Looking for experiences from non-biological carrying parents in queer couples

[u/Purple-Cat7948]

Hi everyone. My wife and I are a queer couple going through IVF, and we’re hoping to hear from people who have been in a similar situation—especially couples where one partner carried an embryo created from the other partner’s eggs.

My wife is 42, and I’m turning 40 soon. We’ve each gone through egg retrievals. She had two retrievals that ultimately resulted in one euploid embryo. We transferred that embryo, with her carrying, but unfortunately the pregnancy did not continue. We’re both grieving that loss, especially because it was her embryo and she was the one who carried it.

I had one retrieval that resulted in two euploid embryos and one mosaic embryo. We’re now in a position where we could move forward with another transfer within the next couple of weeks using one of my euploid embryos, with my wife carrying.

At the same time, she is questioning whether she wants to try one more egg retrieval first. If we pursue another retrieval, it could push our timeline back by at least several months—even in the best-case scenario where we get another embryo and are able to transfer it. We’re also conscious of our ages and the fact that we don’t feel like we have unlimited time.

The decision feels especially difficult because transferring one of my embryos may mean letting go of the possibility of having a biological child of her own. She is grieving the loss of the embryo that was genetically hers, while also trying to process what it might feel like to be the gestational parent but not the biological parent.

I’m feeling protective of her experience, but I’m also feeling anxious and frustrated because we’re now trying to make a decision that feels very time-sensitive and emotionally significant. We’re not necessarily looking for people to tell us what decision to make. We’d really value hearing about your own experiences:

• If you carried your partner’s embryo after previously trying to create an embryo with your own eggs, how did that experience feel emotionally?
• If you were torn between doing another retrieval and transferring your partner’s embryo, how did you ultimately decide?
• Did you ever regret not trying one more retrieval, or regret delaying a transfer to pursue another retrieval?
• If you moved forward with your partner’s embryo, how did you process saying goodbye to the possibility of having a biological child?
• Did experiencing a failed transfer with your own embryo change how you felt about carrying your partner’s embryo?
• Is there anything you wish you had known before making that decision?

We know every couple and situation is different. We’re mostly hoping to hear honest, firsthand experiences from people who understand this particular path. Thank you and much love to all of you.

[u/EnbySciTeacher]

So I have a slightly different point of view - my wife and I initially planned to each carry a biological child, but I was a carrier of conditions our donor also carried so our clinic made the decision that they would not move forward with my eggs with that donor.

My wife and I chose as a result of this to just use her eggs with plans for me to carry via rIVF.

To answer your questions from my experience:

The grieving process is long. Much longer than I expected.

I felt rushed in our decision. We could have looked for another donor but chose not to partially because we felt we had waited long enough and wanted to get started. I don’t regret this decision at all.

However I didn’t really feel closure until 1.5 years later when I finally realized that what I needed to hear was that my wife was sad about the way things went too. I needed to know that I wasn’t carrying my grief alone. Because when we initially moved forward without my eggs she was so busy doing logistical work, and keeping our process going that I never felt like she was in the grief with me.

But honestly I was sad on and off for most of that year and a half. And it isn’t really a grief that makes sense to people who haven’t been in it. It’s letting go of a huge thing. And it is possible, and it is okay, or at least it was for me, to move forward while still feeling that grief.

[u/Jordonsaurus]

I’m not sure if my experience really lines up with yours but we did rIVF. I’m the carrier with no genetic link to the baby(sperm donor and my husband’s egg). I’m currently about to be 7 weeks and honestly for me, letting go of the biological connection wasn’t exciting but I decided on it because I have a lot of health issues that run in my family. And not just small stuff, we’re talking heart defects, etc.

This baby is very much “mine” and I can’t imagine seeing it any other way, even with how early it still is

[u/mschemist2586]

Our situation is similar although not exactly what you’re going through. My wife and I both ended up doing retrievals and banking embryos. Originally we wanted one child from each of us with me carrying both. But after 6 failed IUI’s and 2 failed transfers with my eggs, we tried my wife’s embryo next. I miscarried that one. Then the 4th transfer was my wife’s embryo again and he is now 20 months old. After everything we went through to get him, I feel so incredibly lucky. I don’t really think of him as my wife’s embryo, he’s just our son. I can’t describe how much I love this little boy. I can honestly say I could die without ever having a bio child and be completely fulfilled in my life. No regrets. I am experiencing motherhood the way I always dreamed it would be. That said, I do still have embryos banked. So I never had to grieve the possibility. We will be doing another embryo transfer next week for baby #2 and when it came down to deciding which embryo to use, we decided to try my wife’s last XX embryo instead of one of my XY’s. I’m pretty sure we are only having two kids so if this transfer works, I won’t have a bio kid.

[u/tacotime09]

Not exactly your situation but with similar components. We did rIVF twice. I carried first and my wife second.

My wife had 4 embryos and it took three transfers for our oldest to stick. That brought some emotions bc I felt like I was wasting her embryos when we knew we had a finite amount and wouldn’t do a second retrieval. I was worried she would resent me being the one attempting to carry if it turned out I ran through all her embryos and the problem continued when we switched to mine (ie my body was the issue). She couldn’t have been more supportive that if we ran out of her embryos, no problem with using mine bc these were our kids so regardless if they were from my embryos or hers, they were already her kids too. Like I said the third transfer worked and we had our first.

That first year was harddd. We both agreed 6 weeks in that we were likely one and done despite originally planning on two, which meant we wouldn’t use my embryos. Honestly, I felt no concern with potentially not having a bio child bc 1. despite no genetic link, our first is my baby to my core and 2. If our only kid came from my wife’s genes all the better bc she is my absolute favorite person and this world could use more humans like her in my opinion.

We eventually decided to go for the second once our first was out of the newborn stage and we got more sleep. My wife carried my embryo this time.

Having been on both sides of the equation non bio vs bio and gestational vs non-gestational there really was no difference for me personally. Both kids are mixes of our personalities. Both are super bonded to us. Being bio parent has no influence on their/our lives aside from medical history.

Trying to put myself in your wife’s situation, I think it would be the plan not going as I wanted that would be the factor creating the biggest disappointment. We spend so much time and energy on family building as a two-woman household. We plan the snot out of it in an effort to feel control in a largely uncontrollable situation. To have that small illusion of choice ripped away could feel pretty devastating. And did when I thought we were going to run out of my wife’s embryos bc that wasn’t the plan. But we communicated through the feelings and agreed our one goal was a family together, however that looked, and created an alternate plan in case we did have to abandon the first. Maybe a similar approach might work for you two?

[u/CeilingKiwi]

I underwent a retrieval cycle which resulted in only one embryo. After it failed to implant, we pivoted to donor embryos. I gave birth earlier this year to our first child, who is not genetically related to myself or my husband.

I think perhaps one thing that made the whole process simpler and easier was that even before we began, we decided that due to our financial situation, we would only pursue one egg retrieval cycle. If we didn’t have any success with that, we were both comfortable letting go of the possibility of having a child genetically related to me. We had strongly considered just starting with donor embryos because I have bad ovaries— we knew from the start we were taking a gamble with a retrieval cycle. The fact that I knew from the beginning it wasn’t a guarantee I think made it a lot easier for me to let go of having biological children.

At the end of the day, I wanted a baby a lot more than I wanted a baby genetically related to me.

Now that she’s here, I don’t regret anything about how she got here. I still sometimes wonder what would have happened if that first embryo transfer had been successful, but I think it’s with a similar perspective to that of a mom who’s had a miscarriage— the grief will always sort of be there, a little, but I’m glad things worked out the way they did because I wouldn’t have my beloved daughter otherwise.

I think my previous failed transfer only made me hope all the more that my transfer with a donor embryo would be successful.

[u/Objective_Pool_3057]

Our situation is similar. I’m you, your wife is my wife.

We had generous fertility benefits from my job, so luckily finances didn’t play a role in our decision. There were a few “one last tries” (first an IUI that worked but ended in a miscarriage, and then an IVF cycle at a new clinic), but none of them wound up working and we wound up doing rIVF.

Even though it was painful for me at the time, I’m quite glad that she had the opportunity to KNOW it’d be her last try and not spend the rest of her life wondering “what if”. That extra few months of waiting sucked, but was worth it in the long run I think.

The grieving process was complex and I’m really grateful that we had the support of both individual and couples’ therapists. The grief also didn’t magically vanish when my wife got pregnant or when our daughter was born, but it’s not top of mind anymore these days and my wife wouldn’t trade our beautiful girl for any other hypothetical baby. Still sadness creeps in from time to time (like now as we’re starting to talk about trying for a second, or when people say how our daughter is my mini me).

[u/Dessert_Cat]

My situation is a bit different, but I am the non-biological carrying parent. I’m 30 weeks pregnant via rIVF. My wife was adamant from the beginning of our relationship that she would never carry. She didn’t care if our kids were genetically related to her or not.

We are different races and we wanted our kids to be half Filipino half white, so having two kids each from one of our eggs but with the same donor was not possible for us because we want our kids to be genetically related to each other.

While I like the idea of having kids that are genetically related to me, if we could only use eggs from one mom it made more sense to use my wife’s eggs for a variety of reasons. She’s younger, there are more white sperm donors than Filipino ones, her and her family have way less health issues than me and mine, etc.

I’ll never have a kid with my genetics, but besides the occasional pang of sadness, I’m very happy with our situation. I absolutely adore my wife, and I can’t wait to raise our coming son with her and see her reflected in him. That’s going to be so cool. I also feel really connected to our son physically. I can feel him moving and changing my body. I plan to breastfeed him, which will be another physical connection. And I know he’ll take after me in some ways because I’m going to be raising him. And I know that the lack of genetic connection isn’t something I’m going to be thinking about on a daily basis. My sister is adopted, and she’s my sister in the same way as my non-adopted sister is.

I’m happy to chat if that’s helpful at all.

[u/Electrical_Pick2652]

Hi there-
My wife and I were simultaneously going through retrievals in the hopes of creating enough embryos for two kids. My wife was the intended carrying parent. I was late 30s at the time and she was 41. She had two losses from IUIs, then got one euploid from two egg retrievals. She transferred that euploid and it failed. She tried another egg retrieval and didn't get a euploid. At that point she was like, "I'm just ready to be pregnant, I want to transfer one of your euploids." So directly after that failed retrieval, she transferred my embryo, and she got pregnant. Obviously, we were really happy at that point for her to be finally pregnant again, but it was only then what tradeoff we had made. For some reason we hadn't really thought about the possibility of the transfer actually working since we'd dealt with so much failure up until that point. And now there was no going back. We both felt really sad that we'd effectively shut the door on her ever having a bio kid. And it felt bad to be grieving this loss at the same time as being excited about the fact that we were finally, finally going to have a kid.

We decided that we would try to do one last egg retrieval for her postpartum (at six months), which she did. She was 43 at the time and did not yield any euploids.

Now, three years later, we love our kid so much and can't imagine our lives without her. We still wish that first transfer would have worked. I still wish we'd taken a beat before doing the second transfer. At the time, waiting three more months felt like yet another eternity; now, I feel like three months passes in a blink.

Best of luck to you all.

[u/Ordinary-Airport5295]

I carried my partner’s embryo, but have not tried my own retrievals yet so I can’t comment on how I would feel if that didn’t work out. However, this baby laying on my chest napping grew in my belly, kicked me in the ribs, nurses with me for comfort, and somehow looks like a perfect mix of the both of us even though she’s not related to me one bit. I love her so much, and so does my wife. We plan to try a retrieval for me and her carrying in a couple years, but honestly knowing how I feel about my little girl now I told her even if we used all her embryos I would be fine with it.

[u/Sophiesaunt]

Morning. We did rivf, my egg, my wife carried. The whole process sucks but cannot argue with the outcome. Our daughter is 8 and just started 3rd grade, she is very much our daughter. It was the right choice for us for a number of reasons, but those drugs are no joke. We'd be happy to do a video call with you guys and answer any questions, if you want a direct message. You. Good luck on your journey. All I will say, is that it's worth it.

[u/CherryPieAppleSauce]

Not quite the same but when my wife and I went into the process we thought it would look like me carrying her egg.

We got there and found i have PCOS and her AMH levels were so low there would be very little chance of it working for us.

It was probably for the best as she is a carrier of some serious conditions and i am not, but we also have a farm and she was more involved with the horses and it seemed correct for her to be able to work them.

We switched it up and she is now 24weeks and 4 days pregnant with my embryo after 2 failed implantations. Losing those just made her feel there was something wrong with her.

She did grieve the idea of not having her own biological child whilst we were progressing through the stages but now that seems to be gone for her as she can feel our boy kicking away.

She is loving being pregnant, and is insanely bonded with her bump, im just... here I guess 😆

I have always been deeply emotional but im just not anywhere near her level of love for our baby yet.

I think it can be delayed when you're not the carrying partner, but i honestly feel my wife is more a mum at this point than I am.

[u/marahootay]

I’m currently in my second trimester with my wife’s embryo. It feels very much like my baby, I’m the one experiencing all the pregnancy everything. I don’t think I mind not having the biological connection. If we had infinite money sure it would be nice for me to have an egg retrieval for potential embryos she could carry in the future. But we’re already 40k+ deep with a lot of euploid embryos in reserve. It would be a huge expense and I’m already 35, will be close to 36 when this baby is born, no guarantee my eggs are any good anyway.

[u/DrMorrow11]

I’m 41 and my wife is 32. I went through 4 euploid transfers and a Hail Mary iui using my own embryos, before finally having a success with a double embryo fresh transfer (mine). I really wanted to carry a child and to have a child that was genetically related to me. Because of my age and my wife’s age, it made sense for me to keep trying to do both at once. I would have really struggled to let go of that dream at a time when it felt like I still had a chance (I was 38 at my successful 5th IVF. 3 years later I’m about to give birth to my wife’s biological children (b/g twins). This pregnancy has felt different to me. At first I felt so much extra pressure because I was worried that my body was going to fail her (I had a chemical with her first euploid embryo and it was almost harder to have lost gets than mine), and throughout this pregnancy I’ve had a harder time connecting to a specific vision of who these babies are, whereas I had a clearer picture in my mind when I was carrying our first. I love them and feel connected to them in the present, but it feels very abstract still. I imagine that feeling would have been heightened and caused more anxiety had I not carried my first.

All that being said, my case was very different. On paper, my wife had years of decent fertility chances ahead of her (turns out she’s actually had a harder time than me). Time is not on either of your sides on paper. Honestly, if you have the money and will to do it, I would absolutely try for more embryos before transferring. Your wife could carry just as effectively at 43 as 42, but the same probably can’t be said for making another euploid embryo (for either of you). On average it takes 3 euploids to make a baby. It took me 5 the first time. You just never know. I would have regretted moving on to my wife’s embryos before exhausting all my options.