We did it. We finally signed a contract with a surrogacy agency.
This puts our timeline at 12-18 months until another tiny human being takes over our home and our lives.
Signing with a surrogacy agency was a pretty scary experience for us. We researched and consulted with several places. Some agencies were super formal and all business, which felt distant, cold, and pushy. Other agencies were a bit too informal and appeared scattered, which brought up concern about their ability to manage the details and logistics of a surrogacy journey. Some places have a wealth of experience working with LGBTQ populations and some agencies don't. We're pretty lucky that Oregon has become the "surrogacy state". We found two solid surrogacy agencies to choose from. Ultimately, our decision on which agency to work with was largely influenced by our agreement with Men Having Babies.
Signing a legal document that makes you financially responsible for paying a large sum of money should be a terrifying experience. I am so grateful for Anthony's rigorous curiosity and ability to read through every line of an extremely dense and boring legal document. Our next steps with the surrogacy agency involve
- Creating an intended parent bio. This is a letter of introduction that is shared with a potential surrogate. Luckily, we've been thinking and writing about this for a while. We'll also gather a bunch of photos and caption them.
- Completion of an online social background questionnaire. This form provides the agency and a potential surrogate with detailed information about our current circumstances, and is a helpful reference during the matching process.
- Meeting with the surrogacy agency regarding our detailed surrogate preferences. The meeting normally lasts about an hour, and covers a variety of topics that will help to guide us through the process of finding a compatible surrogate.
In the midst of committing to a surrogacy agency we have simultaneously started the initial medical process too. We should be done with nearly all of these items by the end of October:
- Infectious disease lab/blood work
- Semen analysis to check for sperm count and quality
- Several online questionnaires
- FDA physical exam
- Genetic screening
- Psychological consultation
Upon completion of these we will begin searching Oregon Reproductive Medicine's database for an egg donor.
OMGSHHHHHH...... Is this all really happening?!? We will keep you posted as this all continues to unfold. It's looking like we will have more to write about in coming months.