He started the company so others could be more transparent about the surrogacy process.
Mr Amir and her husband, Mike Gowen, have used surrogates twice and are now starting a third process with one.
They paid a total of about $200,000 for their first pregnancy in 2017: $35,000 for egg donor screening fees, egg donation, egg donor insurance, egg donation agency fees, travel expenses and legal fees; $35,000 for IVF, including egg retrieval, embryogenesis, and embryo transfer; and more than $120,000 for surrogacy, including $35,000 in compensation for the representative, plus surrogacy agency fees, surrogacy insurance, legal fees, screening, travel and other fees. The second time, in September 2020, they pay $150,000, using a different agency.
Mr. Amir, who lives in New Haven, Conn., said his relationship with agents has always been very important to him. “We FaceTime a lot and talk on the phone as much as we can,” he said. “But because of the distance” – the first representative lived in Ohio; the second in Tennessee – “and Covid on the second journey, we only met for the first time when our baby was born.”
And because surrogacy is not allowed for same-sex couples in many foreign countries that allow it, helping a gay couple is a calling for some.
Shea Eschman, a photographer living in Yukon, Okla., will be photographing twins on July 4 for a gay couple living in Italy. Ms Eschman, who has a 4-year-old daughter, took time on social media to talk to others about the possibility of surrogacy when she was having trouble conceiving a daughter. Now, she says, she wants to help people who can’t have children on their own.
“I am delighted to be providing them with the family of their dreams,” Ms. Eschman said. “They want twins, and that’s exactly what they’re getting.”
