ECART - Counselling
What comes to your mind when you hear the word counselling? Psychiatrist chairs, lying down on a couch, emotional distress, American TV shows? Yeah, that was the image we had too. Jokes aside, we found counselling to be excellent and we understand why it is required for ECART. In fact, we'd recommend anyone thinking about having a child or having fertility treatments to consider it.
Our first counselling session way back in August 2019 at Fertility Plus before egg donation and embryo creation. We were very nervous as we had no idea what to expect (see above... we are relying on our recollection for this part of the post). Our counsellor made us feel welcome and she took us through overall process of having a child through surrogacy in New Zealand. We talked about our family, family history, our relationship, and our lives. It felt easy to talk and did not feel like an interview or therapy. By our second counselling appointment, we started to discuss when and how we will tell our family, friends, and colleagues about our journey. There were many scenarios and topics we never considered, including how we will talk to children in our lives (nieces and nephews) about how the baby came to be. What words we might decide to use to refer to each of us, and to our egg donor, and to surrogate. We received book recommendations, where to find forums and social media groups for surrogacy in New Zealand. The counsellor guided us through feelings on many scenarios that we had not thought about. Our egg donor and her partner went through counselling as well.
We flew egg donor and her partner to Auckland for joint counselling appointment (this was before the pandemic and everything was done in-person). This helped all of us to talk about the egg donation, embryo creation, and the surrogacy. We were all clear that the egg donor will not be our surrogate. We listened to how they would like to be referred in future when the child is born. We listened to how extended family, friends, colleagues may respond and how we communicate. We talked about the legal rights and ownership changes through the egg collection and embryo creation process. We listened to partner's perspective on what it means and how they see it. We felt closer through the joint counselling and appreciated openness of everyone. It still feels like a pinch me moment that someone would grant us such a gift. This is how our journey really started.
It wasn't until November 2021 that we would have our counselling appointment with Fertility Associate in preparation for our ECART application. All parts of ECART process requires intending parents and surrogate to be seen by different doctors, lawyers, and counsellors. So we started with deciding who was going to be our counsellor. The primary factor on our decision was a counsellor who does not practicing at surrogate's preferred clinic location to give her more choices.
Our counselling appointment was virtual and our counsellor took us through the ECART process and timeline. We were eager to find out which ECART appointment we could potentially be considered for. We wanted to get in as soon as possible. This was another instance where we learned something new along the way. As more cases of donor conception and surrogacy cases happen in New Zealand, ECART manage the cases with a set number of applications per clinic per ECART cycle. This was quite a surprise for us as we had assumed it would be first in first serve from all clinics. We immediately ask for slot to be considered and we were booked in for April 2022 cycle! It seemed so far away back in November 2021.
By November 2021, most people in our lives knew about our surrogacy journey. We talked about it with our family, friends, colleagues and had their support. Throughout our search for a surrogate, we had to publicly share and share with anyone who would listen including at work in hopes of finding someone. Through it we found a lot of support from many and many shared their own long fertility journey. Some of our family members knew very little about surrogacy and surrogacy in New Zealand but everyone has been supportive and excited for us.
We discussed why we want to have a child, our relationship, our lives, our expectations, our view on pregnancy, termination, and everything in between. A lot of what-if scenarios and practical items like what will happen if we split up or if we both die during pregnancy? How are we going to handle if treatments doesn't work and there is no pregnancy, or miscarried? How involved are we going to be during pregnancy? How would we support the surrogate and her family? What would be our ideal birth plan? What's the plan for expressing colostrum and breastmilk? What will the relationship with surrogate and surrogate's family look like after birth? Who would nurse call first if pregnancy is confirmed?
Our second counselling was in December 2021. There was more focus on any changes after discussion with our surrogate and her family on the what-ifs and practical issues. We've shared our guiding principles in our view and decisions we would make with everything that life may throw at us. First and foremost, the health and wellbeing of the surrogate and her family must be protected. We could not risk surrogate's health ahead of any potential child we may have. Second is no matter what may happen during pregnancy we will adopt any child born.
Some of more practical things like would we "like" colostrum and breast milk expressed and who may be in the delivery room at birth were interesting. Imagine having these conversations with anyone else? We haven't figured out what the logistics of such arrangement would actually look like but we know we will figure it out when we get there.
There was a moment that really struck us. This is when we were asked about how we would experience the pregnancy. It seemed like an odd question to us. We don't live with the surrogate, we are not the one who are pregnant. Yet, the pregnancy was referred as OUR pregnancy. What a shift in mindset! As a same sex male couple, being pregnant is not a medical possibility (at least not yet) and we obviously never expected to be pregnant ourselves. To consider WE are pregnant had never come across our mind! It is true that we will have different experience with pregnancy than the most people. We will be involved but not every day to day moments of pregnancy. Surrogate and her family needs their own time too. Would we record ourselves reading a book or talking and get the surrogate to play it during pregnancy? Connection to the baby prenatal is not something we had thought a lot about. We are busy getting one foot in front of the other.
One of the funnest conversation we had with the surrogate's family is whether we were going to be consuming placenta. We nearly choked. The surrogate partner's humour was on point. We know a lot of people consume placenta in different forms but we are pretty certain it does not do anything for us despite it being our pregnancy. Did anyone else have this conversation? Or anything even more hilarious?
February 2022 was our joint counselling with the surrogate and her partner. We had talked a lot in between counselling appointments but you still discover new things in these sessions. We were able to clarify birth plan and who might be with the surrogate as there was a confusion on our part. We talked about how and when we may need to support surrogate's children in their social circles. What language and frame of reference could they use, how would they talk about their mother being pregnant and being a surrogate. Would they benefit from having counselling session to understand all this? Would they benefit from meeting other children who's mother was a surrogate or children who were born through surrogacy?
When surrogate's partner talked about the first time we had met in person and how their younger child told him that we should have a baby after meeting for the first time us had us nearly in tears. It reminded us of times our nieces asking which one of us was going to carry the baby, how they want a baby for us.
We continue to build the relationship and deepen our trust in each other. Trust is what makes all of it possible. Trust is what helps us have conversations about difficult situations openly and try to understand each other and find resolution. It has been extremely rewarding to build this relationship and counselling absolutely help facilitate and accelerate this. What comes to your mind when you hear counselling now?