"The One?"
Okay. As you may know, this process is intricate and time-consuming. Things, we've found, have sometimes taken days or even weeks to complete. So that is one reason I haven't posted in a while. But, enough of the excuses, lets get started with some of the things that are currently happening.
The Surrogacy Center has matched us with a possible Gestational Carrier or Surrogate. Her name is Elizabeth. She is a 30-year-old mother to three children, married, and lives in Sheboygan. And she looks beautiful. And her story is very similar to ours in a lot of ways. It's filled with struggles and adventure and love. She is from Liberia, coming to the U.S. at 16 as a refugee. Much of her family still lives in Africa...Possible future travels for me! Haha! She is now a naturalized citizen. She is a stay-at-home mom and seems to enjoy being pregnant and being a mom. We received a whole bunch of information about her, including a letter from her. We also received her fees and expenses sheet which had everything from hospital costs to maternity clothes to her husband's lost wages, etc., etc., etc. It also included her child care expenses we'd have to pay. We were a little scared of this at first. Why not find a surrogate who has no children so we don't have to pay more childcare? I mean, we have four of our own that we pay for now. But we heard that a surrogate is required to have had at least one child. So all surrogates will have at least one child already. Also, what's nice about Elizabeth is that she is a stay-at-home mom...Which means they may not need child care that much. I know we shouldn't be looking at the financial situation so much. But it's there...And yeah. Anyways, the next step is that The Surrogacy Center will show Elizabeth our profile and information. If she likes us and agrees to be our surrogate, we will all meet together to continue building our relationship and getting to know each other. I am guessing I will write a lot more about Elizabeth if she becomes "The One." But she may not be "The One" so I don't totally want to write too much about her yet.
We went to a couple banks to see how much of a loan we could get for this surrogacy journey. Both of the banks stated our best bet was to get a Fixed Home Equity Loan. Both banks said they'd give us about $50,000. We have about $40,000 saved. Yeah...We'll maybe need to possibly find another almost $50,000...Not sure where we'll do that. I may apply for some grants...Otherwise...Maybe I'll sell myself on the streets or something :-)
We are very close to finding an egg donor. We are essentially looking for a woman that looks like Adan and has a Hispanic/Latina ethnicity. This has been hard to locate here in Wisconsin. We have found plenty of them in California and states that are faraway. But this will cost extra money for several reasons, one of them being we'd have to fly the woman out here to Wisconsin, paying not only for all of those costs but also for her lost wages at her job, etc. That freaks us out a bit! I know this sounds kind of bad. I mean, money shouldn't be stopping us from making the perfect, right decision. But this is already costing an "arm and a leg" and we also need to be realistic and smart. We did find a woman here in Wisconsin that is half white and half Hispanic. You're probably thinking to yourself..."Why is ethnicity so important to them?" Don't get me wrong. We are looking at many other aspects of the egg donor's health history and personality, etc. But because we're probably going to utilize my sperm (unless we go the twins route) we do want our baby to have some Hispanic heritage. So, as of now, this woman is our #1 choice. Although the more I think about it, maybe we should just pay the extra cost for the Hispanic eggs? We're going to look into one more registry to confirm our feelings...Whatcha think we should do?
Well, I think that's it. Feel free to comment with questions you're having about this journey!
The Surrogacy Center has matched us with a possible Gestational Carrier or Surrogate. Her name is Elizabeth. She is a 30-year-old mother to three children, married, and lives in Sheboygan. And she looks beautiful. And her story is very similar to ours in a lot of ways. It's filled with struggles and adventure and love. She is from Liberia, coming to the U.S. at 16 as a refugee. Much of her family still lives in Africa...Possible future travels for me! Haha! She is now a naturalized citizen. She is a stay-at-home mom and seems to enjoy being pregnant and being a mom. We received a whole bunch of information about her, including a letter from her. We also received her fees and expenses sheet which had everything from hospital costs to maternity clothes to her husband's lost wages, etc., etc., etc. It also included her child care expenses we'd have to pay. We were a little scared of this at first. Why not find a surrogate who has no children so we don't have to pay more childcare? I mean, we have four of our own that we pay for now. But we heard that a surrogate is required to have had at least one child. So all surrogates will have at least one child already. Also, what's nice about Elizabeth is that she is a stay-at-home mom...Which means they may not need child care that much. I know we shouldn't be looking at the financial situation so much. But it's there...And yeah. Anyways, the next step is that The Surrogacy Center will show Elizabeth our profile and information. If she likes us and agrees to be our surrogate, we will all meet together to continue building our relationship and getting to know each other. I am guessing I will write a lot more about Elizabeth if she becomes "The One." But she may not be "The One" so I don't totally want to write too much about her yet.
We went to a couple banks to see how much of a loan we could get for this surrogacy journey. Both of the banks stated our best bet was to get a Fixed Home Equity Loan. Both banks said they'd give us about $50,000. We have about $40,000 saved. Yeah...We'll maybe need to possibly find another almost $50,000...Not sure where we'll do that. I may apply for some grants...Otherwise...Maybe I'll sell myself on the streets or something :-)
We are very close to finding an egg donor. We are essentially looking for a woman that looks like Adan and has a Hispanic/Latina ethnicity. This has been hard to locate here in Wisconsin. We have found plenty of them in California and states that are faraway. But this will cost extra money for several reasons, one of them being we'd have to fly the woman out here to Wisconsin, paying not only for all of those costs but also for her lost wages at her job, etc. That freaks us out a bit! I know this sounds kind of bad. I mean, money shouldn't be stopping us from making the perfect, right decision. But this is already costing an "arm and a leg" and we also need to be realistic and smart. We did find a woman here in Wisconsin that is half white and half Hispanic. You're probably thinking to yourself..."Why is ethnicity so important to them?" Don't get me wrong. We are looking at many other aspects of the egg donor's health history and personality, etc. But because we're probably going to utilize my sperm (unless we go the twins route) we do want our baby to have some Hispanic heritage. So, as of now, this woman is our #1 choice. Although the more I think about it, maybe we should just pay the extra cost for the Hispanic eggs? We're going to look into one more registry to confirm our feelings...Whatcha think we should do?
Well, I think that's it. Feel free to comment with questions you're having about this journey!
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