Help A Queer Couple Have A Child Via Surrogacy

We are Pierre and Chris, a gay couple living just outside Toronto. We were married in 2012 and, for the last six years, have been trying to scrape together the money necessary to have a child through surrogacy. We have access to a surrogate, and we have access to an egg donor; all we need is the money. And, despite our best efforts, we've struggled to pull that money together.

 

But you can help.

 

Background

We initially embarked on our surrogacy journey when Chris started bringing in more money after graduating from his Masters in History and starting his PhD. We resolved to funnel that extra money into a savings account set aside for surrogacy expenses, while continuing to support ourselves with the money Pierre makes working as an aerospace engineer. At the rate we could put the money away, we anticipated being able to start the process within two years of beginning.

 

It's been six years.

 

So what happened? On the one hand, life - unexpected expenses crop up and, in spite of our best efforts, we've had to dip into the surrogacy fund for emergency expenses from time to time. One of our cats needed a pre-cancerous lump removed from the side of his mouth and a thorough teeth cleaning, Chris's computer broke down unexpectedly. Essentially, part of the problem is lots of little things that collectively add up to a fair amount of money over the last few years. But that on its own doesn't account for all our difficulties.

 

The first year that Chris started his PhD, the administrators at his university made the decision to unilaterally alter the contract for PhD students without warning. Whereas previously Chris had been guaranteed his pay through the summer months to allow him to focus on his primary job for the university - getting his degree - the university changed the terms of the contract to put all of that money towards his tuition. He still receives the same amount of money across the duration of the year, but for five months of the year receives no payment at all. This shortfall means that for nearly half the year, Chris receives no paycheck at all, meaning that not only can we not put money away during those months, but we have to expend our savings to account for the shortfall. So, we diligently save up as best we can during the school year only to watch a portion of our savings drain away every summer.

 

Even a Christmas gift of $8000 dollars that Chris's parents had scraped together over the course of a year wasn't enough to get us where we needed to go, given these circumstances.

 

And then the pandemic hit, and Pierre lost his job.

 

Pierre was unemployed for a year and a half, and in order to stay afloat, Chris not only had to take on a third job as a part-time, online English teacher for children in China (in addition to working as a grad student and a teaching assistant), but we had to use the savings we'd set aside for our child as well, while also being unable to spare the budget to add anything new to our savings to make up for these withdrawals. Finally, in November, Pierre got new work in his field, so we're on an even keel again, and Chris was able to shift into a different part-time job that gives him more time to focus on his thesis and his teaching.

 

We managed to hold onto the $8000 Christmas gift from Chris's parents, but that's all - coming out of the pandemic, our own personal savings were gone.

 

But the news, overall, is actually pretty good! We started putting money away again as soon as Pierre started drawing a full paycheck, and Chris sold off some valuable but neglected collectibles to raise additional money. With all that, we're actually over halfway to meeting our goal. But at that rate, given the nature of Chris's pay, we're still at least two years away from being able to make that target and start the process, assuming that no unexpected expenses come our way. And the fertility industry is pretty strict about egg donors and age, to insure the maximum likelihood of successful implantation - our generous egg donor could age out of eligibility while we're trying to get the money together.

 

That's why we're asking you for help.

 

What We Need

We're fortunate to live in Canada, where some of our costs are covered by our insurance and we qualify for assistance as a technically infertile couple, but the process is still expensive, even when you're supported by great family and friends like we are. Using services to get connected with eggs and a surrogate can cost upwards of fifty thousand dollars. Thanks to the unbelievable generosity of our surrogate and our egg donor, we're able to cut those costs in half, and we're able to chop another couple thousand dollars off the top by only using Pierre's genetic material and thereby reducing some of the genetic testing we'd have to undertake prior to beginning the process.

 

All together, we need about twenty-three thousand dollars ($23,000) to pay for lawyers, testing, and procedures, before we even get to covering potential lost wages for our surrogate while she carries our child to term. We're seeking nine thousand dollars to get us to that target, and in the meantime we'll continue to put our own money away as well. Most of the money for the process will come from us - we just need a little bit of helping reaching our goal.

 

We've tried for six years to get to where we need to go and circumstances have made things difficult, but we're ready and eager to have a child. You can help make that possible for us.

 

Where Your Donation Goes

Most of the money goes to the actual process of surrogacy. We're working with the Create IVF fertility clinic in Toronto, and that's where most of the money will go. We also have to pay a lawyer to handle the legal side of the process, primarily contracts between ourselves and our surrogate and egg donor that will make sure that everyone's rights are protected throughout the process. After that, there's a course of medication for our egg donor that leads into the egg extraction procedure and the making of the embryo, which we need to put in our surrogate relatively quickly. There's also a battery of genetic testing for Pierre, our surrogate, and our egg donor (Chris will be providing largely moral, rather than biological, support for the process).

 

After successful implantation, we'll need to support our surrogate with any extra expenses, including lost wages, that she may incur as a result of carrying our child. Any excess money that we have left over after successful implantation will go towards covering any of her expenses. We're asking for just enough money through this fundraiser to get us to that initial twenty-three thousand dollars, and in the interim we're going to keep scrimping and saving as well, so we should have a tidy nest egg put away to support our surrogate if we're so lucky as to hit our fundraising goal.

 

Literally any amount of money that you're able to contribute would mean the world to us. Your generosity could make all the difference for us as we work to start our family.

 

Who We Are

We're Chris Vogel and Pierre Saint-Cyr! We met through a mutual friend in the late aughts and had our first date at a Vietnamese restaurant in London, Ontario, where we talked for hours. When we were introduced, our mutual friend didn't tell us anything about the other, including that we lived in different cities - Chris in London and Pierre in Toronto. Chris almost called off our first date when he found out, but Pierre insisted on meeting, and drove to and from London in a borrowed car and the teeth of a massive rainstorm to have dinner. After that, we started dating long distance and seeing each other on weekend.

 

When we met, Chris was halfway through his undergraduate degree at Western University in history, and Pierre was finishing up his Masters degree in Aerospace engineering at Ryerson. After Pierre finished his degree, he got his first professional job...a one year contract at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. If he wanted to start his career on the right foot, he was going to have to go there. At roughly the same time, Chris was being encouraged to apply to do a semester abroad in Beijing studying Mandarin Chinese full-time at the Beijing Language and Culture University. We decided to stay together even though long distance was already difficult, and at these even longer distances we'd be juggling multiple time zones with no real indication of when we'd even be able to see each other anywhere other than on Skype.

 

But we stuck it out, even when Pierre finished up his contract and decided to remain in the Netherlands to pursue professional opportunities there. Chris spent an amazing semester in Beijing and returned to Canada, graduating in 2012, with the intention of exploring opportunities to travel to the Netherlands to pursue a Masters degree there, at Pierre's side. It turned out that process was a little bit easier if we were married, so we got engaged over Skype and married in early August 2012. Pierre flew in for the wedding and we flew back to Utrecht together.

 

Unfortunately, not everything in Europe went as smoothly as we might have hoped - while Pierre had a relatively easy time finding new professional opportunities in STEM, it was harder for Chris with an undergraduate degree in humanities, and because Chris struggled to find a job, we struggled to stay economically afloat. Everything came to a head when Chris was offered a position doing an MA in History at the University of Hamburg, while Pierre was unable to secure an opportunity to pursue a PhD there. Something had to change, and after a year and a half in the Netherlands, we decided it was time to return to Canada to pursue more certain opportunities there. However, Pierre's amazing employer decided to keep him on even from the other side of the planet, making the transition back to Canada less difficult than it otherwise might have been.

 

Since returning to Canada, Chris has finished his Masters and embarked on his PhD - while the pandemic forced him to change gears in year five, he's well on his way to completing his thesis and plans to do so in the 7th year of study. Pierre continued to work with his previous employer and eventually completed work on the world's first DC-3 fixed based flight simulator software! Now he's managed to find a new job designing simulator software and he's excited about the new possibilities and opportunities that his new job represents.

 

We've worked hard and put in the time - if we could get there on our own, we would. But we're ready for this, and if you can offer us your help, we'd be extremely grateful.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading all the way through that! We hope we've given you a good sense of what we need, why we're seeking what we're seeking, who we are, and how you can help us. We're so excited to start our family, and this is the last stumbling block we need to overcome. If you can't donate, please consider sharing our campaign with your network to spread the word. Every penny means the world to us.

 

Thanks for considering supporting us.