Matt, Greg, Verity & Delilah Hodgson-Fopp (2 guys + twins)
A blog of our 2013-2014 surrogacy journey in California (Los Angeles). We started with an agency and ended with none but our journey was amazing, mainly thanks to our surrogate Natasha.
Just so you are aware, the dates on the posts are incorrect however the dates in the actual text of the post are correct. When we lost the articles (and subsequently found them) we weren’t able to bring across the dates in the manual migration process. So all the posts are 2013-2014 despite them having a date here of November 2018.
Within a few short moments, though. The door was opened and I was summoned in, and ushered to a small stool right next to Natasha. At this stage, the poor woman had disappeared into the heart of a surgical machine by the looks of it.
Read MorePublished February 10, 2014 | By Greg Hodgson-Fopp
At the start of the surrogacy process, before we were matched with Natasha or the Egg Donor, Matt and I had to provide to the agency a piece of writing that somehow summarized us as a couple, and as intended parents.
This document, which really only had to be about a single page of A4 size, had me paralyzed for about 3 months. Seriously, I must have written and rewritten this profile for us about 5 times. I sent it to friends (whose confused silence told me they were out of their depth), I sent it to Matt (he’s rubbish at feedback, by the way) and I even tried to get feedback from the agency we were using.
The precis for the document was simple: Explain who we are, in an honest way. But also in a way that is likely to attract the kind of surrogate we wanted to meet. But also in a way that is likely to attract the kind of egg donor we wanted to meet. Without overstatement. Or being pushy. Or needy.
Let the reader know you’re really serious and committed but without being too obviously needy. Make sure they know you’d be good parents, but at the same time don’t be too gushy or they’ll think you’re stalker material. Make sure that you show that you have the material means to support the child, but at the same time don’t come across as snobby or materialistic. Make sure they know you’ve got a good job and you’re not going to lose it, but at the same time don’t make them think you won’t have time for the children. Talk about your family in an honest way, but make them kinda seem like a Brady Bunch suburban sitcom family at the same time.
It was a minefield.
In the end, I settled on a document that was around four times as long as recommended. I felt that the length alone should convey the message we were hoping to convey about neediness. I also rewrote it about ten times to rephrase the family connections part as well. I wanted people to know that our families were ready to welcome the kids into the world, and were supportive of our life-changing decision, but there was definitely no hiding the fact that we lived across the other side of the world from our folks.
I think part of the reason I was paralyzed by the task was the realization that this might actually be the most important piece of writing I would ever pen. If this document was ultimately successful in making us seem appealing to a great donor and an amazing surrogate, then it would change our lives in ways that a few pages of text should not normally have the power to do.
I wanted to write something that stood out. Good surrogates are hard to find, and I wasn’t really sure how many surrogates were particularly interested in partnering up with gay guys from across the other side of the world. I didn’t want this profile to be sitting in a drawer gathering dust while other couples got picked.
Four months of write and rewrite went into this, so without further ado, I present the most nerve-wracking document I ever wrote.
Here ’tis:
My partner Matthew and I met 15 years ago in our home-town of Adelaide, South Australia. While it may seem impetuous in hindsight, within 24 hours of knowing each other, we’d moved in together and have lived together ever since.
Within a couple of years of living together, we decided that there was a lot more of the world to see than we could find in Australia and moved together to London, in the United Kingdom.
Working and living in London together, we explored everything that Europe had to offer, travelling to see all the major landmarks of the old and new world, exploring the UK, Europe and anywhere we could reach from London’s airports. Our insatiable curiosity about new places kept us scouring the map for new places to visit, and new people to meet.
After some time in London, Matt’s family in Scotland encouraged us to live up there in Edinburgh, where I began a long period of working on a big project for a large bank. In the time we were there, the travel lessened and our focus shifted more and more towards making more permanent connections, friendships and commitments. Our love of history and architecture steered us to buy a 200 year old cottage in the city. Several of our friends from Adelaide had also moved to Edinburgh and it felt like a nice city we could settle into.
During this time, after our anniversary of 10 years together as an inseparable unit, we decided to celebrate our relationship by having a small civil ceremony with a friends and family.
After 8 years in Edinburgh, we finally decided to follow our passions on the next step in our lives and bought a ruined barn together in rural France, which we still have. Over the next 2-3 years we built the barn up into a home and followed business opportunities in the local area – starting a travel agency, then taking over managing a bar and turning it around, and finally adding a taxi company to the bar we were managing together.
In 2010, after years of living in such a small village, we craved the city life once again and decided that the incredibly beautiful nearby cities of Switzerland appealed to us, and so I sought work in my old field of finance with the large banks based in Zurich. While we initially intended this to be a dual life, spending some time in Zurich while retaining our home in France, we have ultimately decided that Zurich is where our future lies.
Which brings us to today. We’re living mostly in Zurich, but still return to our converted barn in France once a week or so to make sure our businesses are looked after, and to enjoy the peace of the French Alps as a contrast to the faster pace of the city.
I work in Finance once again, as a team lead of a large and growing group within the bank, and I find my work very fulfilling, albeit demanding. Matt, while still bearing the major burden of looking after our businesses in France, has also recently decided to return to take his studies further.
We started thinking and talking about children about 5 years ago, when we went on a 1000km hike together across the Pyrenees. The hike was a well-known pilgrimage – The Camino de Santiago – with 8 hours or more of walking each day through some of the most beautiful terrain in the world. It gave us finally a chance to spend a lot of time together, talking over the things that you never bother to make time to talk about in the normal course of day to day life.
We both have very strong and very active families, and have always imagined our lives would involve a large number of children in the form of nephews and nieces, second-cousins and so forth.
My parents are originally from the United Kingdom and emigrated as children in the post-WW2 era, while Matt’s parents are both Australians. My father, now retired, worked in telecommunications, while Matt’s parents were both in Academia. His father is a published author in his field, while his mother now works in senior management in social services. Both sides tended towards large families and our childhoods were both filled with Uncles and Aunts.
We’ve also been blessed recently with a nephew (the first), the son of Matt’s younger sister Kelly. We can see the joy that it brings her, and the changes in her that having a child as the centre of her life have made. We’ve seen the happiness and contentment that it has brought her and her husband, and both sets of grandparents.
While I had initially put thoughts of children away from my mind, Matt’s ‘never say never’ attitude and research into surrogacy has made me confront and dissect my feelings on the idea of being a parent, and I am now absolutely certain that this is the right course of action for us, and we feel that the time is right for the two of us to become fathers.
I personally feel, that raising a new human being, through childhood and development to become a healthy, happy adult to enjoy this rich and wonderful world is perhaps the greatest creation I will ever achieve.
We are emotionally stable, both as individuals and as a couple. We’ve been together without pause or crisis for 15 years. We are unquestionably entwined in the eyes of each other and in our families and friends. We both have supportive and accepting parents who would be delighted to be surprise grandparents to a child of ours, and settled siblings who would make amazing aunts and uncles.
We also have wide circles of friends in many cities of the world, in both Australia and Europe with particular groups of friends (many with children) in those cities that we’ve lived in – London, Edinburgh, France and Zurich.
It goes without saying if we’re pursuing this course of action, but we’re also quite financially stable and have been for a number of years.
While we considered adoption, we both feel that a genetic connection to our offspring is an essential component of what makes the relationship so incredibly rewarding and so our first choice is definitely surrogacy.
There it is.
I don’t know whether it was good or bad, but it worked. Maybe if I get a chance, I’ll ask Natasha whether she got to read that, and if she did, what it made her think and feel, and what made her decide that she wanted to help us achieve our dreams.
I guess I won’t ever know if it’s good, but I do know it worked and I don’t have to write another one.
Published January 27, 2014 | By Greg Hodgson-Fopp
This is part 3 of my attempt to describe the IVF Process as it applied to us. Part 1 – Before The Magic Happened and Part 2 – Transvaginal Aspirations are to be found earlier up the blog chain.
At this point in the process, I almost feel like it isn’t really my story to tell anymore. The involvement that Matt and I had, and all the decisions we had to make and things we had to arrange were in the past by this stage. Once the process of implantation had occurred, I felt like it became Natasha’s story, and her journey. It almost feels inappropriate me writing about it.
The first Family Photo of the twins
On the day our implant was scheduled, I sent Natasha a long and probably incoherent e-mail letting her know how much we had wished we could be there with her, and to let her know we were thinking of her non-stop and wishing her well. She had her parents there with her on the day, so she wasn’t going into the great unknown alone, for which I was extremely relieved and grateful. After the medical bit had been completed, she was happily out and sending us messages from the car pretty much immediately. As I think I mentioned, we heard from her long before the poor staff at California Fertility Partners had time to write up their reports and scan in the images to send us.
Speaking to her while she was in the car on the way home, she was inspiring. Although she was nervous herself, she actually did a really good job of calming me down. She told me that while she’d always felt nervous about going to the fertility clinic, this time she felt really good about everything and her calmness had a knock-on effect on me as well.
And so once she was home, we began the most nerve wracking part of the whole process. To see if it had worked.
To say we had a lot riding on this was the understatement of the century. We had used 2 of our 4 fertilized embryos. The process and procedure had involved months of hormone injections for Natasha that would have had to be started again, putting her through all of that again to have a second round. And that would also mean Matt and I going through the emotional roller coaster of trying not to get our hopes up, while secretly daring to hope as well.
In normal IVF, where the woman carrying the child is also the egg donor, there are some cross-overs from the egg aspiration medication and the possible results. So there are strict rules about how soon you can use a home pregnancy test before the results are definitively reliable and not a by-product of the injected hormones.
We were having none of that. We told Natasha to test as often as she damn well liked!
The next 5 days were pretty tense for me. Matt and I were chatting to Natasha a lot, and I was over-educating myself on the process as my way of coping. I think it’s fairly safe to say that I now know more about home pregnancy kits than most gay men have any reason to. I was aware of what they test for, how it’s produced, how it occurs naturally in the female body and so forth.
The take-home from my research was that the Home kits test for the presence in the urine of something only a placenta makes.
So – the only reason for this particular hormone to show up in a test is if there is a placenta somewhere attached to that bloodstream or system.
Unfortunately, home pregnancy kits are blunt instruments, and being so, quite imprecise. They are designed to be used once a menstrual period (or two) has been missed. In normal usage, women don’t use home kits until they’ve had some reason or inkling to suspect that they’re pregnant. So the level of detection in these home kits is tuned to that. A home kit is perfect for detecting a pregnancy that has progressed around a month since ovulation. They’re pretty much fool proof at that part, but a lot less so earlier in the process.
We were now hoping they would detect a pregnancy that was technically no more than 5 days progressed, and of course, the additional tension wasn’t making either Matt, Natasha or myself any less forgiving of these uncommunicative chemical testing pens.
My reading convinced me that detecting anything before the 5th day after implantation was scientifically so impossible that it wasn’t worth even getting my hopes up. So I spent a tense and fraught weekend, knowing that even if everything was proceeding perfectly according to Dr. Ringler’s carefully laid plan, there would be no positive home kit test until Monday at the earliest (the 5th day after implantation).
On Monday, while at work, desperately attempting to concentrate on things that suddenly didn’t seem all that urgent, I had a few facebook messages from Natasha. The home kit had changed, but the line it formed was incredibly faint, and so it didn’t really match what the Home kit instructions said was a “positive”.
It was at this point that I was very glad of my extensive reading of the science behind how these kits are manufactured and what they’re testing for. Knowing that they were not designed to be used this early, and knowing they were an extrapolation of how a litmus test works, I knew that a faint line simply meant that the pregnancy hormone was present, just not in as strong a concentration as the test was designed to look for.
The only way that hormone gets into the urine for the test to pick up, is if it’s made it into the bloodstream. To make it into the bloodstream, considering it’s made in a placenta, means that one (or, as we know now, two) of the blastocysts had hatched from their shell, floated over to the uterine wall and embedded. At that point the placenta dips it’s little microscopic tendrils into the wall of the uterus to borrow it’s food and nutrients from the bloodstream (and in doing that, pass on it’s pregnancy hormone, which triggered changes in Natasha’s body as well).
So even a tiny, faint line at 5 days was reason to hope.
I started smiling inanely at this stage. Which was incredibly annoying to everyone around me. It was also annoying to me, because if you think it’s early to tell people when we did at 9 weeks, you really, really don’t tell people that you might be having children when you’re at the 5 day mark. That tiny little line lifted my mood and broke the back of some of the built-up tension that I had been feeling that I hadn’t even realized was there.
In years to come, when making embarrassing speeches at their weddings or birthdays, I will be able to genuinely say that from that first faint line on a litmus test I was lifted up knowing they were on their way into the world.
On day 6, Natasha repeated the test and the test result was pretty much the same. A faint line, not as strong as the instructions said to look for. We had all secretly been hoping that within 24 hours that faint line would have become a super strong dark line, and so everyone was pretty tense for this 24-48 hour period.
On that day, despite the science telling me not to panic yet, and that still “Any Reading is a good sign”, I was tense and irritable. I couldn’t really focus on what I was doing, and I was prone to drifting off into my own thoughts. I was useless at work, unable to stay on the treadmill at the gym, and constantly checking my phone to see if there were any messages or updates. Hormones staying the same level would not have been a good sign, but the home kits just aren’t designed for the kind of precision that would be needed to detect a change between day 5 and day 6.
So while I had no reason to think anything was wrong, I also had no reason to think things were going right. It was a thoroughly unpleasant 24 hours to say the least. Chatting to Matt and Natasha helped a lot. I did feel like the three of us were in a sort of holding pattern for those 2 days. I know Natasha was talking to her sister at the same time (who has a medical background) and we all just tried to get through the day.
On the morning of the 7th day after implant (there is a shorthand for this in use in the IVF community, but I’ll spare you), the morning test that Natasha did came back very strong positive. I think you could hear the collective sigh of relief of all three of us in three different time-zones. At that point, we could be pretty sure that at least one implant was successfully attached to the uterine wall, and was happily slurping away at Natasha’s poor bloodstream for it’s nutrients, while feeding her some of the hormones it makes to bring about changes in her body to suit it’s needs. Which, when you put it like that, does sound a little creepy.
It was at this stage that I think I told Natasha that I had an inkling it was twins for the first time. Matt and I had been discussing the possibility since the very beginning, but since there was no basis in thinking it was anything more than me projecting my fears, I hadn’t mentioned it to Natasha. We let her in on the fact that we’d registered a domain “The T-Word” which we were going to use if it turned out to be twins. I think it’s quite telling that we didn’t bother to think of a name we would call the blog if we just had one baby. Maybe “Who’s The Daddy?” (I suspect that might be taken).
We decided we couldn’t wait until the scheduled appointment to confirm pregnancy and so a few arrangements were made and Natasha was able to go in and get a blood test earlier. Withing another 24 hours, the blood test had confirmed what we suspected, she was definitely, provably pregnant.
I might have mentioned a couple of times so far – the hormone being detected by all these tests is produced by the placenta. We could tell from Natasha’s very first blood tests, and the fact that she was reading positive on home-kits a few days before she really should have been, that her levels were higher than expected.
At this point, the science on the internet failed me a bit. The levels of “normal” that are acceptable for this particular hormone are really wide. You can have crazy-high levels and it’s perfectly normal. You can also have really low levels and it’s also still perfectly normal. Every woman and every baby is different and the OK ranges were very wide (like “300-2400″) for the stage of progression.
There was no real reason to suspect twins, but still, I was deeply suspicious.
To me, the most logical conclusion for really high levels of a hormone in the bloodstream being produced by a placenta was… two placentas.
This was further reinforced by the follow-up blood-tests. They were also off the scale towards the high end. By the time of the second blood-tests, I had pretty much convinced myself that we were having twins already, which is why it didn’t really come as a surprise when we later found out.
Now that we’ve been through the process and we’re comfortably sailing towards our birth date, I wanted to stop and say how much respect I have for those other couples who have been through IVF. I think this is one of those things that you don’t and cannot understand until you do it. The stakes are so high, there are so many unknowns still, and the human psyche is fundamentally geared to want this so badly, that there can be no roller-coaster which is rockier. The highs are higher, the lows are lower and there is no getting off once you let yourself start to hope you might have children.
For us, with the science we invoked, and the situations created we had the numbers and good chances of success. I can only imagine how much worse it must be for people trying to conceive late in life, or with a situation where their bodies place impediments on the process.
Before we went through it, I never really understood how invested I would get in the success or failure of the process.
If this is some inkling of what parenthood is like, then I’m in for an emotional ride.
Now that the last two busy weekends are out of the way, next post I intend to start answering some of the other big questions people ask me. Like “What the F–k were you thinking?”, “How do you find a surrogate?”, “How do you choose an egg donor?” and of course – “Who’s the Daddy?”
Published January 12, 2014 | By Greg Hodgson-Fopp
So, this is part 2 of my best attempt to describe the surrogacy process in as simple a way as possible. You should probably read part 1: “Before the Magic Happened” ahead of this if you’re new here.
This part describes the most scientifically intensive part of the process, and also consequently the most anxiety-inducing part. There are a lot of resources on the internet that talk about the IVF 2-week wait, and I now understand why this is something so many people need to write about. It’s basically the hit-or-miss throw of a very long, very emotionally laden process. It’s where the biggest joys and biggest let-downs occur. It’s also probably the part people understand the least, as it bears no resemblance to what happens in a traditional pregnancy.
The process starts with egg aspiration. We talked in part one about synchronizing the menstrual cycles of our egg donor and Natasha, our surrogate, so that their, ahem, ladygarden seasons were roughly in alignment with each other. Ideally, they should be about 5 days apart. The Egg Donor will be ready first.
For the last month, the Egg Donor has been having injected hormones and hormones taken as pills, which cause her to “Super-Ovulate”. Rather than the normal one egg per month with ovaries taking turns that would occur throughout her natural life, this month her ovaries have been kicked into higher gear and will be producing a whole bunch of eggs.
We were told to expect anywhere between 10 and 20 mature, usable eggs. That doesn’t mean that she produces 10-20, generally she produces more, but only the mature and fully ready ones are able to be used.
During the course of the month leading up to the aspiration, our Egg Donor made multiple visits to the fertility clinic, and they used an ultrasound to examine her follicles to see which ones are maturing and growing eggs. It’s important for an egg donor to have lovely follicles that show up easily on ultrasound and are accessible.
Actually, our second choice for Egg Donor was rejected primarily because her follicles weren’t big or visible enough on the ultrasound. So I guess it’s just another something to keep in mind. Some girls just have bigger follicles than others, I guess.
The actual process kicks off about 36 hours before the retrieval process, when the fertility clinic begins the last stage of “ovulation induction” which triggers the final maturation process. This is done with drugs that mimic the hormones naturally produced by the pituitary gland, and tells the ovaries to ripen and release their eggs.
The Egg Donor then comes into the clinic for the procedure and is put under. They are generally asleep the whole time this is going on. The actual technique involves a really, really long needle (seriously, it looks like it’s about half a meter long) which is inserted into an ultrasound probe, and then guided by ultrasound to the follicles of the ovaries. Think ‘acupuncture needle’ and you wouldn’t be too far wrong.
For obvious reasons this is known as “Transvaginal Aspirations” which I personally think is a great name for anything. I can definitely imagine a German Rock band with that name.
Dr. Ringler identified the mature follicles by massively amplifying the ultrasound picture. When this needle pierces the follicle, a gentle suction is applied and the fluid contents of the follicle, including the egg are retrieved into a vial, which is then palmed off immediately to the lab. The whole process takes about 15 minutes, and the Egg Donor generally only needs a couple of aspirin to recover fully within the day.
Once the eggs are safe in their new glass houses, there is a very short window of opportunity for fertilization. Approximately 2 hours. Which is why we kind of needed to make sure all important decisions were made in advance.
In our case, the stress started before the Aspiration day. When they examined our Egg Donor on the day before, Dr. Ringler was unsure about the number and quality of the follicles. He asked us to consider what we might like to do if we only got a small number of eggs this time.
This sent Matt and I into a bit of a spin, because it sounded like he was advising us to change our plans. We had always decided we were in this together, and we would divide whatever number of eggs that we got equally, and implant equally. That way (as has now turned out) if we got two babies, it’d definitely be one each and done.
But when our Doctor sent us a message saying “Please consider what you’d like me to do if I am unable to get enough eggs to do both of you.” Well, it sounded like he was asking us to decide who would go first.
I decided this needed clarifying and so I called Dr. Ringler up in the middle of our night once the time-zones allowed me to do so, and we went over his expectations and our plans. It turns out, he was quite happy to go ahead with both fathers even if the number of resulting embryos was quite small. It might have meant that only one of us could be a father this time if, say, all of Matt’s eggs were successful and all of mine weren’t. But I think we were already quite happy with that possibility. So that’s what we went with.
It’s been our mantra from the start – Do everything equally, and let nature decide who is going first.
So, we arrived at the day of aspiration, and thankfully in the last 24 hours before aspiration, a number of mediocre mature follicles had actually matured fully. The Doctor and our cheerleader egg donor were able to aspirate 12 eggs. For some reason, when I picture our egg donor, I keep picturing Hayden Panettiere - who played the Cheerleader in Heroes. I’m happy with that image, it’ll do.
As it happens, all of my straight male friends seem very happy with her image, too. Note to self for future reference, who not to invite to our babies 18th if they’re girls.
My friends at work seem to think the next part of the process simply involves a big bucket and some gentle stirring, perhaps with a wooden spoon, and people standing around cheering individual wrigglers on. They have been referring to it as the “swishy swoshy” bit for months.
But it’s actually a whole lot more scientific than that. Our 12 eggs were inseminated with a method that involves gently piercing the outer skin of the egg with a super fine needle, and then actively picking up one sperm and shooting it down the needle and into it’s goal. How they picked that one sperm from the 470 million I left them with, I have no idea. Luck, I guess. When our children are a bit older, I shall remind them that they started life with a 1-in-470 million chance lottery win.
With this injection based fertilization there is no competition, there’s no risk of dual insemination, and this method has a higher rate of success (65-75%), so my reading confirms.
Also, Matt and I had horrible visions of sperm ‘fighting it out’ in the race to the goal. I mean, the stakes are pretty high, so there’s every reason for the little fella’s to slug it out. Only one winner, and the rest consigned to the drains of history. It wasn’t really a helpful image.
24 hours after the fertilization happened, the embryos were checked. Of the 12, only 9 had successfully fertilized. That’s pretty much exactly the statistical average for this method based on my extensive google-powered research, so we should consider that a success. We then started the 5 day wait between Egg Aspiration and Implantation.
On day 2, the embryos are at a stage called the 8-cell stage and their progress is again checked. At this point, they don’t even vaguely resemble anything but slightly advanced amoebas. It is expected that at this stage, a proportion of the fertilized eggs will not have progressed to the next stage. In our case, one embryo did not advance to the 8-cell stage, but was still just 2 cells at day 2.
There really isn’t much to tell about the process at this stage. The little candidates for implantation are proceeding with the natural state of affairs in little dishes inside small bio-safes which are humidity, temperature and atmosphere controlled. The right amount of oxygen in the air, the right amount of moisture, the right comfiness of the petri-dish, a few pillows (not too soft, not too hard), maybe some light refreshments provided, I guess. The doctors leave them alone at this stage to quietly go about their business of cell division and growth.
For Matt and I, this was not a quiet time. There were no light refreshments and climate controlled atmospheres. We were pretty much not sleeping, not eating properly, bickering about small things, and frankly utterly unable to focus on our normal lives.
For me, it was a particularly stressful few weeks at work, and the addition of knowing that we were in the Knock-Out-Round of our baby making was pretty much putting me over the edge from my calm, reasonable and unflappable self and dangerously close to going Postal at co-workers for things I’d normally handle with effortless grace. We got by, I think, mostly because we were in separate countries at the time. Matt had to be in Australia (again, for a far from stress-free rollout of software) so we were a half world apart.
In LA, little bundles of mini-me in petri dishes were being made, while the fathers concerned were respectively in Switzerland and Australia. Talk about long-distance fertilization. We’ll be able to gleefully tell these poor children that their parents totally phoned in the procreation process.
I know they were in safe hands, but the science is still so far from 100%, and the internet full of people whose stories did not go well, that we were pretty much bundles of nerves the whole time.
I know Matt and I were deeply regretful that we couldn’t be there on the day of the implantation, to be with Natasha. It was just a case of bad timing for both our work commitments, and trying to work out that fine compromise line between dedication to employment to keep the income safe, and dedication to a process happening a 14-hour flight away. In the end, Natasha went to her appointment with her mother, which I’m very glad for, as having such a supportive family makes me reassured that there are people there looking out for her well-being.
So, on day 5 of the process, a Saturday, I sat home and basically kept hitting refresh on my email waiting for updates from either Natasha or the clinic itself. Giving up waiting for emails, I rang them a couple of times, but when they work on a Saturday, their reception staff aren’t in, so I kept leaving voice-mail.
I can’t fault the clinic, they did exactly what our instructions said. We were later given a copy of the scans from the microscopes, which showed the final 2 candidates that Dr. Ringler had selected as the most viable. This photograph is sort of like the first family shot, now that we know that both implants were successful. We shall definitely roll it out at prospective birthday parties, that’s for sure.
The process of implantation starts with grading. While they are growing, the embryos are monitored closely and given grades. Some clinics use a three-grade system. Such as “5AA” or “4AB” to rate different parts of the little mini-me. One grade is for baby, one is for the placenta, and one for the sack of embryonic stem cells they’re floating in. Our clinic uses a slightly more common system of just giving them the number to represent their overall prospective chances.
By then, of course, I’d over-educated myself to death in what a 5-day blastocyst (lovely term) should look like. The larger of the two was pretty much text book perfect, I could tell that. I actually considered submitting the photo for the textbooks to use in future editions. But I was mildly concerned about the viability of the smaller one. Natasha told me that they’d shown her the implants before whisking them into the catheter, which she found oddly rewarding.
In subsequent follow-up emails, the clinic informed us that the four embryos that were left with from the 12 original eggs all scored 4.5 out of 5, except for one ‘super star’ which scored 5 out of 5. That’d be the text-book perfect one then.
Though initially we felt gutted to get down to just 4 embryos from 12 eggs, a bit of research tells me this is a pretty good result. The statistics say that only 1 in 6 embryos makes it to an implantable quality. As it stands we got close to 50% of our fertilized embryos at implantable (or freezable) quality.
I was happy that we had two frozen, because we intended all along to have two children. So knowing that we had a couple of spares for 2-3 years time was very pleasing to me. It gave us the chance to think about that, and factor that in. To know that if we wanted to repeat the process, we could do so with the same genetic materials.
For our implant, the ‘super-star’ embryo and one of 4.5 embryos was implanted. The process involves pretty much exactly what you would expect. A long, thin, plastic tube, an ultrasound for traffic control and guidance, and a little bit of a push and the embryos are gently dropped off at the end of the line where they’re expected to make themselves comfortable. Dr. Ringler reported that he was very happy with the quality of the embryos and the implantation process itself. Natasha was safely heading home straight afterwards, and we actually heard from her (texting from the car) long before the medical staff at the clinic had had the time to sit down and write up their emails to us.
And then we began the most harrowing part of the process altogether – the wait to see if we’re pregnant or not.
This is known as the “IVF 2 week wait” and any research at all will show it’s the most stress-filled part of the whole process. And that’s what I’ll save for the next post.
Published January 8, 2014 | By Greg Hodgson-Fopp
So, now that we’re out of the closet as gay parents intended, it’s time to answer the questions that I keep getting asked by friends near and far. By far the most common question is (of course): “How the hell does that work?”.
This is a long and involved process. I’m probably going to need 2-3 posts to get through the simplest version of describing the process, and even then, there are some parts (like choosing a surrogate) that are so monumental that they’re something I’m going to want to write about separately anyway.
So, let’s consider this part 1 – the bits we had to go through before the magic could even happen.
Seated comfortably? Good.
So, the simple* version goes something like this:
First, we decide to engage in surrogacy (a whole massive other topic for another time), choose a surrogacy agency to assist, review agency profile, meet with agency and sign detailed contract with agency. This was the first part after doing way too much online research (and as time will tell, nowhere near enough at the same time).
We had decided to use a British Agency because both Matt and I hold British citizenship, and so it seemed to make sense and gave us a sense of trust that we felt might be lacking if we went directly to an American Agency. I’m not sure we’d make the same decision again, to be honest, but at the time we really didn’t know enough about the process and so having an agency to hold our hands through it was helpful.
Ultimately, without them, we wouldn’t have met the other partners in the process that we have met, so it was worth it for the introductions if nothing else.
With agency assistance, we then were directed to choose a fertility clinic and make initial contact to find out the details. Our fertility clinic is California Fertility Partners in Los Angeles. Once the initial contact is made, we then relentlessly googled the clinic to find out details (you can get their success %-ages online, as it’s part of American fertility law to publish them) and make sure they weren’t some small or new clinic that had just popped up overnight.
We then received a checklist from the clinic that was the tests that Matt and I needed to get done before we could even be considered by them. This meant we could start male-aspect medical clearance which involved giving blood (6 vials!) and the first sperm donation (another topic for another time, since Matt and I are both scarred for life by that part of the process). We then went through these expensive tests (expensive in Zurich anyway, and for some reason free in Australia), then repeat expensive tests a month later to make sure you’re still clear of plague. Some of them had to be repeated one month later to ensure that we weren’t getting false negatives, as well.
For us, this part was complicated by my somewhat garden-variety-GP who was distinctly intimidated by the list of tests that I handed him. When he had to get out books to work out what some of them were, I realized it wasn’t just the language barrier we were climbing. This was a doctor more familiar with “I’ve got a cold and want some drugs”, than “I’ve got a list of 15 tests, some genetic, some related to chromosomes, some related to life-threatening diseases like cancer, and a full shopping list of every sexually transmitted disease you’ve ever heard of, and I need you to test me for all of them and provide written evidence of said tests. By Friday.”
I think I was actually tested for Gonorrhea about three times by accident. Aaaaaanyway.
Meanwhile, we were given anonymous egg donor profiles (10 or so at a go, we probably were sent 30+ in total) that matched the initial criteria we agreed with the agency. These profiles are quite extensive medically, feature photographs and full family medical histories, and a reasonable but brief psychological profile as well. You get to choose a donor, be disappointed “Sorry, already taken”, choose different donor, be disappointed “didn’t pass medical”, then choose another donor, finally get to the next stage.
Oddly, we pay upfront for donor to have a battery of medical and psychological tests and if she fails them (our second donor did), then you’re out of pocket for that and back at square one. Seemed a little harsh.
When you get a donor, then the contract part comes into play, you need to place her money with a third party (anonymous, remember?) and then sign a weird contract that lists her by a pseudonym (“Why yes, we do agree to pay CC8877 a princely sum for the fruit of her loins”) which just felt weirdly clandestine.
I have to say, this point of the process was odd for me on a philosophical level. It’s a little bit close to eugenics, as you’re faced with PDFs of 10 different women and you find yourself saying things like “I like the look of this one, but her grandmother had a stroke and her Dad’s short, whereas this one doesn’t have as nice hair or as good teeth, but her grandparents are all healthy and her brothers are all over 6ft tall”.
It’s a very odd thought process to find yourself going through. I’ll detail more specifics about our egg donor journey to find ours in another post. It was a minor side rollercoaster on the whole rollercoaster process.
Simultaneously, we would be looking at Surrogate profiles. These are much more friendly, and interesting in different ways as the surrogates identify themselves and often include pictures of their family and statements of their intent and reasoning behind being surrogates. Some were very short (half a page, one photo) and others were very detailed. Sift through these potential candidates trying to make a world-changingly important decision based on gut feeling and grainy photos.
Once a surrogate is selected, you generally have a phone chat, then maybe exchange a few emails before finally meeting them in person to have a final “fit” conversation. Both sides of the partnership have to feel comfortable with the other people. This is a huge, massive leap of faith and trust and as such it’s really important to get it right. Looking back at our first two candidates (not successful on one side or another), and comparing to some other people’s stories on the grapevine, I realize how incredibly, truly lucky we are to have found and connected so well with Natasha.
So much so, I’ll save that whole process for another post and introduce her properly then.
Once a surrogate and an egg donor have been arranged, then they go through their medical clearance, while at the same time a lot of lawyers get involved. There are contracts to set up between egg donor and agency, agency and us, surrogate and us. These contracts occur in the US, so most of the time it was via extensive emails and documents being sent back and forth for reading, red-lining, clearing and ultimately signing.
At the end of the process (and because law is involved and it’s ultimately a contract, there is always some confusion, some clarification, some clauses that are worded badly or not appropriate at all), eventually you get “legal clearance” to proceed on both parts.
This part was a bit stressful. The surrogacy contract has a million “What if” clauses that really hammer home the risks of the process. It was chilling stuff to be signing.
If you’re also lucky, by the time legal clearance has been given, you then also get medical clearance.
I’m somewhat out of the loop on what this involved, actually. For Matt and I, it was a relatively simple, if incredibly awkward process. For the egg donor, I believe there are ultrasounds of follicles, counts taken, hormone levels assessed and balanced and the required psychological assessment to ensure she is sane. For the surrogate, the process is different again, also involving probably invasive processes at the fertility clinic, more ultrasounds, blood tests for all sorts of things. If I’m brave enough, I’ll ask Natasha next time we see her, and if I’m not asking too personal a question, maybe she’ll allow me to post an update of what that involved at some later point.
From our personal point of view, this part of the process was a few bills and a lot of incredibly nervous waiting. It would have been gutting to get to the point of finding someone you really matched with only to be told a physiological idiosyncrasy stopped it.
Also, for us fathers, our work wasn’t done yet! Despite being medical pre-cleared, we were still required to do all the tests again in the US once the process was ready to start. This mean 6 more vials of blood and another generous deposit of genetic provided in an awkward and distinctly unromantic little booth at the fertility clinic.
And that’s not all. Due to some quirks in American law, we then had to repeat those tests again once more, when back in Switzerland, to ensure we were still clear of the entire gamut of sexually transmitted diseases a month later.
My poor GP was utterly confused by this point, and I dealt mostly with his efficient receptionist/nurse who just took the blood, filled in the form and had the paperwork ready for me a few days later.
If you’re lucky and timely, the surrogate and egg donor are then ready to synchronize. This involves them taking normal contraceptive pills for a month, then somewhat expensive hormones for about a month more.
At this point, Matt and I were done. Our generous and healthy contributions to the process had been left safely in the hands of a nurse at CFP (who I like to think trembled slightly when I handed her my vial of manliness, but that was maybe my hands not hers). Our part was frozen a month before and ready to be put into the mix when the ladies were ready.
And a month later, cycles synchronized, (and I bet both of them were sick of the daily injections by that point), they could come back into the reassuring and ultra-high-tech offices of CFP for the little bit of magic to happen.
And that, I’ll write more about next time
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