2nd Ultrasound

PB had another Ultrasound this week. Erica from GG gave me a call on Wednesday to let me know all went well, and there are still no problems. PB is still on patches and injections. She thinks she might have another 3 weeks to go on the injections. I don't know how she does it. I certainly can't imagine making my self go through self-injections for the length of time she has.

She also relayed to us that she's had some pretty bad morning sickness already, so we wish her the best, and hope she gets over it quickly.

Ultrasound!

Last Tuesday PB got her first ultrasound. It's estimated the baby's at about 1 month old already. (My how time flies). CFP sent us the picture of the Ultrasound. It's incredible to be able to see the baby as it's developing. The doctor also gave us a due date. The baby is now officially due July 8, 2005.

2 weeks

It's been two weeks since we found out we're pregnant. PB, the surrogate went in for an ultrasound this morning, and we've got continued good news. Everything looked good, the baby looks healthy, the heartbeat is good. Yes, in case you're wondering, that's one heartbeat. As far as they can tell right now, we're going to have one baby!

We're more excited than ever. Although twins might have been interesting, we know it would have been a lot of work. Either way would have been great, but we're happy just to have the baby healthy! The next check up is in another two weeks.

My mom has been as excited as anyone, and has been busy knitting away. She's already knit three outfits for the baby, and a baby blanket!

We're Pregnant!

Eileen, the nurse from CFP gave me a call midday yesterday to tell me that PB had come in for her blood test, and the that the blood test came up positive, meaning PB is officially pregnant! I immediately told LH, and we've been ecstatic about it ever since.

We also sent PB flowers and balloons congratulating her (and us!). Later that day I got a call from Erica from Growing Generations checking in and an e-mail from Eliseo from Growing Generations congratulating us.

That evening LH had to go to a work dinner, so I went by myself to my parent's house with a big bouquet of flowers to congratulate my mom on her impending grandmotherhood. All in all a very good day for us!

Back in San Jose

PB, our surrogate, parted ways with us on Thursday, after two days together sharing stories, watching TV and generally being sociable. We won't know the results of the transfer for another two weeks, after PB gets her blood tests.

The whole transfer event was a little like a surreal vacation. We were excited and nervous about the whole thing, and we got to relax for a couple of days afterwards.

Now we just keep our fingers crossed for the next two weeks!

The Big Day

Well LH and I arrived late last night in Los Angeles. We called PB, our surrogate from the road to arrange meeting at 9:30 AM this morning for breakfast. After breakfast we drove PB to the appointment at California Fertility Partners.

At the appointment, PB went ahead to the examination room, while we waited. After she was situated, we joined her in the exam room. Jody, the embryologist wheeled in the incubator, and Dr. Ringler brought in a report and pictures of the two embryos chosen for transfer.

LH and I were allowed to view the two embryos under microscope in the incubator, before the procedure began with PB. Afterwards, we sat for an hour with PB, and kept her company while she had her mandatory bedrest. They kept her tilted on the bed head downwards at about a 15 degree angle. In a strange twist on surrealism, the TV in the exam room was on and tuned to the National Geographic channel. During the transfer, they ran a segment on cross dressing men in India, where it was normal to sleep with other men on only one holy day a year. After that show during the bed rest, National Geographic continued on with a show on stolen Egyptian antiquities.

Kim, the psychiatrist from Growing Generations, visited us during the one hour bed rest wait, and brought gifts for LH and I, as well as for PB. We received a book on an embryo's development in the mother's womb, while, PB received a silver bracelet, with a charm attached.

After the hour was over, we were allowed to take PB back to the hotel. We let her rest for a bit, while LH and I went out to get lunch and then browsed in a bookstore on Sunset Blvd. before we returned to the hotel, where PB had munchies for chocolate and sunflower seeds, which we got her from a local quickie mart.

We then kept her company watching TV, and eventually a movie before leaving her to rest for the evening. We'll see her again tomorrow, and have another day of bedrest before she can go home on Thursday.

1 day and counting

I got another call this morning from Jody, from Fertility Futures to set the time for the transfer tomorrow (it's set for 11:30 AM), and to give me an update on how the fertilized eggs are doing. Out of the 8 fertilized eggs, and the 2 additional that were fertilized yesterday, 1 has divided to 2 cells, 7 have divided to 4 cells, an 1 has divided to 5 cells. An additional 2 eggs of the immature eggs have shown signs of growth and viability. So they've taken those two and one of the 4 cells and frozen those as well as a backup. That leaves 8 fertilized eggs in culture. Tomorrow we'll make the final decision about how many to transfer to PB, our surrogate.

According to Jody, ideally we want the eggs to be around 4 cells today and anywhere from 5 to 8 cells when they're transferred tomorrow.

We'll be staying at the same hotel as PB, so we'll be driving her to the transfer appointment. She has no restrictions on her eating/drinking prior, but Jody did warn she's not to move for an hour or so after her transfer so she might want to watch her consumption of what she drinks as she won't be able to use the facilities.

We're going to leave between 3-4pm for the drive from the SF Bay Area down to Los Angeles. We're hoping to not to get down there too late. But in any case, I'll try and call PB tonight before it's too late to make arrangements for meeting in the morning.

The Egg Retrieval

BR, our egg donor had her retrieval yesterday, October 16, Saturday. It was a surprise to all of us when Eileen called on Saturday afternoon to confirm that they were able to retrieve 30 eggs from BR. That's a huge number. We'd been told all week that she had stimulated 16 follicles, but no one was expecting 30 eggs.

The eggs were fertilized Saturday afternoon, using an invitro fertilization technique called ICSI. It's where the egg is injected with the spermatozoa to increase the chances of fertilization. Out of the 30 eggs retrieved 20 were mature enough for the fertilization procedure. Out of the remaining 10, those that remained viable were allowed to mature further.

I received a call this morning from Fertility Partners, and the embryologist who confirmed that 14 of the 20 eggs fertilized successfully. Out of those 14, 6 were frozen for future use in case the procedure later this week doesn't work out. The remaining eight will continue to mature for use in the transfer. Out of the 10 that weren't mature enough, only two matured enough for the ICSI procedure, which they will undergo today.

So for Tuesday's transfer, we'll have a minimum of 8 fertilized eggs to choose from, with a maximum of 10. On Tuesday, they'll look at all the eggs and decide which ones are the best candidates for transfer. At that time we'll make the final decision, along with the doctor about which ones get transferred and how many.

Dates are set

Wow, I've been a bit remiss in updating this site. All sorts of exciting things have been happening this week. Both BR and PB have gone in for exams every few days, Erica called me yesterday to confirm that we had to slip a date, since BR's folicles are growing just a little slower than expected. So the retrieval will occur on Saturday, the 16th instead of the 15th, Friday, which means that we won't do the transfer to PB until Tuesday the 19th.

That means LH and I will be driving down to Los Angeles on Monday night instead of having all day Sunday to do the drive. We're going to try and leave San Jose around 3pm or 4pm so we don't get into LA too late. We're going to stay in the same hotel as PB, and we'll drive her to the transfer appointment on Tuesday. Afterwards we'll drive her back, and we'll stay with her for two days at the hotel while she's on mandatory bedrest.

More news later!

Update from CFP

Eileen from CFP is on vacation this week, so Anita gave me a call yesterday with the update on what's happening. BR, our egg donor had her check up on Monday, and she's still on target for all the original planned dates. She's got another followup this Friday, so we'll be able to confirm the dates again then, the idea is that the transfer of the eggs will occur on the 15th of October, and then fertilized embryos will be implanted in the PB, our surrogate on the 18th of October.

I received an email from PB and she's doing well, continuing her fertility drug regimen. She's on patches now, and she's getting ready and excited for the 18th as well.

After getting the call from Anita, Kim Bergman, the psychiatrist from Growing Generations gave me a call and we talked for a little bit. So all is going well for us at this point. Just another couple of weeks before the big day!

Quiet Couple of Weeks

It's been a quiet couple of weeks for us as the transfer date draws nearer. We've had a little contact with Growing Generations and CFP. Mostly administrative things, bookkeeping and such. We did get the DVD and biographical information for BR for our records, and signed more paperwork, but for now it's just waiting.

Calendar official

I received a call from Erica today, telling me that CFP released the calendar that they will work from. The dates are the same as the estimated dates from before, but now they're on a working calendar, and still subject to change. It depends all on how fast BR progresses on the drugs she'll be on and how quickly the eggs develop.

So for now we continue to wait and see. I got an email from PB, she's started her hormone injections, something I know I wouldn't look forward to, and I know she's not either, but she's being a good sport about it all.

We're still scheduled to go to LA for the transfer to PB, and we'll stay at the same hotel as her during her bed rest. Meanwhile we wait and see what happens.

Labor day weekend update

During our family outing this weekend to the Tahoe area, LH and I got a call from both Erica and Eileen giving us little updates. Erica wanted to make sure we were set going into the weekend with all the information we needed. She had no real new news, so all was good on that front. Eileen called to let us know that our egg donor, BR, received almost all of her medical clearances, so we were definitely a go. The only clearance left was for nicotine. Eileen also said for us to expect an official calendar from them this week. So we'll have better dates for when everything is going to happen!

Medical Clearance

After a rocky start with my blood tests (with the CBC not working out that I mentioned earlier), the lab that actually performed all the blood and urine tests took longer than expected. Results finally came back yesterday, and I heard from Eileen that I'll be getting the medical clearance to go forward, as there was nothing strange in any of the results.

Nothing strange to her at least. It's very disturbing when you have a belief, and you've held that belief most of your life, to be told that you wrong, that you weren't who you believed yourself to be. My whole life (since about the 4th grade), I've thought that my blood type was B+. This didn't seem strange at all to me, since that's my mom's blood type, and my dad's blood type is O+. In the fourth grade we tested our own blood with these do it yourself kits, and I was pretty sure my blood type came out to B+. So imagine my surprise yesterday when Eileen came back and told me that my blood type is O+. I guess back in the fourth grade, somehow the do it yourself kit messed up.

A belief I've held for almost 30 years, just turned upside down! LH had a good laugh over this yesterday. But the good news is all the results looked fine, and we're pretty much sure we can go forward.

Eileen also mentioned that we're going to target October 15 for egg retrieval and October 18 for the transfer. We're definitely rolling now!

More paperwork, more calls, but we're closer!

I got a call yesterday from Kim, the psychiatrist we're working with at Growing Generations. Only I didn't know it was here, I didn't hear her correctly when she identified herself, so I spent this phone conversation wondering who the heck I was talking to. It wasn't until near the end of the phone conversation, that I asked her who was on the phone. I then had to apologize, and I realized I must seemed extremely stand-offish during the whole call where she was asking how the meeting with PB and her husband went.

We got more paperwork including the retainer agreement with Fertility Futures, the egg donor agreement, and additional paperwork from CA Fertility Partners. More to read and more to sign.

I also got a bill from CA Fertility Partners for the phone consultation with Dr. Ringler. It also sunk in for the first time that all these medical costs are going to have to paid out of my own pocket, since my Kaiser coverage won't cover anything out of Kaiser!

I got a call from Erica this morning asking about scheduling and if I had spoken with the nurse over at CA Fertility Partners and the scheduling for my Europe trip.

I called her back and confirmed that I had and asked her for a status on the blood work I had done. But apparently the paperwork still hasn't come back yet, so we're still waiting on that one.

Kim did mention to me that I could contact PB and let her know how we're doing, so I'm going to try and send her and her husband an e-mail either today or tomorrow.

Trip planning

My work is going to require that I be in Europe in late October. As it turns out this seems likely to be right around the transfer date (when the embryo will get transplanted into the surrogate). So I spent yesterday on the phone between Erica, Emily and Anita to try and get a better idea on dates, so I could better gauge when I should take my European trip.

Looks like I'm going to start my trip around the 23rd of October and push into November, since we're going to see if the transfer can be scheduled earlier in October.

It's all tentative of couse, so it may all still change on me.

In other news, the money for the trust fund that's going to pay for all this needs to be funded by August 26th, so I sent off a check to Growing Generations today. A mighty big check too.

Little steps back and more paperwork

I got a phone call yesterday from Eileen who is the nurse assigned to us from CA Fertility Partners. Apparently the blood sample they took from me on Friday didn't make it to the lab in time, so they couldn't do a good CBC and diff. They've asked me to find a local lab and have the blood test done again and faxed to them.

Last night I found a local lab, and today went there during my lunch break to have my blood draw. None of this of course is covered by my insurance, so I'll have to see what the cost of this is going to be. I'm going to be billed directly for this latest blood draw.

In addition LH and I sat down last night and went over the legal agreement sent to me by Will Halm's office for the surrogacy agreement, and also went over the consent forms that CA Fertility Partners gave me to review.

The surrogacy agreement looked pretty standard, so we agreed to okay it, but the consent forms are going to take a little more study. There are some heavy duty decisions we have to make as part of the consent forms. These decisions include disposition of any left over fertilized embryos. What's the right decision. I'm not sure, but we're going to have to decide soon.

The LA Trip

Wow. It's Monday, the weekend's now over, and it seems like so much has happened in such a short span of time.

After we arrived in LA, we spent Thursday evening at the Grove, a combination of theaters, stores, restaurants and farmer's market. It was a nice evening at leisure in preparation for the next day's meeting.

Early on Friday we got up and drove over to the offices of Growing Generations. We were greeted by Gail, who we sat down with and chatted about PB, and the process for the day, and answered some questions for us.

We also met with Teo M., who runs operations, and he went through the cost breakdowns of the process, as well as when and how payments are due, including which pieces were available for payment via credit card (in case we wanted to earn miles when possible).

We got to meet Erica face to face and learned some interesting facts about her, including the fact that she was also an egg donor previously for the program.

During our meeting with Erica we found out that PB and her husband were going to be late to the match meeting because they had been rear-ended in their car on their way to the office. Not an auspicious start for the match meeting. It was Friday the 13th after all.

So prior to meeting with PB and her husband, we also sat down with Kim B., the staff psycologist at Growing Generations, who wanted to address any concerns and questions we had. She had met both PB, the surrogate mother, and BR, the egg donor, and thought they were both good matches for us.

When we finally got to meet PB and her husband it was obvious they were both still a little frazzled by the car accident, but Gail let us in the discussion of introducing ourselves to each other. She facilitated the meeting for about half an hour or so, and then sent us on our way to a restaurant for our lunch meeting, unchaperoned.

PB and her husband were extremely friendly, easy to get along with and made the meeting very easy for LH and myself. We presented them with a Chinese Yi-Xing teapot we had picked up last year in China, as a welcome gift, and it seemed well received.

The parting words from Gail before we left the Growing Generations office was for us to call her before noon on Monday, to let her know if we wanted to go ahead with the surrogate, and for PB to let us know if they wanted to go ahead with us, the Intended Parents.

It turns out I learned from Gail later that PB and her husband called her that afternoon after lunch and tol her that they wanted to go ahead with us as Intended Parents! LH and I discussed and had already decided Friday as well, but I didn't call Gail until Monday the 16th around 9 am to let her know our acceptance.

Later, Friday afternoon, I had my appointment at California Fertility Partners to do my testing, which inlcuded a blood draw and urine sample. They were going to do a toxicology work up, CBC, hepatitis B and C, HIV, among other tests. Anita, the nurse at CA Fertility Partners informed us that we did not need to leave another sperm deposit as the one from April was sufficient (we had been told earlier to expect to leave another sample). The results of the sperm tests showed a lower than average concentration, lower motility than average - 39%, but a larger than average volume, which made up for the lower concentration.

We spent the day Saturday in Hollywood visiting my sister and her family who were doin in LA for the day as well. We flew back into San Jose Saturday evening, and got to spend Sunday back at home. LH and I talked for a while on and off through out the weekend about PB, about in-vitro fertilization, about Growing Generations and the whole process.

On Monday, I called Gail, as I mentioned earlier and got the good news that PB and her husband wanted to go forward with us. Around 12:30pm I had a phone consult with Dr. Ringler from CA Fertilty Partners, since he was unavailable during our Friday visit. He walked through the procedures, and timelines during my call.

So now we wait for the test results, we wait for BR, the egg donor to be screened (she's the long pole, as her tests take 3 weeks to complete), and then we can go forward!

At least at this point in our journey, if feels like we're moving ahead, and quite quickly!

In Los Angeles

LH and I flew to Los Angeles today in preparation for out meeting with the surrogate mother, PB, and her husband tomorrow.

In addition to the match meeting, we've also got a meeting with Stuart, the CEO of Operations at Growing Generations, a meeting with the Insurance agent, and a meeting at the fertility clinic, so that I can have some blood tests run as well as another genetic deposit.

We also got the donor agreement from Will Halm's office today to review, before it goes on to BR, the selected egg donor.

We spent the flight down from San Jose going back over both PB's profile and BR's profile. The excietment just grows in anticipation of tomorrow's match meeting!

Email and more Forms

Yesterday I received an E-mail from Will Halm's legal offices. Will is one of the co-founders of Growing Generations. It contained copies of the retainer agreement and waivers of conflict of interest notices. There's a possible conflict of interest since Will represents us and Growing Generations, as well as Fertility Futures.

We signed the forms and faxed them back today. I'm sure there's lots more paperwork to go!

A Little Bit of Disappointment

We had been warned by Emily at Fertility Futures that if we had found an egg donor profile we particularly liked, we should let her know immediately to prevent someone else from choosing her. There's a lot of competition in this industry apparently, and we found that out this weekend. Two of the five egg donors we were looking at were taken this past Friday. These two were our top two choices as well. So we started the search from the beginning again, and to our surprise we found a young lady we both really liked.

BR is caucasian, with a mixed European background. She has a large percentage of Italian heritage. She's fairly intelligent, and has very beautiful look to her, which LH calls a little bit on the exotic side. She has a little bit of everything in her background.

I called Emily this morning, and told her BR was our first choice, and she's going to contact BR to get her black out dates (the dates she's unavailable for injections/harvesting), and get her started on appointments for psychological and genetic screening.

So there was a little bit of disappointment this weekend, but it all works out in the end!

More calls from Growing Generations

Yesterday, I got another call from Growing Generations, this one from Teo, who called to ask us to select a lawyer to represent us through the process. Will Halm, who is the co-founder of Growing Generations, represents about 99% of the clients of Growing Generations. Why buck a trend that's been successful? So I chose Will Halm as well.

I'm going to have sign a retainer and mail it back to them, and they're going to take the money for the retainer out of the trust account we've already set up with them with our initial retainer for Growing Generations.

I also got a call from Monica at Fertility Futures who was calling on behalf of Emily to see if we had any questions. We still haven't made a decision yet on the egg donor, but we will have to soon!

Match Meet Scheduled

Yes! While we were on our trip to the family reunion, we got a call from Erica at Growing Generations confirming our match meet with PB and her husband. While we're Los Angeles next Friday, we've also got to meet with the insurance representative, and I've got an appointment with the fertility clinic for blood tests.

We also got a call from Emily at Fertility Futures, who recommended we have an egg donor selected by the time we meet with PB next Friday, and earlier if possible.

So, LH and I sat at the computer last night again going through profiles. We even discarded some of the ones we really liked originally. It's tough, as there's no perfect ideal candidate, since as I said earlier, none of the young ladies has a match with LH's ethnic background.

We're down to three candidates to choose from, and we're going to discuss them again tonight, and try to come up with a final tonight. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be to decide!

Still No Norwegian Match

Emily got back to me Friday afternoon, but her search only came up with an egg donor with German ancestry. We may have to go with Northern European since we haven't found anyone specifically with Norwegian ancestry. Still waiting to hear from Erica about when the match meeting will be.

Meanwhile LH and I have had a busy weekend, attending a wedding, and a 50th anniversary tomorrow.

We got the call

I had to start this blog today, because we're so far down the road now, I didn't want to lose any of these experiences. We got the call on Wednesday, July 28th from Growing Generations, letting us know they found a potential match for us for a surrogate mother. Mind you, this wasn' an immediate thing. We had previously met with Gail as I said in April, read through the materials, and signed a retainer agreement with Growing Generations. From there, there was lots of paperwork to do, including writing essay answers to personal questions about our motivations, desires, and thoughts on each other. We uploaded pictures, filled out forms, and spoke with insurance specialists. After all that we got placed on the waiting list. And we waited. We were told early on it was about a 1 - 2 month wait to hear about a match.

For us it was about 2 months. When I got the call on Wednesday from Erica, our case worker, I sort of froze. It was exciting and scary at the same time. We were moving forward. The first thing I did was call LH and tell him we were getting a fedex packet from Growing Generations the next day with information on our match. LH had lots of questions for me, none of which I could answer, since I hadn't seen the contents of the packet yet. The next day, the facilities guy at my company dropped off a fedex envelope at my desk around 11 in the morning. I tore into the envelope immediately and sat down and read about our possible match with a surrogate mother, located in Bakersfield, CA. I'll call her PB. It was fascinating to read about how she learned about Growing Generations and her expectations from the process. Gail had prepared us well, and she met the description that Gail said most surrogate mothers fit.

I still had some concerns though, but kept them to myself until after LH got to read the packet that evening. Afterwards I voiced my concern about making sure the PB's husband was aware that we were a gay couple, as they had a Hispanic background. As much as I hate stereotyping I was afraid that if they weren't aware they'd be surrogates for a gay couple there might be some problems with homophobia. I was also concerned about some medical issues and called AF, my sister-in-law, who's an ob-gyn. She was able to relieve my concerns, in that respect. That same day we also got an e-mail from Fertility Futures, the fertiltity clinic that Growing Generations uses, with login information for their egg donor database.

LH and I had already discussed the fact that I would be the biological father of the child we would have. There were a few reasons behind this, the primary one being that LH already had two biological children, while I had none. A secondary reason was that my parents were really looking forward to having biological grandchildren. My father is currently a stage 4 cancer patient, and it would be a wonderful present for him to be able to see his grandchild that's a child of mine in his lifetime.

Already armed with that decision, Thursday evening LH and I did our first egg donor search together, knowing that we were searching for an egg donor whose ethnic and racial make up would be closest to LH's. LH is mostly Norwegian in background, so at a minimum we were looking for Scandinavian/German background. We spent a couple of hours looking at biographies, photos and videos of various young ladies. We saved four profiles for future consideration and went to bed.

This morning, I woke up late, and a bit tired from all the excitement yesterday. I got into work about half an hour late. I still managed to call Erica and get LH on a conference line by 10 am. I discussed my concerns with her, and came up with a new one regarding selective reduction. Selective reduction is where you reduce the number of fetuses the mother is carrying, primarily for health reasons. LH and I had already decided it would be in the best interest of the baby(ies) we would be having to fetally reduce to twins at most if there's a multiple pregnancy. The reason for this is that most triplets and higher are born premature, and spend a long time in NICU, something I don't think we're prepared to deal with. I was concerned that PB, who listed herself as Catholic may not be as conducive to fetal reduction. Reading this you may think fetal reduction is a light decision. Trust me, it's not. I already know if I got asked to do this, it would be a difficult process, much less decision for me. I can think rationally about it now, but in the moment I know it'd be impossible to look at it rationally. Lastly LH brought up to Erica my concern about the blood type of the egg donor relative to my blood type. One of the egg donors we had looked at last night had a B- blood type. I have a B+ blood type. I had been concerned there may be blood type that's not a good match for me for having a child. For parents that are B- and B+, it turned out (from a web search) that the child could be B-, B+, O+ or O-.

Erica let us know that she'd research our questions and she'd get back to me with answers the same day. It turns out she called me back 5 minutes later. PB and her husband were indeed aware that they were working with a gay couple, Gail had spoken to PB about fetal reduction, and she preferred to fetal reduce to twins as well, and was willing to carry triplets if necessary. This addressed our concerns with the surrogate mother, so I asked Erica to arrange the match meeting. I'll know later today when that's scheduled for. On the other front about blood type, she got Emily from Fertility Futures on the line to speak with me . Emily said there wasn't any issue with blood types, but there would be genetic screening that would occur after we made a decision, but she did mention that many prospective parents choose based on blood type to ensure that the child and the parent had matching blood types. In my example, B- was a bad choice because the child could be a blood type where LH and I wouldn't be able to donate our blood to the child.

While I was speaking to Emily I mentioned to her some of the difficulties we had with doing an egg donor search the previous evening. I wasn't able to search specifically for those donors with a Norwegian background, one of things we were looking for. Emily said she'd do some searching herself and get back to me. She also asked me if there were any other criteria we were looking for, and I mentioned to her height, since LH is fairly tall as is most of his family. Standing at 6'1" to 6'2", he's quite a bit taller than my 5'8".

So now we wait to hear back from Erica about the match meeting, and Emily about other possible egg donor matches.

What's this all about?

LH and I are a gay couple, we've been together for over 2 years. I wanted a way to chronicle our experiences as we go down the path to becoming parents. Helping us with our journey, is a firm called "Growing Generations" in Los Angeles. We contacted Growing Generations early 2004. Growing Generations is a surrogacy and egg donation firm, specializing in helping the gay and lesbian community to become parents. After reviewing their materials we met with Gail Taylor, one of the founders of Growing Generations in April of 2004.

LH and I discussed becoming parents for quite some time before we actually committed to the idea in April 2004. LH is an older gay man, having come out late in life after being married with two kids. When we met, LH had just turned 51 and had only been "out" as a gay man for about 5 years. I was 34 at the time, having self-identified as gay since I was in college. Although we are 16 years apart in age, we found that not only did we have a lot in common, but we were extremely comfortable with each other, filling in each other's lives effortlessly. Our goals were similar, and though LH wasn't originally planning on starting a second family, the idea was an obvious one for us as a couple.