Episode 93 – Josh – gay dad

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Thanks for watching!

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Welcome to Surrogacy Australia’s podcast series. I’m your host Anna McKay, and my aim is to raise the level of awareness of surrogacy through these conversations. This podcast is a recording from a webinar that I host, and you can find more details about those and upcoming dates on our website at surr The webinars are free, go for an hour, and will take you through how surrogacy works in Australia. You can ask questions, typing them in anonymously if you prefer.

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and you hear from a co-host who has navigated surrogacy in Australia, either a surrogate, a gay dad, or a straight mum. This episode is one from the archives, recorded in December 2021, featuring Josh. Josh and Jack, originally in Sydney and now in the ACT, became dads to their daughter, Ari, in April 2021. Ari was carried by their surrogate, previously a stranger, Fee, who lives in Newcastle, New South Wales.

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Josh has been a mentor with SAS and has supported many new gay intended dads who are at the beginning of their journey. You’ll be able to hear from his surrogate Fiona in the next episode number 94. In this episode, Josh gives a detailed explanation of how the World Egg Bank works, as well as how those eggs were later made into embryos. His recap of the birth was particularly funny and sounds like a memorable day for all involved.

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You can clearly hear the love in his voice when talking about surrogate Fee and her gals and how they have become family. In particular, his and Jack’s way of thinking when Fiona was pregnant, that a member of their family was pregnant so they were essentially planning to clothe, feed and care for her and her daughters in that way. I thought this was spot on for IPs, intended parents, to help wrap their head around the commitment that is altruistic surrogacy in Australia. I hope you enjoy this episode.

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Now it’s a nice way to segue into Josh and to see what his happily ever after looks like. So as Josh and I mentioned before, this is sort of the first photo. This is not happily ever after Josh. This is pregnancy, isn’t it? Yes, yes, but very, very close to the end of pregnancy. But yes, it was pregnancy. Clearly up to that point is a lot to get to that point, right? Yes.

02:20
Let me just start you off with a question, but then you sort of sum it up for us. So I guess what brought you to surrogacy and how did you find feet? OK, so it was way back in probably 2016, Jack and I kind of started having some serious discussions about having kids and starting a family. It was always something that was at the back of my mind, but it was the first time we’d really discussed after dating.

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probably about two years. We started looking into options and initially we considered adoption and then we stumbled across an article about surrogacy. And then that led us down a Googling, Robert Warren and Jack ended up founding an Our Growing Families conference. So we bought tickets and off we went. At that point we were living in Canberra up to Sydney. We went to one of the…

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conferences and we were just inspired and it kind of lit a fire and we were really really determined from that point that surrogacy was going to

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going to be the way that we could have or start a family. So after that, we kind of joined the ASC Facebook page, interacting, engaging, putting ourselves out there to the world and letting it be known that we wanted to have a baby. And we also shared within our close family group at that point, that we’re also looking at, oh, sorry, because here’s an option to start a family. Then in 2016, we got engaged and we decided to kind of put our.

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put a hold on planning for a baby and decided to focus on our wedding. So we took some time off from the Facebook group, focused on our wedding, and then we got married in 2018 and decided that shortly after, I think it was while we’re on our honeymoon, that we wanted to start the surrogacy journey again. We rejoined the surrogacy Facebook group, put feelers out there again, introduced ourselves and started engaging with other IPs, other surrogates, and really kind of, yeah,

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into making our dream a reality. And it wasn’t long after we reintroduced ourselves to the group that we got a notification pop up on our phone saying that Fiona Morrison had commented.

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on our introduction post. And then shortly after that, a few minutes later, I got a direct message from Fiona saying, good day, how are you going? I’m also a defence personnel. At that point in time, Jack was at sea and I was at home. So Fiona and I struck up a conversation almost instantly around defence postings and how it can be challenging at time to be separated from your loved ones while you’re on a deployment. And that’s when we began chatting. And that was back in May,

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19. And so I think that that’s that to me is a classic thing that you just never know what you’re going to connect over right it could be a similar sense of humor memes

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pets, just employment, just yourself. So like, I was one of the questions I thought to ask you was, did you, would you have any advice to people in terms of, you know, how did you get picked then? Like what, what were you doing? Or, I mean, clearly you were just being yourself then, because it was just talking about Jack’s work that was the connecting point. But do you remember that feeling of being active and did it feel awkward and you had to put yourself out there? I guess there’s an element of kind of uncertainty around putting yourself out there and kind of

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something that’s so important to you and so, I guess, special in a way. Like you’re trying your hardest and dedicating all of this time and effort into kind of creating your dream and getting to the end result of having a baby. So there’s that kind of vulnerability around putting yourself out there, but after a few interactions with other IPs and some surrogates, I mean, intended surrogates on…

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the Facebook group, it kind of just all just went away, that nervousness and that vulnerability, because everyone was in the same boat, whether all of the IPs were in the same boat, we all had a common goal, common interest, and we were all kind of willing and eager to engage and make friends and build this community to support through your journey, whether it be as a surrogate or an IP. So it kind of just all went away shortly after I, oh, Jack and I started engaging in the group.

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It was scary. It was a little bit nervous putting yourself out there, but that’s about it. Yeah, yeah, that’s good. And yeah, and I think knowing a bit about Fiona’s background, it was partly also right place, right time. She was ready to look for you and you were there and it was a good fit type of thing. So then you having messages and at some point met in person and doing some dating. So it take us through a little bit of that process. Yeah, so Fiona and I, from the initial message, we started communicating daily,

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It was just like, it was someone for me, it was someone that I could confide in, who understood what it was like, someone going through a deployment and could understand what it was like for the person staying at home and how kind of lonely and isolating it can get at times. So I kind of confide in Fiona a lot and we bonded over our mutual love of baking. So we often shared a lot of recipes and at that point in time, I was…

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heavily into going to the gym and Fee’s a CrossFit junkie as well. So we bonded over that as well. And then Jack came home from a deployment and we decided to head up to New Castle and meet up with Fee and her two daughters. Jack is also from Newcastle. So that was another thing that we bonded over as well. So we went up to Newcastle and met Fee and her daughters. We went out for a beautiful brunch.

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Cafe Blue Door, I’ll forever remember the name of that cafe. And it was just, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t, it wasn’t forced. It wasn’t, yeah, it wasn’t nerve wracking or anything. It was just like, it just felt like I was meeting an old friend and catching up for a coffee with an old friend. That’s important to new people then that if you don’t get that feeling, you should question it. Like it needs to feel like that. It needs to feel like an old friend. Yeah. It needs to feel natural. It needs to feel like.

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it’s not forced, there’s no pressure behind it. And that’s what we felt when we met with Fee the first time. And so we spent some time having brunch with Fee and her daughters. Then we went to the Newcastle Museum and spent some time getting to know her daughters and playing with them and having a look at the different exhibits in the museum. And it was really, really great. That time Fee and I had been talking for about two, two and a half months daily, FaceTime calls on the phone, like just messaging constantly.

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fast, really fast tracking a friendship here, like getting to know each other. Were you talking surrogacy as though you might be a potential team or was that still treading water there? It was kind of still treading water. Like it was like surrogacy was like an afterthought. Like we were really building the friendship. We were spending a lot of time like just talking about our interests and our passions for things and our morals and our values and things that we found important and just sharing everyday life.

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important. And then following that came the discussions about surrogacy. So what it would look like for us and what it would look like for Fee and how it would work with her and her daughters, how we could support her if we did end up going down that route. Following our catch up, our first meeting in Newcastle, Fee gave us a

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little bag and also a beautiful jar full of homemade protein, like almost like bliss balls. And they were peanut butter flavored and coated in coconut. Sorry, I’m going off and I’m talking about food, but they were phenomenal. That was so delicious. I think she’s almost just mentioned it in the questions.

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She was so nervous too about that meeting. And she gave us this gift bag and she kind of quickly got into her car with the girls and said, we’ve got to go, we’re off to do the grocery shopping. And we said, oh, okay, yeah, thank you. It was so lovely to meet you. We’ll obviously still keep in touch. And Jack and I wandered off back to the car, feeling like it went really, really well and really excited and hopeful about the future. And we were sitting in the car park.

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behind the museum and I was like, oh, let me have a look at this bag. What does he put in this bag? And I’m like rummaging through rummaging through and it was tissue paper. And I’m like, I’m pulling it all out. And I was like, oh, it’s a card. OK, I’ll just put the card aside and read the card. So I’m going to go through and then I was like, no, read the card. Open the card and see had gifted.

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like this little card was that big and it had a love heart on the front of it. We still got it. And there was this most gorgeous poem that Fee had written in the card. And it was expressing that she wanted to be our surrogate and that her offer was sincere and true, but the decision was ours to make and that she wanted us to think it over and let us know, but she was willing to carry for us. And at that moment, Jack and I just looked at each other in the front seat of the car and just tears just started pouring.

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pouring down our cheeks and Jack was like rummaging in the jar of protein balls, like chewing one and like there’s tears just coming down his face. And then I went rummaging through the bag and then there was a tin. I opened the tin and there was a tin of Feats Home Aid and Zack Biscuit. So I started shoveling them into my mouth and I was like, there’s still more in this bag. And I’m like rummaging. I went to the bottom of the bag and there was…

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a size 4-0 onesie in pink and in blues. And both of them said two dads are better than one. Perfect.

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From that moment, we knew that Bea was someone that was going to be in our life forever. That was ultimately the beginning of our surrogacy journey. We were sitting in the car park of the Newcastle Museum, bawling our eyes out, stuffing our face with these delicious, homemade goodies from Bea and just absolutely gobsmashed that someone was willing to offer to carry for us.

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and just a million and one emotions running through our minds about what happens next, what do we do now, how do we like.

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How do we like even sleep at night with the sheer excitement that we’re gonna be going on this journey? Absolutely. Because that’s the biggest part, isn’t it? Sort of getting a surrogate, having this offer. Fiona, I’m guessing listening to this, hearing your Josh talk about that story and recount it. I bet you are full of pride right now, Fiona, listening to that, having it recounted. I can just, I think I can imagine how you’re feeling. And that’s, and just for if you’re brand new IPs,

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written there that surrogates are quite nervous too, that will you accept my offer? And then we become quite blinkered going, I don’t want you to get snaffled up by another surrogate. And so I think often sometimes surrogates offer early in that sense that I’m offering to become your surrogate. And then you go on and you continue to build the friendship. So it’s not like they were then pregnant the next day by the way. So in some ways that’s probably a nice way to lead it. So then you continue the friendship and you would need to make embryos at some point.

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to get Fiona pregnant. So how did you go about making embryos then? I’m going to add in, this is a unique, one thing that’s unique to your team so that people don’t know is you engage with the World Egg Bank, which is a purchasing of eggs and the donors are, are they unknown forever? Or can you get access to them? Or, but that was a, how did you come at that decision to use the World Egg Bank? As opposed to again, being active in a community like Egg Donation Australia or canvassing your friends and family, how did you come to that decision?

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So we, after we kind of had that initial meeting with Fee and we accepted her generous offer, we kind of went down the sorrow-dangering path and spent a lot of time really getting to know each other. I think it was about six months before we actually had any kind of, I guess, formal appointment with an IVF specialist or an obstetrician or anything like that. We spent a lot of time together, like getting to know each other, staying over and

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of like just really bonding as I guess is like ultimately was a family unit. We absolutely adore these girls and we loved spending so much time with them in those early days and really getting to know them and getting to know what their life looked like. So we spent a good kind of six months um doing that and in the background we were kind of furiously kind of looking at options for egg donation and at that point we

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of decided after many discussions that we were going to go down the road and look at the purchasing of eggs through the World Egg Bank. We didn’t feel pressured by Fiona but we understood that her time is precious. We didn’t want to kind of be that couple that was kind of lingering on and oh we’re still looking for an egg donor or we’re chatting with different people and we’re trying and we kind of we just didn’t want to go down that route of having to find a surrogate and then an egg

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altruistically in Australia. Because it sounds like the amount of time and effort that you were…

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putting into growing your sorrow family and wanting to do that really well, in some ways adding another person into that mix and then wanting to do that well and thorough was another huge amount of time. So I can appreciate then that you were already investing so much time there. So I’m sure for the people listening too would be curious about price and how many you got and how many embryos were made from that. Yeah, so we engaged the World Egg Bank. So quite simply send an email off

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their kind of information kind of portal, I guess. And then a client representative reached out to us and kind of explained the process and put our minds at ease that it wasn’t just a kind of a scheme far off in the US somewhere and that we were gonna put all of this money into it and we’d end up with nothing. And after we had that conversation with our client representative, they opened up.

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the donor portal for us. So we were given access to the donor portal. And at that point in time, there was around 2000 egg donors. Some of them were active, some of them were inactive, and some of them could donate to Australia, some couldn’t donate to Australia. It all depended on the state where they were based in the United States. So because ultimately I should have mentioned that the World Egg Bank’s based in the United States, in Arizona, but they’ve got donors all across America.

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many hours trawling through donor profiles, kind of a bit undecided about the approach that we were going to take to choose an egg donor. And then we kind of decided that what was important for us was a good medical history, a good education. Finally, we decided that it was important for us that it matched some kind of genetic appearance. So whether we chose a donor that

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had similar characteristics to either Jack or myself. We thought that was important to us at the time. We then narrowed our search down to five egg donors. And then from that, we kind of sat.

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three months on our decision and really kind of wanted to make sure that we made the right choice. So while that was going on, we had IVF appointments to our clinic, Janeeya in Sydney. We had obstetrician appointments with our obstetrician, Dr. Matthew Holland in New Castle. We had also done some counselling that was required through our IVF clinic and continued our Sareo dating. And then around the end of 2019, we had a look at our selection

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one egg donor that we had kind of were really drawn to initially and we were still really drawn to her again. And in the donor profile, you don’t get to know their name or their address or their phone number, anything like that. You’re given their medical history, photos of them now, photo of them when they’re a baby, when they’re a young child, teenager and a young adult. And then our donor had chosen to include photos of her children as well. And we just felt a connection to both our

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almost immediately and that was when we made the decision that she was the right donor for us. And funnily enough, we, because she had like some bizarre serial number that we were referring to her by and we were like, no, we need to give her a name. And we named our egg donor, Anna. Oh! So we referred to our egg donor as Anna from that point.

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At that point, we started engaging with the World Egg Bank again. This was our preferred donor. And from that, we could see that, yeah, Fiona just provided the number. She remembered it. Fiona, you’re a machine. And we looked at buying a cohort of eggs. So one cohort is six eggs. We were really lucky that our egg donor had already gone through an egg collection cycle in August.

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of 2019 and there was one cohort of six eggs left from that cycle. Oh cool. So the eggs had already gone through quarantine and they were ready for immediate dispatch to Australia. And our clinic, Jania, had a pre-existing partnership with the World Egg Bank. Yes. So that was a great opportunity.

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made things really easy in terms of shipping and now that we had a donor coordinator that looked after all of the shipping and the management of that. Her name was Hazel and she’s based in Sydney but our six, cohort of six eggs cost us 27,000 Australian dollars so that took up a big portion of our overall costs for our surrogacy journey.

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And then they were shipped to Australia and shipping costs on top of that was another, I think, $1,500. Ultimately, it was around $30,000 for the six donor eggs. And I know because I follow you on Instagram. So you’ve chosen to keep until Ari’s old enough to understand who’s the genetic father. And so that’s absolutely fine. To create an embryo, you need to insert sperm into the egg and to see if they fertilize and grow. How many embryos did you make from those six eggs?

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So from those six eggs, the process is that the eggs are frozen and shipped, are stored and shipped to Australia. And once they arrive in our clinic, we had to wait for another three months for our sperm to go through a quarantine process because that was mandatory in our clinic. At that point in time, we were also finalizing our legals, finalizing our counselling in that three-month period. And then our clinic started tracking Fiona’s natural cycle.

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And the idea was that we wouldn’t thaw, the clinic wouldn’t thaw the eggs until, um, it was at the right point in Fiona’s cycle. Um, and then they would be fertilized with frozen sperm. So they were fresh, well not fresh transients, but they weren’t being frozen as embryos. Um, it was a frozen egg, frozen sperm, thawed at the same time, egg was inseminated and then they were grown to day five blastocysts.

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So when our eggs were coming out of the freezer in the thawing period, we had within, I think, a day, we’d lost one egg, no longer viable. Day three, we had, that was five, day three, we lost another one. So we had four left. And then on day five, we had a really strong blastocyst and that ultimately turned out to be Ari. There was three, yeah, three other embryos, I think. Yeah, three.

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There was three embryos left. They weren’t quite at the blastocyst stage. So they were almost fully formed. The clinic wanted to give them a chance. So they kept growing them even after our transfer on the 16th of July 2020.

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So the next day we got a phone call from the clinic saying that two of the embryos didn’t make it and we have one embryo left that was viable for freezing. Okay. So out of the six we got two. That’s a pretty good hit rate I’d say from what I hear. Yeah and we, we kind of give them a little bit of reassurance that if none of the six eggs were viable upon freezing, upon thawing sorry, and none of them created a viable embryo that resulted in a pregnancy.

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we could purchase a second cohort of six eggs from the World Egg Bank at a reduced cost. And I can’t remember off the top of my head exactly what that cost was.

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They do provide some reassurance there if you’re concerned about taking such a big investment in the purchasing of eggs, there’s always options going forward if the embryos aren’t viable or the eggs aren’t viable. Yes. Thank you. That’s been an education for me. And I guess in my world, I keep learning because people might come with those sorts of questions at some point. So that’s really handy just to know a bit of an overview and then I can head them in your direction to answer more specific questions. So. I’ll be too.

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I actually might go back to our screen share now, back to that pregnant photo, and then just go through those little photos. So you were telling me beforehand that you went to Newcastle four weeks before birth. Was this photo taken during that time or in the lead up to it? Yep, that photo was taken, no, actually it was taken about six weeks before Ari was born. We spent a lot of time throughout the pregnancy up in Newcastle. We really wanted to make sure that Fee was feeling well supported and that her girls were also

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feeling well supported throughout the pregnancy. It was really, really important for us that we were able to attend every appointment with our obstetrician and every scan. So we spent a lot of time throughout the pregnancy up in Newcastle and this was on one of our trips up for

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one of our weekly appointments with our obstetrician. Lovely. And then I suppose, you know, these are just snapshots, aren’t they? But then here we go into birth. And so I was in the surrogate group at the time when Fiona shared this and fairly quick labor. I think her pants are down around her knees. Yes. So call Ari herself. I’m listening to her own tunes, I’m thinking there. Yep. So, Remember the birth pretty well? Ari was engaged for about four weeks. She was sitting very low.

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had the pregnancy bottle on and she was doing the the curb walking as inspired by Anna and and we were doing absolutely everything to bring this little one into the world lots of spicy Thai lots of bouncing on the exercise ball he was doing lots of cat cow yoga moves on the floor of our Airbnb for the entire four weeks before I was born but to no avail and then it got to 39 weeks and six day

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obstetrician and he’s like, I think it’s time for her to come along. So we’ll give a little bit of help with an induction, which was, it was interesting. It was an interesting process, but our team took it in their stride and we had a lot of laughs at the hospital during the induction process. He was in induced at 5pm. Yes, we had a very, very difficult midwife named Glenda at the hospital. You’ll forever remember her. So he was induced at 5pm the day before Ari was born.

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1st of April. We didn’t want to stay at the hospital after having a delicious, incredibly spicy Thai beef in one of the broking sweets, beef salad. We decided to head back to our Airbnb, which was about 2k from the hospital. And at that point it was about 10 o’clock at night and nothing was happening. And then we all went to bed hoping and praying that it was going to happen soon. And Jack and I couldn’t sleep a wink. We were just kind of sitting there and wondering, oh, when, when are we going to hear the yell out to us and say, it’s on. We got to a bed.

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It was about 5am and we could hear Fee rustling around in her room and Jack was like, I think we might be on. And then we hear Fee yell out from the bathroom. It’s time to go. It was 5am or it was about 5pm in the morning. We helped Fee down the stairs of our Airbnb and got in the car.

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after a heated phone call on my behalf with the birthing suite who told us that they weren’t ready for us and that we should come in 20 minutes because they were cleaning the room and I was like that wouldn’t be the case because we’re coming now.

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I remember vividly Fee squatting in the garage of our Airbnb saying, no we’re coming effing now, get in the car. And we got in the car and Jack very quickly drove us to the hospital. We got out at the front door.

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helped be inside and we waited in the lobby for Jack to come inside and Jack came inside as I was helping Fee through a contraction. We waddled into the birthing suites to find our midwife who has now become a long life friend as well, a hospital cleaner cleaning the room. And he saw the look on Fee’s face, saw the look on our faces and I’ve never seen someone more before so quickly in all my life. Fee was listening to her.

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calm birth tracks. She was sitting in an armchair and she’s like, I need to go to the bathroom. So she went to the bathroom and I’m just pacing around like mad, like trying to set things up as we discussed in our birth plan and trying to get the labor aid prepared and trying to get.

27:09
Fee’s water prepared and wet washes and I’m pacing around and Jack’s just sitting there rocking in the chair. And Fee’s like, can you come in here? And I was like, okay. And she’s like, I need towels. You need to put towels down on the floor. And I was like, oh my God, okay, yep. And it’s like in the dark and I’m like trying to find towels and I flick the light switch on and I turn around, grab a towel.

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what I thought was a towel, which turned out to be a hand towel. And I went to fan it out on the floor and Fee’s like, we need more. That’s not enough. And then she’s like, no, you know what, that’s close enough. And then I was like, no, here’s more towels. And then Jack comes in with towels and chucked towels on the floor. And at this point, Fee’s kind of transitioning from the toilet to the floor. And she’s like, it’s too late. The head’s here. And this has all happened within about six minutes of arriving at the hospital. And then my wife comes in, Jules, and screams out to Glenda saying,

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you need to get in here.

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And then she started screaming out for Roslyn. And then by this point, Fee had delivered Ari’s head. And then with one big push, Ari had arrived on the bathroom floor of the birthing suite. Wonderful. All very quickly. So in all, it was about 25 minutes of active labor from first contraction until head popping out was about 40 minutes, I think. So it all happened very, very fast. We were all huddled around on the floor and in the bathroom of the birthing

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and just couldn’t believe that it just happened that way.

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our little one who was here. And at that point, we still didn’t know what we had had. And all of the photos that were taken by our midwife were on an iPhone, so they were live photos. And we weren’t, she wasn’t recording, but she was taking lots of photos. And they said, oh, what is it? And I remember moving the umbilical cord and I squealed at the top of my lungs that it was a little girl. And then we just all lost it from that point. We were just, just, I couldn’t believe what had just happened and the fact that we’d had a little girl

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after months of believing that we were having a boy and Fie believing that she was carrying a boy, it was a little girl. And it was just, yeah, it was just- You can see the emotion in that photo. Fie, clearly she’s a birthing woman.

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body’s meant for it. You still feel you look so relaxed in that photo, just like got the adrenaline. Jack, just that look on your face in this photo here and Josh, you’re like, I was just getting towels a second ago. And I love what he’s mentioned in the chat about how, it’s not quite how she remembers it, but it must be lovely for hearing Josh tell the story and his memory of it. So I’ll take you then this next photo here is just sort of getting a chance to catch her breasts and checking her out, your little Ari there.

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calm Ari was, I think she was picking up a lot on Fi’s vibes, that how calm and kind of strong Fi was throughout the entire birth, throughout the entire pregnancy. And Ari was just so calm and just soaking it all in. It was just, it was amazing. Beautiful.

30:05
Beautiful moments. And TZ has said to us here, thank you for sharing this story. And this is exactly why we’re here to do this. They joined tonight feeling nervous and uncertain about what to expect, have a heart full of joy, feeling less anxious about what they’re embarking upon. They’ve laughed and cried. So this is why we do what we do, eh, Josh? This is, you get to reminisce and we get to bring hope to the next wave of people. So, and then was this on that same day or the next day? This is the next day. Yes.

30:35
She was about 24 hours old here and Fee’s looking fresh as a daisy. Jack and I not so much. But she’s parenthood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here we are. I think this is my last photo. So then this is a catch up. She’s clearly not a newborn there, Ms Ari. No, she was about.

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two months old at that point before lockdown hit in Sydney and yeah Mother’s Day it was yeah. We thought it was very important for us to spend Mother’s Day with Fee so we had a delicious brunch with her and the girls. It was one of the last times before lockdown hit in Sydney. Oh yes, I was going to ask about that which actually brings us, that’s probably a nice segue into one of the questions that we’ve been asked here that in terms of how frequently do all get to catch up in person post-birth given the distance?

31:23
from just over three months until she was six months old, seven months old.

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Yeah. She spent a large portion of her first year on this earth in lockdown because we were living in Sydney in the lockdown and then we moved to Canberra and had quarantine and then we were out of quarantine for eight days and then Canberra got locked down and then that extended for many months after that. Have you seen them since that May Mother’s Day photo? Have you seen each other in person? Yes, yes. We’ve been to Newcastle a couple of times to see Fina Girls and we try to catch up as much as possible. It’s a little bit more difficult now that we live in Canberra, but it’s nice.

32:00
when it comes to the drive, getting up there and seeing Fee and letting her spend time with Ari and letting the girls spend time with Ari and it’s just, it’s amazing to see Ari’s face when she sees Fee, even after the five month period she, she recognized Fee’s voice and she could recognize the girl’s voice and just instantly lit up and her face was just like, you could just tell that she recognized who they were and she remembered and that like, that instant it just like, it

32:30
She knew how special Fee was and how much of an important part Auntie Fee is in her life. As a surrogate, that’s hearing you say that as a parent is such a beautiful thing to say. You’re not fearful of that connection, but why not let Ari have extra connections with people you don’t feel as a threat to you as dad? Not at all. It’s so important for Ari to have these connections with people in her life, but more so Fee because ultimately we wouldn’t be here.

32:59
for Fee. I’d give my own life for Fee. She is probably is one of the most important people in my life and in Jack’s life and in Ari’s life and nothing will ever change that. It’s just so important for us to have that ongoing connection with Fee and for Ari to know who Aunty Fee is and how important she is. She’s got pictures everywhere throughout the house and we refer to Aunty Fee on a daily basis and when she’s going to bed she says…

33:25
We say, say goodnight to Aunty Fee’s photo and she says goodnight. Like, like all of those kinds of things are really, really important for us. And it’s important for Ari to know that as she grows. That’s beautiful. And that, and I think this is what happily ever after looks like. It’s having the language. It’s not just, we catch up with Aunty Fee every few months. You talk about her, there’s photos. She’s part of the say goodnight to the pets, say goodnight to Aunty Fee. It’s all part of that ritual. That’s beautiful. It’s, and I think from people that were strangers and you’ve built this, it’s a credit to your whole team of the beautiful job that you’ve all done.

33:55
So, well done. And like, it’s more than just the surrogacy to us. Like, Fee is family. Like, Fee and I still talk every single day. Nothing has changed in terms of our friendship. Like, we founded a friendship before we had Ari, and that friendship has continued and is still as strong. The fact that we’ve had Ari is like almost like a bonus of the friendship. We’ve forged and spent so much time forging this friendship, and it’s just so important to us that we still talk every single day.

34:25
of things to say on that and that’s so beautiful hearing you say that because I know in one of my other presentations I say about if there was no baby at the end of this do you still want to be their friend and by saying that Ari’s the bonus to this friendship that’s exactly what we try and emulate here in this altruistic surrogacy model so that is beautiful.

34:42
to hear you say that. Matt and Brendan have clearly asked us three little questions here. We’ll just comment. Jack’s added from the other room. Did the obstetrician make it? No, I’m guessing not, right? No, he didn’t. He turned up about 25 minutes after I was born. Yeah, that’s it. No time. For us, we went through the public system and we just had midwives, so we didn’t have an obstetrician. So we actually got to…

35:04
call the midwife, like the show. So that photos of me on the phone and Matt on the phone to them. And so they have to decide how far along are you? Do we come out? And so yeah, that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? So my obstetrician did, I went private for my first child and she didn’t make it either. So let’s answer these three little questions and sort of wrap it all up. How long did you spend in the Airbnb post-birth? So we- Well, they moved Airbnbs two days after Ari was born,

35:34
with Fee and her family post-birth? Two weeks. We moved into another Airbnb. And at that point, Fee wanted to spend time with her daughters and felt that she needed to be at home and kind of needed that support of her girls. So we stayed in the Airbnb and we went up and saw Fee at her place with the girls every day, still just kind of maintained that really close connection so that Fee could have that really important bonding time with Ari.

36:04
body and hormones understand that Ari was safe and that Ari was with us. So yeah, we spent about two weeks post birth before heading back down to Sydney. And then after five days in Sydney, Fee came down to Sydney and saw us. Good. Yeah, that’s a nice balance to hear. So Emily has mentioned again, thank you for sharing it as a potential IP who’s lost a lot of hope over the year, hearing about the connections and the benefits brings back possibilities. So you’re very welcome, Emily. This.

36:31
glad that we do this. Tell somebody else. So what about what was your total overall cost for surrogacy? I’m going to add in from start to finish. I’ll tell you others listening. So my average I would say to people is 50 to 60,000 with a range of about 30 to 90,000. Those at the bottom end would be those who perhaps already had perhaps the hetero couples and they had an embryos already made. They live locally to each other so they didn’t have much travel and accommodation

37:01
no loss of wages. Our team had two egg collection cycles and then teams at the upper end would be teams who had perhaps multiple egg collection cycles or in your case went through the World Egg Bank, perhaps had a long-distance team or interstate and there was travel and accommodation costs. So Josh is this going to be news to Fee or she does know?

37:20
So we spent all in all, including our eggs, all of our IVF, legal fees, counseling fees, accommodation in Newcastle, travel costs for Fiona to come down to Sydney for IVF appointments, and also obstetrician appointments, hospital fees, health insurance, life insurance, all of that. Our total cost was $92,000 from start to finish.

37:50
shorter, which is still currently going through the Supreme Court of New South Wales. So we’re hopefully getting an outcome before Christmas, we’re hoping and praying that we’ll get an outcome from that. But yeah, that includes that cost as well and the drafting of our

38:03
parentage order documents with our lawyer. Cool, so there you go for people listening. Bear in mind, it wasn’t 92 upfront, that was 92 across the course of a couple of years. So you’re still working and earning your money, but it’s good to have 10, 20, 30 grand saved already as a nest egg would be good, or have embryos made if you’ve got that opportunity. Like if you’re a hetero couple, you might be able to do that.

38:24
So that’s our one big piece of advice for IPs embarking on the journey, make sure that you’re financially ready for the commitment. Because ultimately you’re caring, feeding, and looking after another member of your family for nine months. That’s how we saw it. We saw that Fee was another member of our family. And by default, we also ensured that her girls were looked after. So where Fee needed food, because she was too tired

38:54
from being on their feet all day or at work whilst pregnant, we just paid for our rates or we paid for takeout or we paid for groceries or we stocked fees for ease or up with food, like all of those things are really, really important throughout the pregnancy and being able to financially cover those costs is really, really, really important. So that was something that we made sure that we had, we had a really good buffer available. So we had that put away and then we were obviously still working throughout the entire course.

39:24
our surrogacy journey, topping that up and paying for things as they come along. And I know surrogates are really conscious of how much it’s already cost you and we don’t want it to cost you anymore but it’s so money is often those awkward conversations that can have but her having the trust in you or not feeling the guilt of having that takeaway or you you know pre-paying for things and whatever. So yeah that that comes with time and and together too so that yeah that sounds like a treat it as another member of your family that’s a really good way to look at it hadn’t thought about that.

39:54
roadblock if any in relation to your relationship that you had to overcome? I think, I guess, I wouldn’t even call it a roadblock. I would call it kind of a bit of…

40:04
misunderstanding and differing, I wouldn’t say value of immorals, but like differing opinions. And it was around the time we were tracking, our IVF specialist was tracking Fee’s cycles. I mean, she thought it would be beneficial for Fee to take an ovarigal trigger to trigger her cycle so that we knew exact dates of when the eggs could be thawed and the sperm would be thawed. And Fee is very, very trusting in her body. She’s very determined and very strong.

40:32
and very in control of her mind and body. She didn’t want to take the orogel injection, the trigger injection to start ovulating or whatever.

40:42
kind of remember what part of the cycle is in. She didn’t want to take the trigger injection and that kind of perplexed Jack and I at the time because we were just so emotionally invested, emotionally, financially, physically, and mentally invested in this journey and it was just heightened emotions and there was a bit of a disagreement around the injection. But looking back now.

41:03
we ultimately should have trusted Fee and we didn’t, there was never any forcefulness in us saying, Fee, you needed to have this injection. It was always, we trust Fee, but we didn’t trust her fully at that point in time. But ultimately she knew her body, she knew her mind, and she didn’t need to take the trigger injection. Her cycle came and it was spot on and we transferred on the perfect day. But yeah, I guess that was the biggest kind of, wouldn’t even say roadblock, it was like the biggest kind of, kind of thing.

41:33
learning opportunity to see just like any you know lifelong partnership you’re going to have times where you slightly disagree on things and that’s a sorrowship is more than a friendship not quite a partner relationship but it’s still pretty intimate and it’s that give and take and trust there so I think that’s a great example and a reflection that you’ve done now over time too to take away from that and it built up the trust and because like as an IP like you’re you’re it’s like you’re in the middle

42:00
So you’ve got your surrogate over here who knows her body and knows what she needs to do, how she needs to do it and what support she needs around her to be able to do it successfully. And on the other hand, you’ve got medical teams of whether it be IVF specialists, obstetricians who are feeding you science and this is how it will work. This is what you need to do. And as an IP and you’re somewhere in the middle of that kind of, I guess, spectrum and you are kind of pulled

42:30
both ways. So you pull to the surrogate’s way of thinking and that she knows her body and she knows what she needs to do and she knows what’s good for her body and her soul. And on the other side, you’ve got the IVF specialist and medical team saying she needs to do this. No, she needs to have this or she needs to kind of cooperate better. And then you kind of in the middle, you’re like, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And what we found throughout our journey is that we trusted Fee 150%. And we knew that

43:00
She knew what was best for herself. She knew what was best for our baby. And she knew what was best for us as a team. So ultimately we trusted Fee. Yeah. A lot of trust. See this surrogacy comes down to so much to trust here, doesn’t it? Yeah. And she needs to trust you that you’ve got her back and that you won’t sell her out and force her to do certain things. Because then that’s going to trust her more with all the other decisions that she’s going to then eat right and do the right things because she wants to do it for you and for her. So that’s a great takeaway.

43:30
they’re going, so which way did you go? Like, yeah, you trust your side. We backed Fee 110%. We always had her back. We always discussed absolutely everything with her that was being fed through from the medical team. So it got to the point in the pregnancy where our obstetrician was really pushing for an induction and Fee was against it initially. And we supported her. We were like, no, we’ll keep waiting. If you know your body, you know what’s right. If you don’t

44:00
induction. And then having a conversation as a team at each week marker. Yeah, that open dialogue and that open communication through that, through that period, because things can change in a matter of matter of minutes. And it kind of got to the point where Fede kind of actually made the decision herself that you know what, I know my body, I know that I can handle an induction, we’ll do the induction, I need to bring this little baby into the world safely. And if the medical team is suggesting that this is the safest way possible, and I

44:30
body, then that’s the procedure that we’ll do. And we back to 100%. We were like, you know what, you if you if you’ve come to this decision by yourself and you don’t feel forced, you don’t feel pressured from the medical team, you’re not being forced or pressured or coerced by us, then and you can’t with that decision yourself, then we’re 100% for you. So that’s what we did. Wonderful. Well, we have chatted a lot tonight, but it’s been on the edge of my seat. Wonderful. Josh, if you got sort of either I just there was one last question about advice for impatient

45:00
advice for IPs listening or something that you learned about yourself throughout this journey? How could you sum it up for us? I think the one piece of advice that I’d give to any IP out there is that just don’t give up. It might seem like it’s so overwhelming and it’s going to be such a long journey and that you’re not going to be able to do it, but you can. We were there and we know how you were feeling that it’s such a big journey, it’s such a big financial commitment, it’s such a big emotional commitment.

45:30
got a second full-time job managing a surrogacy. But it’s, it’s worth it. Ultimately, in the end, when you’re standing there, holding your baby and like the instance, look, Ari was sleeping in her cot right now, like sitting here, watching your baby sleep, like you’ll get there one day, like it might not feel like it at any point in the journey, you might just feel like giving up.

45:53
Just don’t, just keep pushing through, keep jumping through all of these things and kind of jumping and pushing and striving to get there because you will. And the fact that if you can get it, if you can get what we have and manage to do that here in Australia, it’s 10 times better because you get to live the experience, you get to be with the surrogate, you get to have that connection. And I think that’s really, really, really important. So just don’t give up, just keep pushing, keep striving, ask questions, engage,

46:23
Reach out to parents through Service and Life, Jack and I. Reach out to us. Don’t be afraid. We’re happy to talk. We’re open books. It’s just really, really important that you just don’t give up. Well, and I’ve done a lot of these webinars. I thank you. I think that’s a fantastic summary and brings hope to people and lights that fire. Keep it alive. Thank you for having me. Wonderful. Lovely to have you. Thank you for sharing your time with me for this episode. If you’re finding these episodes helpful, please share them with friends.

46:52
If you’d like to see the images mentioned, head to our YouTube channel for all of the recordings. If you’re looking for more individualised support, consider joining SASS , Surrogacy Australia’s support service, so you can be connected with a mentor and also with me to help guide you on a journey. You might think of me as your Siri for surrogacy. Until next time, welcome to the village.