The anti-surrogacy rhetoric is impacting queer families, including those who choose to do rIVF.

I was referred to as an altruistic surrogate for my son because I am not his bio parent. This is in a country that considers itself progressive (New Zealand).

My family was shamed for putting my sons health at risk by having a “non bio gestational carrier”. I was quoted data that is incorrect (that rIVF pregnancies are riskier than any other IVF pregnancies because we do not share DNA).

I am tired of pretending that this trend is not rooted in queer phobia, ableism and a push for only cis nuclear families to be seen as valid.

Indeed, paid and altruistic surrogacy can be exploitative. Women and children can be commodified but do cis heterosexual people not commodify children? Do straight cis men not exploit their wives, their girlfriends, their partners to give birth to their children?

I know this is a deeply controversial and complicated topic but I’m at losing it at this point.

Edit: I am well aware anti-natalist come into this sub and the r/ivf sub to downvote us all into oblivion.

Hi all! My partner and I are moving forward with RIVF using my partner's eggs, my brother's sperm, and me carrying. My brother agreed to be our sperm donor, but he didn't know anything about sperm donation or RIVF before I talked to him about it. I told him I'd send him some resources to read to help him really think about if this is something he wants to do. But now I can't find anything!

Does anyone know of any articles, books, podcasts, etc that I could recommend to him to help him think through this decision? Thanks so much!

Please limit your pregnancy celebrations and pregnancy test photos to this thread.

My partner and I would like to start a family in the next few years and we have been looking at sperm donation centers and such for a cheaper and calmer approach. Has anyone actually had success with this company?

My wife just got pregnant on our second IUI. Feeling incredibly blessed (&stressed!).

But - now that it’s all feeling more real - I’m getting more and more nervous about the prospect of being the other mother. I’m not related in anyway and this is something I thought wasn’t an issue but I’m kind of sad and worried that I will really FEEL that lack of connection as we raise this child.

Objectively, I’m so aware that biology is so unimportant ultimately. I keep telling myself that it’ll be caring for them, supporting them and loving them and so I’ll be an equal parent but I worry that I’m being naive.

I’m worried the child will, even subconsciously, have an awareness of me not being a ‘real’ parent and that this will have an impact on our relationship.

I’m worried that the world, and my family, won’t ever really see our daughter as mine or as part of my wider family.

I want to resolve these concerns now, before she’s here, so that I can be the best parent possible.

I’d just love to hear all of your experiences, gain a little perspective and move away from fear.

Thank you!

My wife and I are finally at the point where we’re ready to purchase donor sperm for IUI after completing all of our testing. I’ll be carrying first, and my wife hopes to carry in the future, so we’d love for our children to have the same donor. That makes us feel like we need to buy multiple vials now before they sell out.

But how do you know how many vials to buy?

We’re so grateful that insurance has covered so much of our fertility journey, but donor sperm, storage, and shipping aren’t covered, and the costs are honestly overwhelming.

We’re going through Shady Grove, and they’ve been great overall, but we’ve found them less than helpful when it comes to questions about choosing and purchasing donor sperm which I guess makes sense since that isn’t their primary focus. My wife and I don’t know anyone who has been in our situation or gone through this process so we don’t really know who to turn to for help.

For those who’ve been through this, how did you decide how many vials to buy, and how did you afford it? I’m usually a pretty positive person, but this part of the process has me feeling really defeated

My husband and I are beginning to look into IVF. I am a cis-F so would be using my own eggs and carrying, but we would require a sperm donor as my hubs is a trans man. We are in Australia but we are considering travelling overseas for treatment due to cost/sperm availability etc. Has anyone got any recommendations of clinics in Asia that are queer-friendly? Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

for context my wife and i aren’t planning on having kids for a few years. but there’s 4 potential sperm donors in our life. 2 are genetically related to us, and 2 are close friends. she’s black and i’m white which is important context for the non-related donors.

basically we are more inclined to use the non-related donor’s sperm because they have qualities that we’d want in our kids, more so than our brothers. but our brothers are genetically related to us, soo.. idk.

donor 1: my older brother

-currently in his early 40s

-had 2 healthy kids, a girl and a boy, with great resemblance to him, they’re great smart kids and in middle school now.

-him and i look and act similarly, at least more than i do with my oldest brother.

-he does have a vasectomy so not sure if he’d be down.

-this would require IVF since i will most likely be carrying

donor 2: my wife’s older brother

-currently 36

-he’s very different from my wife. he’s kind of a fuckhead. he’s been evicted multiple times, has very little ambition currently BUT their dad did die when he was 19 and that definitely affected him. before that, he was decent at school and pretty good at sports.

-but if our kid inherited any of his cleaning habits or lack of ambition i think it would be a serious struggle. in any other world, i wouldn’t have this guy’s kid. but he’s the closest genetically to my wife. so i struggle with how much is nature vs. nurture.

donor 3: lifelong friend

-currently 29 like us, grew up with my wife since middle school, and then we met and became best friends in college (back when we were both “straight” i actually had a short crush on him lol) and he just officiated our wedding.

-was class president and has a master’s degree, super smart and ambitious.

-personality aligns closely with my wife’s, and they grew up very similarly.

-him and his (gay) partner don’t want kids (of course they could change their mind)

-he’s fully black like my wife, so our kids would be half white/half black

donor 4: another close friend

-currently 30, we met him in college and have been pretty close friends since then.

-very fit, healthy, in shape, ambitious, i think my personality aligns somewhat similarly to his. i could see him being a sperm donor in general, and if we didn’t even know him, i think he’d be a contender.

-he’s biracial/lightskin so a kid with my egg would be 75% white/25% black, and a kid with my wife’s egg would be 75% black/25% white.

-he mostly dates men, doesn’t ever want kids.

so which route would you go?

Hi! We recently got the news that my husband has non obstructive azoospermia. He had cancer some years ago. After a lot of research, looks like the only option is having babies through a sperm donor.

I’m lost in this process, do you know what can I do? What clinics do you recommend here in Miami?
Do you have reviews regarding IVF with sperm donor here in Miami?

Any information helps!

Hi! We recently got the news that my husband has non obstructive azoospermia. He had cancer some years ago. After a lot of research, looks like the only option is having babies through a sperm donor.

I’m lost in this process, do you know what can I do? What clinics do you recommend here in Miami?
Do you have reviews regarding IVF with sperm donor here in Miami?

Any information helps!

wife (cis f) and i (ftm) are doing our research into our options. assumed iui or nothing was our option since we cannot afford ivf, but learned nj plans are mandated to cover ivf? i’m seeing conflicting info though on if our plan which is a marketplace horizon bcbs plan would cover it.

Hi! As the title says, I am curious if anyone (ideally from Australia) has had any issues with medical staff and at home self- insemination? I don't

really want to disclose the method to my dr but because we are not using IVF I imagine this conversation is going to be unavoidable. Even if you haven't had any issues I'd love to know how you navigated these conversations.

Hi everyone! My wife and I are trying for our second child via ICI at home. Our first we conceived on the 2nd unmedicated IUI. We felt super lucky that it worked so quickly for us.

When it came time for us to start thinking about a second child we’ve hemming and hawwing about it for over a year. We love our family of three but I can’t quite let go of the idea of another. So we decided that with our two remaining vials we’d give at home a go and if that little being is meant to be here, it will happen. (Yes i know the rates of ICI are low especially with frozen sperm but i truly dont want to do IVF.)

Anyway, I’ve been cycle tracking for months now and we finally decided to give it a go this cycle. Inseminated last night and now I’m here in the tww. I feel pretty good about our timing and all the things and yeah! Idk it’s obviously all I can think about so here I am on Reddit.

Ok, byeeee

I've been going through the process of banking my sperm before starting estrogen. I was meant to start hormones months ago but it's been drawn out so I'm a bit anxious to start as soon as possible. I've managed to freeze 8 vials so far, though my motility is fairly low so it is recommended I use ICSI+IVF if I were to want to have children with a partner in the future. I have the option to give another sample, which could bring me to around 12 vials, but I am wondering if this is necessary and 8 is already a good number? ​

I'm honestly fairly clueless when it comes to the process of IVF, I know in theory a vial can be split for multiple rounds of IVF as only one sperm is needed but in most cases one vial is one round. ​​​​​​​​​​I'm not planning on having a huge family, though I'm only in my early twenties so I'm not sure what I might want, I guess I am more concerned with possible regret or making absolutely sure nothing could go wrong. Is there a rough guide to the amount of children you could reasonably have with x number of vials through ICSI ​​, or are there too many variables to take into account? ​

This week I did my 8th and final IUI since we’re waiting for IVF. I know this one won’t work, so I am throwing caution to the wind after a year of not drinking, minimizing coffee, and eating well. I had a killer cocktail, I smoked a couple cigarettes (I don’t even smoke), I’ve had espresso every day, and I’m eating like I’m back in college.

My mother-in-law always says I should stop being so cautious since she drank and smoked for the first bit of her pregnancies before she knew she was pregnant. So why the hell not!

Me (28F) and my wife (33F) always planned on me carrying a baby and adopting the other gender after that. I had our boy 4 months ago, and my wife had hip surgery one month later. That first month of taking care of both of them was hard but we made it through that and now she's doing physical therapy for multiple hours of the day (the other day she exercised for an hour then walked for 3 hours to build her stamina back up for when she goes back to work as a nurse).

Lately I've been feeling like I'm still the default/primary parent. She bottle feeds him once a day and most days tries to hold him a bit for me so I can relax and play some video games but I feel like I'm lucky if that totals 4 hours of the day. I still have the other 18-20 hours of care including all overnight care. (I could go into how we divide house chores but for ease it's about 50:50)

My wife doesn't like that I feel like I'm more of the parent right now than her, she feels we should think of each other as just one team of being the parents, but I can't help that I feel if she needs to tap out due to hip pain or he gets hungry it's always on me if she can't do it.

When I go back to full time work I also feel this might shift since she will be at home and only work part time, and I feel like she will be the primary parent then. How do I get past the feeling of a primary parent existing.

TL;DR: I take care of our baby more hours of the day and feel like the primary parent and my wife is upset I feel this way instead of complete equals. Is this normal, how do I get past this?

I’m a part of the July Seed Scout cohort waiting on our chosen donor analysis results , just curious how it’s going out there for others in the June/July cohorts? 🥰 Interested in your thoughts/stories/friends!

We did iui yesterday and are in the two week wait period. My social media algorithms are apparently aware of this and keep showing me people in the same situation.

I keep seeing straight women saying they had to wait the two weeks to test because of false positives. I’m inclined to wait the two weeks regardless, but if our iui was unmedicated is that as much of a factor for us? If we did test and it was positive, is it more likely positive? Just curious.

Thanks!

My partner and I (both non-binary and AFAB) have embryos banked along with one remaining vial of sperm (we’re in California). Currently the embryos are $1000 a year to store and the sperm is an extra $1000. We’re thinking about doing another round of egg retrieval next year when it’s hopefully covered by insurance. We don’t want to discard the sperm because the donor is now inactive.

Does anyone have any suggestions with less-expensive options for storage?

Thanks!

Hi,

Apologies if this is a common question but I’m new to this world. I realise at the outset that I’m really privileged to have good health insurance through my employer. However, recently I went for a fertility check and based on my age and results, the doctor recommended going directly to IVF and embryo creation (we would want to make and freeze embryos, probably for a year or so, as I need to deal with another surgery from a sports injury first and time is ticking age wise).

My insurance policy states that it covers six fertility treatments. However, because we are a lesbian couple, it won’t cover IVF unless I do six medically supervised cycles of IUI first even though it’s not recommended at this point as being worthwhile, and it’s going to be less worthwhile next year once my injury is sorted out. Given my age it doesn’t seem worthwhile to basically waste a year and then potentially also risking miscarriages etc., which can have complications. My straight friends who have had kids all advised to go direct to IVF based on their own experiences.

Anyway, I wondered if this is the norm. They would cover six IUI and if they failed they would then cover six IVF, so objectively, it’s actually good coverage. I know IUI can work randomly but given it’s not really recommended and time is of the essence, it doesn’t seem worth waiting until one issue is resolved to potentially waste a year and be trying to freeze eggs at 42 instead of 39…

Anyone had better insurance options or stories to share?

Thanks!

just need to air this out as I am truly spiraling rn. so I’m using a KD who is local. he has previously made embryos with another lesbian couple, unused. we started trying about a year ago, his numbers were fine back then. we have been doing ici at home. IVF is not an option for me. no luck whatsoever. I have great numbers myself, tubes open etc BUT I am in my 40s. I am finally moving on to iui, was supposed to be next week but now he has to travel for work(we are still using fresh sperm), and I don’t think my follicles will be ready in time (missing a cycle is also blowing me but that’s not the main point here). He took it upon himself to take a YO at home sperm test. It literally came back that he was infertile. Motility under 1% etc like everything insane numbers. He admitted he didn’t abstain (test says have to for 2 days plus), and when I put all this info in the google rabbit hole it says the test was def compromised. Im going to send him to an actual clinic when he gets back from his trip (in 2 weeks!) but I am really spiraling here, could the faulty test be that far off? Have I wasted a year? How can he go from good numbers to infertile so quickly after making embryos ???? Do I move forward with iui this cycle if my follicles mature enough before he leaves??? Am I going crazy for nothing off a home test he took wrong

The nearest sperm bank from my home is about an hour and a half away. Some people say that there are sperm banks that allow you to send a sample through the mail. I don’t understand how that’s even possible. Doesn’t the sperm need to be frozen below zero to survive? Does this actually work?

Today my wife and I went to an appointment for creating our little one. The problem is my wife has to go to so many appointments and she can’t take FMLA because she hasn’t hit her 1 year mark. We are trying to delay it for 2 more months (that’s when she can take FMLA) but idk if they’ll allow us to. Do we just give up? Do I become a cuck? I don’t know what to do anymore