Considering surrogacy? At this point, you probably know that the surrogacy process certainly isn’t cheap. But beyond surrogacy costs, what major things do you need to consider? My husband Kevin and I started the surrogacy process nearly a year ago. Kevin, the diligent, organized notetaker that he is, could tell I was getting a little overwhelmed. So that’s when he decided to break down the surrogacy process into 3 simple steps —

• #1: Select your fertility clinic. Here is our story on that topic and what you’ll need to do.
• #2: Find your egg donor: Or what I call the Tindr for Eggs… We wrote about what you should consider here.
• #3: Identify your surrogate: This is what this post is all about. Whew, you’re in the right spot!

We broke it down this way and it was actually pretty straight forward. We know others who were juggling different parts of this process at the same time. But doing it this way eliminates that feeling of doom. We both agreed that by taking this systematic approach, it really wasn’t all that daunting at all.

Finding The Best Surrogate For You

The surrogacy process is a very personal decision. We wanted to share our thoughts since it’s something that many couples, especially gay couples, don’t like to discuss. We really want to help other couples going through the surrogacy process.

We honestly thought this part of the surrogacy journey was the most daunting.  After all, you’ll likely be meeting this person in real life and developing some sort of relationship. And while she isn’t genetically linked to your baby, she and your babies will be spending a lot of time together.

In this post, we’ll share our thoughts on what mattered in finding a surrogate.

Surrogacy For Gay Couples: What Should You Consider?

Now that you have the fertility doc and your eggs on ice, it’s time to work with a surrogacy agency. A Perfect Match, who provided the eggs,  also offer this service (if you want to further streamline the process). But again, we recommend not committing to one agency up front so you can “shop around” (i.e. have a chance to work multiple databases at once). Every couple is different but we had 3 main criteria for selecting our donor:

1. Proximity: This was priority #1 for us. We wanted our surrogate to be near the fertility clinic so we could join for those appointments. This also helps cut down on costs since you won’t have to travel to her (and vice versa). Finally, we wanted our surrogate close to ensure she had the best hospital possible when having the baby.
2. A “mom’s mom”: Basically, this is what Kevin and I would say broadly when talking about someone with a support system. It’s someone with either an office job or a stay at home mom. The last thing we wanted to do was make our donor carry our twins and be on her feet all day!
3. A healthy mom, who’s had babies before: While we ended up going with a first time surrogate, we wanted someone who knows what’s coming. Our surrogate has given birth to two healthy boys. And we wanted someone familiar with being pregnant.

Which Surrogacy Agency Should We Choose?

One thing we quickly learned is that surrogacy agencies can be a bit sketchy. It isn’t regulated by any medical organization. Plus, many of these agencies are one man shops.  Or small operations where they’re looking to maximize their total money in. We will not mention our surrogacy agency in this post. We didn’t have the best experience, which you might have gathered already!

But how do you sort out the good from the bad? In short, it’s VERY difficult. And many gay parents that we’ve spoken to had some issue with their agency so we weren’t exactly alone. What is the biggest area of contention? Money naturally… And agencies not being clear on fees, extra costs or additional “gotcha” fees.

Here are some recommendations that might be helpful in your journey.

• Ask friends who have gone through the process. How was their experience?
• Go into online forums. There are forums like Reddit and Facebook groups that have actively engaged parents.
• Is there a parenting advice group in your area? We live in LA and were thrilled by the advice we got from the Pump Station.
• Talk to your fertility clinic nurses. They are often on the frontlines in meeting intended parents’ surrogates and have advice on the best ones (vs the agencies with a pattern of unsatisfied intended parents). Though, we did ultimately go with our fertility clinic’s recommendation (and we weren’t very satisfied with our agency in the end).

Wrapping Up The Surrogacy Process: Any Last Minute Tips

There were several lessons learned in the the surrogacy process.

• Get a good lawyer to evaluate your surrogate contract. We were provided a lawyer by our surrogate agency.  But let’s face it, the lawyer’s motivation isn’t on the side of the intended parent. It’s with the surrogacy agency (who is giving them business).
• Make sure your legal contract has zero room for interpretation. When evaluating the terms of our contract, we should have made it much more concrete (without any latitude on interpretation). This is to avoid any extra costs that might be tacked on at the end (based on a contract with 2 interpretations).
• Don’t commit with an agency until you’re matched with a surrogate. This was one thing we did right. Yay! Many agencies get you hooked with a large financial down payment. Then you wait… and possibly wait even more. Our approach was to get access to multiple surrogate agencies’ databases. That way, we could find someone we liked — with our many parameters. If we matched, then we paid the surrogacy fee. Some agencies will say no.  But we found 3 different places that agreed to it.

While mistakes were made in selecting our actual agency, we ultimately got two healthy twin babies. And that’s really all that matters in the end. We also loved our egg donor agency (A Perfect Match) as well as our fertility clinic (HRC Pasadena).

Looking for more advice? Be sure to check out our entire section dedicated to parenting resources. Have more questions, feel free to drop us a line at editor@adventuringdads.com.