Surrogacy: ‘Little Angel’

David calls friends to tell them about the positive pregnancy test from surrogate Tonya Rosenberger (called Sissy), who is Chad’s sister. Three days after the home test, a blood test confirmed Sissy was pregnant.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

David, left, and Chad join David’s mother, Brenda Furman, in a toast after receiving confirmation through blood test that their surrogate was pregnant.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

David and Chad flew to Texas for Sissy’s doctor’s appointments. She holds her daughter, 1-year-old Annabelle, before a checkup at which they learned she was pregnant with a boy and a girl.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

David, Chad (holding Annabelle) and Sissy learn that one of the babies will be a boy.  (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

Ultrasound images of Holland and Asher sit on a table for the memorial service at Sissy’s church in Dallas.  (Béatrice de Géa / LAT)

Sissy and Chad weep together as David keeps his arm around Chad during Asher and Holland’s memorial service.  (Béatrice de Géa / LAT)

A rose adorns the mementos for babies Holland and Asher at the Dallas memorial service. Doctors and nurses attended from the neonatal intensive-care unit where the babies were born and died. “There was just something about Chad and David,” said one nurse. “I don’t know if it was that they wanted these babies so desperately, or their love for each other, or their love for the babies. But the whole unit felt it.”  (Béatrice de Géa / LAT)

David cries in a friend’s arms as Chad struggles with emotion during the Dallas memorial service. The curate who had baptized the babies performed the ceremony.  (Béatrice de Géa / LAT)

David and Chad at the Atlanta memorial service. Their fathers drove in for the service, and their surrogacy lawyer flew down from Virginia.  (Brian Vander Brug / LAT)

At a second memorial service in Chad and David’s home city of Atlanta, associate rector Beth Royalty holds her hand over the bronze box with the twins’ ashes.  (Brian Vander Brug / LAT)