Our experience with surrogacy in the U.S.
My husband and I were lucky enough to welcome our little boy into the world in August. I thought I would share a little of our journey here in case it’s helpful to anyone.
First things first, we are based in the U.K., and we are both British - me by birth and my husband by naturalisation. He also holds an EU Country passport in addition to his U.K. I also realise that the experience I describe below is only possible because we had access to £250,000 to spend and that relatively few people are so lucky.
That said, we assembled a team to help us:
- Brilliant Beginnings are our UK agency. They handled the introductions to our partners in the United States.
- NGA law are a partner firm of Brilliant Beginnings and handle the UK legal process.
- NEFI were our fertility clinic. I cannot recommend them even to my worst enemy. Our experience with them was the most horrific of our journey. Their communications were terrible.
- US Surrogacy were our surrogate agency. They were nothing short of amazing. They are known to prioritise the wellbeing of the surrogate - but believe me, as intended parents you actively want someone to be advocating for your surrogate. A healthy surrogate is a healthy baby.
- IFLG were our US lawyers. They were ok. Their communications tended to be last minute rather than stepping things out in advance. This often meant delays if I was travelling for work and they suddenly wanted me to sign something in front of a notary.
The important thing here is that regardless of who you go with for many of these services - you will be assembling a team of people who will need to work together to bring this off.
We got incredibly lucky with our surrogate match. She is the kind of person who researched the exact details of every aspect of her own pregnancies - and so when things started happening with ours, she was able to give us details and insights that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The process itself is an emotional rollercoaster. There are sublime highs, and devastating lows. For us, the lowest point was embryo creation. We went from elation at 29 eggs retrieved from the egg donor, to devastation at ending up with a single viable embryo. We had resigned ourselves to creating more embryos- but decided in the meantime to go ahead with the one we had. Against the odds - the pregnancy took.
Being so far away was hard. We managed to visit the states for the 20 week scan, but otherwise our main communication method was WhatsApp groups.
Why did we choose the US? Certainty. Commercial surrogacy is legal here and we were protected by a contract. Executive orders notwithstanding… the legal framework gave us a lot of peace of mind. It also meant that we were able to apply for a pre birth order. That means that the only birth certificate ever produced for our baby lists two fathers - us. This makes the process for the UK citizenship and the EU third country citizenship much easier.
My main advice is to plan for the hidden costs. For us these were:
- A lack of understanding of the healthcare system meant some unexpected bills.
- The cost of living here in the states has been eye opening. The two months we have had living here have been shockingly expensive in terms of food in particular- which is more expensive than the UK.
- Buying things for the two month stay that we can’t fit into our luggage for the journey home. Our surrogate has helped us here by assisting in donating goods to a women’s shelter with us.
My other tip that would have made things easier for us… hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, vital records offices, and other people - they are not set up for international phone calls. Get yourself a temporary US phone number. It will save heaps of time.