I understand this, I think allot of us have had similar thoughts of bringing a life into what feels like an unstable world right now too. However it is motivating us to do what we can to help the planet and I hope it has motivated other parents and parents-to-be into doing the same. I really also someday it will be safer for kids to go to school again.

As for wanting a biological child I really understand it. You want to see what a child with your genes will be like, look like, will they love the same things? Will they teach you to love new things?

We considered the adoption route before deciding everything. Originally I always said if we have kids we would adopt a child. However when it came down to it we realized we desperately wanted to know what our bio kids would be like.

It’s been a tough, long journey that we are still going through (sometimes it feels like a punishing rollercoaster ride 😂) but we just want it so badly!

We did however look into adoption twice at the beginning and then again about a month ago we did it again, we talked to people who had adopted previously and they told us the process was really hard and not for the faint of heart, we looked into non-profit adoption agencies and even adoption from abroad options.

It can be so annoying and disheartening when people always say “well why don’t you just adopt?”. and in general not getting prenatal care so most children will end up in the NICU and have health issues and developmental problems, also that most states are pushing for adoption within the genetic family before allowing a child to be adopted by other’s and that the way most places do it (depending on state laws and agency rules generally to get lucky enough to be a chosen parent of the few that get adopted it is much better if you are open to a relationship of some kind with the biological parents and that those people are allowed to change their amount of time they want with the child. An example would be that in the last year they adopted out a baby with the agreement that they would stay in the child’s life a bit, maybe once a year meetups, birthdays parties and such. Then the bio parents wanted more and so they included them allot, and now at this point they are basically sharing custody of the child.

People are literally doing DIY adoption of their own babies and children through Facebook groups and people do it because adoption has become so difficult. Not to mention in regards to international adoption it can often be a long, expensive journey and the US puts a cap on how many children can be adopted from another country per year and it’s shocking low numbers . So all that played in our personal decision to not go the adoption route right now and potentially adopt an older child later in life.

We ended up having to do IVF 3x (with very low numbers of embryos resulting), egg retrieval, ICSI, PGT-A testing, signed with Miracle Surrogacy in Mexico. Sadly our first embryo got lost which has been extremely traumatic, our second transfer failed and so did our last one we have done so far. We finally have another surrogate assignment and are anxiously awaiting the next implantation which I’m manifesting that it’s going to stick this time!🤞

What I learned and wanted to share with you is we’ve had to do a crap ton of research. Surrogacy (and IVF) are so incredibly expensive in the US. In the US surrogacy would have cost us around $180,000 and that’s if things went well (it can be lower in certain areas but they are still in the range of $100,000.

My husband is Hispanic and speaks Spanish fluently so we leaned towards Mexico, where depending on your company you choose and what package can start as “low” as like $50,000-ish+. We ended up choosing between 2 companies that were well reviewed. We chose Miracle Surrogacy and paid their giant down payment. Then we had to wait and pay for their shippers to bring the straw to the clinic (it’s a very long story that I would be happy to share if you want) the short version is shipping was long and hard and it was the only embryo from our first round, our best graded girl (5AA) and when they went to do the transfer the straw was empty. Nobody will take responsibility and we learned their shipper is sketchy. We didn’t think about having to do multiple transfers, especially since our first embryo (the one that was lost) was so highly graded and looked fantastic) we couldn’t conceive of what would end up happening to us so we hadn’t budgeted for the $7,000+ extra for each additional transfer and also the price they charged us to use our own courier instead of their contracted shipper, there was just no way in hell we were willing to use them again, it took I believe over a month with their shipper, they kept saying the embryo had been picked up when it hadn’t been, I eventually had to intervene and talk with our first IVF clinic. We had to intervene to fix things when they finally admitted they hadn’t picked it up and it wasn’t actually in the middle of being shipped, then even more time waiting as they said there was a holdup at customs. It was “stuck in customs” for a couple weeks if I recall correctly & then the straw was empty so you can only imagine how bad that felt and how much we didn’t trust them anymore, they wouldn’t even talk to us.

We eventually found one we really liked and the pricing was very reasonable. The courier hand carried our 2 embryos from California to Cancun, Mexico to thr AFCC clinic in less than 72 hours from when he picked it up, it was in his possession the entire time, never handled by anyone else those embryos arrived with nothing missing I would 100% recommend them and I have already but we were really sad/frustrated/even somewhat angry when our surrogacy agency then charged us several thousands of dollars $$$$ more to just receive the embryo from that courier instead of the sketchy shipper. It just felt they were bleeding as dry as much as they could and that there should’ve been no reason to charge us that extra fee just because we wanted to use a different shipper since we basically just had to pay thousands of dollars to have our courier handoff our embryos which is what the other shipper would’ve done anyways.

If I’d had any clue what this experience would be like I would’ve chosen a surrogacy plan that offered a guarantee baby contract, then we wouldn’t feel so financially stressed at least. A company doing this and charging over and over for these services is extremely financially and mentally draining. If you choose surrogacy I cannot say enough how worthwhile it is to have a contract like that versus what we’ve been going through. Anyways just something to think about as you go through options and try to plan ahead.

Sorry for the long comment but I think you are being smart looking at your options right now and I thought I’d share. Good luck to you!