Australia, Egg Donor, Gay Parenting, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

Australia – A single gay man just made history with the birth of his son via surrogacy

Source Upworthy

A single gay man from Melbourne, Australia, is finally living his lifelong dream of fatherhood with the birth of his son via surrogacy. Despite a long and challenging journey, Shaun Resnik made history as the first single man in the Australian state of Victoria to become a father via surrogacy, following the arrival of his baby boy Eli Michael on March 22 this year. The process took three and a half years, but he could not be more thankful for his newborn son. He hoped that his story of fatherhood would open doors for other single folks who wish to become parents, The Daily Mail reports.

‘My heart is so full’: Surrogate baby Eli makes Victorian history
birth.

Eli is the first biological child born to a single man in Victoria through local #surrogacy. His father, Shaun Resnik, was the first such man

Read more

Egg Donor, Surrogacy, UK

UK – Teacher becomes a single dad by choice through surrogacy and egg donation

Source Metro

42-year-old man has become a solo parent after finding a surrogate and egg donor.

Tired to waiting to find a man who also dreamt of becoming a dad, David Watkins, a teacher from Southampton, decided to become a solo parent.

In January 2019 a law passed that gave him the ability as a single person to become the legal parent of his own child conceived through surrogacy.

He is now one of the first men in Britain to become a solo parent through Surrogacy UK, thanks to a selfless surrogate and anonymous egg donor.

Read more

Egg Donor, Surrogacy

Judge grants citizenship to twin son of gay couple

Source Four States

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A federal judge in California ruled Thursday that a twin son of a gay married couple has been an American citizen since birth, handing a defeat to the U.S. government, which had only granted the status to his brother.
The State Department was wrong to deny citizenship to 2-year-old Ethan Dvash-Banks because U.S. law does not require a child to show a biological relationship with their parents if their parents were married at the time of their birth, District Judge John F. Walter found.

A lawsuit filed by the boys’ parents, Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, sought the same rights for Ethan that his brother, Aiden, has as a citizen.

Read more

Egg Donation, Egg Donor

An Altruistic Gift: What to Consider If You’re Thinking About Becoming an Egg Donor

Source Rush PR News

Self-fulfillment is something we all strive to achieve, but how we obtain this feeling remains very different for each of us.

Some people find a sense of achievement in pursuing a high-flying career, while others want to feel they’ve helped others in a life-changing, significant way.

If you’re amongst the latter, you may be considering egg donation. After all, what better way to fulfill your own existence – and others – than by offering the gift of life itself?

Read more

Egg Donor, egg donor children

What happened when I told my adult daughter she was conceived with a donor egg

Source Washington Post

It was 1992 and I had just turned 50. Unwanted invitations to join AARP were arriving regularly in my mailbox, when what I really yearned for was another go at motherhood, which I felt as ready to take on as I had when I’d given birth to my son, Jake, 11 years earlier.

I felt this way even though my friends thought I was seriously unbalanced and even though, at the time, older women taking advantage of the newly emerging fertility technologies were being criticized for selfishly saddling their kids with decrepit mothers. I weighed the caveats carefully, but decided that I was no more crazy or selfish than any other woman who ached to hold an infant in her arms.

Read more

Egg Donor

Utah Woman Donates Eggs to Best Friend So She Can Realize Her Dream of Becoming a Mom

Source Inside Edition

After seven years of heartbreaking disappointment, Chelsea Judd is finally pregnant, thanks to her best friend.

The Utah woman and her husband, Steve, finally learned her eggs weren’t fertile enough after an IVF attempt failed. They were reluctant to use an anonymous donor.
And that’s when Chelsea’s friend, Tia Stokes, stepped forward to help.

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – Teacher, 32, who spent four YEARS trying to conceive reveals how her ‘selfless’ best friend donated her eggs – and now she’s the proud mother of the daughter she always dreamed of  By Latoya Gayle For Mailonline

Source Daily Mail

A married couple who spent seven years trying to conceive have revealed how they finally realised their dream of starting a family – after a close friend donated her eggs.

Chelsea Judd, 32, and her husband Steve, 34, from Santa Clara, Utah, began trying for a baby in 2011, but didn’t fall pregnant.

During the couple’s first IVF attempt doctors discovered Chelsea suffered from low quality eggs and urged her to seek either egg donation or adoption.

The ‘devastated’ couple began to fear they would never have the children they craved, until Chelsea’s best friend Tia Stokes, 32, offered to help.

Read more

Egg Donor

UK – A Love Letter To The Family I Donated My Eggs To

Source Huffington Post

A while ago I went through an IVF cycle to donate my eggs to you, a couple in your 30s I didn’t know. Why? Because, at 35, it was now or never for me. Because a generous sperm donor had given us our family, and I felt a duty to pay it forward. It was about integrity, gratitude and doing the right thing.

I felt enormous responsibility for it to work. I wasn’t going through all the injected medication, diary rescheduling, overstimulated ovaries and endless driving back and forth to the fertility clinic for you not to get pregnant. I held your dreams in my hands and I couldn’t bear to let you down. Then the fertility clinic counsellor told me that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t giving you a baby, I was giving you a chance, and that was my gift whether it worked or not. And, as I relaxed about the whole thing, I realised the gift I was making was not just of my eggs; it was a gift of hope, of humanity, of love. That may sound weird and probably pretty corny. We’ve never met. I don’t know who you are. But a gift of love doesn’t just evaporate. It lasts

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – Why I donated my eggs at 21

Source The Times

What do you say to a child, born with your DNA, who you’ll probably never meet? This was the question I found myself trying to answer five years ago as I filled in a form after agreeing to donate my eggs to a fertility clinic. “Leave a goodwill message for children born from your donation,” read the instruction at the top of a blank sheet of paper. “Be happy” was the only thing I could bring myself to write.

Read more

Egg Donor

Does exercise boost your egg production? Doctors weigh in on 5 common fertility myths

Source Today

It’s hard to understand what’s fact and fiction when it comes to getting pregnant, but the experts clarify what’s true and what’s not.

Everyone loves Chrissy Teigen for her brutal honesty and hilarious insights. And her candor about her struggles with fertility and using in vitro fertilization to become pregnant has helped many people feel less alone with their infertility struggles.

“The big question was why this wasn’t working for us when I was young and he was healthy,” Teigen told SELF magazine in 2016, before her daughter Luna was born. “I thought, ‘People get pregnant by accident all the time! How does this happen?’”

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – Selfless generosity or naive mistake? Kerri, 30, endures daily injections and painful operations to donate her eggs to women she doesn’t know – but doesn’t want children of her own

Source Daily Mail

For someone who says she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, Kerri Middleton will happily admit she was thrilled when she discovered a baby was on the way.

‘I was absolutely over the moon — so much so that I had a little cry,’ she says. ‘It was exactly what I had hoped for.’

Would it look like her? Would it inherit her colouring and her single-minded personality? All were questions that flitted through her mind — but they are ones she will likely never be able to answer.

Read more

Egg Donor, Surrogacy

Australia – ‘We can never thank her enough for helping us to achieve our dream’

Source Kidspot
After a hysterectomy to treat her severe endometriosis, Jennifer relied on the kindness of strangers to help her become a mum.

I was barely in my 20s when my fertility struggles began.

When I was 16, I was diagnosed with severe stage five endometriosis, a painful chronic condition that affected every aspect of my life.

I underwent a dozen laparoscopies to try and improve the condition, but when I was 21 it was decided that the only way to move forward in my treatment was to remove my ovary (I was only born with one).

Time was running out

I was single at the time but went through two egg retrievals before the procedure so that one day having a baby wasn’t entirely an impossible dream. I ended up with five eggs and after I had the surgery to remove my ovary I went into surgical menopause.

A year later I reconnected with an old friend Steve, I’d known him since childhood, he is the brother of one of my best friends. Steve and I quickly fell in love, and while we both wanted to start a family, my endo was just getting worse and the threat of me needing a hysterectomy was very real.

With that possibility looming, Steve and I decided to try IVF, knowing that time was running out.

Read more

Egg Donor, New Zealand

New Zealand – Egg donor friends share special bond helping couples become parents

Source NZ Herald

It might be one of the most uniquely beautiful friendships in Australia.
Two women who formed a bond over their love for helping other women become mums, became best friends themselves — and have helped produce 35 babies, news.com.au reported.

If you count Melissa Holman and Sarah Connor’s own children, that number sits at 40 — and then there’s all the potential babies that could come from frozen embryos around the country one day giving parents desperate for a family a child of their own.

Read more

Egg Donor, LGBTQ, Sperm Donor

Canada – Paying Sperm And Egg Donors Will Help LGBTQ Couples Build Families

Source Huffington Post

The Canadian government is considering amendments to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA) that will benefit the LGBTQ community.

On May 29, Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather introduced a private members bill to the House of Commons. He is seeking decriminalization of surrogacy services and consideration of reasonable compensation for egg and sperm donation in Canada.

It’s currently illegal to pay, offer to pay or advertise payment for sperm, eggs, or surrogacy services. Under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act of 2004, any compensation beyond reasonable expenditures is a criminal offence punishable by 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. What constitutes a legitimate expense has yet to be clearly defined by the government, leading to criticism of the Act by many doctors and legal experts.

Read more

Egg Donor, Ireland

Ireland – ‘Remote’ IVF allows use of anonymous donor eggs without travel

Source Irish Times

Anonymous sperm and egg donation is expected to be banned in Ireland, once the Minister for Health commences enactment of Parts 2 and 3 of the 2015 Children and Family Relationships Act, which allows for parentage through donor-assisted human reproduction. File image: PA

Irish women undergoing fertility treatment can now avail of anonymously donated eggs for use in IVF without having to travel abroad, according to an international clinic which has facilities in Ireland.

The Institut Marquès, which has clinics in Dublin and Clane, Co Kildare, says it has developed a new programme which will allow patients to avoid travelling and to “remotely” carry out IVF with donor eggs.

The institute is to present the initial results of its “distance oocyte donation” (DOD) programme at the 2018 conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona on Tuesday.

Read more

Egg Donor

UK – Marriage celebrant, 29, shares why she has donated eggs for six couples struggling to have kids – and is still in touch with the families

Source Daily Mail

New Zealand-based Laura Giddey has helped six different couples to become parents since she began donating her eggs in late 2015.   

Speaking to FEMAIL, Ms Giddey, 29, said while becoming a donor wasn’t something she’d previously thought about, spotting an ad posted by a desperate couple to a Facebook group she was following changed all of that.

‘As soon as I saw the ad I thought “I could do that”, I hadn’t thought about this before but knew it was something I could do,’ Ms Giddey said.

Read more

Cryogenic storage failure, Egg Donor, Same Sex, Surrogate Mother

Two dads, an egg donor and a surrogate: How a freezer failure changed everything

Source CNN

San Francisco, California (CNN) — Their first date was over lunch during a Proposition 8 protest, where they joined hundreds of others railing against the passage of California’s same-sex marriage ban. The two men took a break from demonstrating, threw their hearts on the table and talked about their desire to have kids.

So it was somehow appropriate that in June 2013, nearly five years later, Bill Taroli and Yang Li stood in a delivery room and welcomed their son, Henry, one day before the US Supreme Court overturned Prop 8. A couple weeks later, with their newborn in their arms, they exchanged vows and were legally married.

Read more

Egg Donor, UK

UK – What it’s really like to donate your eggs to a stranger

Source Cosmopolitan

30-year-old Kerri shared every aspect of the process with us – from why she did it to how it affected her, the health risks and the pay she didn’t know you got.

GETTY IMAGESCOSMOPOLITAN UK

Most women have probably never even considered donating their eggs – and neither had Kerri, 30, until she saw an advert for it on a London tube.

“To be honest, I didn’t even know that you could donate eggs,” she told Cosmopolitan UK. But the curiosity got the better of her and, after weeks of playing on her mind, she googled the London clinic advertised on the underground, eager to know more.

Read more

Egg Donor

UK – Why I already tell my one-year-old that she was so wanted that a donor helped to make her

Source iNews

My one-year-old daughter Astrid has spent the past week practising the sound ‘mamama’. I’d love to say this is an acknowledgment of all the hard work I’ve put in during the year, but I know it’s no more aimed at me than when she says ‘dadada’, despite no dad figure in her world.

Many babies make the sound ‘dada’ first. I’m not sure whether in centuries gone by a father heard his baby’s first word and said ‘yes, that is me’, or whether a mother heard the noise and cannily offered encouragement, saying: ‘This is our child’s name for you. Now, please change this loincloth-nappy’.

Read more

Egg Donor

At 28, I Know I Never Want To Be A Mom, So I Donated My Eggs Instead

Source Essence

For years, Lyne Mugema knew that motherhood was not on the menu for her. Though, this didn’t mean she drew a line in the sand: Mugema still wanted to support other women who wanted to conceive.

So, in 2016 Mugema leaned into that aspiration and donated her eggs for the first time. The 28-year-old self-described free spirit did her due diligence–she researched everything she needed to know about becoming an egg donor and discussed the experience with a coworker who’d already gone through the process.

This journey helped her produce two pregnancies and enough wisdom about herself to last a lifetime.

Read more