Meeting with a Surrogacy Agency

Having spent 3 hours listening about adoption from the French, we thought it only fair to listen to 3 hours about surrogacy from an Agency. A US agency, of course, for whom 25% of their clients come from France. Clever monkeys.

I learnt several odd things.
For our roughly $90K, we could start with IVF in France, bringing over frozen embryos on the plane with a piece of paper from the 'Food and Drugs Association' in the US to show to their customs officers explaining why we're carrying 'blood related materials'. (Made me laugh to think that, if we were to do this, that journey with the embryos in a box under my seat would be the closest I'd get to gestation). Hey, gee, to be sure we get enough embryos over time, we could buy an 'Embryo package deal'. How simply marvelous.

Men don't have the same problems with freezing or thawing their own jewels. Sperm could survive if used to stick down a stamp on an envelope and sent like that hrough the post to the US. That means women could still get pregnant from that stamp if it was inserted in the right place. Makes you think twice about sleeping in dirty sheets, doesn't it...?

Anyway, you hand over your genetics and they're 'transferred' into the surrogate (for $5K) who you've already chatted with on skype to introduce yourself and check you get on. This is a relationship, according to the agency we met. You're going to be in close contact with this lady - to the extent that some might demand to have you in the delivery room at the end of the day - so your relationship is very important from Day 1.

You spend the weekend with her and her family, and then potter back home. You can then make trips for the 3 month scan, finished with a trip lasting roughly 2-4 weeks (depending on how easy the birth is and if they're twins) for the birth.

I'm 32 so my eggs are almost of 'donor value'. That's to say, they shouldn't be too far off the gold standard that they get from their donors. (Super donors, I discovered are 23 years old and have given eggs that have been successfully implanted in the past. Sigh. It's sad to be told up front you're past your prime.) If frozen, my eggs/the embryos lose about 5% of their success rate only so my probabilities of success per transfer are as follows:

1. 65%
2. 77%
3. 93%

Not bad.

All told, with legal fees, medical fees, insurance fees for the surrogate if they don't have it, travel for the surrogate to the clinics, monthly charges for food/clothes, and the fee that goes to the surrogate for her time, it's 90K. Add on 5-8 for twins, add on 5 per extra transfer you need to make, add on 10 if you can't get frozen embryos and need to go to the US for IVF, and you're getting the full picture.

They explained that not many of their 'intended parents' (ie people like us) were of our age because this thing is so darned expensive.

They said more French do it than Brits because while French think about science fiction behind it, so do the Brits but they also care deeply what their neighbours think of it too --->

Those are the options. Question now is if we want either of them, or whether the hand that Fate has dealt is the option we should take instead. The update on the kidney, so you know, is the results got worse again, going up to 190 and then 193 over the past month (I need to be at 160 maximum). My chances of getting a 'oh go orrrn and give it a go' from the doc are now not very likely. What would you do?