Donor Conception
Two dads on a mission – everything to know about UK surrogacy, egg donation & TwoDads UK
Eloise Edington | 2 Feb 2020
Fertility journeys are as unique as they come. Whatever your situation and starting point, support is pivotal, and for those navigating the LGBTQ+ routes to parenthood landscape, few people know the process as thoroughly as TwoDads UK.
Hearing from ambassadors who’ve walked the walk and know first-hand the intricacies of egg donation and surrogacy inside out, is invaluable. So we picked up with the wonderful Michael and Wes, founders of TwoDads UK.
Over to these two epic dads, for the 101 on everything TwoDads UK works to achieve for and with LGBTQ+ and blended families, in the UK.
Founding TwoDads UK
We’re Michael and Wes, and together we’re the founders of TwoDads UK, an organisation supporting intended parents (IPs) as they explore and navigate surrogacy in the UK.
Our help is built out of a unique perspective – we’ve also been on our own fertility journey, spanning two fertility clinics in the UK and creating a total of twelve blastocysts from three sets of egg retrievals (via an egg donor) over five years.
In a – much simplified! – nutshell, we had three separate single embryo transfers:
- one successful transfer in 2016
- one failed transfer in June 2019
- one successful transfer in December 2019
All in all, our fertility treatment was effective, resulting in two children – Talulah who is 3, and Duke who is now 5 months old.
Our egg donation and surrogacy journey has blessed us with having two healthy babies, but we’re all too aware that for many, this isn’t the case. With infertility affecting 186 million globally, those struggling to conceive are sometimes right alongside us, but often suffering in silence – which is heartbreaking.
It’s part of the reason we walked away from successful careers unrelated to fertility, to dedicate our time and effort to the world of family building – far more rewarding – and TwoDads UK was born in 2016.
The early days
TwoDads UK started its life as an Instagram and Facebook page.
A fun blog tracking our egg donation, surrogacy and IVF journey, helping to normalise same sex parenting and de-stigmatise surrogacy, whilst sharing our personal account of fertility treatment.
The aim being, to create a community of people in fertility treatment or exploring treatment, talking openly about their experiences.
Prior to our journey, we spent almost four years researching surrogacy and exploring the fertility clinic options available to us. Our minds were blown, the choices were just as vast as the fertility costs. The frustrating bit? There wasn’t a central place for all this information.
I had spreadsheets, emails, brochures, Skype meeting requests, notes, scribbled bits of paper, face-to-face meetings and even trips overseas to understand what our route to fatherhood looked like and what this may end up costing us. And all of it (especially the cost factor) varied massively.
After what felt the most draining couple of years, we started exploring UK surrogacy, and the more we understood it, the more it felt right for us. We’re not anti-international treatment, far from it. But for us, completing a journey in the UK where we could see our baby growing, whilst developing a relationship with our surrogate, felt the right thing to do.
We set out to understand more about UK surrogacy, and quickly discovered a crucial point of difference to other international processes. The UK operates altruistic surrogacy – where surrogates are reimbursed reasonable expenses only, and cannot profit from surrogacy.
Whereas, in the USA for example, commercial surrogacy is allowed in some states, and this naturally drives the cost up. Currently, surrogacy in the USA can cost over $200,000, whereas in the UK our first pregnancy via surrogate worked out at £35,000. This included:
- donor eggs
- our IVF process
- the surrogate’s expenses
- all blood and semen analysis
- surrogacy legal costs
Depending on your fertility treatment, surrogacy in the UK varies in cost from £10,000 to £35,000. The lower end being traditional surrogacy, (usually involving home insemination) and the higher end being gestational or host surrogacy, using a fertility clinic and an egg donor.
UK surrogacy laws
The other important difference, is UK law and the (in our opinion) outdated Surrogacy Arrangements Act of 1985. This has been recommended for reform, however, and the consultation period ended on 11 October 2019 – which we’re so proud to have played a role in.
Currently, UK surrogacy law states that upon birth, the surrogate is the legal parent, regardless of whether she’s biologically linked to the child. And, if married, then her husband is considered the legal father.
This means that in order for IPs to become the legal parents, you have to apply for a parental order, once the child is six weeks and one day old. Your application is submitted to the Family Courts, where you are assigned a CAFCAS officer. You’re invited to court and also have a home inspection, to carry out any safeguarding checks.
The Parental Order, once obtained, switches the parental responsibility from the surrogate to the parents. It removes their names from the birth certificate and replaces them with the parents’. It’s a very straightforward process, and is usually finalised within four months.
Thankfully, the child can remain with their IPs from the moment they’re born, the need for a parental order doesn’t impact that.
Growing our social following
So, as TwoDads UK gathered more followers, we found ourselves getting busier.
Posting, sharing, blogging, vlogging, and also doing our best at being decent husbands to each other, and dependable dads to our baby, whilst managing demanding job commitments commuting from Birmingham to London every day (up at 4am, home at 9pm) – all of it meant that, in the end, something had to give. It was exhausting.
We began to receive emails on a weekly basis from other intended fathers, initially wanting to explore surrogacy. But again – like us – they didn’t know how. We were taking between six to ten Skype calls per week, some as late as 11pm. It was clear there was a desperate need, and we loved helping people realise their dreams of parenthood, so the corporate careers fell away.
And incredibly, media requests, TV documentaries, big Christmas adverts, magazine articles, radio interviews and podcast requests began to filter in – brands were listening and they wanted to collaborate.
We were doing something different in the face of adversity, and the community liked it. All of which complemented our main mission – to help normalise same-sex parenting and de-stigmatise surrogacy. We were a modern family, showing everyone that underneath it all, we’re simply parents, parenting.
Then came the website, and a more structured way to support those needing our advice – all delivered for free. By this point, fertility clinics had heard about us, and we’ve made some absolutely wonderful partnerships – supporting those clinics who offer a surrogacy programme, where we can offer something real, tangible and – hopefully – useful, to intended parents walking their own path.
A programme of events
Next up, we designed a Surrogacy Information Event programme, comprising six-hour sessions, educating people on surrogacy and helping pave their route to parenthood.
The events were an instant success, selling out each time. Everyone was keen to hear from the fantastic speakers we’d engaged, and feel real, justified hope that this was possible.
And, whilst the event was geared towards gay men initially, we’ve begun helping straight couples and single intended parents understand surrogacy too. And we’re so delighted that one of these couples are now pregnant – due in July – after eight unsuccessful rounds of IVF.
This is why we do what we do.
Want to learn more about the egg donor and or surrogacy process and surrogacy costs in the UK? Touch base today with TwoDads UK.
