My Perspective

It's been over a week since we decided to blog / document our rather unconventional journey to parenthood, and since then I have been struggling to write my first post.

I have decided that the best thing to do first would be to document how I currently feel about what lies ahead.

My friends and family know that having a child was not always something I wanted to do. I’m not good with kids and much like our dog, Digby, they scare me a little. But that being said, when I met Lou I knew that eventually I would like to start a family with her. Raise kids with her. Build a home with her.

When we found out for certain a few months back that having children “naturally” wasn’t going to work and that the risks associated with IVF were simply too great it was extremely hard. To see the anguish in my Wife’s eyes was devastating. So I knew we had to find a solution at any cost.

Surrogacy was never something I had really thought about, it was something for celebrities, but now it looked like our only realistic chance of having a baby.

I tend to look at things a little more coldly (logically) than my wife does, so the first thing I was worried about was money, could be really afford it.

So I did what any good engineer would do, I built a model. Lou and I (mainly Lou if i'm honest) looked at various clinics and how the payment schedules worked, hidden costs, risks etc and started to develop a plan that would allow us to achieve our goals without risking our financial future.

We wanted to go for a “guaranteed” package which means that even if we don’t succeed on the first attempt we can continue to try until we eventually get a baby, to me this is a no-brainer, the risk of losing $40k with nothing to show at the end of it simply doesn’t bear thinking about.

Guaranteed plans cost around $60k (£45k) and payment is front loaded into the first 2 months of the process, but they also cover a significant amount of the costs you might not have thought about such as accommodation in the host country while you wait for a passport for your baby.

With the model done, I am confident that we have a plan to achieve what we want, even if it won’t be easy. Now we just need to find a donor and select a surrogate (and 100 other things) before we can pull the trigger and get this process started.

I am extremely excited, nervous, terrified and happy to start this journey and I couldn’t hope to have a better partner to start it with.