We Choose An Agency!
After returning home from our family vacation, we wasted no time in our start researching surrogacy agencies. We spent the first week of February reviewing different agencies, learning about wait times, how they screen their surrogates, financial, and legal matters. Ultimately we decided to move forward with IARC Surrogacy, IARC just seemed to be the perfect fit for us, being originally introduced to them through Ryan's high school friend, them being known worldwide as one of the best for same-sex couples, and just the fact they were located right here in our home state of Minnesota!
On February 10th, we reached out to IARC for general information, and boy did we get the information... we quickly realized we had a lot more to learn about this process. We received some general pricing information, questions about our clinic selection, if we had an egg donor already or if we had frozen embryos in storage, that we would need to discuss insurance and legal... none of this had crossed our minds yet, so we started to worry that we got ahead of ourselves. Thankfully the first step was a video chat and consult with Steve Snyder, IARC's Executive Director, to go through the program and answer any questions, so we scheduled that on the first availability about 2 weeks out.
During those 2 weeks, we spent time researching more about the process, getting more familiar with each step that would need to be completed, and reviewing the agency's legal contract, each party's obligations, timelines, and financials. After reviewing all the information, we felt that we had a good grasp on everything that needed to happen, and being that we were local to the agency, we had the option to come into the office for our consult instead of a video chat, so we elected to do that.
On February 24th, we head into our appointment, with the full intention of moving forward as long as we feel comfortable with the consultation. We arrive fully prepared with a down payment and everything we need to start the process, and after just a few minutes of meeting the staff and Steve, we felt so comfortable and knew we made the right decision! Steve explained everything from the ground up to us, was very patient, and took the time to make sure we understood the process.
Some of the important steps we would need to take after signing are picking out a fertility clinic, picking an egg donor, and creating embryos prior to being matched with a surrogate. We also had to choose if we wanted to be on a singleton (1 embryo transfer) or multiples (2 embryo transfer) waitlist. The singleton waitlist time was about 1-year out, and multiples would be almost 2 years until matched with a surrogate. Ideally, we would have loved to go for multiples for the cost savings, but the wait is so long as most couples in our situation prefer this option for financial reasons, and there are WAY fewer surrogates that get medically cleared to transfer 2 embryos safely. So we decided that we would like to get started sooner and choose the singleton option.
With all excitement and joyful tears in our eyes, we signed the contract, and officially got placed on the singleton waitlist! Our next steps will be to start looking into fertility clinics and to pick an egg donor to get our embryos created sometime within the next year, or before getting matched with a surrogate... and we can't wait!!!
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