A Bun in the Oven

PART I
The surrogate search is a complicated, involved process. There are websites devoted to the surrogacy process where one can learn the basics and read through the "classifieds" where women advertise their services for surrogacy, traditional or gestational, or for egg donation and through the "want ads" where prospective, "intended" parents post their desires for a surrogate or egg donor.

David Favret did the legwork, poring over hundreds of listings, writing emails and replying to responses. Two years ago, by the end of 2006, we chose a wonderful woman who had donated eggs a few times before but was wanting to complete her own surrogacy experience by giving the gift of new life to a deserving family. Her own family was extremely supportive and she was willing to do whatever it took to help us achieve our dream.

Being a male gay couple is not an easy road for having children. Fortunately for us, California and a handful of other states (though there are more everyday) are very supportive of "intended parents," be they straight or gay, males or females. Through the intervention of lawyers, a "pre-birth order" can be established where the intended parents are listed as co-parents on the birth certificate, where no mention is made of egg donors, sperm donors, surrogates, surrogates' husbands, etc. The catch is that the medical procedures and, most importantly, the birth must happen in that state--California, in our case--and everything, of course, must be legally contracted.

Our surrogate was willing to travel for the medical proceedings and "reside" in California for the delivery. We had finally begun our journey!

David and I learned more about the female body and its cycles than we ever wanted to know. Although gestational surrogacy (where the surrogate only carries a child to term having no genetic relationship to the child vs. traditional surrogacy where it is her egg that is fertilized) is a highly medical, clinically-controlled process, there is still heavy monitoring and dependence upon the surrogates' and egg-donors' natural cycles, compounded by government-regulated testing of all the players involved and clinic-required psychological, genetic and medical counseling and examinations. David was a great coordinator. I would have gone crazy trying to align the doctors appointments, phone consultations, flights, hotel stays. All but David and me lived in different states throughout the country!

To make a long story short, things did not work out. After two attempts, one failed and one called off minutes before the embryo transfer, we learned that there were incompatibilities with our surrogate and the medical regimen. We were back to square one.

Sort of. The eggs my sister had donated were fertilized and all viable embryos were frozen. We just needed another surrogate.


PART II

It only took about one month before we found Florence, a New Hampshire native, living in California, only two hours away from Los Angeles. We fell in love and signed on the dotted lines.


She has a husband and three adorable daughters. They are all supportive of her decision to carry a child for a gay couple and are very interested in the process. They have become extended family and we enjoy our time with them when we're there for our monthly doctor's visits.

As quickly as we could, we got her medically and psychologically cleared and started the procedure. Although this is her first surrogacy journey, Flo is in nursing school and had a great handle on the medical regimen of injections and pills. A month later we were ready to transfer the embryos that were frozen.


We had frozen seven embryos from the prior transfer attempt, but the freezing and thawing process destroyed all but two.


We implanted those two and one successfully attached to the uterine lining.


Now here we are--a beautifully bigger Flo at the New Orleans airport with traveling companion!