Since the customised advice with Families Through Surrogacy in Sydney, we have narrowed down our surrogacy options to Canada. Why Canada? We felt that the surrogates in Canada have a much higher level of compassion and desire to help couples to have children. It was because, in Canada, surrogacy has to be altruistic, which means the surrogates do not get paid for being surrogates. They only get their expenses paid, that’s all. That means that what they are doing is 100% out of their own heart and willingness.
In the USA, they do commercial surrogacy, which means that surrogates there will be paid for carrying someone else’s child(ren). I am sure those in the USA can also be doing it out of their own heart but probably not as much as those in Canada. That is not only the reason why we chose Canada. Canada’s dollar value is not too different from that of Australia’s, and the cost of surrogacy is not as crazy high as that in the USA… still reaching close to AU$100,000 anyway according to some of the surrogacy estimates from the agencies in Canada.
On 12 November 2016, Canadian Fertility Consulting had an online Facebook event where a couple of (past) surrogates who works for the company starts to answer questions about surrogacy and ‘debunking’ the myths surrounding surrogacy. It was a very good video and I suggests those thinking about surrogacy as an IP or surrogate to watch this. The video is can be viewed here.
As of today, there are only four surrogacy agencies in Canada:
- Surrogacy in Canada Online
- Canadian Surrogacy Options
- Canadian Fertility Consulting
- ANU Fertility Consultants
We were keen to get to know each and every one of them to see which of them would be the best fit for us. Canada spans across a few time zones and most of the agencies are based in Ontario or have head offices there, so it is about 16 hours behind Melbourne, Australia on Daylight Savings Time. One of the agencies has their head office in Alberta which is 18 hours behind us. Anyway, on Monday this week, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to Skype-call three of the four agencies (one of them did not have numbers listed). I had a chat with each of them and explained the purpose of my call – to find out more about them and to make a consultation appointment with them for us. We can then ask them as many questions as we like and also see what their processes are like and how they differ between them. The one that did not have numbers responded to my email a few days later and we secured a consultation time with them as well.
The first consultation is tomorrow early morning at 7am our time. It is a video conference, so we might have to scrub up a little. Hahaha. Well, we have to dress up for work after anyway, so we should be fine. The next one is on Friday morning at the same time, and then the rest of the consultations are in the next week (mornings too).
Can’t wait!
