Our First Bump in the Road of IVF and Surrogacy
It wasn’t a huge bump, but it has changed our approach to our journey.
Our agency is instituting new measures for potential gestational carriers (GCs), requiring them to undergo additional screening and testing. We completely support this. It will ultimately be better for intended parents (IPs) and GCs, but it does mean that we will likely have to wait a bit longer than anticipated before we can match.
What made this delay distressing was actually a misunderstanding in our contract. I always emphasize how crucial contracts are in this process. This shows how important they are, and how important it is to fully understand them.
Our contract has a clause that states the agency must attempt to match us with at least one medically acceptable GC within 15 months of signing up. Due to these new screening requirements, we may miss this deadline. However, we initially understood this clause to mean that we would then incur an additional cost, as the 15 month deadline is worded in a way to state that after this amount of time, the ‘prevailing rates’ for the agency and GC may change.
Right after hearing about the delay, we quickly emailed the agency to clarify this. Fortunately, the agency responded and reassured us that this delay would not have any financial repercussions for us. Unfortunately, the response came after I had lost a night of sleep anxiously pacing around the apartment and worrying about the situation.
We have put our entire life savings into the journey. As I have stated before, we specifically chose this clinic and agency because of the ‘peace of mind’ program, allowing us to have all the support, guidance, and assurance that one can have when undergoing a journey on the other side of the world (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/beginning-surrogay-journey).
Because of this, we have taken a more considered and slower approach to the journey. Don’t get me wrong, we cannot wait to be fathers, but we also didn’t want to miss this part of our life by racing through it. We have enjoyed taking the time to discuss the process with a therapist, understand our own testing with a genetic counselor, and gradually select an egg donor who feels perfect for us (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/choosing-egg-donor).
However, the last article I wrote about our journey was about the long stretches of waiting (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/waiting-game). This feels like another one of those stretches. At the end of the day, it’s just a few more months, but it has made us alter our approach to the journey and agency.
We want to take a more active approach to communication. Up to this point, we have patiently waited for the agency and coordinators to email us with updates and next steps. We always respond immediately, and everything continues to progress.
This process has built in delays. It’s a very ‘human’ process, full of hard decisions and relationship dynamics. You don’t need to work to slow it down and enjoy it, as it is inherently a slow process.
We have realized that while we may have ‘peace of mind’ with our program, we still have to assertively ‘push’ the process forward. We will no longer wait for a coordinator or agency to contact us. We will email them regularly to ask for updates, question delays, and propose workarounds, because if we had been doing this from the beginning, every step could have been shorter and this latest delay - while out of our control - would have likely impacted us less.
What’s funny about this is my husband and I are naturally assertive people. We don’t have a passive approach to our careers, our home, our dog, our friends, or anything else that is important to us.
So why did we take this approach to the IVF and surrogacy journey?
Again, I think it was because we wanted to ‘enjoy the process.’ I guess we both assumed that the clinic and agency would gently carry us through the journey, white gloves and all. Don’t get me wrong, we have been treated exceptionally, but this process is like anything in life. If you want something done, it’s best to put your foot forward and help get it done.
For anyone considering or staring their own journey, this would be my biggest takeaway from this delay:
Be assertive with your clinic and agency. You may be a priority, but you will never be their only priority.
And:
In order to enjoy your journey, you have to live it the way you live and enjoy the rest of your life.
We are now leaning in with these mental shifts for our journey. I am thrilled to report that we have an official egg retrieval calendar, and there is a high likelihood that our embryos will be created on the 4th of July. Cue the Bruce Springsteen soundtrack, and we will most definitely set off fireworks in Stockholm on that day.
We cannot wait to be fathers. We are happy to share our journey with all its decisions and delays, and we hope that this can help some other queer intended fathers as they embark on what is most likely the greatest adventure of their lives.