-How did you and your Partner meet?
Dylan and I met through mutual friends while in Sydney Australia back in 2004 when we were both visiting Sydney during the Mardi Gras festival.
-Please describe your journey to starting a family.
It’s been a long time, we started our journey back in 2009, when we saw a TV program on surrogacy for same-sex couples who had success via India. I have (Luc) always wanted to be a dad from an early age but just thought it was never possible being a gay male, and more so being in NZ.
We started looking into surrogacy and adoption options in NZ but soon identified it was a very difficult process with no real precedents. After looking into options, we identified that Sydney Australia had better options so we packed up our lives and moves to Australia so that we could start the surrogacy process.
After about 12 in Australia, we found a lady who offered to be a surrogate for us so after about 12mths we had everything ready to go.
We created 3 embryos, implanted 1 which did not take and then unfortunately our 2nd & 3rd embryos didn’t survive the thawing process, so after a few years, we had no pregnancy.
It hit us hard, so we took 12 months to regroup and after another 12 months we found another surrogate. Unfortunately, after completing all the contracts, counseling etc… and another 12 months we found that our surrogate was unable to carry a baby due to some health issues.
As our second surrogate’s health issues became clear, we started to look at other options, and this is what lead us to Hawaii surrogacy.
-How did you find The Fertility Institute of Hawaii? Who was your Physician?
We googled international surrogacy and came across Hawaii Surrogacy who then connected us up with FIH. 3mths after our initial contact with Hawaii Surrogacy, we signed with them and then quickly moved through the process with FIH.
Our physician has been Dr. Karmon and she is also helping to create our second child now.
-Describe your experience at FIH (w/ physician, the staff, and/or the process)?
We have found the experience with FIH to be amazing, from our first meeting right to this day the information we get is fantastic. Whenever a question comes to mind we send it off and within 24hrs we get a response which is so reassuring, especially as we are so far away and we can’t just pick up the phone and call.
-What were some of the challenges of your family-building journey?
For us, we have had many challenges, but once we went international it seemed to become easier, as we had a group of people helping us along the way, telling us what we need to do, next steps but most importantly reassuring us it will happen it’s just going to take time.
Before we went international it was very hard, as we said earlier NZ was to hard so we moved away from our friends and family as Australia seemed to have a better process, but little did we know it was going to be hard there as well, just a different kind of hard.
Each state in Australia has different laws and the state we moved to didn’t allow for commercial surrogacy (which we didn’t realize until after we had moved). This meant that we had to manage the entire process end to end including finding a specialized lawyer that was accredited in surrogacy legislation, our own egg donor, surrogate, fertility clinic including spearheading the updates of their internal clinic procedures via their internal board to facilitate same-sex IVF processes etc.
-What advice can you give anyone wanting to start a family?
Just keep at it, as it will happen, from the start of our journey to finally having our son it was 10yrs, would we change what we have done, know then what we know now? Absolutely, but becoming Dad’s is so rewarding and is the best thing ever.
🤙Would you like to be part of our Patient Journey Project? Please contact our Chief Marketing Officer Robyn by email at robyn@armghawaii.com or call our office at 808-545-2800. Helping to Create New Beginnings…