In my research into surrogacy, it was really hard to find resources about surrogacy from a surrogate’s perspective, and especially with a New Zealand slant. The fertility clinics have great resources about how to approach surrogacy as intending parents but the experiences and details from the surrogate point of view are really light. There are a few stories out there, but no real collection of resources for a surrogate to use as part of advocating for themselves and having an idea of what they’re committing themselves to.
As I mentioned in a previous post, there are two flavours of surrogacy: traditional and gestational; I’m the gestational kind. The advantage to a traditional surrogacy is that you don’t necessarily need to involve a fertility clinic in the process. It’s probably good if you do at least get everyone checked over (both from a general / reproductive health perspective and from a random STI perspective).
Gestational surrogacy needs the assistance of Science to make it all work. This means spending time with the lovely folks at a fertility clinic. It also means a paperwork laden trip to ECART (aka The Ethics Committee) to gain approval. Their job in the process is to ensure that the birth mother, the intending parents, the child that’s the hopeful result, and all other family members involved are well considered and taken care of; that everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are; that everyone is aware of the risks of the process from physical, mental and legal points of view.
In the case of surrogacy, documentation from lawyers (for both the birth mother and the intending parents), documentation from counsellors (for everyone involved), and documentation from doctors (for everyone involved) are required. Additionally, because of how the laws in NZ are structured, pre-screening and approval in principle to adopt any resulting child needs to be included from Child Youth and Family (CYF) (the NZ children protection agency).
And so, our particular journey began with the intending parents making contact with Fertility Associates in Wellington to discuss how we could proceed. When they started the journey with their first child, it wasn’t possible for a single man or a gay couple to get to the Ethics Committee (ECART). The guidelines required an Intending Mother who had a reason for not being able to carry a baby. As of December 16, 2013, following a consultation process, new guidelines for ECART were published by ACART which made it possible for single men and male couples to apply. Side note, according to our clinic, we’re apparently the first male couple to successfully make it this far.
Next up was a flurry of appointments. I had an appointment with one of the doctors at Fertility Associates to talk about my health and to have a look at me. Because they require women over 45 to see an additional specialist for further tests and discussion of the risk factors for a geriatric pregnancy, we decided that since I was nearly there already we might as well go ahead and get that out of the way. Couldn’t hurt our application, anyway. So, doctor number 2 was scheduled.
In addition to checking my physical health, my mental health was also assessed. I had two counselling appointments to discuss the process, what I might be feeling, what I might be thinking, what I should be thinking that I hadn’t thought about, and any questions I might have. They also gave me (and the intending parents) some questions that we could use to test our own feelings as well as serve as prompts for discussion of the harder issues like what if there are problems with the fetus? Or problems with my health? They sparked a great conversation over lunch with the dads - fortunately for us, we were all on the same page for all of the issues raised.
Finally, there was the legal aspect. I met with a lawyer to discuss the legalities of the whole process. It was her job to make sure that I understood the legal risks I was taking on. Because there are no surrogacy specific laws, until I have consented to the adoption the baby is considered my child. It will be my name (and my partner’s if I had one) on the birth certificate. I could, in theory, change my mind at any point up to signing consent and this is my baby. The intending parents could, in theory, change their mind and decide that they don’t actually want a baby after all and this baby would be mine. There are also inheritance issues to consider should they not complete the adoption. All things that I needed to be made aware of. It’s a lot of risk.
CYF didn’t need to talk to me as part of this initial data gathering phase. They met with the intending parents and their daughter to assess whether they were in a good position to take on another child. They provided a letter to indicate that they’re happy for them to adopt again so we were a go from that perspective.
In addition to all of the doctors and counsellors and lawyers I saw, the intending parents each had medical assessments, counselling and met with a lawyer. The egg donor also had counselling. Then we had one gigantic group counselling session where we talked about all the things we had been talking about: health risks, what-ifs, legal risks, guardianship.
Then we were done. The fertility clinic produced the report for ECART. I saw the bits relating to me, along with the joint counselling report. They did an amazing job. In the minutes from the ethics committee, they commended the counsellors for the completeness of their report as it enabled them to come to their decision despite any concerns they had as it was clear we had talked about those things and had plans in place. I’m also thankful to them. They’re wonderful people.
And then we started the waiting game again. Our paperwork was submitted in April for the early May committee meeting. Then it would take about 3 weeks to hear whether we could proceed. I really suck at waiting …