Many a Meet & Greet

Over the past week we have been to three events involving surrogacy and egg donor communities. Whilst the online forums are highly useful, many of them offer intermittent meet-ups across the country to facilitate more conversation and face-to-face introductions.

First up was a dinner organised by the Australian Surrogacy Community in Fitzroy. It had been a very busy work week for us both, so energy levels were waning. Compounding this was the fact that this was our first foray into the meet-ups, meaning some potentially awkward introductions awaited. But fortunately, we only had to endure some brief standing around before we warmed up and got chatting. Before we knew it, it was close to 11pm and we left feeling pretty buzzed. We’d met some really interesting people – intended parents like us, potential surrogates, those who had been surrogates for others, surrogacy lawyers – who had so much to share and many tips to offer. As we mentioned in our initial post, this is a community of some really great people (there were women there who had had five pregnancies (for their own families and as surrogates) and were willing to have more to help out families in need), and no matter what happens on our bumpy road, it will be/has been lovely to discover this.

Next up was a meant-to-be-picnic the next morning run by Egg Donation Australia. Melbourne’s weather certainly wasn’t picnic friendly, so we squeezed into a very accommodating café in Kew. Sadly, Lachy’s early morning baking, which couldn’t be enjoyed inside the café, had to come back home with us to Geelong!

There were some familiar faces from the night before who were also going back-to-back amongst others. Whilst this meet up was focused on egg donation, these groups are very interconnected, and so we got the sense that we’ll be crossing paths with many of these faces for as long as we’re involved in all of this. Again, we loved hearing of people’s stories and the offers of support came thick and fast as others learned where we were at with our journey.

Fast forward a week and we were back in Melbourne for a seminar run by Families Through Surrogacy.

There were 11 different speakers representing a wealth of aspects within this domain. This seminar had a stronger focus on international surrogacy, which is an option available to us (as we’ve said, nothing is off the table), but we’re hopeful and optimistic on the domestic front first and foremost. That being said we did learn about some of the possibilities and complexities of surrogacy through the US, Ukraine and Mexico. We heard from a surrogacy lawyer as well as a panel of four parents, each of whom had had successful surrogacy journeys in different jurisdictions. The seminar seemed pretty well turned out – there were roughly 20 male same-sex couples there, which again made us question the supply/demand predicament we’re in here and what might set us apart. But all we can do is remain active and hopeful.

So it’s been a busy week with lots of conversations about embryos and IVF clinics and egg pick ups and the fourth trimester and Medicare rebates and counselling hours and the word journey being uttered umpteen times, but we’re feeling excited and grateful for the opportunity to meet some of these great people 😊