It is always wonderful to hear of a couple who has had a great surrogacy experience and has successfully welcomed their child into the world. Though we were not their Agency, we are very happy to congratulate Bill and Giuliana Rancic, who are now proud parents through Gestational Surrogacy. We hope their example will inspire others to not give up and to eventually welcome their dream baby through Surrogacy!

Bill and Giuliana Rancic Welcome Son Edward Duke

Jeff Kravitz /FilmMagic

He’s here!

Bill and Giuliana Rancic welcomed their first child, son Edward Duke Rancic, on Wednesday, Aug. 29 in Denver, the couple announced via Twitter Thursday morning.

“The ‘Duke’ has landed! Edward Duke Rancic was welcomed into the world last night at 7 lbs., 4 oz.,” the Apprentice winner writes. “G & I feel blessed beyond words…We did it!”

Born at 10:12 p.m. with the parents in the delivery room, the baby’s cord was cut by Bill and he was first held by Giuliana, the couple tell E! News.

After struggles with infertility, miscarriage and a breast cancer battle for E! news anchor and Fashion Police co-host Giuliana, 37, the couple announced that they were expecting a baby via gestational surrogate.

In June, the Rancics shared that they’d be welcoming a boy whom they planned to give a traditional name.

“Our journey has a happy ending,” Bill, 41, tells PEOPLE. “We didn’t give up, we didn’t quit and we’re going to have a good ending to this.”

– Sarah Michaud

We are proud to be among the participants at the Men Having babies seminar in new York on September 22nd. Please join us! We will have several breakout sessions where we can answer all of your questions about Surrogacy, costs and our program. Though this is focused on Gay Parents, everyone is welcome to come and learn about our unique and renowned approach to surrogacy!

Time for YOU to have a baby as well?

The eight annual NY Surrogacy Seminar and Expo by Men Having Babies is September 22, 2012!

This year’s day-long event is going to be the largest and most extensive program for prospective surrogacy parents ever… The independent nonprofit organization Men Having Babies is hosting an unprecedented number of clinics and agencies (16 so far, and counting) from all across the USA and beyond, alongside a number of supportive community organizations.  The program will include expert and personal stories panels, a surrogacy and gay parenting exhibit, a catered lunch, and 24 breakout sessions. The exhibit and breakout sessions will allow attendees to personally meet and hear from the various agencies and clinics, never before assembled under one roof.  The event will also mark the debut of the Gay Parenting Financial Assistance Fund, which will benefit from the event’s sponsorship proceeds.
While the event is organized by a gay parenting organization, non-gay prospective parents are also welcome and will no doubt highly benefit from it as well.
Admission is $10 (free for pre-registered out of town guests).

Register now: www.MenHavingBabies.org/ny

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/508288702518239/

Surrogacy 101: Choose your Agency

To begin the process of surrogacy, most people will start online. You’re here right now, aren’t you? There is a vast amount of information available to you online, from Agencies like ourselves, Surrogacy Gathering sites, blogs, articles, doctors and clinics, attorneys and consultants. You will be overwhelmed by the amount of information available at your fingertips, so be sure to choose wisely.

Once you have narrowed down the list of partners you want to decide between to reputable agencies or attorneys, then you should Google those agencies to see what everyone has said about them. You should contact them and speak with their references. Simple Surrogacy is proud to provide many happy Intended Parents as references who have gone through our program, and our word of mouth on the Internet is excellent.

Simple Surrogacy has been in business for over 10 years, and we’re a trusted and recommended source for information in the surrogacy process. We can be your guide through the maze of finding a great surrogate, making sure she is screened by a great clinic, psychologist and background checked, and most importantly, making sure that you like each other! We will help you to choose your clinic through our excellent connections in the Infertility world, we’ve worked with nearly every major clinic throughout the United States.

From there, we’ll help you negotiate the Surrogacy contract with industry expert attorneys and consultants, for the best possible agreement for you and your surrogate. We’ll then collect and manage your escrow fund in our bonded, insured escrow accounts, making sure that your money is handled as securely and carefully as we handle our own money. We also act as an intermediary between you and your Surrogate, insuring that she receives timely payments under her contract and that those payments are correctly paid.

As you can see, the importance of an excellent guide through your surrogacy is crucial. Once you have decided that Simple Surrogacy is your ideal partner, then you would continue in the process of consultation and retainers.

Simple Surrogacy is pleased to announce we are joining the Men Having Babies seminar in September in New York City. This is a great event where prospective Intended Parents can meet with Agencies, learn from guest speakers and ask questions about surrogacy agencies. We’re very excited to be a sponsor! learn more and register at the link below!

http://www.menhavingbabies.org/surrogacy-seminars/ny-2012/

This blog continues our series on Surrogacy information for Intended Parents, Surrogates and egg donors.

Surrogacy 101: Becoming an Intended Parent

The process of Surrogacy can be long and confusing, and who you choose to guide you through it is the most important decision that you will make. To become a Simple Surrogacy Intended parent, we require that you meet certain criteria. These include:

• • • Be Honest
    • No criminal history, able to pass a background check
    • Complete paperwork fully
    • Financially stable
    • Be respectful of Surrogate’s time and commitment
    • Between the ages of 21-60
    • Be in a stable living situation
    • Have the support of your spouse or partner (when applicable)
    • Not be on public assistance
    • Have read and understand the Surrogacy process
    • Be willing to undergo a Psychological Assessment

Simple Surrogacy does not discriminate against any person desiring to be a parent, regardless of gender, race, age, religious affiliation, fertility issue, marital status or sexual orientation.  We work with every Intended Parent who can meet the above criteria and has a genuine desire for a family. This series will explore the steps and journey to becoming an Intended Parent.

The article below is very interesting as it brings up a topic that not many of our Intended Parents consider when they begin their surrogacy journey. Hopefully, most businesses have realized by now that all types of families need maternity or paternity leave when a child comes into their lives, no matter how that child arrives! Many progressive companies now cover their family leave for surrogacy as the same coverage for adoptive parents, which is a huge leap forward.

Should parents who use a surrogate get paid leave?

A case currently receiving a lot of attention in England involves a mother and her supporters campaigning for the right to paid maternity leave, a universal right for mothers there.

She has been denied paid leave because she did not carry or deliver her twins. She used a surrogate.
(Bigstock)

Fertility law experts have said that under British law, only mothers who carry a baby or who adopt are entitled to leave benefits. The Daily Telegraph has been chronicling the story.

In the United States, the case hasn’t stirred much attention. Perhaps that’s because, as we all know and many of us bemoan, Americans are not guaranteed paid maternity leave. Still, it raises broader issues that do affect parents here.

I asked Marni Hotchkiss, the creator of Bridge to Baby, a Web forum devoted to helping parents and potential parents work through fertility issues, for her thoughts.

Hotchkiss, a Bethesda mother, is expecting a baby who is being carried by a surrogate. She started by describing how much discretion U.S. employers have with parental leave.

“Although the Family Medical Leave Act provides that covered employers must give an eligible parent up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave to care for a newborn, there is no law requiring that an employer provide paid leave. So it is up to each individual employer to decide whether or not to provide paid parental leave benefits.

“This begs the question . . . Should an employer be allowed to decide who gets paid leave based on who gave physical birth to the baby? It’s hard to believe that mothers who have their own biological children via gestational carrier don’t have the same maternity leave rights as all other mothers.”

Hotchkiss explained that she gave birth to her son, now 4, and is expecting her second child via a gestational carrier in about four months.

“The only difference I foresee in the two scenarios is the recovery from the birth itself. I’m happy to say I won’t be spending quality time on a sitz bath or pumping breast milk, although I would have given anything to experience both again if it meant I could carry this child on my own.

“Yes, there is some medical recovery involved in giving birth but not enough, in my opinion, to warrant someone in my shoes not getting paid maternity leave while someone who gives birth does.”

She went on to emphasize that the mother’s recovery isn’t so much the issue as the needs of a newborn.

“The common fact is that all newborn babies, either born the old-fashioned way or via a borrowed uterus, need constant, round-the-clock care to survive. It’s about caring for the newborn that is most important. That care comes with the round-the-clock feedings, doctor visits, bonding and diaper changes. Did I mention diaper changes? And that comes with sleep deprivation for the parent . . . whether or not they have given birth.

“At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter if you are a man, woman, have given birth, used a surrogate to have a child or adopt. All parents taking care of newborns should be treated the same and have equal parental leave rights.”

What do you think? Should surrogacy be treated by laws or employers any differently than pregnancy or adoption?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/should-parents-who-use-a-surrogate-get-paid-leave/2012/04/25/gIQAyJJHhT_blog.html#pagebreak

Happy Father’s Day to all of our Wonderful Intended Fathers, current Past and present!

Father’s Day
Over the years
As we grow old,
We remember our father
So brave and bold.

In the garden,
Leaning on the plow,
He would listen to me;
I see him now.

He would give advice
And understand;
He was always there
To lend a hand.

God made fathers
Strong and firm,
For he knew our lives
Would have great concerns.

So he gave us fathers
To teach us to pray,
And guide our lives,
And show us the way.

So on his day
Let’s take the time
To say “Thanks, dad.
I’m glad you’re mine.”
Mary Frances Bogle

Straight, Single Men, Wanting Kids, Turn to Surrogacy

At a lavish baby shower outside of Boston, there was no pregnant mom in sight. The diaper genie and burp cloths were for a 45-year-old middle school principal named Peter Gordon.

Gordon has been dating and searching for Ms. Right for more than two decades, but hasn’t found a wife. Yet, he badly wanted to start a family.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said. “Some people are lucky in love. I haven’t found luck yet. It’s not for lack of trying.”

Steven Harris, a 57-year-old lawyer from New York, found himself in the same predicament. He knew he wanted kids but didn’t have someone to have them with and said he felt a “profound sadness” about 15 years ago.

“I really felt like I really was missing something,” he said.

So Gordon and Harris, both heterosexual bachelors, made the decision to become dads on their own through surrogacy, using their sperm and a donor egg.

Gordon said he tried adoption before surrogacy but kept getting turned away.

“I called five different agencies and every one of them told me that either I would not be considered or that I would be at the bottom of the list because I was a single father,” he said.

Harris said he too was rejected from adoption agencies.

“Who is going to give their kid to a 50-year-old bachelor living in SoHo, you know? I wouldn’t,” he said.

So both Gordon and Harris turned to surrogacy.

“I didn’t want to wake up in five years when I’m over 50 and say, ‘if you’d just kind of done this earlier, you might have been able to use the energy and be able to kind of give the time that you can give,'” Harris said.

Stephanie Scott, the executive director of Simple Surrogacy in Dallas, helped set up the arrangement between Gordon and 24-year-old Sara Eaton, the surrogate Gordon ended up choosing. Scott said more and more of her clients are single, heterosexual men.

“Over the last few years it’s become the norm,” she said.

But when Harris decided to go the surrogacy route, his mother was appalled.

“She said, ‘Stevie, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Harris said.

That is, until he introduced her to baby Ben, who was born with the help of in-virto fertilization and another surrogate. Today, Ben is a 5-year-old spitfire and Harris is a busy dad.

“I get him ready for school, I take him to school, then I go to work and the babysitter picks him up at 3, and I come home at 6 and she leaves, so it’s really all me,” he said.

Making a family this way is not cheap, especially for Gordon, who discovered he was having twins. Like most men in his situation, he was responsible for Eaton’s medical bills.

“I’m looking at probably close to $85,000-$90,000,” he said. “I’m 100 percent sure that I’m going to be able to make it work.”

Both single dads acknowledge that their kids will have questions about their family situation one day. Harris said Ben has already started to ask him if he has a mother.

“I say ‘there are all kinds of families. There are families with two daddies and two mommies and a daddy and a mommy and we’re a kind of family with one daddy,’ and that’s fine for him now,” he said.

Both Gordon and Harris said they still have high hopes of one day finding a spouse.

“Dating is a snap,” Harris said. “Ben is a chick magnet.”

“Definitely want a wife,” Gordon said. “I definitely want that family, and a child on each arm, and walking to the park and a stroller with her and, I mean, who wouldn’t? I just think for me that would be ideal.”

But the wife will have to wait. Gordon’s twins, Olivia and Noah, were born six months ago and this single dad could not have been happier.

“To have what I’ve been wanting for many, many years now is here,” he said. “What an amazing miracle. It’s just unbelievable.”

The science to detect fetal abnormalities continues to improve dramatically. As the article below shows, soon there will not be a need for CVS testing or Amniocentesis to determine any genetic abnormalities, which will protect the fetus and save unnecessary discomfort to the Mother or Surrogate.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fetal-genome-sequence-20120607,0,7625263.story

What a Wonderful way to celebrate Father’s Day! JC Penney’s has just released a wonderful ad showing two daddies with their children. What a wonderful way for a company to be so welcoming to all types of families. Read more about it at the post link below then head to JC Penney’s to buy something in support!

http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2012/05/25746/