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The process of becoming a father may be more complex if you are a gay man, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. With the all inclusive service you’ll experience in our state of the art fertility clinic, an onsite IVF laboratory, an inhouse egg donor and surrogacy programs plus years of success in helping to build families for our gay patients, you are in the right place. As a gay man having a child, what exactly happens between calling us and holding your newborn in your arms? We make the gay surrogacy process easy to understand. Follow the main steps of your journey to parenthood below.
1. Speak to Our Patient Coordinator
Our patient coordinator will be your initial point of contact in your surrogacy process; she will answer all the questions you may have and guide you through the whole process of becoming a dad. She will assist you with choosing the egg donor and surrogate who meet your needs and requirements best.
2. Schedule Your Consultation
Everyone’s path to parenthood is different. During your consultation, one of our specialist doctors will help you determine what your unique path looks like. Our in-house fertility specialist can speak with you in person or over the telephone and help you determine the next steps of your journey.
3. Choose Your Egg Donor
Next, you will review our egg donor database. The database contains everything you need to know about each of our donors, including their medical history, physical traits, even personal statements from the donors themselves. After reviewing the database, you will select and secure a donor. We will work with her and plan her donation cycle to retain the number of eggs needed to build your family.
4. Undergo Directed Donor Screening
Of course, both an egg and sperm are needed to create a baby. After choosing your egg donor, we will then work with you to ensure your sperm is tested and ready for fertilization. This process consists of a questionnaire and a physical exam, which will include a blood test to check for any infectious diseases. Your semen will also be analyzed and possibly frozen.
5. Plan The Egg Donation Cycle
We will assign you a nurse coordinator who will be your main point of contact from here. She will work with both you and the egg donor to plan her egg donation cycle and egg retrieval. You will provide a semen specimen on the day of egg retrieval unless you are using a previously frozen semen.
6. Fertilize The Eggs
After harvesting eggs from your donor, we will fertilize the eggs with your sperm in the lab to create embryos. Our team can use one or more sources of sperm in the event that both partners want to be biological fathers.
7. Incubate The Embryos
The embryos will be incubated in the fertility lab to ensure that they are good candidates for implantation. If you wish, our team can also test the eggs for sex and chromosomal normalcy.
8. Freeze The Embryos
After incubation, our team will freeze the viable embryos to save them for future transfer. Freezing embryos is not harmful. Frozen embryos will last for years, giving you the flexibility to grow your family on your own timeline and, if more than 1 embryo is available, will give you an opportunity to have siblings in the future, if desired.
9. Choose a Surrogate
The next step will be to choose your surrogate – the woman who will carry your baby to term. Our team will help you go through our available surrogate profiles, so you can identify your perfect match. We will arrange a match meeting between you and your surrogate; this is a great opportunity to get to know each other, ask any questions you both have, and ensure she is the right fit into your surrogacy journey.
10. Make Legal Agreements
After making and confirming your selection, you will execute the legal agreement with the surrogate. These documents protect both parties during the pregnancy and will make sure you have legal protection at all times during your surrogacy journey. You can choose your attorney and we can also recommend experienced surrogacy lawyers to you as well.
11. Get Ready For Embryo Transfer
Once the legal agreement is signed, we will work with you and your surrogate to plan her cycle and schedule a date for the embryo transfer.
12. Follow the Surrogate Pregnancy
After the transfer, you will follow your surrogate’s pregnancy. The pregnancy will be monitored for the first 10 weeks by our fertility clinic and for the remainder of the pregnancy (and delivery) by the surrogate’s obstetrician. You will be part of your surrogate’s pregnancy journey and depending on what you both agreed and what was outlined in your surrogacy contract, you may be attending her medical appointments and ultrasounds and getting regular updates all the way to delivery of your baby.
It All Starts With a Phone Call
If you are ready to take the first step toward parenthood, or just have questions about egg donation and surrogacy process for gay individuals and couples, we have the expertise and experience to help. Call our surrogacy coordinators at 310-566-1470 or fill out this form to contact us.