We Matched with a Gestational Carrier!

After over a year of waiting, we have officially matched with a gestational carrier (GC)!

This is a truly momentous moment in our journey, and we are beyond thrilled to now be at this stage.

I wanted to take this opportunity to give background on the matching process through our agency, some of the key elements we were focusing on for a GC, and how I was feeling the night before and immediately after our Zoom meeting with the GC.

I have written about how my husband and I navigated the decisions before starting our international surrogacy path in the U.S., which you can read more about in a previous article (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/beginning-surrogay-journey).  

In the end, we opted for a full-service, all-in-one fertility clinic and agency called Hatch and selected their Piece of Mind (POM) program (https://www.hatch.us/peace-of-mind-program).  While you can work with Hatch as just a surrogacy agency, I will speak specifically to our experience through the POM program.  However, I assume many of the elements and processes would be similar no matter how you partner with Hatch.

The GC Matching Process at Hatch

When we first signed up with the Hatch POM program, we were immediately put on the GC waiting list.  While the agency does not share potential GCs with you until you have genetically tested embryos, they do start the process of getting to know you and finding out what could be a good match.

My husband and I filled out an extensive questionnaire about ourselves, our lives, our backgrounds, and what type of communication we would want with a GC during and after the pregnancy.  We then had a Zoom meeting with a match specialist, where she went over our questionnaire and then also asked us about our perspectives on termination, selective reduction (termination of a fetus in order to not have twins/multiples), and desire for breast milk for the baby.

After this, my husband and I drafted our ‘Dear Surrogate’ letter.  This was an autobiographical letter full of fun photos and details about us, our story as a couple, our desire to become parents, and what we are looking for in a GC.

Understanding what you want and expect out of the relationship with a GC is critical for any surrogacy journey.  

While it is imperative to have alignment on termination and selective reduction as well as other medical decision making regarding the GC and pregnancy, I find these decisions to be more black and white.  It’s necessary to have them, but it’s also easy for the agency to filter out poor matches as these are not gray areas.  You either have alignment or not.

Communication and the type relationship between the IPs and GC are entirely unique and full of potential gray areas.  How much do you want to communicate during the pregnancy?  Every day, every week, a few times a month?  How do you want to communicate?  Text, phone calls, video meetings?  Do you want to be in the delivery room?  Can photos be taken during delivery?  How much contact do you want to have after the delivery?  Can the child contact the GC when they are older?

These are the questions that make matching challenging and are where I think it’s mandatory to be completely honest with yourself, your partner, and the GC in order to ensure there are no unspoken expectations or misalignments before embarking on this journey together.

For my husband and I, we have been very clear from the beginning that we want a close relationship during and after the pregnancy with our GC.  We know that communication and relationship building will be a challenge while we are in Sweden, but we want our child to completely know the story of how they came to be.  Our GC is an integral part of that story.  We have worked hard to form our own ‘chosen family’ of friends, and we want this person and her family to join that group.  

Another aspect that my husband and I prioritized in our GC match was her social support.  Being that we are halfway across the world in Sweden, we wanted to know and trust that she had an amazing network of friends and family to be there for her when we could not.  

It’s largely for this reason that my husband and I turned down our first potential GC from Hatch.  While our first candidate did have some social support, she would have relied heavily on her elderly mother to help with her two young children during the pregnancy, and she had a complicated relationship with her ex-partner.  In addition to this, she lived in Florida, which is a post-birth order state.  This means that the parental birth order that would establish my husband and I as the parents of record is done after the delivery.  Consequently, my husband and I would have to spend extra weeks in the U.S. before we could fly back to Sweden with our child, adding cost and complexities.  This was a minor element and not a deal breaker, but it was another negative aspect to the first potential match and made us realize that a GC in a pre-birth order state was a criteria we now had.  

It was only after reviewing this GC profile and discussing these concerns with the Hatch matching specialist that we were able to refine and better understand our own needs.  I really appreciated Hatch’s ability to adjust and navigate through the potential matches with these additional criteria.  Our matching specialist was able to take this new feedback on board, and then the next candidate met all our criteria and more.  

Hatch then shared our ‘Dear Surrogate’ letter with our second potential candidate, and she had to agree to meet with us before we could schedule the all-important, nerve racking virtual introduction.  Within a few days of both parties agreeing to meet, the matching specialist set up a Zoom call with us, the potential GC, and herself.  It was happening so fast, and I was up almost the entire night before the meeting with a flurry of thoughts and emotions. 

The Night Before Our GC Matching Interview  

The feeling the night before brought me back to Christmas Eve as a child.  My mind was racing with anticipation while also being nervous about expectations, but, overall, I was excited for the day to finally arrive.

I didn’t want to put too much pressure on this meeting, but it’s hard not to.  After waiting for so long to get to this point, there was going to be pressure no matter what.  I also had to think about how I could ensure that I was as much ‘myself’ as possible for a first meeting.  You only get one chance to make a first impression, but I wanted my first impression to be as close to my actual self as possible.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a ‘fake’ person, but I think we all try to put the best version of ourselves forward whenever we are meeting new people, especially if we want to develop a meaningful relationship with those people.

Like many gay men, I struggle with acceptance and was worried this would influence how I portrayed myself.  I wasn’t accepted by my own family, and while I have built up my chosen family and have the love and support of them and my husband, I don’t think I or anyone who has suffered that type of rejection ever completely stops trying to get people to like them.  However, I didn’t want to be a ‘people pleaser’ in this first meeting.  I wanted to be as genuine as possible so that the GC and us could be confident in each other for this match.

After this thought process, I finally went to bed.  I was feeling excited, nervous, slightly self-aware, a bit self-conscious, and had tempered my expectations.

The GC Matching Interview

I want to respect the privacy of our GC, and so I don’t want to disclose personal information about her.  However, I would like to say that the Hatch matching specialist did an exceptional job moderating and navigating the meeting.  It was an hour long, and the matching specialist had us each give an overview of ourselves.  While we had each read about most of these things in the profile and ‘Dear Surrogate’ letter, it was good to hear it again face-to-face.  

The matching specialist then transitioned to asking us and the GC questions that were focused areas for each of us.  She asked more about the GCs social support and communication style.  She asked us about our own support for the baby after it is born, seeing as we live abroad in a foreign country.  She asked how many visits we would plan on attending in person, and, of course, she re-clarified the all-important medical decision-making questions around termination and selective reduction.

The hour flew by.  Before I knew it, we were wrapping up and saying that within the next 24 hours we would each reach out to the matching specialist with additional questions and/or a decision as to whether or not we wanted to proceed together.

Immediately After Our GC Matching Interview

As soon as the video call had ended, my husband and I looked at each other, smiled, and both said pretty much the same thing about how great she was.

There are personal elements to her life and family that made us like her even more, such as the fact that she has a queer daughter and is excited to be a GC for a gay couple.  However, what really sealed the deal for us was that we genuinely liked her.  It’s really that simple, but we just liked talking to her.  This made us believe that our child would like her too.  This is the most important part, as more than anything, we want our child to love themselves.  This means that they have to be excited about their story, and the GC is one of the earliest and most critical aspects for the story of them.

The GC wanted to communicate and be open with us about everything.  She was excited to share this experience with us, and also to remain connected after the delivery.  On both sides, it seemed we could enjoy this journey and each other’s families, and we got the sense that we could trust her.  

At the end of the day, this journey is about a trusting relationship.  Even if we lived next door, we would still have to trust her to take care of herself during the pregnancy.  We’re not here to micromanage her life during this time.  We want her to enjoy being pregnant with our child as much as she did with her own children.  In order to do that, we have to let her experience the pregnancy how she wants to, and from our conversation, we felt nothing but encouragement and trust that she will do this.

Officially Matched!

The next day, we woke up to an email from our matching specialist stating that she wanted to work with us as our GC!

The moment took my breath away.  

Even now, a few days later, I still don’t believe we matched.  As with every step in this journey, it’s about celebrating the milestones while also protecting ourselves emotionally.  

The GC still has to finalize her medical clearance, and then we have to go through legal contracting before starting medications in order to proceed with the implantation.  Then it comes down to whether or not she gets pregnant.

There is an abundance of things that could derail or slow down our journey.  However, I’m choosing to focus on the overwhelmingly positive step in matching with a wonderful GC.  She is an incredible woman, and she will now help us write the story of our child and our rainbow family.