My darling child,
I hesitate to even write this part of Your Story because I want to protect you from knowing that there are people out there who don't understand our family. I wish I didn't have to warn you that you may come across people who will think hateful thoughts or use harmful words in order to make you feel inferior. I wish I didn't have to teach you that there will be people in this world who tell you that you cannot, even though you can. I wish that the 'bad guys' didn't exist and that you never come across one, but they do and you probably will, especially as the world gets closer and closer to realizing equality.
Sometimes though, the bad guys creating adversity is what makes the 'Happily Ever After' that much sweeter. Think about it - what would 101 Dalmations have been without a Cruella De Vil? Batman without a Joker? Peter Pan without a Captain Hook? Harry Potter without a Lord Voldemort? Your Story is entirely too great to not have come across a bad guy or two along the way.
After your Daddy and I emailed three different IVF doctors about setting up a consultation to discuss conceiving you through an Egg Donor and Gestational Surrogate, we grew more excited with each passing moment. We were finally embarking on the adventure that would lead to you. We still had no real idea of what lay ahead, but we knew we were already closer than we'd ever been.
We finally heard back from two of the doctors we emailed, and it was not good news. I didn't save the emails, though I now wish I had, but they both looked very similar to this.
Dear Mr. And Mr. Deriso,
Thank you for inquiring about our services. We regret to inform you that the arrangement you seek is not allowed by the state of Texas and cannot be performed by a licensed physician. Have a nice day.
Sincerely,
The Bad Guys
To say that we were crushed would be an understatement. I don't think I'll ever forget that afternoon or that feeling of devastation for as I long as I live. Nowhere had we read that gestational surrogacy was not allowed in Texas or that gay couples were barred from using it as a means to start a family. Then again, we'd also never found a single story showing this *was* a possibility so it was entirely possible that I was wrong. Your Daddy and I sat on opposite ends of the couch and for the first time, said out loud one of our biggest fears. What if we never get to be parents?
The rest of that day was a quiet one. Every now and then, one of us would half heartedly suggest researching other options such as going to another state, but we both knew that our financial barriers could never allow it. We went to bed that night with heavy hearts, missing someone we had never even met.
When we woke the next day, we saw that we had finally heard from the third doctor. To our great surprise and confusion, he said he'd be happy to work with us and to call his office for a consult. But I thought this wasn't allowed in Texas? I decided to stop taking someone's word for it and do more research for myself. So your Pappy did what he does best - he Googled it.
It turned out that we had been lied to. Whether it was simply a case of misinformation or discrimination, we'll never really know, but I suspect it was the latter. I highly doubt that someone with enough intelligence to obtain a medical license and perform skilled operations was simply ignorant to the laws that are directed at their profession.
Having beaten our first bad guy and booked our first consultation, your Daddy and I were back on our journey. We were cautiously optimistic, but more determined than ever to bring you home.
We love you to the Moon and back,
Pappy and Daddy
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Why We Chose Gestational Surrogacy
My darling child,
One of the most important reasons I've always known your Daddy was the one for me was because he was just as passionate about having a family as I was. We didn't know how or when, but we knew we were willing to do whatever it took to bring you home. After dreaming you up in our heads for years - your gender, your name, what you'd look like, which one of us you'd be like - it was time to get to work.
There are only two ways for two daddies to have a baby in Texas, either through adoption or gestational surrogacy (traditional surrogacy, where a surrogate carries a baby made with her own egg, is not something most doctors will help with because the law cannot protect you). Adopting was a very scary thought. Just the thought of potentially waiting years to be matched with our child was more than I could bear. I did a lot of research trying to figure out if adoption was right for our family, but in the end, there were just entirely too many variables that were out of our control. What if people thought we were too young? What if people didn't think that two daddies could raise a baby? While I never give too much thought to what others think (and neither should you!), knowing that people and their opinions could keep me from you made me think really hard about how to find you.
The reason gestational surrogacy was not the first place we started was due to one very large hurdle - money. I hate to break it to you kiddo, but your Pappy and Daddy are just regular ol' middle class people. All I've ever heard about that process was that it would cost well over $100,000. You could have said $3,000,000 and for us, it would have made no difference - either way, it was more money than we'll probably ever have in our bank account at one time. But just like with adoption, I decided to do some research anyway.
I started with researching IVF. It turns out that Houston is a great place to live if you're needing IVF to help begin your family. There are many renowned doctors in the city that can help, and to keep themselves competitive, some of them offer some fairly substantial pricing incentives. We even found doctors that only charge $8,500 for the first round! (We would later find out that this didnt include many other procedures that have to take place beforehand, but we'll save that for a later date). Even though this was still a lot of money, it was at least believable that we could come up with it. But before we could even book a consultation with a doctor, we knew that we were missing two very important things - an Egg Donor and a Gestational Surrogate.
We started looking into some online resources for finding a donor and surrogate and quickly learned that this is where the unbelievable pricetags come into play. The amount of money that these agencies charge to help people who need it is just insane! Don't get me wrong - surrogates themselves deserve every penny of compensation and more paid to them, but we learned that surrogates often don't even see half of what is paid to the agency. How is that even legal?! At any rate, we learned quickly that an agency was out of our reach.
Your daddies have a friend that told us for many years that if we ever needed her, she would love to carry our baby for us. But could we really ask a friend to do that? We would compensate her as much as we possibly could, but would our offer be offensive? We decided we would discuss it with her and without hesitation, she agreed! We were ecstatic!!! Maybe this was a possibility after all! (We would later find out that this friend was unable to help us, but it gave us enough hope to book a consultation.)
That left only one detail left to tend to - a donor. This is one of my favorite parts of Your Story. So much so, it deserves its own chapter. Stay tuned!
With both a donor and surrogate in mind, we sent an email to three different local doctors to get a feel for who we wanted to have our first consultation with. Even though we knew we still had a very long way to go, we could already nearly feel you wrapped so tightly in our arms.
We love you to the Moon and back,
Pappy and Daddy
One of the most important reasons I've always known your Daddy was the one for me was because he was just as passionate about having a family as I was. We didn't know how or when, but we knew we were willing to do whatever it took to bring you home. After dreaming you up in our heads for years - your gender, your name, what you'd look like, which one of us you'd be like - it was time to get to work.
There are only two ways for two daddies to have a baby in Texas, either through adoption or gestational surrogacy (traditional surrogacy, where a surrogate carries a baby made with her own egg, is not something most doctors will help with because the law cannot protect you). Adopting was a very scary thought. Just the thought of potentially waiting years to be matched with our child was more than I could bear. I did a lot of research trying to figure out if adoption was right for our family, but in the end, there were just entirely too many variables that were out of our control. What if people thought we were too young? What if people didn't think that two daddies could raise a baby? While I never give too much thought to what others think (and neither should you!), knowing that people and their opinions could keep me from you made me think really hard about how to find you.
The reason gestational surrogacy was not the first place we started was due to one very large hurdle - money. I hate to break it to you kiddo, but your Pappy and Daddy are just regular ol' middle class people. All I've ever heard about that process was that it would cost well over $100,000. You could have said $3,000,000 and for us, it would have made no difference - either way, it was more money than we'll probably ever have in our bank account at one time. But just like with adoption, I decided to do some research anyway.
I started with researching IVF. It turns out that Houston is a great place to live if you're needing IVF to help begin your family. There are many renowned doctors in the city that can help, and to keep themselves competitive, some of them offer some fairly substantial pricing incentives. We even found doctors that only charge $8,500 for the first round! (We would later find out that this didnt include many other procedures that have to take place beforehand, but we'll save that for a later date). Even though this was still a lot of money, it was at least believable that we could come up with it. But before we could even book a consultation with a doctor, we knew that we were missing two very important things - an Egg Donor and a Gestational Surrogate.
We started looking into some online resources for finding a donor and surrogate and quickly learned that this is where the unbelievable pricetags come into play. The amount of money that these agencies charge to help people who need it is just insane! Don't get me wrong - surrogates themselves deserve every penny of compensation and more paid to them, but we learned that surrogates often don't even see half of what is paid to the agency. How is that even legal?! At any rate, we learned quickly that an agency was out of our reach.
Your daddies have a friend that told us for many years that if we ever needed her, she would love to carry our baby for us. But could we really ask a friend to do that? We would compensate her as much as we possibly could, but would our offer be offensive? We decided we would discuss it with her and without hesitation, she agreed! We were ecstatic!!! Maybe this was a possibility after all! (We would later find out that this friend was unable to help us, but it gave us enough hope to book a consultation.)
That left only one detail left to tend to - a donor. This is one of my favorite parts of Your Story. So much so, it deserves its own chapter. Stay tuned!
With both a donor and surrogate in mind, we sent an email to three different local doctors to get a feel for who we wanted to have our first consultation with. Even though we knew we still had a very long way to go, we could already nearly feel you wrapped so tightly in our arms.
We love you to the Moon and back,
Pappy and Daddy
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
The Beginning
My darling child,
You have yet to be conceived, but you have already made your Pappy and Daddy the happiest and proudest fathers on the face of the earth. There are so many wonderful and good people waiting patiently to meet you and we long for the day that God finally brings you home and completes our family.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how your Daddy and I will tell you the story of how you came to be. At first, I thought we'd read you this book about how two male penguins became the daddies of a little girl penguin to show you how families can be different. I wanted to show you that some families have a Mommy and a Daddy, some have only a Mommy *or* Daddy, some have two Mommies, and some families, ones like yours, have two Daddies. But that wasn't quite good enough. Your Story is much more unique than that.
So then I thought we would create your own personalized children's book. We would tell you about how your Daddy and I met and fell in love when we were just kids ourselves. We'd tell you about how we got married ten years later and immediately started dreaming of all the ways to bring you home. We would tell you that we decided to use surrogacy and then tell you about the two brave and beautiful women who we chose to be your Egg Donor and Gestational Surrogate. The last page would be the day you were born and it would conclude the same way every great story does - "And they lived happily ever after." I knew I was on the right track, but something still wasn't quite right. Your Story is much more special than that.
Tonight, as I was aimlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed this article making its rounds. I saw that friends and strangers were disheartened by what happened in this one case and I was afraid that they might be inclined to believe that their dreams of starting a family may never come to fruition, especially if they remain a resident of the great state of Texas. The comments made me very sad and all I wanted to do was reach out to every last one of them and comfort them and tell them that it is absolutely possible and to not lose Faith. But how? How could I possibly reach out to all of the people who would read this article and think, "What if I never become a parent?"
And that's when it hit me. Your Story, the story of how you came to be, has the power to give someone the Faith they need to keep their dreams alive. Your Story is unique enough to show that love is what makes a family, no matter the state you live in or its current laws. Your Story is special enough to prove that conceiving via gestational surrogacy does not have to cost anywhere near the $100,000+ that the Internet claims it will (Lord knows if it had, it'd have taken me and Daddy MUCH, MUCH longer to get here!).
So, my darling child, this is Your Story. I hope that when we are through, you know just how badly you were wanted and will see the extraordinary lengths we've traveled to bring you home. I also hope that by sharing Your Story for all to see, you can inspire and help others achieve their "Happily Ever Afters."
We love you to the Moon and back,
Pappy and Daddy
You have yet to be conceived, but you have already made your Pappy and Daddy the happiest and proudest fathers on the face of the earth. There are so many wonderful and good people waiting patiently to meet you and we long for the day that God finally brings you home and completes our family.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how your Daddy and I will tell you the story of how you came to be. At first, I thought we'd read you this book about how two male penguins became the daddies of a little girl penguin to show you how families can be different. I wanted to show you that some families have a Mommy and a Daddy, some have only a Mommy *or* Daddy, some have two Mommies, and some families, ones like yours, have two Daddies. But that wasn't quite good enough. Your Story is much more unique than that.
So then I thought we would create your own personalized children's book. We would tell you about how your Daddy and I met and fell in love when we were just kids ourselves. We'd tell you about how we got married ten years later and immediately started dreaming of all the ways to bring you home. We would tell you that we decided to use surrogacy and then tell you about the two brave and beautiful women who we chose to be your Egg Donor and Gestational Surrogate. The last page would be the day you were born and it would conclude the same way every great story does - "And they lived happily ever after." I knew I was on the right track, but something still wasn't quite right. Your Story is much more special than that.
Tonight, as I was aimlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed this article making its rounds. I saw that friends and strangers were disheartened by what happened in this one case and I was afraid that they might be inclined to believe that their dreams of starting a family may never come to fruition, especially if they remain a resident of the great state of Texas. The comments made me very sad and all I wanted to do was reach out to every last one of them and comfort them and tell them that it is absolutely possible and to not lose Faith. But how? How could I possibly reach out to all of the people who would read this article and think, "What if I never become a parent?"
And that's when it hit me. Your Story, the story of how you came to be, has the power to give someone the Faith they need to keep their dreams alive. Your Story is unique enough to show that love is what makes a family, no matter the state you live in or its current laws. Your Story is special enough to prove that conceiving via gestational surrogacy does not have to cost anywhere near the $100,000+ that the Internet claims it will (Lord knows if it had, it'd have taken me and Daddy MUCH, MUCH longer to get here!).
So, my darling child, this is Your Story. I hope that when we are through, you know just how badly you were wanted and will see the extraordinary lengths we've traveled to bring you home. I also hope that by sharing Your Story for all to see, you can inspire and help others achieve their "Happily Ever Afters."
We love you to the Moon and back,
Pappy and Daddy
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