A Gay Couples Journey Through Surrogacy

A deeply personal account of the trials and tribulations of the surrogacy journey! Surrogacy’s been coldly and unjustifiably called “baby buying” and “baby selling” and many states have banned it. But those insensitive terms do not tell the inspiring tale of a couple fiercely wanting to become parents. A Gay Couple’s Experience with Surrogacy: Intended Fathers is the moving true story of a gay couple’s decision to have their child through a surrogate mother. With humor and emotion, the author traces their intense experience from the initial decision to have a child through surrogacy on through the entire pregnancy and birth. A Gay Couple's Journey Through Surrogacy chronicles this couple’s no-holds-barred account of the emotional toll, the legal matters, the financial concerns, and the ultimate fulfillment of parenting a child. A Gay Couple's Journey Through Surrogacy reveals the author’s answers to these questions: why surrogacy over adoption? which type of surrogacy—traditional or gestational? what were the issues when choosing a surrogate? how much does surrogacy cost? what living expenses are included in the cost? what are the emotional and financial reasons that surrogates choose to bear another’s child? what are the pitfalls in choosing surrogacy? what are the legal issues—what to beware and what to consider An excerpt: Before I knew it, I was writing an ad of my own, and I actually posted it. David, of course, had no idea what I was up to. The ad read: “We’re a gay couple in New York that just celebrated our fourteenth anniversary and we’ve decided to extend our family. We’re looking for someone close by and even have a separate apartment available if needed.” Nice, huh? Could it be just a little bit more. . . vague? Could my ad have lacked a little more personality? Sure, have our baby and move right in while you’re doing it! Who the hell would respond to that? I wasn’t even sure after reading it myself that it made any sense. But what should I have said? What could I have said? I scrambled to find a way to delete it, but couldn’t. A Gay Couple's Journey Through Surrogacy is a touching memoir that reveals the challenges that face gay and lesbian couples who may be considering either adoption or surrogacy.

The LGBT Journey to Parenthood is unique in that it offers useful and practical information that will help in the very early stages of family planning. These inspirational first-hand accounts provide key insights and the critical information needed to make informed decisions for successfully traveling the complex road to parenthood. Author, activist and father, Eric Rosswood guides and helps prospective LGBT parents to weigh their options and learn which path would be best for their family. Rosswood also shares the experiences and wisdom of others who have already been through the journey. The LGBT Journey to Parenthood is divided into five sections: adoption, surrogacy, foster care, assisted reproduction and co-parenting. Each section includes an overview, a list of pros and challenges for readers to consider, personal stories from parents who have been through the process and closes with a list of questions for couples to ask themselves. Same-sex couples are faced with many different options when choosing to have children today. The LGBT Journey to Parenthood will serve as an informative and essential handbook for couples navigating their own amazing path to parenthood.

This book is a fascinating personal story that describes from start to finish the journey of a couple based in the U.K. undertaking IVF and surrogacy in the U.S. Written as their story it is also a detailed step by step guide that aims to help those starting out on the road to parenthood via surrogacy. Each chapter is a different step of that journey and it gives the reader an incredibly detailed insight into what to expect along the way. The chapters end with very practical questions and tips that the reader should be asking. This book raises pertinent questions targeted specifically for intended parents to analyse what should be done and when. In highlighting certain issues it enables those embarking on the surrogacy journey to become much more informed about the issues that will come up. Although this book is about two men creating their family in the U.S it actually looks at the thought process and decisions required around IVF and surrogacy. It has been written in a way that anyone considering surrogacy can learn more about the journey and hopefully can gain insights into what to expect. It has been written so that the chapters are virtually stand-alone; if one part is not relevant it can be skipped and the next chapter read. The aims of the book are to demystify surrogacy and to simplify the decision making involved at every step. But the real goal of this book is to help others have a single unbiased reference guide on the whole IVF and surrogacy process.

If you are thinking of becoming a gay dad ─ or if you are already a gay dad ─ this book is for you! Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. In 2016, The Chicago Tribune reported that 10 to 20 percent of donor eggs went to gay men expanding their families via surrogacy, and in many places the numbers were up 50 percent from the previous five years. Gay parenting: Having a kid is like coming out all over again, on a daily basis, especial if you have an infant. Was coming out stressful for you? It’s about to get more intense and you will have a child watching your every move and listening to your every word. If you stutter or pause, they may pick up on your discomfort and could start to feel like something is wrong about their family unit. The Ultimate Guide For Gay Dads is jam packed with parenting tips and advice to help you build confidence and become the awesome gay dad you were meant to be! How Is This Parenting Guide Different From Others? Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads. It covers topics like how to find LGBT friendly pediatricians, how to find LGBT friendly schools, how to childproof your home with style, how to answer awkward and prying questions about your family from strangers, examples for what two-dad families can do on Mother’s Day, and much more. The book also includes parenting tips and advice from pediatricians, school educators, lawyers, and other same-sex parents. Top LGBT parenting expert: Bestselling author Eric Rosswood covers every aspect of fatherhood for gay men in this essential guide to growing your family in the post-DOMA era. He is a major influencer on social media with over 100,000 followers on Twitter alone, as well as thousands on other platforms. Exploring LGBTQ issues: Rosswood is an in-demand authority and commentator on LGBTQ issues, including civil rights, parenting, marriage and politics. The author has been featured in major media including The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, CBS News, The Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Yahoo! News, AOL News, NY Daily News, IB Times, and regional LGBTQ press.

This comprehensive text makes an important contribution to the study of surrogacy, developing a novel theoretical framework through which to understand the broader social contexts as well as individual decisions at play within surrogacy arrangements. Drawing on empirical research conducted by the authors and supplemented by secondary analyses of media, legislative and public accounts of surrogacy, the book engages with the key stakeholders involved in the practice of surrogacy. Specifically, it canvases the standpoints of women who act as surrogates, intending parents who commission surrogacy arrangements, children born through surrogacy, clinics that facilitate the arrangements, and politicians and journalists who engage with the topic. Through a focus on capitalism as a means of orientating ourselves to the topic of surrogacy, the book highlights the vulnerabilities that potentially arise in the context of surrogacy, as well as the claims to agency invoked by some parties in order to mitigate vulnerability. In so doing, the book demonstrates that the psychology of surrogacy must be broadly understood as an orientation to particular ways of thinking about children, reproduction and economies of labour.

The complexity of Surrogacy is arguably made even more so by the very nature of it being a decision many families reach due to the greatest of emotional challenges. There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong, but also the greatest of happy outcomes for so many families too. As a specialist surrogacy lawyer and a surrogate in 2018, Sarah Jefford has observed many surrogacy teams both flourish and struggle, and that has led to this very important book. In order to maximise every potential for things to go well for both intended parents and surrogate mothers, we need to make informed decisions that protect the interests of everyone involved, but most importantly that are in the best interests of the children - those who are already here, and those who will be in the future. If you want to know answers to the questions of how does surrogacy work, and the surrogate mother process, then this book will be your best place to start. But keep it handy throughout the entire process so that as your journey progresses, you will be able to understand the many aspects of surrogate pregnancy, intended parents roles, and each other's vital roles in creating a family together.

Having a baby to save a marriage—it’s the oldest of clichés. But what if the marriage at risk is a gay one, and having a baby involves a surrogate mother? Pat Faunce is a faltering romantic, a former poetry major who now writes textbooks. A decade into his relationship with Stu, an airline pilot from a fraught Jewish family, he fears he’s losing Stu to other men—and losing himself in their “no rules” arrangement. Yearning for a baby and a deeper commitment, he pressures Stu to move from Manhattan to Cape Cod, to the cottage where Pat spent boyhood summers. As they struggle to adjust to their new life, they enlist a surrogate: Debora, a charismatic Brazilian immigrant, married to Danny, an American carpenter. Gradually, Pat and Debora bond, drawn together by the logistics of getting pregnant and away from their spouses. Pat gets caught between loyalties—to Stu and his family, to Debora, to his own potent desires—and wonders: is he fit to be a father? In one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy, Michael Lowenthal writes passionately about marriages and mistakes, loyalty and betrayal, and about how our drive to create families can complicate the ones we already have. The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new “family values.”

Surrogacy presents particularly complex questions for human rights law and theory. This book provides a unique and insightful examination into the underexplored issues of how domestic and international law is responding to the sharp increase in the use of surrogacy. The work presents critical analysis of the current regulation of surrogacy via domestic law in Australia, India and the USA, and international law in the form of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Including a wide range of views from academics and practitioners around the world, the contributors consider what could be done to further protect the rights of all persons involved in surrogacy arrangements. This in-depth study of the international and domestic law governing surrogacy provides much needed scholarly knowledge of this contemporary phenomenon, along with recommendations for improvement, regulation and reform. The book will be of great importance to human rights and legal scholars, and well as practitioners in this field.

The National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon explores the consequences of extreme personal differences between parents and children, describing his own experiences as a gay child of straight parents while evaluating the circumstances of people affected by physical, developmental or cultural factors that divide families. 150,000 first printing.

There has never been a way for gay couples to gather their thoughts and plans around a surrogacy journey... until now. Think of this as your guide through the complicated world of surrogacy. Insightfully organized and carefully scrutinized by experts, this journal could only have been written by one who has experienced the process firsthand. Combining the practical with the emotional, Dave Leong aims to help you communicate as a couple while planning for the most incredible project you will ever undertake. Knowing that everybody learns, works and plans differently, the information and journaling pages are presented in a range of formats to keep you on track, engaged and orderly. By distilling his own journey with his husband into practical, measured and realistic steps, Dave hopes to show prospective parents-to-be one thing: It's possible to have a child through surrogacy. It's time to fill in the blank line on that front cover. It's finally time to write your own story. To find out about other inclusive books such as versions of this journal that are inclusive of other minorities, children's fiction and young adult series, please visit http: //www.supercreative.global/books Features: Self-customizable front cover Premium hardcover edition with 70lb pure white paper Expertly-researched basics guides and conversation prompts Pages for your journaling style: Mental health check ins Achievement pages Photos and memories Questionnaires Prompted and guided lined pages Additional blank pages