There is not a lot written about the experience of going through those steps and encountering those delays, but it was one of the most complicatedly painful experiences of my life. I'm not used to being helpless about things which matter to me as much as my children matter. You're in my thoughts and I am sure you will be incredible parents once the dice finally roll in your favor.
This is a wonderful piece and I wish you the best of luck in your journey. As a side note, I think the Cornell review on the effects of same-sex parenting is a mish-mash of studies with varying rigor.
Fortunately, I reviewed the highest quality set of studies on the effects of same-sex parenting and they provide no cause for concern 😄
Thanks! This is actually the one I was looking for and hoping to link; I couldn’t find it on a quick search but I’m glad to have it again. I’ll edit the post.
I hope your family finds success and happiness. As a parent myself it's joyful to see new families forming. It's also a peverse delight knowing that you will encounter the most mind boggling situations with your child(ren) and find yourself questioning your sanity. At 3am I was just having this fun conversation with my daughter. " You're very smart and capable. I'm very proud of you. Go get your own water. I love you very much. Leave me alone."
I wanted to add something about adoption and foster care. I don't want to disuade people from helping those children but I do want people to go into the situation clear eyed. I used to teach children with emotional disturbance and I have seen foster parents and adoptive parents unprepared for the reality of potential challenges their child will have. Children may have been exposed to illegal drug use in the womb, their early life may have been abusive, they may have genetic predisposition to learning, mental, emotional disabilities. Agencies don't hide these things but you can't really prepare someone for this.
Good luck! You'll need it! One day in the darkest part of a pandemic you'll see your child move their mask to put their tongue on a shopping cart handle and be convinced your not going to make it.
We had twins 15 years ago via this same process. We found our surrogate through an agency. She is my hero, and her family has become cousins to ours. We travel interstate every year to be together. Maybe not "romantic" initially, but very much so now. Best wishes!
Great post. I wish you swift success with the process!
About a year and a half ago, my ex and I spent a day at an information session for the foster family to adoption route, which was the required first step in that process. A sinking feeling took both of us as we learned more and more about how this sort of thing is expected to go. Not just the fact that adoption is the less desired outcome, but also that there are just so many *heavy* requirements such as having to bring the child to supervised visits with their biological parents basically every week for about two years. We were told that it's highly preferable to have a car than rely on public transit because the children tend to be extremely emotional after such encounters. And various other things like that.
Not to mention the heavy bureaucratic and legal work that had to be completed at various points. We considered at least signing up for infant adoption, but the wait time for this in our city is 10 years (!) and it involves enough paperwork to get started that we put it off indefinitely. As for international adoption, it's now rare in general, and rarer for same-sex couples who are barred from most countries that still allow it. (As far as I could find info on this, which is very little, the only gay-couple-friendly countries for which there exists some sort of process in Quebec to adopt from were Colombia and... the United States.)
So yes, surrogacy is basically the only practical option for gay couples, and I wish that we made it more accessible instead of adding various bureaucratic layers to it, except insofar as the bureaucracy may reassure people who are still uncomfortable with the idea.
I think about this topic a lot, nowadays mostly with sadness, since it seems pretty unlikely that I'll ever have kids now that the process for me has reset all the way to "find a partner." Besides I don't really plan on optimizing to find someone who absolutely wants kids. So it would take a lot of things to go right for that to happen. At least I'm lucky enough to have two great nephews.
We had the same troubling experience attempting adoption. Gave up and did a surrogacy. The change from being judged and micromanaged in the pre-adoption process to being empowered to select an egg donor and a surrogate was astonishing. We got very lucky, but as usual, money = power.
I went through this and am here if I can ever share experiences or resources. Regarding the ethics issues, two notes. First, I've found that having a kid is so life-giving and generative that it offsets a lot of concerns about leftover embryos. Second, there's something called embryo adoption where people who go through IVF can donate extra embryos to families struggling with fertility. It's a really beautiful thing — to give an embryo a chance at life while helping a couple make a family. Anyways, best of luck in your parenting journey.
Ah Trace I don’t know ya but I just love reading you because 1) You’re a fabulous writer, and 2) I, too, am an ex-Mormon who has hung onto the best of that childhood. A gay high school best friend and his husband just brought home their first surrogate baby - so it is possible!
I wish you and your husband nothing but the best as you move towards parenthood. I’m about to send my twin boys to daycare for the first time and I can attest that, whatever form it comes in, it is a truly awesome experience. Good luck!
While I applaud Tracing Woodgrains for sharing his personal experience; and I also feel for him how distressing it must be to not have a child. It is a pain I share, having found myself unmarried in my 30s.
That said, I can’t allow sentimentality to allow me to accept his statements uncritically.
I have mixed feelings about surrogacy, one one hand, wonderful for those who can have kids. However, on the other hand, it turns wombs to a consumer product and a woman into simply a capitalistic vessel. As much as he says he wants the romanticism, what shocks me most about the gay family portraits is the absence. Absence of the women who carried the baby 9 months, risking their lives, to make these babies possible.
I see these family portraits, with two dads and kids and I ask myself, where is the mom who carried these children and kept him or her alive? And after birth, the mother doesn’t keep in contact with the family, she has no place of reverence or respect. It’s like she is a worker, paid for her labour, then abandoned.
The studies he cites on the impacts of surrogacy are few, and not numerous enough to show what would happen if surrogacy was more widespread. I would caution using the limited data we have to draw widespread conclusions.
That said, since he wants to have a child, why not use an agency? Romance is nonsense in this business, he is hiring a woman to carry a child that she will then have to disconnect from after birth. Why not go to an agency that can protect the woman’s rights? With women who have done it before? And can do it again?
I don’t believe him that it is because he is romantic, I worry that it is a money thing.
I’m sorry to be the skunk in this heartfelt piece. I wish him the best of luck.
Thank you for conveying your discomfort in a non hostile way — it has helped me understand this perspective better. I suppose my answer, as someone going through surrogacy, is that I don’t share your aesthetic distaste for “capitalism” or for transactions? I think it’s a beautiful thing that this woman is carrying my baby, with care and with a nurturing spirit, to give it to me; and I am giving her money which she will use for her own family, and in that way I’m nurturing them. We have met with her and her husband and established a friendly acquaintance, and we will share baby updates as well, although perhaps eventually we will fall out of touch. That’s okay. Not all friendly acquaintanceships (or friendships!) last forever.
I’m not religious at all but I like the Christian social media idea of “seasons of life” that I see thrown around. The surrogate walks with the baby for a season, and then that season ends.
I don’t really see pregnancy or childbirth as something you walk through for a “season”. You go through childbirth to become a mother. This seems to me as an aestheticizing something that isn’t really that beautiful; perhaps for you, who gets a child without the pain and risk of birth; but for her, who knows?
You mention that you are giving her money which she will use for her family, I don’t find anything beautiful in what is essentially a woman selling her womb so that she can provide for her family.
Also you never have prepared for the other big thing no one discusses; What if this woman dies during or after this pregnancy. A lot of pregnancies go wrong, now more than ever with our new abortion laws. Have you thought of the fact that your desire to have a child may inadvertently lead to the death of this woman? How would you compensate that or remember her? What if she develops eclampsia and then has a stroke or has a peripartum cardiomyopathy (as a result of this pregnancy) which severely decreases her quality of life? How would you compensate for that? Does your contract include provisions for this?
See there are a lot of difficult questions here that don’t fit on Instagram posts or Christianisms (that sort of very hand washy Christian sayings that obfuscate the reality underneath).
That’s why while I am not anti surrogacy I am unabashedly not pro it. It requires carefulness to do justice to the women and the family involved. Most people do not have that level of consideration.
Our surrogate did it because she loves being pregnant and wanted to help someone. As I mentioned in other comments here, her family is now our family. Sure it can go bad, but it can also be wonderful for all involved.
At the risk of sounding like a dick, why not adopt instead of surrogacy? I mean, you can provide an outstanding home for a kid. Since we are heading for a population collapse, I don't think the genes being passed on is a realistic expectation with coming demographic changes and the possibility of widespread population collapse. My wife and I made this tough decision, and it was a tough ego pill to swallow.
Why go thru the expensive, lengthy, and possibly error-prone business of in vitro fertilization, instead of just having sex with the surrogate? Not judging, just surprised.
That's the sort of thing that opens a lot of cans of worms, both legally and ethically in terms of potential complexity of the emotional dynamics. It happens, but it's rare (sensibly so, in my own estimation).
There is not a lot written about the experience of going through those steps and encountering those delays, but it was one of the most complicatedly painful experiences of my life. I'm not used to being helpless about things which matter to me as much as my children matter. You're in my thoughts and I am sure you will be incredible parents once the dice finally roll in your favor.
This is a wonderful piece and I wish you the best of luck in your journey. As a side note, I think the Cornell review on the effects of same-sex parenting is a mish-mash of studies with varying rigor.
Fortunately, I reviewed the highest quality set of studies on the effects of same-sex parenting and they provide no cause for concern 😄
https://open.substack.com/pub/unboxingpolitics/p/same-sex-parenting-examining-the?r=27wzgp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks! This is actually the one I was looking for and hoping to link; I couldn’t find it on a quick search but I’m glad to have it again. I’ll edit the post.
More children need to be brought into the world by stable, loving, two-parent families. I hope yours is among them, Trace.
I hope your family finds success and happiness. As a parent myself it's joyful to see new families forming. It's also a peverse delight knowing that you will encounter the most mind boggling situations with your child(ren) and find yourself questioning your sanity. At 3am I was just having this fun conversation with my daughter. " You're very smart and capable. I'm very proud of you. Go get your own water. I love you very much. Leave me alone."
I wanted to add something about adoption and foster care. I don't want to disuade people from helping those children but I do want people to go into the situation clear eyed. I used to teach children with emotional disturbance and I have seen foster parents and adoptive parents unprepared for the reality of potential challenges their child will have. Children may have been exposed to illegal drug use in the womb, their early life may have been abusive, they may have genetic predisposition to learning, mental, emotional disabilities. Agencies don't hide these things but you can't really prepare someone for this.
Good luck! You'll need it! One day in the darkest part of a pandemic you'll see your child move their mask to put their tongue on a shopping cart handle and be convinced your not going to make it.
We had twins 15 years ago via this same process. We found our surrogate through an agency. She is my hero, and her family has become cousins to ours. We travel interstate every year to be together. Maybe not "romantic" initially, but very much so now. Best wishes!
Great post. I wish you swift success with the process!
About a year and a half ago, my ex and I spent a day at an information session for the foster family to adoption route, which was the required first step in that process. A sinking feeling took both of us as we learned more and more about how this sort of thing is expected to go. Not just the fact that adoption is the less desired outcome, but also that there are just so many *heavy* requirements such as having to bring the child to supervised visits with their biological parents basically every week for about two years. We were told that it's highly preferable to have a car than rely on public transit because the children tend to be extremely emotional after such encounters. And various other things like that.
Not to mention the heavy bureaucratic and legal work that had to be completed at various points. We considered at least signing up for infant adoption, but the wait time for this in our city is 10 years (!) and it involves enough paperwork to get started that we put it off indefinitely. As for international adoption, it's now rare in general, and rarer for same-sex couples who are barred from most countries that still allow it. (As far as I could find info on this, which is very little, the only gay-couple-friendly countries for which there exists some sort of process in Quebec to adopt from were Colombia and... the United States.)
So yes, surrogacy is basically the only practical option for gay couples, and I wish that we made it more accessible instead of adding various bureaucratic layers to it, except insofar as the bureaucracy may reassure people who are still uncomfortable with the idea.
I think about this topic a lot, nowadays mostly with sadness, since it seems pretty unlikely that I'll ever have kids now that the process for me has reset all the way to "find a partner." Besides I don't really plan on optimizing to find someone who absolutely wants kids. So it would take a lot of things to go right for that to happen. At least I'm lucky enough to have two great nephews.
We had the same troubling experience attempting adoption. Gave up and did a surrogacy. The change from being judged and micromanaged in the pre-adoption process to being empowered to select an egg donor and a surrogate was astonishing. We got very lucky, but as usual, money = power.
I went through this and am here if I can ever share experiences or resources. Regarding the ethics issues, two notes. First, I've found that having a kid is so life-giving and generative that it offsets a lot of concerns about leftover embryos. Second, there's something called embryo adoption where people who go through IVF can donate extra embryos to families struggling with fertility. It's a really beautiful thing — to give an embryo a chance at life while helping a couple make a family. Anyways, best of luck in your parenting journey.
This is a beautiful story. Thanks for taking the time to share. And best of luck as you continue!
Ah Trace I don’t know ya but I just love reading you because 1) You’re a fabulous writer, and 2) I, too, am an ex-Mormon who has hung onto the best of that childhood. A gay high school best friend and his husband just brought home their first surrogate baby - so it is possible!
I wish you and your husband nothing but the best as you move towards parenthood. I’m about to send my twin boys to daycare for the first time and I can attest that, whatever form it comes in, it is a truly awesome experience. Good luck!
While I applaud Tracing Woodgrains for sharing his personal experience; and I also feel for him how distressing it must be to not have a child. It is a pain I share, having found myself unmarried in my 30s.
That said, I can’t allow sentimentality to allow me to accept his statements uncritically.
I have mixed feelings about surrogacy, one one hand, wonderful for those who can have kids. However, on the other hand, it turns wombs to a consumer product and a woman into simply a capitalistic vessel. As much as he says he wants the romanticism, what shocks me most about the gay family portraits is the absence. Absence of the women who carried the baby 9 months, risking their lives, to make these babies possible.
I see these family portraits, with two dads and kids and I ask myself, where is the mom who carried these children and kept him or her alive? And after birth, the mother doesn’t keep in contact with the family, she has no place of reverence or respect. It’s like she is a worker, paid for her labour, then abandoned.
The studies he cites on the impacts of surrogacy are few, and not numerous enough to show what would happen if surrogacy was more widespread. I would caution using the limited data we have to draw widespread conclusions.
That said, since he wants to have a child, why not use an agency? Romance is nonsense in this business, he is hiring a woman to carry a child that she will then have to disconnect from after birth. Why not go to an agency that can protect the woman’s rights? With women who have done it before? And can do it again?
I don’t believe him that it is because he is romantic, I worry that it is a money thing.
I’m sorry to be the skunk in this heartfelt piece. I wish him the best of luck.
Thank you for conveying your discomfort in a non hostile way — it has helped me understand this perspective better. I suppose my answer, as someone going through surrogacy, is that I don’t share your aesthetic distaste for “capitalism” or for transactions? I think it’s a beautiful thing that this woman is carrying my baby, with care and with a nurturing spirit, to give it to me; and I am giving her money which she will use for her own family, and in that way I’m nurturing them. We have met with her and her husband and established a friendly acquaintance, and we will share baby updates as well, although perhaps eventually we will fall out of touch. That’s okay. Not all friendly acquaintanceships (or friendships!) last forever.
I’m not religious at all but I like the Christian social media idea of “seasons of life” that I see thrown around. The surrogate walks with the baby for a season, and then that season ends.
I don’t really see pregnancy or childbirth as something you walk through for a “season”. You go through childbirth to become a mother. This seems to me as an aestheticizing something that isn’t really that beautiful; perhaps for you, who gets a child without the pain and risk of birth; but for her, who knows?
You mention that you are giving her money which she will use for her family, I don’t find anything beautiful in what is essentially a woman selling her womb so that she can provide for her family.
Also you never have prepared for the other big thing no one discusses; What if this woman dies during or after this pregnancy. A lot of pregnancies go wrong, now more than ever with our new abortion laws. Have you thought of the fact that your desire to have a child may inadvertently lead to the death of this woman? How would you compensate that or remember her? What if she develops eclampsia and then has a stroke or has a peripartum cardiomyopathy (as a result of this pregnancy) which severely decreases her quality of life? How would you compensate for that? Does your contract include provisions for this?
See there are a lot of difficult questions here that don’t fit on Instagram posts or Christianisms (that sort of very hand washy Christian sayings that obfuscate the reality underneath).
That’s why while I am not anti surrogacy I am unabashedly not pro it. It requires carefulness to do justice to the women and the family involved. Most people do not have that level of consideration.
This should not be mainstreamed.
Our surrogate did it because she loves being pregnant and wanted to help someone. As I mentioned in other comments here, her family is now our family. Sure it can go bad, but it can also be wonderful for all involved.
I am confused. You write that you already have a woman serving as a surrogate. Why are you looking for another?
At the risk of sounding like a dick, why not adopt instead of surrogacy? I mean, you can provide an outstanding home for a kid. Since we are heading for a population collapse, I don't think the genes being passed on is a realistic expectation with coming demographic changes and the possibility of widespread population collapse. My wife and I made this tough decision, and it was a tough ego pill to swallow.
Why go thru the expensive, lengthy, and possibly error-prone business of in vitro fertilization, instead of just having sex with the surrogate? Not judging, just surprised.
That's the sort of thing that opens a lot of cans of worms, both legally and ethically in terms of potential complexity of the emotional dynamics. It happens, but it's rare (sensibly so, in my own estimation).
> to notice what everyone other teenage boy
typo
Thanks! Edited.
I wish you and your family the best of luck!