September 2017:
Tony and I and our lawyers and E and her lawyers agreed on the contractual terms of the donation and all of the paperwork was signed. E had to travel to LA to get medically cleared by our doctor. The screening fee at the clinic was $1,800.00. Her travel expenses were $1,184.98.
In her screening, we learned that E was a carrier for two recessive conditions that we weren’t enthusiastic to pass on. Tony and I then went to the clinic to have genetic testing to make sure we weren’t carriers for the same disorders. The fee for the genetic testing was $299.00 for each of us. New total: $21,597.98.
We also learned this month that we would now be working with a new nurse practitioner. While explaining our progress on our family building journey to the third nurse in less than a year, we had to share with her that our friend and surrogate would no longer be working with us. We weren’t eager to go through another intense search process, but we were totally understanding and supportive of our friend’s decision.
October 2017:
After being screened for over 250 disorders, Tony was a carrier for none of them. I was a carrier for 1: a super scary, very, very rare condition. We were not a match with E on any of them and we were given the green light to make embryos. E was medically cleared and would be seeing a doctor in her hometown to monitor her progress for the next couple weeks.
October 7, 2017:
Our 1-year wedding anniversary. We ate some of our wedding cake we had kept in the freezer for the past year. It tasted like freezer.
October 18, 2017:
We found a new surrogate! After asking for some recommendations on agencies from HRC, we started working with International Surrogacy Center, Inc. They talked us through the fees and their process, and later that day we had access to the surrogate profiles. There weren’t as many surrogates as we were hoping for, but it’s understandable that people aren’t lining up to put their bodies through carrying a stranger’s baby for nine months. The same day we talked to the agency and received access to the surrogates, we emailed them to tell them our top choices.
We started reading through all of the information about each surrogate and here we were again, online dating. Even though it felt easier this time, we hit some roadblocks. Our fertility clinic told us that our odds for each embryo implanting were 50/50. If we, and more importantly, our surrogate, felt comfortable with the risks of potentially having two babies, we should transfer two embryos to increase our odds. This idea was very enticing to us.
As you can see, it had already been an expensive, exhausting process. A lot of the women only wanted to allow the transfer of one embryo. Our previous surrogate, our friend, had also wanted this, so we were very familiar with that choice.
The biggest issue we came up against: nobody stood out and there were very few people to choose from. The reason for the low number of people, we later found out, was because we were only shown surrogates who would agree to carry for two men. We also noticed this in our previous searches for a surrogate. Most women wanted to carry for another woman who wasn’t able. For “religious reasons,” carrying for two men was help they weren’t willing to provide.
Defying all expectation, the last profile in the list was a young woman who had carried four kids of her own, full term, no complications, with no issues conceiving them. She was willing to carry two (although she would prefer one) and she wanted to carry for a same-sex male couple. We’ll call her L.
Tony and I were supposed to be somewhere that night, and if we didn’t leave the house right then, we were going to be late. I wanted to email the agency right away to tell them L was perfect. Tony wanted to leave, come back to the profiles, and search a little more. This was a huge decision, so I agreed.
We were out that night and I don’t even remember where we were because all I could think about was the surrogate. We came home and I pulled up the profiles right away. L had big red letters next to her name – on hold. I couldn’t breathe. Was this some kind of joke? A few hours ago, we had the perfect surrogate and now she was gone. I was crushed.
I emailed the agency about how even though L was now on hold, we still wanted her. If we can’t work with her, we guess that so-and-so will do…. The truth: in my mind, there was no second choice. L was it and we lost her, so we lost our perfect chance. Nothing was ever going to work. Somehow the universe wanted us to fail. Life sucked.
I knew I was being dramatic, but I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about a lot of things related to fatherhood and family, and I was struggling. Our lives were changing really drastically, and pretty quickly. We were beginning to consider a big move. We were going to leave LA. We were feeling the pressure to tell everyone about where we were in the kid process. So many people kept asking us about it. And now, we were talking about having two kids, and although they would share DNA from the donor, they would only be half siblings meaning some children wouldn’t have my DNA. I didn’t want to feel connected to some more than others simply because of genetics.
I knew deep down that I, as well as Tony, would love all the children as our own flesh and blood. We have considered, and are still open to, adopting, and there’s no way we would treat an adopted child different from a biological child. Tony will be an incredible father. All of our kids will be obsessed with him.
The thing that concerned me, and the hardest thing to talk about, was: would everyone else see our kids as both of ours? It’s so easy to see a child do something or look a certain way and say, “you’re just like your mom.” I’ve been guilty of that before too. In our case, there is no mom (another complication to consider), and what happens when a family member, or even a stranger, says, “oh that’s just like your dad,” and our other child who isn’t biologically related to that dad is sitting right there. How would they feel when that happened? How would I react? I felt like everyone was already against us. This was my primary worry and a source of some vicious fighting with Tony: would everyone love our kids the same?
I felt so alone. I couldn’t even describe all of my fears because I was so scared to voice them. Tony reminded me that, no matter what, we were team Ecklund-Kouba, and our team also included our future children. As long as we loved them all unconditionally and as our own, it didn’t matter what the rest of the world said or did. They were already in for a struggle just having two gay dads so let’s not complicate life with hypothetical scenarios. Fine. That worked for me. I could accept that level of future complication.
I would remind myself continually from that point on that Tony and I were on the same page. At times, it felt like we were on an island called Gay Guys Having Biological Children, and even if we tried to tell people how to get there, no one could figure it out, and we were destined to be lost at sea. But we were together, and that’s all that mattered to me.
October 23, 2017:
We got an email that L was no longer on hold – would we like the agency to share our profile with her? Heck yes! After our profile was sent to her, she instantly responded that she would like to set up a meeting with us.
This was the incredible news I needed to get me out of this rut. And not only was L available, but we were going to meet her in person. She lived in the LA area. Having submitted her surrogacy services to an international company, she didn't expect the intended parents to be so local.
We set up a time and place to meet and someone from the agency would be there with us to talk through everything, answer any questions, and provide details about the next steps.
October 29, 2017:
Again, it felt like online dating, but this was finally the fun part: meeting the person. We got to the restaurant super early and we both wondered non-stop: what we’re they going to be like? I hope they pick us.
L was bringing her husband. It was like a double-almost-blind-date, with a chaperone. Like any great first date, we couldn’t wait to meet them.
We talked in-depth about different scenarios surrounding the embryo transfer, contracts, termination, communication, doctors visits, and childbirth.
Our favorite part of the conversation was L’s reason for wanting to be a surrogate. She and her husband told us about their son who had come out as gay a couple years prior. Although they were wonderfully accepting parents, he was sad. He knew his mom wanted to be a grandma someday and he was sad that he wasn’t going to be able to have kids. Then and there, she decided to do this specifically for a gay couple to show her son that there is someone out there who will help you.
When I came out, one worry my mom had was that I would never have a normal family. She knew I wanted that. As I get older, I realize more and more that there is no such thing. Every family has been formed in such a unique way and pieced together with cousins, step-kids, adoptions, half-siblings, etc., so normal doesn’t exist and families are great however they’re formed.
We could tell that L and her husband’s hearts were in the right place, and we had indeed found the perfect person to be our child’s surrogate mother. Even though it felt a little formal at first, we had all shared so much that by the end, we all hugged.
We went our separate ways and each couple told the agency we wanted to move forward. This was so incredible and such a relief. We were ecstatic.
November 4, 2017:
We were in Las Vegas with Tony’s friend Andy. Andy was there with his wife, Kelly, and her mom, aunt, and sister. Tony and Andy have a favorite pastime of donating money to casinos via the blackjack table, so we were all donating and having a good time in Vegas.
I played some slots and then went to find Tony. I was sitting at the table next to Tony telling Kelly and her family all about our embryos. It was fun to talk to real people about this stuff instead of reading about it all on infertility blogs.
“Enough about the damn embryos,” Tony said. He was losing and apparently stressed about the embryos and pregnancy as well. He apologized, but I knew where he was coming from. It was consuming stuff and a break with friends was nice.
November 7, 2017:
Before we could begin drafting and signing contracts and transferring embryos, L had to get a psychological evaluation, L, her husband, Tony, and I had to pass criminal background checks, and L needed to be physically evaluated by our doctor. L and her husband also needed to be tested for diseases. The total for all of these screenings: $4,200.00. New grand total: $25,797.98.
We couldn’t wait to move forward, but we knew the screenings would take time, and with the holidays coming up, it would likely be January before we could even start thinking about transfer and implantation.
November 19, 2017:
The eggs were retrieved from the donor, E. I don’t know a lot about the process, but allegedly, the procedure, as well as the bloating before the retrieval, are both mildly painful. E was required to travel to LA with a companion and they stayed for 5-10 days. Her travel cost for this trip was $4,284.56. The fertility clinic cost for this was $12,300.00. The cost for her medications was $3,924.95.
In addition to that doctor fee was the fee for E’s anesthesia, $570.00, the fee to fertilize the eggs (a process known as ICSI), $1,600.00 (x2, because we had two sperm samples being used to fertilize half of the eggs), the fee to freeze the embryos the clinic created, $750.00 (also, because why not, x2), and finally, the fee to freeze the sperm again, $350.00 (you guessed it, x2). Grand total thus far: $52,227.49.
November 20, 2017:
This was one of the most surreal days. A day we had been waiting for. How many eggs did we get? How many embryos did we have?!
Our new NP emailed us early in the morning and told us that they retrieved 24 eggs. Out of those 24, 20 eggs were mature. They would fertilize 10 with Tyler’s sperm sample and 10 with Tony’s. 8 of Tyler’s fertilized well, and 9 of Tony’s had fertilized. From 24 eggs, we were down to 17 embryos.
The next steps would be to grow the 17 embryos for 5 days to the blastocyst stage and have them genetically tested to see which ones would more likely lead to a viable pregnancy. The cost for pre-implantation genetic screening, or PGS, was $5,050.00 for each set of embryos. New grand total: $62,377.49.
November 25, 2017:
The previous five days were some of the most serious of this journey for me. Tony and I learned that we had each lost one embryo during the five days. Tony was down to 8, and I was down to 7.
When our NP explained the PGS process to us, she told us to expect 1-3 genetically normal embryos each. HRC fertility did not implant abnormal embryos. We had 15 that we were having tested, and we could potentially hear news that none of them were normal.
If that were the case, we would essentially have to start over. Would it be worth it? It was all so expensive and I was already more sad than I expected to be when not all of the embryos made it to the blastocyst stage. I actually didn’t really predict that the growth of the embryos would be something I would even be sad about. It was killing me to know that we were going to lose more.
December 4, 2017:
We got an email about the results of the PGS. The email started out, “Great news! Anthony, you have 8 normal embryos. Tyler, you have 2 normal embryos.” My first thought was, wow, 10 embryos! Then, I immediately got really sad and scared again. I only had 2 and just because they were normal didn’t mean they were good quality. Although we were told to expect 1-3 each, and I was right in that range with 2, I felt like a failure next to Tony’s 8. All of Tony’s blastocysts had come back normal.
When we looked at the full report, we began to look up what each of the abnormalities meant. Embryo 1: Trisomy 15. Embryo 7: Monosomy 11p. Embryo 5: Complex mosaic. While I wished I could recall everything from my genetics coursework in college, I had to go to the computer for help. As we had known from the beginning: no one is here to explain anything or any part of this process. Aside from the insanely advanced medical procedures, we were on our own.
From this point on, any term we didn’t know, and there would be a lot, we looked up on Google. This began my love-hate relationship with “Dr. Google.” That’s the unofficial (but pretty official) name given to all of the websites that come up when you search for medical terms in Google. Most of the pages aren’t affiliated with any doctors or researchers. It’s mostly ordinary people writing about various medical topics that they have no empirical data about. It’s alarming, but it’s fantastic.
As it turns out, people have had a freaking field day with writing anything and everything on the Internet. Not so shockingly, sometimes the people who write things on the Internet are not very well educated. Finding meaningful, accurate information that isn’t intended to show you a worst-case scenario and keep you up all night worrying is damn near impossible.
After coming to the full realization that we had 10 embryos, we then began to have the debate over which embryos to choose for transfer. Did we choose two, one from each of us, two boys, two girls, a boy and girl, two from one of us, or just one at a time? Other clinics used a pretty universal embryo grading system to determine which ones would be more likely to implant. Our clinic did not volunteer that information.
We asked the clinic for the full detailed report on the embryos. We wanted to know the quality of all of them.
We were lucky people. Out of our 10 blastocysts, we had 5 girls, 5 boys, and they were all fair, good, or great quality.
Although my mood about everything was taking a turn for the better, I was still a little fragile and I asked the clinic to save the abnormal embryos as well.
Because our fertility clinic did not implant genetically abnormal embryos due to their low implantation success rate, the clinic’s normal procedure was to “dump” the abnormal ones. I couldn’t do that. I don’t know what will ever come of them, but as of right now, all of our embryos are still there.
Shortly after this, Tony and I would begin a large-scale renovation on our house to prepare for selling. We planned on remodeling the kitchen, painting everything, including the exterior, refinishing the hardwood floors, changing light fixtures, light switches, knobs, hinges, and fixing every little thing that was broken. It would be my full time job for the next 5 months.
January 23, 2018 11:30am:
We met with the doctor to go over all of our embryos and make a decision about how many and which one(s) to transfer. Tony and I had talked through so many scenarios, and we were at the point where we just wanted the doctor to tell us what to do.
And he did. He looked at the report and told us that I had one embryo that was off the charts in terms of quality. It was a boy. From there, he suggested a female embryo from Tony. Two embryos. One from each of us. One boy, one girl. Biologically half-siblings. Both ours.
We were so excited, but in a moment of very bold seriousness I told the doctor, “It has to work.” He reassured me that he would do his best.
February 13, 2018:
Another email from the fertility clinic: L was cleared to start her medication to prepare her uterus for the transfer. A schedule for the medication and monitoring appointments was attached. The calendar also had the date of the transfer, March 9. The reality was beginning to set in. The cost for her medication leading up to the transfer was $386.88.
The legal contracts with L were signed, we paid the surrogacy agency their $24,500.00 retainer fee, and we wired $60,000 to another account set up by our legal team for L’s compensation and medical fees. Our new grand total: $147,264.37.
We learned from our lawyers that L had great insurance as it covered surrogacy. This is rarely the case as most intended parents end up spending an additional, large amount of money on supplemental insurance plans. We felt like we had a win. Things were moving in the right direction and we could see March 9th in our sights.
Feb 24, 2018:
Three days after L had started her medication, Tony and I were in Colorado for a wedding. I have a lot of family there and I invited them to go skiing with us. My cousin and her son were able to join us. It was really fun to see them and we had a great time. At this point, the only thing Tony and I were thinking about was life in our construction zone of a house and the impending transfer, so we told my cousins all about it.
Freezing our way up the mountain on a chair lift, my cousin asked me if my idea of when life begins had changed. Did I think life began at conception? I wasn’t shocked by the question, but I was a little shocked that I hadn’t really thought about it.
These embryos meant so much to me already. The idea that someone would throw them away or that I could lose them did not bode well with me.
I answered that, “Yes, it has changed. I still think women have the right to choose, but, yes, I think their life has begun.”
I could sit and pontificate about the science of embryo development and when the heart starts beating and terminating pregnancies at various stages and who’s right and who’s wrong and all of the politics, but I don’t want to.
On this topic, my thoughts are simple. I like having the freedom to make my own decisions when I think I know what works for me or what is right for me, and I believe women should have that freedom as well.
I know that personal criticism comes from within and it comes from outside. As a person who has been ridiculed for my lifestyle and some of my choices, I can attest that having nasty things said to your face really hurts and it fixes nothing. I will do my best to withhold my public judgment on personal matters and I’ll try to teach my kids to do the same.
Large-scale studies have shown that children, especially daughters, of same-sex parents are notably less anxious and self-conscious than children raised by heterosexual couples of a similar demographic. I know I’ll make mistakes as a parent, but I’m determined to teach my children that they are valuable, powerful, and deserving, worthiness has no prerequisite, they are supposed to be here, and that no one is more important than anyone else. We are all in this together.
March 9, 2018:
Transfer day.
We met L and her husband in the lobby of the clinic at 11:30am and the procedure was scheduled for 12pm. She had to sit in the lobby and drink a few bottles of water.
We were all anxious and unsure about what was going to happen. Although I had, of course, read about peoples transfers on Dr. Google, every clinic is slightly different.
This was our second time meeting L and her husband, after our “first date.” L came with a present for me and Tony. She gave us each a necklace with a few pendants on it. One had little compass arrows, one had small footprints, and the biggest said, “and so our adventure begins.” We didn’t have anything for her, other than the two embryos we were about to transfer….
L was also wearing a matching necklace. I loved them. We put them on and wore them proudly, but I immediately knew that if this worked, the necklaces would belong to our children. Their first gift ever would be from their surrogate mother.
