Hi and welcome to our blog! We hope that this introduction this will give you a brief about us and why we have created this blog.
We are Polly & Alex, a Dutch and British couple, living in the Netherlands, where we met each other at work nearly 12 years ago. We started our beautiful life together 10 year ago, when we got married in the heart of London in a very traditional ceremony. Like most couples, we wanted to expand our family and have kids very soon. Everyone around us was having kids. Friends. Family. It would be easy for us too, of course! However, our fertility journey would be so difficult – we never thought about it!!
Our fertility journey has been a long and difficult one. After a year of trying on our own, we sought help, we were medicated, poked, prodded and punctured for 2 years without success. After multiple rounds of IVF and miscarriages, we realised that gestational surrogacy was our only realistic option for a successful pregnancy. We went about exploring options locally in the UK and in the Netherlands. Both countries allow surrogacy, and surrogacy procedures are well defined in the local laws. It felt that there wouldn’t be too many stumbling blocks.
Were we in for a surprise!
Both countries are spectacularly unfriendly when it comes to helping couples for surrogacy, especially straight couples with no apparent reasons for infertility. We faced hurdle after hurdle, a few of them being –
- You will need to find someone yourself who is willing to be a surrogate, but you cannot openly advertise it. In the Netherlands it is strictly enforced.
- There are websites where you can advertise “in the grey zone” because these servers are hosted in opaque countries such as Russia. We found a few women willing to be our surrogate, but they were asking fees in the ranges of € 30,000 / £27,000 for the journey in addition to all their costs. Which could come to almost the same amount as they were requesting.
- In the Netherlands, hospitals and fertility clinics absolutely are not willing to help couples who do not have a clear infertility reason (such as MRK syndrome, heart conditions etc.). In my case, it was unexplained infertility. In fact, I came across fertility doctors who said, I shouldn’t even worry about doing IVF until I was 40. There was almost a certainty, I would get pregnant easily by then. We just had to keep trying and let “nature” do its thing.
- There is some flexibility for gay couples and fertility clinics are slowly opening up to surrogacy for gay couples and singles. However, there is such a large demand, and the supply of “willing” clinics is severely limited.
- In the UK as well, it is not always easy to find clinics that will help surrogacy or are legally “qualified” to support surrogacy journeys.
We finally decided to look for solutions in other countries. Ukraine, Russia, and Czech Republic were quickly abandoned because they did not meet legal requirements of our countries (at that time). India, Vietnam and Cambodia in the meanwhile stopped allowing surrogacy for international intended parents (IPs). It was a year of darkness, desperation and frustration in so many ways.
Then, Canada came to be a major blessing in disguise for us. And we are eternally thankful to all the people from Canada who helped us in so many ways.
We have documented our main learning and experiences in this blog. We want to share all best practices for European couples and also any pitfalls to avoid during such a journey. Alex and I both have successful careers, that we are passionate about. At the same time, we also want to help others so they don’t have to jump through the same hoops we did, and can have a much easier and simpler journey. The best way it seemed was this blog.
Because we are very private people, and this is a very altruistic cause, we will not be sharing specific information about us. In the past, we have been approached by journalists and by organizations to share our story, but we have avoided this, because we want to protect our privacy and that of our children.
However, we are here for you, for any conversations, and any support that you might need from us. Feel free to reach out via email and also we are happy to have a call to help you with anything.
Good luck in your journey and we wish you a lot of success!!