Episode 3: Donor Conception 101: What LGBTQ+ Parents Need to Know with Lisa Schuman

but you have to be really careful. This is the future health of your child, and
for the rest of their lives, if there's a mental illness, if there's a physical
problem because something happened in utero, for the rest of your life, this is
going to be an issue. So even though it really feels stressful, you really need to
kind of wind back, think about what matters most, right? It's a psychological and
physical health of your future child, and that has to be covered first.
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♪ Come over and visit us, hi ♪ - Welcome back.
I'm Steven. - I'm Brett. - And we are the Broadway Husbands and this is... - Another
episode of From Husbands to Dads. - What? - Welcome back. - If you've been following
along and listening in succession, in succession. - In succession. - Hey.
- Secession. We did an awesome interview with Brian from Kids About Adoption last
week, but we wanted to talk about this episode which is about donor conception,
which is the math. One of the paths we chose in building our family and if shout
out to anybody who's either donor conceiver has chosen to go through donor conception
because it is definitely a process that has a lot of mystery to it. Yeah, and so
part of that process is Choosing an egg donor for us because we are two men.
That's kind of the first step. That is what well the first step is Testing our
sperm and making sure that all of our swimmers are swimming straight As straight as
they can be and then and then choosing an egg donor and Honestly,
for us, choosing our egg donor was really pretty simple.
I think-- can we just talk about some misconceptions you have around choosing an egg
donor? So I think that there's a whole niche market around there,
around choosing-- You could get an egg donor and an egg donor of all people who
went or all or all people who were supermodels or all people who were I don't
know. And it's a great easy writing to overthink it and overthink the process and
maybe even spend more money than you probably really need to if you want to have a
family here. But also if that's what you choose to do, do the thing that you
believe is best for your family and but we really went Our fertility clinic had
their own egg donor or bank and so we just stuck with them. We stuck with them
That's where we the profiles we looked at we looked at a total of three profiles
And the first profile and it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a little bit like
looking at a dating profile Yeah, and you know, there's questions that they answer
like written questions You know just facts about them, right? But the first profile
was this awesome woman who had an awesome,
awesome, I keep saying awesome, a really sweet video talking about a little bit
about who she was and why she wanted
um, be a donor for, uh, a gay family. Um, and it was so sweet.
She specifically said that. She specifically said that she wanted to do this for a
gay, for two dads. Um, and one thing I will say is now, even, even though,
even though it's been like five or six years since we started that process, it's
changed even more. Like now it's much more common to actually know your end. Yeah.
Where when we were looking, it was anonymous, so we don't really have access to
her. We don't know, you know. - One thing I wish we did. - I know, I know. - She
was awesome and I would look for her to know. - It was the sweetest, sweetest
video, and-- - Regardless. - Regardless. - We are super happy with the eggs that she
gave us. - Yes, so, no, and so let me just back up. So it was the first profile
we looked at. We looked at two more and And we went back to the first profile. We
looked at her like, this is it. It was a no -brainer for us. It was like, yes.
The things she said, there's so many common things between all of us. And so we
chose her and-- - And the common things were not genetic. - No. - The common things
were not like-- - They were for nothing. - I think some people were like, oh, I
need blue eyes. I need, you know, Irish background. But really, I think then That
was a misconception I had going in, but I was like, no, like her story and why
she wants to do this and like her experience is exactly who I'm one. Yeah. Yeah.
And so that's who we chose. And so for us, it was like a pretty easy a one to
thing. And then, and then she went in, are we
went in and they were able to get 38 eggs.
She gave them produced. What do you want to use the word? She produced 38 eggs.
That seemed like a high number. Then from there, I think the viable eggs went down
to 11 that they used to,
um, inseminate, to make embryos inseminate. I can't remember the word. And friend
that 11, when they did the PGS testing, yes. We ended up with five viable embryos.
So it's, it goes from 38 to five. Yeah. That's a big, big jump. Yeah. And that's
typical. I think, you know, we even have friends who ended up with one. Yeah. And
that one took, Thank God, but you know, that isn't part of that IVF process in
creating the embryos. And so we just got to the embryo stage and froze them. And
we're waiting to figure out how we were going to find a carrier and how to
replenish our bank account. Because at that point, we spent about $40K because you
had to do the egg retrieval was like $20 ,000 and the
and like embryo creation with another 20 ,000. - Yeah. - So we were like, okay, we're
gonna try to go work and try to make up for the next part of this. - And then in
the process, we met Lisa Schumann because we had our day where they took our blood
and our sperm and all of that stuff and made the embryos with the egg donor and
our And part of the process with any fertility clinic is they have an in -house
social worker home because of the psychology of it all and like understanding, you
know, but also when you match with the story, you want to make sure everyone's
mentally healthy and good. So this was the in -house social worker at our fertility
clinic, which is Alume Fertility up in Connecticut. Shout out to Dr. Leigh &
Dearest. Yay. So I just wanted to say that out loud. - Yeah, and then like Brett
was saying, we took a little bit of time to kind of figure out how we would do
the next step. And the next step is to find a carrier. And we found a carrier
through a Facebook group.
And so now it was about maybe like a year later,
a year later, maybe even longer. And we ended up having to wait even longer once
we matched with her. And she went through all of the evaluations, and she passed.
And Lisa was also a part of all of that. And then we had to take some more time
to wait for some financial But I want to give it like another little shout out to
Lisa during that time. Yeah. Is I remember there was concerns about that.
There were. Yes. Because she had had some PTSD. Yes. And they were so honest with
us. Yeah. Like she was really clear how I want to let you know. Like I question
whether or not she's a good candidate because of this PTSD from whatever event
happened. Yeah. But if you want to move forward with her, that's fine. And I just
remember her being so honest about that and being supportive. So I want to say that
out loud to know, like, you want a social worker who's going to call out the yes
stuff and not just try to make a book. Well, she called it out. And to be fair
to the woman who is going to be the carrier, she also was very straightforward with
us about all of the information. And it was all out in the open. It wasn't nothing
was a surprise. But in the end, now it was, I think our team day of making the
embryos was March of 2018. And now we had waited and we were going to try and do
the transfer before 2020. And it was November of 2019. And we were doing the legal
contracts. And the surrogate decided the last minute not to do it.
And which is Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. We were but we were devastated.
It was Thanksgiving 2019 and we were like, oh Just so upset and so like the next
week our one of our best friends was having her 40th surprise birthday party Yeah,
and her and our new friends was in town from Orlando for the party and Her name
is crystal and we talked about She I you know what it happened It's older and then
lost our surrogate. Yeah, and then she literally was like, I'm so sorry She's like
I would totally carry your baby for you and we were like, we're gonna call you
tomorrow. Are you serious? Are you sure that's not the glass of wine or whatever
you're drinking and she was like no no no call me like yes I'm totally serious and
She ended up carrying her son. Yeah, and so that's how And now we're neighbors. And
now we're going to be neighbors, we're going to be neighbors. So Lisa Schumann was
really there for so much of that journey and she's our guest today. Yeah. And so
Lisa Schumann is an award -winning researcher and the only therapist chosen to testify
before the State Senate Judiciary Committee to legalize compensated surrogacy in New
York. Lisa is the host of the podcast, Building Your Family, author of the book,
Building Your Family, the complete guide to donor conception and creator of the
Building Your Family community platform. The only expert created education and support
community designed to provide you with the latest support tools and evidence -based
guidance to help you become more informed at any point of your journey from
preconception through parenthood. So ladies and gentlemen, here's our interview with
Lisa Shuman.
Well, hello, Lisa. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank
you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. We're so happy to have you.
You've been such a huge part of our journey to parenthood, and we know you've
helped a lot of people. But to start, can you Just give us a brief overview of
something that you and I were exchanging about, which I think is this general idea
that families, especially same -sex families, growing their families are just going to
do it through surrogacy when it comes to a biological journey. What is the
difference between, let's say, donor conception and surrogacy? Just to clarify that
for people who maybe have seen that as a generic term. Okay, so years ago,
there was something that we now kind of call traditional surrogacy, where the
gestational carrier would also use her eggs, so you could use your sperm for a
gestational carrier and she would just get pregnant from IUI, and of course, that
was less expensive and easier, but it turned out to be very complicated because, of
course, It was more likely that she would be attached to this baby because it was
her egg. And so there was a big case in New York about that and a custody case
over the baby and it became a big mess. And so since that time, we really don't
do traditional surrogacy anymore. We really try to separate both of those parts by
getting an egg donor and also getting a surrogate and and both of those pieces very
separate. And so the idea would be, as you guys know, you create embryos with both
of your sperm, you try to split the batch of eggs in half. And so for that
reason, everybody out there who's planning to do this in the same sex male couple,
you really probably shouldn't get frozen eggs because then you need to get at least
two batches. You wanna get one full batch from somebody's cycle, so you could have
lots of eggs to work with. You split them in half and fertilize them from each
partner. You make embryos and then you find a gestational carrier to carry the baby.
And so there was traditional surrogacy, which was the egg donor and the carrier
being the same person. What do we call this now? It's a gestational carrier journey.
- So it's not traditional but it's a little less, it's a little more long -winded.
We gotta come up with a shorter, quicker answer. What do we, modern surrogacy, I
don't know. - Yes, well people call it surrogacy still, but technically it's a
gestational carrier because you're describing this person carrying the baby, not being
related to the baby. - Right, Thank you for clarifying and then do you feel like
donor conception also For let's say same -sex female couples is also could that that
phrase would cover How they might go on a bot biological journey as well, or is
that different they have more parts, right? And so it's easier for them. I'm not
saying it's easier for anyone who uses reproductive medicine because it's not easy I
mean, even just to start who remembers their 10th grade biology, just to start, it's
overwhelming. So it's hard for everyone, but for women, it's easier because they have
more parts. They have the eggs, they have the uterus usually, and so they have more
options. The person who's younger very often can produce more eggs. Either one of
them can use
And we published at a Loom Fertility years ago some research recently that we looked
at, it was published after I left, but we looked at same -sex male couples and how
they felt about their journey, and then compared it to same -sex female couples and
how they felt about their journey. And we found that most men wanted to be able to
have the opportunity to use both of their genetics. And lesbian couples did not seem
to care. And at first we thought, oh, that's really interesting. I wonder if women
have this kind of maternal feeling where they feel like it doesn't matter to them
and they just are going to love any child that they see. And we thought that maybe
that's it. So we thought we would pursue it with research and see what happens. And
what we discovered was very interesting that it, in fact, wasn't that, but it was
that they have both of these parts, and so they have more options. And some people
feel really strongly about genetic connection, and other people feel really strongly
about caring a baby. And so the reason was because some people didn't care about
the genetic connection, some people cared about caring. So they had these options
that weren't available to men. - Interesting, that is interesting. - What do you think
are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about donor conception that you
encounter? Like both from perspective parents when they come in to start the journey,
but maybe even from general public as well. - Well, I am so happy you asked me
that question because that is my favorite chapter in my book. How to choose a
donor. I think it's so, so important for people to think about that. And now we
have lots of open options. You guys didn't have as many when you were starting your
journey, but we have lots of options for openness. And I think that we also have
options to think about with regard to screening. And that ultimately I think is the
most important. And the reason I say that is because I think that people don't
really understand the level of stress that they feel when they go through this
journey. They don't really digest how difficult it is to choose this person who is
a stranger to you and say that person is going to have the genetics for my future
child. It's the most intimate relationship in my life, right? My family, I'm gonna
have this baby and I'm gonna use the genetics from somebody I don't know. And so I
think that reflexively, people will very often say, "Oh, I really like this donor
because she's so sweet or she's pretty or she's got the same ancestry as me,"
right? She looks like my long line of Irish relatives or whatever it is. People
look for something that makes them feel comfortable and what's comfortable for one
person is different than for somebody else. Somebody's, you know, who's interested in
IQ is not going to be the same person who's interested in looking for a supermodel
or looking for somebody with dimples or whatever it might be. And if we think about
it, people don't necessarily look like or behave like their relatives, right?
We all know people who don't look like their brothers or sisters or don't have the
same personalities, right? And if you look at in our public world. The two princes
of England don't look alike. Bill Clinton had the highest IQ of any president and
his brother's an alcoholic and can't keep a job. Kristie Brinkley's daughter looks
like Billy Joel. So everybody, right? I'm sure that's not easy for her, but lots of
people don't look like their relatives and don't have the same personality or IQ as
their relatives. And so when you look at this donor, you think, "I'm going to get
her or him, if you're a lesbian couple, but you're actually getting three generations
of relatives. You're getting the father's dimples and the mother's IQ and the
cousin's athletic ability or the mother's musical talent.
And all of those things are within the genetic code, but it can be expressed in
any way to anyone. And so what's really important is to think about what are the
things that I have some control over and can I separate them from the things that
I don't have control over. So in my five -step process, I really look at,
okay, you like the fact that this woman has dimples or, you know, this guy has an
Italian background. That's great. Let's put it to the five for a second, and let's
think about the things you have control over. So you have control over psychological
screening. There are lots of, unfortunately, lots of cases in the US and abroad
where people have used gametes, sperm or eggs, where they have found out later,
unfortunately, that that contained the predisposition for schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder, all sorts of things. And when their children develop these illnesses, very
often not for 20 years, they discover that it was in the donor's family. And so we
really want to do the right type of psychological screening and the type of
psychological screening that's suggested by the American Society for Reproductive
Medicine is really the key to doing this. Lots of people years ago would do these
psychological profiles. And unfortunately, it's not worth a hill of beans. You really
need to do the right type of screening. I think it's also important to use your
genetic counselor or at least to use your own assessment to try to determine if the
genetically linked parent has any familial difficulties,
they're the same as the donor. So for example, I just saw this family, and this
woman says, "I want to use an egg donor, and I'm going to use this extra special
person that I think is so terrific," and whatever. Turns out that her husband has
colon cancer in his family. She's going to mix his sperm with this donor who has
colon cancer in her family. Now, having colon cancer in your family by itself is
not necessarily a problem. We all die of something, right? You know, the donors are
gonna be healthy and young. People say, oh, my donor's healthy and young. Well, of
course your donor's healthy and young, but health does change over time and
eventually we die of something. And so, yes, there may be those donors who die,
whose grandparents died of old age at 110, but for the most part, people get
cancer, heart disease, whatever. So the question is, are those issues similar to the
genetically linked parent? Because when you go to see your genetic counselor, you're
looking at inherited traits, right, like cystic fibrosis and things like that. And
then people leave their genetic counselor and say, okay, I'm done. Well, I think we
can look at it a little bit further by digging into the donor's history and seeing
if those difficulties match the difficulties of the genetically linked parent. So I
think that's something that we do have control over. We also have control over maybe
not as serious, but also medical issues that perhaps we don't want to inherit.
Like let's say, you know, Brett, you didn't like wearing glasses and you thought, I
don't want my kid to have poor eyesight. And so I'm going to look at the donor's
family and make sure that there aren't lots of people who wear glasses, right? Or
there's asthma or other things like propensity for diabetes. There could be all sorts
of other issues, maybe not life -threatening, but maybe other things that you don't
want in your family. So I think those are things you can control. You also can
control whether or not you use an open donor, right? If you have someone who's
willing to be reached out for medical information or for social contact,
whatever you feel comfortable with. And I think that's really valuable because you
can then contact the donor if your pediatrician says, well,
how come my kid has eczema? I don't really understand it. Is this gonna go away?
Why isn't developing, you know, teeth at two years old. Why is this happening?
You can just call up the donor and find out or reach out to them. You can also
see how their health changes over time, right? A woman who's donating her eggs at
25 and is very healthy may have no issues at all. But what if she at 35 develops
breast cancer? You may want early mammogram screenings for your daughter, right? And
so if you know of this, even if you don't want to have a social relationship with
your donor, at least you have some of these options. So I think those are just
some of the things that we do have control over and give us a greater sense of
comfort because we have control over some things. And then we can look at the other
things last. You know, once we've kind of covered all of these issues, then we can
say, all right, well, everything else is gravy. Do I really want her to be sweet
or kind or artistic or what have you? But I think it's helpful to kind of look at
those other things first, knowing that we're not getting her, we're getting her whole
genetic pool. - Yeah, and I think you're talking a little bit about open egg donors
is really interesting because I feel like that's become so much more available than
it was even when we started our journey five, six years ago.
Most people think when they think of the surrogacy process, they think so hard about
the carrier because the carrier lives with the baby probably for the longest amount
of time within the process. But talk a little bit about why an egg donor might
want to donate and why it might be... So that someone who maybe is able to
traditionally have a baby might understand a little bit why they wouldn't want to
maybe have another baby, but they want to help someone else be able to do that.
Well, to answer your first question, I think that it is helpful to kind of think
about, you know, these two different parts of the process and to understand that,
yes, you're going to have this close relationship with your surrogate for a long
time. And so of course, she's going to be front and center in your life. And
that's great. And it's wonderful to have a good relationship with your surrogate. And
you know, I have a couple of really helpful videos on my podcast about that. So I
think it's really helpful for you, for your child, for the journey, for a million
reasons to have a good relationship with your surrogate. But remember, children
developmentally, when they're young, they have curiosity about whose tummy I grew in.
They're gonna go to a nursery school, they're gonna go to kindergarten, they're gonna
see their friends have siblings, and they're going to say, why, you know,
why does so -and -so have a brother or sister? You know, how did that happen?
How come I don't have one? Or why does so -and -so's mom have a big belly? You're
gonna start to see these things and children are gonna ask questions and you're
gonna have lots of discussions about your child's gestation. And so you're really
going to want that information in that connection, particularly early on. But then
after that, for the rest of your child's life, they're going to have more thoughts
about their donor, or you're going to be talking more about your donor. And when
you're going through the surrogacy process, that's so immediate, it feels like
everything's about the surrogate. But for the rest of your child's life, you're going
to be really connected to this issue about their donor. And so I think it's helpful
to try to think about this ahead of time and really think about how important it
is to really like your egg donor and choose an egg donor that works for your
family. As far as surrogates go, it is confusing to a lot of people why somebody
would want to do this. And I think people can't imagine, you know, why would
somebody want to do this sort of thing? But What we see is the psychological
profile of a gestational carrier is usually the psychological profile of somebody who
likes to be helped. They're usually people who feel altruistic. They see themselves
as caretakers. They see themselves as giving people. They see themselves as nurturing
people, and they want to do something for somebody else. In fact, many story gets I
see after the birth, miss the intended parents more than the baby. They have this
really tight relationship with the intended parents. And they often say to me, "I
cannot wait to see the faces of the intended parents when this baby comes out."
They want that so much because it gives them such joy to give you joy. And that's
not how everybody feels, but it is the psychological profile of the typical
gestational carrier. And that's wonderful. It's really wonderful that there are people
like that out in the world who are willing to do this. And it's gotten harder.
It's gotten harder because there are fewer people doing it. There's a greater demand.
And of course, we have issues in this country now around termination that are making
it very complicated. But in the end, I think that people are going to continue to
want to do this and surrogates are going to want to continue to help people. - And
just to chime in, like on a personal note, our surrogate totally wanted to see our
faces when Maverick was born, so much so that she had her phone in her hand.
And there are photos from her point of view that she can see us as Maverick was
born. That's how committed she was to saying, so that is totally true.
Totally true. That's amazing.
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the show notes. We'll see you in the neighborhood. You know, also, I think you
talked a little bit about this, and I actually wasn't super clear on it. The case
that you talked about with the, what was the term that you used,
traditional surrogacy,
the mother wanting to keep the baby. Can you just explain the misconceptions about
just like kind of go back and talk about the misconceptions of like the gestational
carrier, the fear of people keeping their baby. And what is the like legal and
emotional aspects that actually address that? Okay. So we,
because we don't, we no longer have this traditional surrogacy, right? So this is
called the baby M case, it was a very famous case. And it's one of the reasons
why it was so difficult to re -institute surrogacy in New York or institute
surrogacy, gestational surrogacy in New York for compensation. If you weren't
compensated, you can pursue it, but for compensation. And so it was really, really
difficult because there were a lot of people who were really concerned about that.
People had other concerns as well, which is a whole other story, but I think that
there is naturally a worry for people that this woman is going to get attached to
baby or want to carry the baby. And what I just said and what you guys have
experienced is very true that the gestational carrier just really wants to help you.
Now, legally, we can't force anybody to do anything in life.
Lots of people have concerns about donor conception, how can I stop my donor from
donating a million times, right? Lots of people have seen this movie,
"The Man with a Thousand Children," and people are trying very hard to try to stop
that. I think it's really impossible to stop people from doing doing whatever they
wanna do. We don't have any sort of system to track sperm or eggs now. And so at
the moment, I think the best thing you can do is really talk to your children
about the fact that there will be a lot of daughter -conceived siblings. Now with
regard to the surrogate, we can't stop her either, right? And so that is why it's
so important to make sure that you guys are in the same page with your surrogate.
People understandably feel very stressed out when they go through this process.
They have to wait a long time to find a surrogate, particularly a surrogate that
they like. Some fall through. It doesn't always work out right away. And so people
just want to kind of get the counseling meetings over with and just move forward.
And I appreciate that. But, if you're not on the same page about termination issues,
about other things that are really important, those things can blow up later. And
you want to make sure that everybody is on the same page, everybody feels the same
way, because you can't force a person to do something that they don't want to do,
right? And so, technically, legally, could she try to fight you to keep the baby,
if she wanted to, anybody can sue anybody for anything, right? But it's extremely
unlikely. And again, speaking of babies, speaking of babies, that's what they do
best, right?
So you want your surrogate to be on the same page with you. And that's the reason
we're so careful about choosing people who really don't want to do this for just
the money. They need to have an altruistic motive. Somebody who is not in poverty,
we don't allow people who are taking public assistance or are really strapped for
money because we don't want them to be doing this for the money. And then, of
course, we're worried about other issues. We want people to really feel like this is
something that they feel called to do. This This isn't their heart. This is what
they want to do. And yes, they're compensated. It makes sense. It's a it's you know
They're putting their life at risk. They're spending a year with you They're going
through all these medical procedures in the end. It's not really a fortune for the
surrogate You're paying a lot for other things legal fees and Agency and all that
insurance but for the surrogate it's really something that she wants she wants to do
from her heart And I think once people see that, they will feel much better knowing
that this is something she wants to do. And that's why it's great to have a good
agency. You don't want to be cutting corners and just find somebody on Facebook
because those things very often just kind of blow up. And you don't want people who
are going to be doing things you're not going to feel comfortable with. Yeah. Thank
you for that. that. Yeah. So just sort of shifting who we're speaking to, you know,
we have a lot of people who listen and follow us who are not LGBTQ + who are
straight, who want to be supportive allies. What do you think is the best way to
talk to parents who've gone through the donor conception process? And are there
certain phrases or questions that you think people should avoid? Hmm. Yeah,
I think it can be really difficult to be in a situation where you care about
somebody but you don't really understand their circumstance, right? And so I think
that's true for infertility and surrogacy and donor conception and all of these
situations. And so I think the best thing that you can do is ask the people that
you care about, "Do you want to talk about this? Do you want to talk about your
surrogacy process? Do you want me to ask you questions about who's genetically
related or not? Do you want me to ask you questions about how the process is going
and making embryos?" Because sometimes people want to be open and tell the whole
world everything, and they love to get on their soapbox and other people are more
private, right? And so we have to respect the people we care about and make sure
that we don't step out of line by asking them what they want. We can't read other
people's minds. Well, you know, something we, you know, we get a lot because we are
one of those people you were just mentioning who's very open and on our soapbox, if
you will. But we get a lot of comments about Where's the mom and that poor child
doesn't have a mother and And so to It says a lot to me about the sort of
general public and you know, maybe even just the ignorance and what people don't
understand As someone who works in fertility and works in this field How what would
you want those people to understand a little bit more about what about what a
family looks like and why a child can still thrive even without a heteronormative
parental relationship. Oh, Brett, that's a tough one because, again,
we can't force people to do things that they don't want to do. So I talk in my
book about this story of taking my daughter, who, as you guys know,
is not genetically connected to me, to kindergarten. And in this kindergarten class,
we had this wonderful teacher, he was teaching, you know, for years and years and
years, he was, you know, in the '60s and he was still teaching me. He was great.
And he had an assistant teacher who was an immigrant from India who was very,
very connected to her culture and her religion and had some ideas about families and
about the way things should or shouldn't be. And I was very open about my family
building journey with my teacher and the assistant. And one day we had like a back
to school night or whatever about the family. And she said, "You don't have to be
here." And I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, she's not your daughter.
You don't have to be here." And I said, "She is my daughter." She goes, "But you
didn't carry her, you didn't birth her, so she's not yours, so you don't really..."
And she didn't mean to be hurtful, but this is what she really believed. Like she
thought I was like caretaking for my child and she accepted that I was going to
caretake for her but didn't see me as a mother. And so I used that example,
just to say that I think we all need to think about what's right for us,
right? What do we want to share? What do we not want to share? Do we want to
have these quick answers that we have in our back pocket to say to somebody when
somebody says, "Who's the real dad?" Do we want to tell them?
Do we want You know, we don't really feel like talking about that. That is our
child's information to share or not. And one day when our child's older, if he
wants to share that with you, that's up to him. You can say, there's no mom in
the picture and just go on your merry way, right? You can decide what's right for
you guys as a couple and maybe what's right for you guys may not be right for
somebody else, right? You guys are, you know, on social media and you've got like a
very public presence, so you have to kind of think about how you want to manage
that. But I think everybody is entitled to privacy and that's different from secrecy,
right? Secrecy is being ashamed of something and not feeling proud of your family.
That's different from your privacy. And I think you're entitled to your privacy. You
don't have to put yourself in situation after situation where people are going to
say wonderful things and you have to keep swallowing it. - Thank you for that.
- Yeah. - And it sort of leads into like our next question. - Do you have advice
for parents explaining surrogacy to their children or to others in their community?
How do you explain surrogacy? Like what's the best way to explain it to your child?
What would you tell us? - And Lisa, this kind of leads from like something you and
I experienced together when I saw you at the ASRM convention and the donor
conceived, people kind of came and talked to us. And I think, as you were sort of
mentioning too, is the idea of shame or whatever,
especially for I think hetero families historically who had to use surrogacy were
trying so hard to keep the family feeling like a nuclear family, thinking that if
they told their child they were conceived as a donor, conceived child, that there
might be some issues. But now we're hearing more and more of these issues for
keeping that secret. And so I'm wondering, what kind of advice would you have for
parents explaining this to their own children or perhaps even to their community and
family? So, I have a video on this, but also I have a very, I think,
helpful in -depth program on my membership platform about different developmental stages
for children at each age, how to share and how to explain their origins in a way
that's really helpful for them and helpful in a way that they understand it. But I
think what's really important to do is to start as early as possible.
And people have a hard time doing that, both with donor conception surrogacy. I
think because there's so much shame and because out there on social media, people
are shaming parents all the time that it makes people drive themselves crazy and
feel like I've gotta do it perfectly and no one's gonna do it perfectly. So I
think that what's helpful is to practice with your partner, if you're a single
parent, just practice with your friends or your family, and start to think about how
do I want to share my narrative and I have lots of books on my website, people
can look. But I think there's like four helpful elements. So first is to think
about difference, right? Because of course, your family might be different than your
neighbor's family. And then the next one would be to think about sameness because,
of course, even if you're different in your family unit, your child will want to
feel the same as their friends. They want to have the same sneakers. They want to
have the same Xbox, whatever it is. So I think you can explain that. And there's
lots of cute books about sameness because we all come from the same parts.
We all need an egg, a sperm, and a uterus to come into the world. And that way
everyone is the same. And I think that's really helpful because certainly, you know,
in trans families, you're not going to have a sperm in a manner, egg and a woman,
right? So the idea is it doesn't really matter where you get those parts from. You
put all these parts together and build your family, right? Um, and then I think
it's good to talk about the mechanics, how does this work, right? And you can think
about, do I like to talk about it in a storybook fashion? Do I like to talk about
it in metaphor? Do I like to talk about it kind of technically? How do I like to
talk about this? And what suits us as a family? And then the last part is,
you know, my own child's story. So as you guys know, through the gestational carrier
journey, or even or even if you're a lesbian couple and you're carrying on your
own. I think it's really helpful to think about documenting as much as you can what
happened along the journey, making a little journal, having mementos and memories of
your journey because children are curious about their own story, right? Not just
about their third or fourth birthday party, but how did I come to the world? How
did this of this happen? I'd like to see a picture of my surrogate or my donor or
here's information about the first thing that your family said when we brought you
home and all the nice things that happened all along the way. There's so much
information out there about the donor path and not all of it is accurate. So what
are some red flags people should watch out for when researching surrogacy or donor
conception? - Oh, we need to hold another podcast for that one. (both laughing) - We
can skip this question. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I will say the first thing is, again,
is psychological screening. I think I can't say enough about the right type of
psychological screening. And you really need to be careful who's doing this
psychological screening. If you're using an egg donor, you want to have an objective
person. Because if you have a therapist who works for an agency,
then of course, it's almost like the fox guarding the henhouse, right? You don't,
it's hard for them to be objective. I'm not saying that they're not trying, but
they're being paid by the same people who are asking them to screen this person.
And because there's a shortage of surrogates and donors, it's likely that they're
going to want to pass them. And you don't want them. I mean, I've sadly seen a
lot, I saw a report recently for a woman who donated her eggs five times. And it
was very clear to me, she has bipolar disorder. So that's really important. - Yeah,
vital, that's good. - And what you're looking for, by the way, in a surrogate and a
donor are different, right? Because in the surrogate, you're looking for her genetics.
You don't want problems in her genetics for the surrogate. - Also,
can you just speak to the fact that most people don't even know this, that the
surrogate also should have gone through her own journey as a mother, ideally,
correct? - Yes, right. They say, you know, you want a proven uterus. You want to
make sure that she's-- - It all works. - Deliver, she can carry. - Most people don't
realize that a lot of people don't. - Even our pediatrician me when I didn't realize
that she has her own kids. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting how little people
understand it because they already are a mother most of the time. Yes, it should
be. She should be. I mean, in New York, the law actually went through without that
regulation, but the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's guidelines include that
she should have had previous, at least one previous pregnancy with a healthy baby.
We also are very concerned about other things where there are complications to chief
postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety after. Are there issues in her family?
We're looking for a lot of things with the surrogate that we're not looking for
with the donor because let's say a donor's parents on both sides have a lot of
substance abuse. We're worried about inheriting that genetics. If the surrogate's
parents, it doesn't matter, just so she's stable because you just want her to have
a stable life and be able to carry the baby. We're not interested in her genetics,
so we're looking for different things in assessing both the donor and the gestational
carrier. Yeah. This is really great. Yeah. If there's one piece of advice you could
give to aspiring parents considering a donor path, what would it be? Oh gosh.
One, I don't know. I would say that, again,
please appreciate that you're probably a little more anxious than you think you are
when you're going through this, and so it's really helpful to get accurate
information. The internet is full of stories about people who use their eggs when
they're 50 years old or gestational carriers who they just found on Facebook and
look how fabulous she is. It really is sad because these stories prey on vulnerable
people. Surrogacy is enormously expensive. And so, of course, people are going to
want to jump at somebody who's going to be inexpensive and on Facebook and they
don't really have to go through all of this and people are gonna want a donor who
they don't have to pay a lot or they think seems really nice, but you have to be
really careful. This is the future health of your child and for the rest of their
lives, if there's a mental illness, if there's a physical problem because something
happened in utero, for the rest of your life, this is gonna be an issue. So even
though it really feels stressful, you really need to kind of wind back,
think about what matters most, right? It's a psychological and physical health of
your future child, and that has to be covered first.
- So finally, how can people learn more about you, your work and connect with the
Center for Family Building? - Oh, well, thank you for asking. I have a new platform
that I think is wonderful and it combines information from my book,
from all of my courses, from my podcasts, and it involves both the ability to chat
with other people on your specific journey, whether you're going through surrogacy or
donor conception or fertility treatment, whatever you're going through. It also
provides weekly workshops. So it's almost like having a Q &A with the person who
you're doing the podcast with. There's lots of downloadable materials and courses for
free, chat rooms, all sorts of things. And it's all for less than a dollar a day.
So I really love my new platform. I'm very happy to provide it for people. And
this is kind of my last tour on my career because I feel like this is really
going to help a lot of people. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you for all the
help. And thank you for all the help you've given us to like you've been such a
support. So thank you. I'm happy to help you guys anytime. Yeah, it's my pleasure.
Really my pleasure.
Okay, so we hope this episode gave you some answers or brought up some maybe some
questions for you around what it is to have a donor conceive child or anything that
you have that you want some more answers to, you can always come hop on our sub
-stack and drop some questions on there because we want to make sure you get support
and you can also go follow Lisa Schumann because she has a lot of amazing tools
and ways and she's super accessible and kind. So sweet. So educated on this on
this, which isn't constantly changing world, the world of donor conception. They're
constantly coming up with new technology on how to build your family through this
process. So staying up to date on it, if you are somebody who plans on doing this
in the future, I think it's super important and someone like Lisa can help you do
that. So make sure you follow her. - And join us next time for our upcoming episode
with Loose Remy from Family Equality, where we have a great interview where we talk
about really just being an ally and all of the different obstacles that queer
families have legally. - Yeah. Family Equality is an important organization you should
know about, so make sure you join us for that interview. Thanks for being here for
this episode and we'll see you around the neighborhood.