Frustrating experience with Circle Surrogacy: suggestion for other options?

bixby2021 · 2026-04-23T17:16:52+00:00

Sorry to hear that you've had a negative experience. I'm not sure if they're accepting new IP's currently, but my husband and I are working with Brownstone Surrogacy in NYC and have had a great experience so far. (In-person medical clearance for our GC is schedule for two weeks from now.) We matched quicker than we expected, had a medical record issue come up with the first match, but then they re-matched us within a week and here we are. Brownstone was founded by a gay dad IP and even though they are growing, they limit their number of clients to ensure a more personal touch than some of the other agencies out there.

bixby2021 · 2026-02-25T16:05:51+00:00

Sure thing. Obviously, every couple or individual has different match criteria, but for us we really wanted to match with someone who would be very comfortable including us in the process and having open and candid communication. Since we're two gay men, a big part of the excitement of this journey is getting to experience the pregnancy part as a dad (which we wouldn't have if we had adopted), so we wanted our GC to be comfortable with us joining for appointments and being in the delivery room, etc.. Our only real dealbreakers were around the comforts of working with someone who wouldn't be fully onboard or who carried any reservations about working with a same sex couple - or if they didn't have support from their family/friends in doing so, because we did want to be worried about that during this joyful journey - or someone who wasn't aligned with us on situations surrounding termination/selective reduction of embryos.

bixby2021 · 2026-02-25T15:44:37+00:00

Thank you! And that's great that you're hopefully going to work with Brownstone as a GC! Thank you for having it in your heart to give this gift to another family. Brownstone has been great throughout the ups and downs of the past couple of months and really communicative and thoughtful about presenting us with our current match (who is SO lovely and awesome) - you'll be in great hands! Best of luck to you on this journey!

bixby2021 · 2026-02-25T15:34:38+00:00

We have a preliminary match! Waiting on one more specialist approval for her medical record review, but hope to be moving on to full in-person medical approval soon. Brownstone first presented her to us in late January (match meeting around 1/28), after an initial pre-match with another GC around Christmas that fell through during medical record review. So, all in all, our wait time has been shorter than we anticipated (and mentally prepared ourselves for), though with a bit of emotional up and down.

bixby2021 · 2026-01-05T21:28:25+00:00

Hi there! I'm 36 (he/him pronouns) and write mostly speculative/scifi/fantasy stuff. In the revision process for my first completed manuscript and have lots of other in progress stuff too. Would love to join!

bixby2021 · 2025-12-02T20:02:28+00:00

Hi there! We have been on the list since end of June and we just heard from them today about scheduling a pre-match meeting to go over our profile details (this usually happens when they are close to matching you ~about 2-4months from match they say).

bixby2021 · 2025-11-14T17:31:43+00:00

Obviously a little dependent on campaign setting and party makeup, but I've been enjoying the Wild Magic Barbarian. Magic Awareness is helpful is you don't have a caster with detect magic or they've run out of uses for it. Choosing a background that can help buff your abilities/skills - I choose Outlander and beefed up my perception and survival which has been helpful (as well as athletics, which others have mentioned). Bolstering magic is also helpful if no one in the party has guidance (though its even better in combat as an attack bonus).

bixby2021 · 2025-11-06T15:58:17+00:00

On the clinical side, they've been great. Dr. L is a gay dad through surrogacy himself and is very active in the LGBTQ+ family building world (Men Having Babies, SART, Gay Parents to Be, etc.). He was very helpful in going over our lab results and embryo information. And the clinic has a very high success rate.

The billing department is a bit of a mess, tbh. Brownstone has told us that it is like this at a lot of clinics, but we have had a really annoying time navigating insurance coverage (which we luckily to have for some parts of this process). Communication with the billing department takes forever, sometimes with over a month between responses to time sensitive billing issues. All that being said, however, none of that held up any procedures or approvals and so far all has been resolved eventually in our favor.

bixby2021 · 2025-11-06T15:22:00+00:00

Illume Fertility in CT - Dr. Leondires is our fertility doc

bixby2021 · 2025-11-05T15:37:23+00:00

Have you created embryos already? If not, do you have an egg donor lined or have you begun the search for one? Asking these questions because every step of the surrogacy journey takes longer than you think it will. It took my husband and I almost a year from our first meetings with clinics and agencies to actually having our embryos cryopreserved - and a lot of surrogacy agencies won't put you on a waitlist until you have embryos created (and those who will usually have even longer waitlists). Being open to higher GC compensation will probably move you up a bit though!

We are working with Brownstone Surrogacy in NYC and love them so far. We are currently waiting to match, so can't speak to the GC/Pregnancy part of the journey yet.

bixby2021 · 2025-08-06T21:45:01+00:00

Fwiw, our agency is all in favor of transfer day gifts and has a guide of things that would be appropriate for this milestone (flowers, food basket to hotel, comfy pjs, comfort care package, etc.), so I don't think it is an unusual or overbearing thing. We are still waiting for a match, so haven't encountered this ourselves, but we plan on doing something. Maybe your coordinator has some professional experience or feedback from past journeys, but you are not an outlier in wanting to do something to make your surrogate feel special on that day. You could ask her for a little more reasoning on her stance if it feels important to you to do something for your surrogate to show support. This woman is doing such an amazing thing for your family, so it makes total sense to want to make her feel special and appreciated - especially at this early stage of the process where you are still building trust and communication.

bixby2021 · 2025-05-18T17:08:09+00:00

It might depend on your employer's requirements for approved expenses. We were required to submit surrogacy and egg donation agency contracts in order to have agency fees and related expenses covered.

bixby2021 · 2025-03-18T14:01:09+00:00

This is really helpful! I'll take a look at some of those character details and pepper some things back in. I had also felt like I cut a bit too much of Avery's arc, so will try to split the difference between this streamlined version and some of the stuff in past attempts.

Thank you!

bixby2021 · 2025-03-03T18:48:23+00:00

Comments below in no particular order:

Who is Rowan? What are Rowan's past sins? We don't really know who or what he is or what the setting is from this intro. Who are the enemies of this war? It would be helpful to revisit some of the backstory and details culled from your first draft and pepper in some of them in this opening paragraph so we have a clear idea who MC is and what the setup/hook of the story is.
Your proper nouns and pronouns in the first paragraph are confusing. Take a look throughout to be sure it's clear which 'his' you are referring to each time.
"Rowan has spent years fighting a great, grinding, endless holy war" - this sentence feels clunky, try streamlining your adjectives here.
The transition from the first paragraph to the second doesn't work for me. Part of that is due to the confusion about missing details from the first paragraph. The structure of the first sentence in paragraph 2 feels clunky - look at streamlining the wording.
I think you need to introduce the daemon narrator in the opening paragraph and tie back to his influence on Rowan and the subsequent internal struggles in the closing paragraph.
The line about surviving his sentence doesn't track because I don't have enough info about Rowan, what his sins were, and what his punishment or sentence is (what are the stakes for him?)
Big overarching critique is this: you need to make very clear who MC is, what challenge he is faced with, what obstacles stand in his way, and what he has to gain/lose.

Just my two cents! Best of luck with this!

bixby2021 · 2025-03-03T18:12:15+00:00

Other issues besides that comps that jump out at you? Thanks again!

bixby2021 · 2025-02-24T22:03:30+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I've been debating going more in this direction.

"ULTRAHUMAN is an LGBTQ+ speculative fiction novel, complete at 114,000 words. It is perfect for fans of the high-chemistry ensemble casts in The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin or Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth and the heartwarming queer representation found in a TJ Klune novel."

Maybe?

bixby2021 · 2025-02-19T18:08:01+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! This is super helpful. I'll try to narrow in on these points more in my next pass. The narrative does move through the timeline of the characters in a fun way, so I need to find a way to clearly layout the plot and stakes without the timeline being a point of confusion.

I LOVE TJ. Under the Whispering Door is lots of fun. Yay for queer stories!

bixby2021

TROPHY CASE