which is honestly the most Joanne thing I've ever realized.

What it became.

We've woven it into our surrogate gift baskets now. Every surrogate we support gets a McDonald's gift card at transfer time with a little note that says "get fries on us." Because we know what transfer day feels like. We know the specific kind of nervous-hopeful-terrified energy that fills that morning. And we want there to be one moment — even just twenty minutes in a drive-through — where the only thing on your mind is whether you want a large or a medium.

The tradition spread from there. Into forums. Into Facebook groups. Into the broader surrogacy community across Canada and then beyond. Families who have never heard of CSO doing it. Clinics making jokes about it. Transfer day posts that always, always include the fries.

My mom started that. In a McDonald's parking lot, 45 minutes from our dentist, with a chocolate milkshake.

That's the kind of agency we are. The kind where a family dentist tradition becomes a community ritual. Where the small things — the human things, the things that have nothing to do with contracts or costs or timelines — are what actually hold people together.

That magic has always lived here. It always will. 💜

From hope to heartbeat to home.

Robyn Price Executive Director, Canadian Surrogacy Options Founded by Joanne Wright, 1992

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