ONE WOMAN’S SURROGATE JOURNEY

TIMNA RUTLEDGE | POSTED ON MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2015 AT 08:48PM

Many Intended Fathers who are matched in Texas through our agency have come across the story below and become worried and concerned about their legal rights to their children after delivery in Texas. We wanted to address their concerns.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/jason-hanna-and-joe-riggs_n_5506720.html

The couple in this story did not use an Agency to guide them on their journey. They went it alone, and somehow ended up with an attorney who did not practice in North Texas, but instead had a primary practice in Houston. This attorney either had a foolish political agenda and purposely filed in Tarrant county courts to gain fame and notoriety in trying to overturn the policies there, or he was simply incompetent and made uninformed decisions about where to file his client’s legal paperwork.

When you hire Simple Surrogacy, we provide you with a competent attorney who understands the Texas legal landscape.   Your attorney will work in concert with the Surrogate’s attorney, to prepare and negotiate your agreement.

Once everyone has agreed, the agreement is signed and notarized. The next step is to establish your parentage, which can be done in a number of ways depending on your particular case. One way in which your parentage can be confirmed is through the Texas statutory validation process. The validation process results in obtaining a pre-birth order from the Court that names both intended parents as the legal parents, or the single intended parent as the sole legal parent. Whether or not a same sex couple or single intended parent can obtain an order naming them as the parent(s) of the child prior to birth depends on several factors. First, a same sex couple must be married in order to obtain an order prior to the birth naming them both as the legal parents. Second, the attorney handling your case must know the views of the Judge he or she is asking to grant the order naming you as the parents of the child. Surrogacy in general involves some areas of unsettled law; however, the attorneys who frequently work with our clients have taken the time to speak with local Judges about their views and to present their legal argument as to why they believe the laws in Texas support validation of a gestational agreement for same sex married couples and single intended parents. Many local Judges have agreed with those arguments. Even if obtaining a pre-birth order is not an option or undesirable, there are other legal avenues by which your attorney can work with you to confirm your parental rights and be found the child’s legal parent.

Simple Surrogacy works with experienced attorneys such as Lauren Gaydos Duffer, and our clients have always been able to obtain parentage to their Child. Please be confident that when you choose Simple Surrogacy as your Agency, we will insure that your journey to Fatherhood through the Texas court system is a smooth one.

Surrogacy is not always a smooth journey, though we at Simple Surrogacy always strive to make the process as easy as possible for you. Once you reach the long awaited delivery day, many Intended Parents assume that it is smooth and easy from there – that now that they have their babies they can take them and go back to their lives. That is usually the case, but the time of delivery is fraught with emotional challenges that many Intended Parents do not know how to navigate. Handling things incorrectly can result in emotional strain and possible legal repercussions to your surrogate, to yourselves, and even to your babies.

Your Surrogate has carried your babies lovingly for 9 months. She has nurtured your children, fed them with her own body, and given up her time, freedom and health to make sure they grow into the wonderful babies that you now hold in your arms.

She is also emotionally invested in this journey, with you, to help you create your family. She longs to see your family complete, to see you hold your babies, and to hold the babies that she has helped to create.

Imagine making a special cake for someone. You lovingly mix it, put it into the oven, smell it as it is baking, hear the timer go off knowing it is ready, and remove it from the oven to cool. Now imagine that someone takes the cake away, you never see it again, you wonder, did it turn out OK? Will they like it? Will they enjoy it and appreciate all you did to bake it for them?

It is thousands of times worse when it is not a cake but a baby that the surrogate is never allowed to see again. Sometimes Intended Parents fear that letting the Surrogate hold the babies will cause her to bond with the baby and become attached to it. They worry that this would make it more difficult for them in turn to bond, but this is far from the reality. Your surrogate has already bonded with your children, in the 9 months she lovingly carried them for you. The Surrogate needs to hold your children following birth, to have closure on the long journey that you have undertaken together. She needs to hold your children, and then pass them to you, to see you hold them. She needs to see the final, wonderful completion of the journey you entered into together. Together, you have created and grown a life. This life would not be here without your surrogate, and to not allow her to share in the final joy of fruition is not only callous but also criminal.

Not allowing the Surrogate closure can also lead to costly emotional problems. Intended Parents are still obligated to pay for counseling after delivery, and in most cases, Surrogates who do not have the closure of saying goodbye to the children they grew typically need counseling. This can be a substantial expense on top of your new expenses for your children. It can also be argued that in not allowing your Surrogate closure that you are intentionally inflicting emotional distress on your Surrogate. She may have a legal case to pursue if you deprive her of that emotional closure out of fear or vindictiveness.

The simplest and also kindest route is to simply allow your surrogate time alone to say goodbye to the lives that she created for you. If you cannot find this compassion within yourself, to appreciate your Surrogate for the human being that she is, with emotions and feelings and love for your babies, then Simple Surrogacy is probably not the best agency for you, as we have seen the harm that can do and we want to protect our Clients and Surrogates and prevent it.

A new story on the Today show highlights a phenomenon that we’ve been aware of for a while now, that is single men turning to surrogacy when they are ready. Stephanie Scott, one of our founders, is mentioned in this story!

Dr. Conrad Cean was nearing 40 when he felt his biological clock ticking — with no special someone to help him start a family. So he did something that’s only recently become an option for single men: He turned to IVF and a surrogate halfway around the world to make a family of his own.

The 43-year-old pain specialist from New York City is now the proud, single father of 18-month-old twins, Konrad Fritz II and Kennedy-Josephine Marie. And he’s considering adding to his brood.

“I grew up in a very close family with two sisters, parents in Queens and cousins,” he told TODAY. “We’ve always been a tight family and I always wanted children.”

Cean’s surrogate family takes on special poignancy in the wake of the blowup between British singer Elton John and the fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana after the founders recently championed “traditional” families andcriticized fertility treatments in a magazine article.

Although no one keeps track, plenty of bachelors are intentionally having babies, though perhaps not “in the millions,” said Dr. Philip Werthman, director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Vasectomy Reversal in Los Angeles, who helps men optimize their sperm for IVF.

“The desire to be a parent is similar, whether you are gay, straight, in a relationship or not,” he said. “For these men, they are getting older, they have the resources and the love to give and they want to go ahead. Technology gives them the ability to have children outside traditional means.”

Cean said he planned to marry by 33 or 34, but his busy schedule interfered with finding the right woman.

“I had just finished my fellowship and was trying to get the lay of the land in the business of medicine,” said Cean. “I thought I would meet the right person, but I didn’t want to force anything.”

After two failed embryo transplantations in India in 2012, Cean went to Panama where for about two-thirds the cost of surrogacy in the United States, his twins were born on Aug. 30, 2013.

“I was ecstatic,” said Cean, who used his own sperm and is biologically related to the twins. “It’s other worldly, worth a thousand bucks, a million bucks. It’s hard to put into words.”

Stephanie Scott, executive director of Simple Surrogacy in Dallas, says she sees men like Cean “all the time.”

“Some of them have been focused on their careers for so long, they never got married,” she told TODAY. “A lot are afraid they have missed their opportunity and don’t want to wait and hope they’ll find the right woman.”

In gestational surrogacy, a woman is implanted with an embryo through in vitro fertilization using a donor egg and sperm. The baby is not genetically related to the surrogate mother.

In the United States, a man could spend up to $150,000 for all the medical costs, including $10,000 for an egg donor and $25,000 for the surrogate mother.

Scott arranged for Peter Gordon, a 48-year-old middle school teacher from Brimmer and May in Massachusetts, to have his twins with the help of a surrogate. His twins, 3-year-olds Noah and Olivia, were born in St. Louis.

“It’s funny,” he told TODAY. “I always said when I was in my 20s I would find the woman of my dreams and be married. But in my 30s I was at a junior boarding school and didn’t pay much attention to relationships. All of a sudden, I was in my 40s.”

Gordon said he made a “pact” with himself. If he reached 44 and was not married, he would look into an “alternative way” to have a family. The summer he turned 44, a relationship dissolved and he began to look into surrogacy, a lengthy project that, in the end, cost him $90,000.

“I had to qualify for loans and lines of credit,” he said. “I vetted agencies. I was meeting surrogates and getting an egg donor. It was all a blur. … Still, I was determined.”

The surrogate he chose was 23 and single, but had a child. “She made a decision she wanted to help others,” he said.

Gordon was in the delivery room at the full-term birth. The twins had a baby nurse and now a nanny, and he makes sure there are plenty of female influences in their lives.

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “It was the most unbelievable dream come true. It’s one of the hardest things I have ever done, but a lot of it is instinct. … From the minute they were born, they were in my arms and have been there ever since.”

Gordon says he still dates, when he can, but caring for twins is “tiring.”

“I still think it will happen,” he said of finding a wife. “And it would be great to share this with someone. … But that void I used to feel when I worked at boarding schools is no longer there, because my life is filled with my kids.”

As for Cean, he said that he, too, would still be open to marriage.

“I am definitely still looking,” he said. “My two biggest things are finding someone genuine and sweet with a kooky sense of humor. Someone offbeat.”

But his weekend family life is also full and rewarding: a Saturday gymboree class, naps and bottles, an afternoon walk in the park or drive out to Queens to see his parents, sister and cousins.

“My family was skeptical at first — obviously they would be,” said Cean. “But I have absolutely have no regrets.

“Hey, gay guys do it all the time. I told myself I was the straight half of a gay couple.”