I am done with infertility, IVF and repeat pregnancy loss. I really am ready to say good-bye and move on. It’s clear to me that it is time.
So, what do we do? We have absolutely opened our hearts to adoption and are doing research and talking to other adoptive families.
However, surrogacy recently popped up on my radar again as an option and I want to explore this as well as adoption. Surrogacy, for those who don’t know, is where our embryos would be transferred to another woman’s body and she would carry and give birth to our biological child. This is the only option left that my doctor recommends for us.
I had one person in my family that offered a while back, but the timing wasn’t right. I was blown away by her offer and sat in tears reading her message. I can’t imagine a more selfless act. We thought that we still had a good shot on our own. Ha! If only I had taken her up on her offer at the time. We also had someone approach us about adoption about a year ago…a teen who was pregnant, but we were not ready for adoption at that point. As it turns out, it’s a good thing we weren’t, because they decided to keep the baby. Such is the nature of serendipitous occurrences, I suppose. Now, I would die for those situations to present themselves!
Surrogacy would be absolutely ideal since my eggs and our embryos appear to be ok. We just need a body that isn’t a hostile environment like mine. That way we could still have a biological child. The problem with this is that it is very expensive unless you have someone who volunteers to do it for you. It’s too bad my mother and mother-in-law don’t have their parts any more. You might think I’m crazy for saying that, but when you’re desperate, you come up with crazy ideas and are willing to try anything (and they both have said they would have done it if they could). Also, age really doesn’t matter for surrogacy, as the eggs are the problem with aging, not the uterus.
We certainly can’t afford the hefty price for a surrogate through an agency, especially when this isn’t guaranteed. If we come up with that much money, we would use it for adoption. I am thinking maybe we could find someone locally and pay them way less money directly instead of going through an agency?!? Who knows? This might be a crazy idea, but I need to pursue it to once again know that I have absolutely tried everything possible. You have to get creative. You don’t have any other choice. Especially when funds are limited.
Now I turn to all of you. Have any of you used a surrogate? Do you know someone who has? Have you looked into it yourself? Am I crazy? I would love your advice and any resources you might have to share.
12 Comments
Whitney- refresh my memory-do you have any frozen embies left? I think that is part of the expense- is paying for the IVF too. Do you have any free cycles left for yourself? That may play a part.
I think the issue with surrogacy is people want everything paid- just like adoption- i/e 9 months of food, doctor copays, rent…it can add up.
I have not pursued this myself, as I have the opposite issue- it appears our embies are the problem. Also- it was just so expensive, I am not sure it is something we ever could have considered.
I do have 2 friend that tried with frozen embies that tested normal and still did not have success after 2 rounds. This person did use a friend, who had had her own children previously.
I have read 1 other blog where someone did have success.
From what I understand, the key is getting a legal arrangement in advance. I would recommend checking out http://www.stirrupqueens.com on the side, I think there is a link to surrogacy blogs!
I looked into it when we were planning to do the 3 cycle embryo banking with CGH with Dr. Sher. It just felt like I couldn’t risk an embryo in my body with the DQ Alpha partial match after going through that much effort and money trying to get it.
So I started looking into surrogacy. It’s expensive. Like $100k on top of everything else when you include the agency fee, surrogate fee, and the insurance on the surrogate (it’s more than the surrogate fee!)
So yeah, I hear you on trying to find another way… Good luck!
I don’t have any personal experience, but here is a blog that I really enjoyed reading about a woman during the pregnancy of her surrogate. She doesn’t blog anymore as she stopped after her twins were born, but it was very interesting hearing her thoughts as another woman carried her children: http://theexpectantduck.wordpress.com/
I’ve looked into it, but my husband’s not ‘there’ yet. Plus the cost is a huge hurdle and no one in my family has offered to be our surrogate. Here’s an article I enjoyed on the subject. It’s about 3 years old, but it’s one of the few detailed personal experiences I could find about a surrogacy experience:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30Surrogate-t.html?pagewanted=all
I had a couple of people offer it to me. They were close family and friends, and I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable with that, because I don’t know how they’d feel seeing the baby only at family reunions and such. We would have probably gone with someone we didn’t know, even though it would have been more expensive. It’s a lot to think about! Good luck with your decision.
Surrogacy is so overwhelming, especially the expense involved. My SIL is trying one more fresh transfer and then wants to try a surrogate. I wish I didn’t have the pregnancy history I have, because I wish I could be a surrogate for her and avoid the expense and hassle that comes with a surrogate from an agency. But then again, I honestly wonder – if I hadn’t been through what I’ve been through, would I even consider something like that? I like to think I would, but I don’t know. And I doubt we’d know as much about her battle with IF were we not fighting our own alongside her.
The only way I could ever afford surrogacy (and I’ve thought about it) would be in India- I think the cost is about 22-24,000 for all of it.
I hope you can get something that works out locally, its amazing of your relative to offer- are you planning to talk to her about it?
I’ve read about surrogacy in India as well as an option. I think the costs I saw quoted were $12 000?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-12-30-surrogacy_N.htm
Hello,
i stumbled across your blog and thought i could offer you advice about adoption if you would like. My husband and i did two IVF cycles and one frozen. We decided to pursue adoption. it was an amazing (and positive) ending to our infertility woes. Just email me if you want want any more info.
-marian
My cousin and his wife are currently pursuing surrogacy with his sister as the surrogate. Both of my cousins were adopted and are not biologically related. I think it is costing around $40,000 including ivf, CGH, the transfers, legal fees and psychological assessments. They transferred one embryo in July that did not work and will find out later this week if the second embryo transfer worked.
We are in the process of doing surrogacy in MA and it is very expensive. The only way we can afford it is because of my inlaws who have graciously agreed to help us out. We’re estimating about $75,000 when all is said and done. Since adoption is going to cost us a little bit more than $30K, it’s significantly more (although I suppose if you end up with twins it makes it closer).
We did two rounds of IVF with our surrogate and neither one was successful. It was heartbreaking to hear the negative results each time- after we stepped away from the adoption plan to pursue this with a family member. I was so devastated to have invested so much money that I could have put towards our adoption. It took us a few years to heal our hearts and we are not back on the adoption path again. Would I do it again? Yes, I don’t know how we could have turned the opportunity down. I do have a couple great surrogacy blogs that I read during that time that really helped. I would email and they were so helpful with any questions as I was going through all of it.
One thing though that makes me so mad is the # of people who have come to me with no research and say ” well, I would be a suggorate for you”…. it is such a long process and those people generally didn’t have any idea what is involved. They just knew that they *loved* being pregnant and so on….