Hitting the road

We’re doing it! We’re hitting the bumpy road to growing our little family.

So what’s happened so far? Plenty.

Dec 2018 – We found a free consultation advertised by a US company, Circle Surrogacy, about international surrogacy for Aus/NZ couples so we figured we’d give it a go. What they offer is pretty amazing, and as we’ve said, no option is off the table and so this one isn’t, but we feel exploring local alternatives to their fullest extent first is optimal. This is for a range of reasons, but predominantly for us, practical and financial ones.

Jan 2019 – this has been all about becoming more and more informed. We’ve read websites, listened to podcasts, watched talks on YouTube from relevant seminars. There is A LOT of info out there. We’ve joined online forums, Facebook groups and written a profile here and there. So much of this is about becoming active in a community and we’re excited by what that holds. Fortunately, even whilst this process is very new to the both of us, we’re not the first pioneers. We’ve very gladly been welcomed into quite a few incredibly supportive Facebook groups and online forum groups including the Egg Donation Australia forum (or EDA as they’re commonly referred) and the Fertility Connections Australia forum in order to hopefully find an egg donor and surrogate respectively.

We’ve also decided to join Surrogacy Australia’s Support Service (SASS) as Intended Parents (or IPs as they are commonly known) and had to have a GP appointment for our doctor to declare us ‘socially infertile’ (lovely phrase isn’t it?) so that we can join. We also needed a National Police Check and had to complete an online personality questionnaire (the 5 Love Languages for those in the know!).

Our journey will be like many others but not all. We’ll need the help of many people. There’s no saying which may occur first, but we are going to need to build relationships with both egg donors and surrogates.

Having never operated in this space before, there’s so much we didn’t know. There’s also so much we’re still yet to know. For those of you who may know nothing about this topic, here are some interesting introductory points:

• All surrogacy in Australia has to be what is called altruistic surrogacy. This means it’s illegal to pay someone to carry your child for you.
• There are two differing types of surrogacy:
  • gestational surrogacy is when the surrogate has a fertilised embryo transferred into her. The embryo is the product of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) using the sperm and/or egg of the intended parents, however in our case the egg would be from a donor. A gestational surrogate has no genetic contribution to the child they are carrying. Gestational surrogacy is the most common type of surrogacy arrangement in Australia.
  • traditional surrogacy is when the surrogate herself provides the egg, which is combined with the the sperm of the intended father, usually through artificial insemination. A traditional surrogate provides a genetic contribution to the child she is carrying.
• Whoever your chosen surrogate is has to have successfully carried a child to term.
• Before anything can go ahead with your chosen surrogate, you need to submit your case before a Patient Review Panel. This is often done with lawyers present.
• There’s no legally binding contract with your surrogate. In fact, at the time of birth, by law, the surrogate is still deemed the rightful parent of the child. The IPs then have between 28 days and 6 months from the birth to apply to the Supreme Court for a Parentage Order in order to become legally recognised as the child’s parents on their birth certificate.
• Despite it being a reservation of many Intended Parents, there isn’t a single case in Australia of a surrogate having changed their mind at the time of birth and deciding the keep the child for themselves.

All of this is new info and we feel like we’ve only just scrapped the surface! We’re sure that there will be plenty more ‘a-ha’ moments to come as we gain more information and start to build the picture of what we need to do in order to grow our little family.

Thanks for reading,
Lachy & Dan.