FAQ's
We have been receiving a lot of great questions from friends and family, so thought we would put together this FAQ to answer as many of those as possible. We will keep this updated as we receive any other good questions that we haven't already covered.
Is the surrogate biologically related to the child?
No. Technically Jane is a Gestational Carrier "GC" and will be carrying our embryo that was created by use of an egg donor. Biologically the child will be from the egg donor and either Ryan or Trent's DNA. We use the term "Surrogate" loosely as many seem to understand that better than Gestational Carrier.
How many embryos are you transferring?
We signed up for a single embryo transfer way back when we started the process. The agency (IARC) we are going through had a waiting list for both single and dual embryo transfers. The dual embryo would have been a more cost effective route, with no guarantees of course, but also the route that many others prefer to go.... add to this that it is much harder for a surrogate to get medically cleared to safely transfer two embryos and that leads to double or longer the wait time to get matched with a qualified surrogate. So given we did not want to wait an additional year or two, this is why we elected the single embryo waitlist.
Is Jane her real name?
Yes, her name is really Jane 😊
Who is IARC?
IARC is the agency we signed up with (Maple Grove, MN) that has helped us through the process since day one and has helped us with every step of the journey. They screen and qualify surrogate candidates and match you with them, they also have a separate legal team to help with contracts, wills, and everything legally needed, as well as handling financial aspects and coordinating escrow accounts, and providing advice/guidance throughout the process. We could have attempted this journey without the use of an agency, but that could have been a much messier avenue and something we did not feel comfortable doing on our own.
Who is ORM?
ORM is the fertility clinic we selected (Portland, OR) to create the embryos and for the actual IVF transfer procedure. We selected them based on them being one of the highest recommended by IARC, and mostly as they had the best success rates when comparing all the clinics at the time. ORM also had an internal bank of egg donors to select from, which made the embryo creation process a little smoother for us.
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