The Start of Our Baby

What is happening? 

Since starting our journey to have a child, Tobias and I have noticed that the process raises many questions from friends, family, and sometimes complete strangers. The path for queer couples, those who struggle with infertility, or those who elect not to use their own reproductive organs for child bearing is often confusing, complicated, and almost mystical to people who are used to the traditional method a heterosexual man and woman pro-creating. Through our early experiences, I've thought about writing all of this down to not only monologue the course to share with our future child(ren), but to keep others updated, informed, and educated on what this process looks like for us. 

Adoption versus Surrogacy (More accurately Gestational Carrier)

Tobias and I had the good fortune of meeting a doula at a PRIDE event a few years back. At that time, we knew that a baby was still a few years off for us, but her booth grabbed our attention as this was the first moment that having a child together seemed possible. When you're sitting alone talking about the future as a homosexual male couple, you know that it isn't as simple as when you're going to 'start trying.' We can't stop our birth control, monitor our cycles, and have intercourse with the goal of becoming pregnant. It has to be much more calculated, with multiple moving parts, healthy access to finances, and many people involved in what is normally such an intimate and private moment for what people would consider a traditional couple. The pressure to choose a 'right time' is even more present as you are making a conscious decision, we can not have a child by accident or let God decide. We have to put in the work. 

A few weeks after meeting this doula, we reached out to her simply to discuss what having a child even looks like and what options are available. Going into this meeting, I had been set on adoption. Being adopted myself, I thought that it would be incredible to give a better life to another child like I had received. Tobias, on the other hand, was focused on raising a child from infancy. He absolutely loves children, shown by his commitment to pediatrics and his future career as a pediatrician. He wasn't as concerned with what path we took, as long as we had a baby. You might ask, why is a baby so important? There are plenty of toddlers in foster care/up for adoption that need homes. This is a true statement, and something we have struggled with as well. Ultimately, it comes down to wanting that experience that so many others get without question - raising this precious life-form from birth and watching them grow from this 8lb alien to a fully functioning and independent adult. That being said, we have talked many times about how we will likely pursue adoption for our second child to help a child in need as well as satisfy my inner desire to provide a better life for a child in the way my parents did to help me achieve my current life. Another driving factor behind pursuing surrogacy, which in our scenario is more accurately called a gestational carrier as she bears no biologic relation to the child, is that the baby is fully, unquestionable, and irrevocably ours. At least in the state of Minnesota, a birth mother has a full year, a full 365 days to decide she would like her child back. We recognize that as a beautiful grace period, and that a goal of the system is to reunite birth parents with their babies, but we also know ourselves. I would not be able to live my day to day life knowing that my child could be taken at the drop of a hat, and Tobias could not deal with the 'loss' of a baby that he had grown to love and care for. All of this went into deciding that a gestational carrier would be the most appropriate way to grow our family. 

Embryo Creation* 

*Not a discussion on when life technically, scientifically, or religiously begins

The beginning of every human life starts with the creation of an embryo. As stated earlier, we need a little help with this step. There are many fertility centers, but as with anything regarding sexuality and orientation, some places are better/more willing to work with queer couples. CNY Fertility Center in Buffalo, NY was recommended to us not only for their experience with the LGBTQ+ community, but also the fact that they can perform the same services for ten to fifteen thousand dollars less than locations in Minneapolis, MN. 

There are two biologic materials necessary for embryo formation: one sperm and one egg. When this process takes place outside the body, we call this In-vitro fertilization (IVF). Many people's first question to us is 'whose sperm are you using.' I will answer this by first saying, one would never ask a heterosexual couple such an invasive question about their sex life, especially in such a casual manner. But, naturally, people are curious about the lives of the queer as it has been so stigmatized that there is little to no education on our community, outside of sensationalized media and the classic 'coming out' story where the kid almost kills himself only to be saved by his, often straight and beautiful friend, who convinces them that despite being gay, they are beautiful too. As a side note, this trope is tired. Not every LGBTQ+ child is from a home where they are ridiculed, beat by their Dad for trying on Mom's high heels, and struggling at school because they are hopelessly in-love with the hot quarterback. Anyway, a short-answer to a long question, we feel like it's awkward/uncomfortable to be asked this, but yet always feel compelled to answer to avoid hurting others feelings or making them feel weird for asking. So, as I fortunately control this space, we will not be going into whose sperm was used for this process as ultimately we are both the father of this child and it does not matter whose microscopic DNA was injected into the egg. In the future, I am sure our child will know whose genetic makeup was utilized, but that will be discussed out of a place of curiosity, rather than on how to gauge how much of a parent either one of us are. 

The part that is more exciting is how you go about obtaining an egg. Fortunately, there are many egg-bearing people who know and understand others struggles or challenging when trying to conceive. These people are willing to inject themselves with medications for weeks at a time and undergo a procedure where eggs are collected from their ovaries as they start to form into a follicle. To add to that, our donor even did this process during the Covid-19 pandemic, understanding that our desire to have a child was not on-hold, much like heterosexual people did not halt all pro-creation. Selecting a donor, to me, seemed arbitrary, and almost sexist. You're provided with pictures of the egg donor, basic background information (education, a skeleton health history, and how they rate themselves in various areas). Given the nature of how egg donors are approved by an agency, you can imagine much of these profiles look exactly the same. Almost all of the women have a bachelor's degree, no prior health problems, and rate themselves as empathic, caring, and smart. So, at the end of the day, you're choosing someone who you think is pretty. I guess that is a portion of the traditional experience as well, but something just feels wrong about it when it's such a conscious choice. Because of how I felt towards this process, Tobias was actually the major player in selecting who we would like to donate our egg. He was able to create a more objective selection process and he is also less focused on people's appearances than I am. 

We ultimately were placed on a waiting list for a short, young, Puerto Rican, queer woman. We received ten eggs from her, with two turning into successful embryos. These were ultimately genetically tested to determine viability. This brought a question that was answered immediately by both us. But, when creating embryos, they are treating more like objects than human life. They're discussed in terms of numbers, age of creation, and what the genetic makeup is, almost like I'm shopping for a new laptop. When they screen the embryo for genetic abnormalities, they will be able to tell us if the child would have trisomy 21 (more commonly known as Down's Syndrome). At that juncture, you have to decide if you would terminate this embryo/fetus if you were at that stage. In our opinion, it would be inappropriate to terminate a child with trisomy 21. This is not considered a lethal condition and many people live happy, fulfilling lives with that extra chromosome. You also know the sex of your child, not to be confused with gender which is a social construct, however we have elected not to know the sex of our embryos. The reason behind this is how do you decide between a male or a female should those be the choices? Many couples when planning for pregnancy say things like 'I hope it's a boy!' or 'I really want a daddy's girl!' but given the true option to pick, I am sure couples would struggle to really decide, because truly, what are the criteria? How can you look at a child and say that you want them to be a male/female? Are you picking from unconscious or conscious biases and societal standards and privilege? Or can you fool yourself into thinking it's truly an innocent decision? For that reason, we have elected to have it be a surprise, at least until the 20 week anatomy screen. The jury is out on whether or not we'd like to know at that point either. 

Gestational Carrier*

*Not to be confused with a surrogate. Gestational carriers bear no biologic relationship to the child, where as in surrogacy, the surrogate provides the egg. Many situations you may think of as surrogacy, were actually the use of a gestational carrier. 

Once the embryo is created, we had to find a way to grow, nurture, and develop this embryo into a fetus, and eventually a life-sustaining infant. This is the most expensive portion of the journey to have our baby, and rightfully so. You are asking someone to again, inject themselves with medication for ten weeks, in our case fly to NY to have the transfer completed, and then do all the pre-natal care, visits, and eventually labor and at the the end of the process they go home like nothing ever happened. Of course they get some financial incentive and the personal satisfaction of helping another family, but we're talking about sharing your body for 9 months with a life-form for a complete stranger. What we discovered to, and I am happy to see this, is there are other stipulations where the carrier would receive additional compensation. For example, if she carries multiples, goes through the trauma of a miscarriage, or loses her reproductive organs there are fees agreed to that would work to compensate her for this experience. She also has access to mental health resources should any of these events result in emotional or mental stress. 

The selection process of a carrier is a lengthy one, so I will present this more in list form. 

1. Tobias and I underwent a psychological evaluation to assess whether or not we understand what the process entails, the emotional stress of having a child through IVF and a gestational carrier, and that we had no interpersonal and familial problems that would interfere with raising the child once they were ours. Of note, heterosexual couples having a child through the traditional sense of intercourse are not placed through even this most basic step of screening. 

2. Once we passed the psychological evaluation, an agency works to match you with a gestational carrier who fits your profile. The carrier herself undergoes a profile and counseling to make sure that she understanding the process and that at the end of the pregnancy, she will not be keeping the child. This seems so simple, but I think if you talked to many people who have carried children, I'm not sure it's always easy to grow them for 9 months, go through labor, and then have the baby removed from you. Fortunately, there is some leeway - for example, Tobias and I can 'agree' that she can hold the baby after birth and even visit a few times prior to discharge. She may even breastfeed the baby initially if this is something we agree upon with her. Finally, she carrier is entitled to often yearly updates, meaning a picture and a little story about how they're doing. Ultimately, the relationship all comes down to legality.

3. Once Tobias and I agree to a specific carrier, she and her family must agree as well. Following this, multiple legal contracts are drafted that cover any scenario you could possibly think of in order to protect both of us. This includes provisions on often we can contact the carrier during the pregnancy; this helps protect her from mental and emotional exhaustion, harassment, and unreasonable expectations. This understanding also helps the intended parents as we can ask for the amount of communication we would like and know going into the process that this is what was agreed upon. The agency represents both of you the entire time and is there to protect both parties, no party has more of a 'right' to anything than the other. It all about what is initially agreed upon and what is reasonable. Ideally, the process works best when both sides are calm, realistic, and flexible. Things will come up, an update text will be missed, you might step outside your bounds a time or two, but it's all about good, clear communication. 

We are currently in the match process and are looking forward to speaking with a potential carrier. If this goes well, she will begin the long journey of medical clearance, medication injections, a trip to NY (where we also pay for her partner and/or friend to accompany her) to have the transfer done. After this, everyone crosses their fingers, prays, meditates, or whatever you believe in that the pregnancy will be viable. If not, we only have one more chance since we have two embryos. If both embryos end up miscarrying, we haven't decided what our next step would be - but why put that negative energy out there until it becomes and issue. 

I plan on chronicling our journey here. I suspect future posts will not be this long, but I wanted to get the whole process out there. 

With love,

Clinton Billhorn and Tobias Donlon