Will Porteous always knew that he wanted to be a parent. And eight years ago, when he met his future husband, one of the first things they aligned on was a shared desire to be dads.
But as members of the
"Oftentimes adoption for LGBTQ couples can be more challenging legally, and more time intensive than to take the surrogacy path," says Porteous, who today serves as the chief growth officer at
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With the support and guidance of friends who had pursued parenthood through both surrogacy and adoption, the couple started their journey to fatherhood in 2018. By the time they became parents, Porteous estimates that they'd spent nearly $175,000 of their own money throughout the nearly three-year journey.
"Most estimates put it at around $130,000, but I've spoken to other LGBTQ couples and I don't think anyone has done it for less than $150,000," Porteous says. "It's a very meaningful financial hit, something you have to save for for a very long time — and even then, that's out of reach and unaffordable for many people, even after years of saving."
Porteous walked EBN through his family's journey — and shared how, at Maven, he's now working to make the road a little smoother for hopeful parents of the future.
Doing the (very expensive) prep work
After first selecting a surrogacy agency, Porteous expected they'd have a guiding voice to hand-hold him and his husband each step of the way.
"It's a big part of the overall cost," Porteous says. "But lo and behold, the agency did not do much to guide us through the process."
The couple felt like they were left to build their process piecemeal, selecting fertility clinics, egg donor clinics, and attorneys to negotiate all agreements. At the time, neither Will nor his partner worked for an employer that offered robust family-building benefits, and they quickly saw the costs pile up — the surrogacy agency alone, he says, was a five-figure expense.
When it came time to select an egg donor, Porteous admits that he and his husband got caught up in finding the perfect donor who might capture some of their own physical characteristics, as well as someone that had personality traits and skill sets they valued.
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"Our fertility doctor — who's a real straight shooter — asked us how the donor search was going, and we told him about a rubric we'd created to narrow the list," Porteous recalls. "He told us that the donors' profiles are not validated, so there's no way to know if they're being honest about their LSAT score or whatever. At the end of the day, he said we needed to figure out if we were of the nature or nurture mindset."
Starting the medical process
With that blunt advice, Porteous and his husband selected a donor (and engaged another pricey attorney) and started the process of extraction and implantation. That process, he explains, is both anonymous and regulated by the FDA, which requires the donor to be STD tested one month ahead of the extraction, as well as one day prior.
"A day before extraction I got a frantic text from our egg donor agency, and our donor tested positive for hepatitis C," Porteous says, adding that in the event of a positive STD test, the process becomes non-anonymous, which allowed all parties to connect via video chat. "The poor girl is distraught — she'd never been with anyone other than her partner, so now she's worried about her own personal life."
Despite high emotions, Porteous credits the donor agency and the fertility clinic for calmly guiding them through this alarming news. Porteous and his husband were told that this test in particular delivers a high rate of false positives, and were reassured that all genetic material is removed from the egg upon extraction. Effectively, the egg would be safe to use, but it was still a choice Porteous and his husband would have to make — and they'd have to make it before additional test results confirmed or challenged the positive test.
They moved forward with the extraction and the following day learned that the original test result was, in fact, a false positive.
Following the pregnancy
In addition to selecting their egg donor, the couple had identified a surrogate that lived in Maine, though because of COVID precautions, they'd only ever communicated via Skype until the day of the embryo transfer. The trio had lunch outside of the fertility clinic, and then Porteous and his husband watched their surrogate enter the facility, which they weren't able to access because of continued pandemic policies.
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"An hour later, she came out and was like, well, I'm gonna go to the beach, I'll see you guys later," Porteous says. "We planned to talk in 10 days, but she called us a few days ahead of schedule to tell us she had good news."
Hospital restrictions didn't allow the parents-to-be to attend any appointments with the surrogate, though Porteous says she went above and beyond to make them feel like a part of the journey, calling them from appointments so they could hear the baby's heartbeat, and sending them pictures of her progress.
In early 2021, as the surrogate's due date approached, COVID vaccines started to become available in the U.S., Porteous and his husband scheduled their shots to be completed 10 days prior to the due date. When the surrogate went into labor a few days early, they managed to move their vaccine appointments up, suffered through side effects on a long flight from Los Angeles to New York, and drove to northern Maine to meet their newborn, Walter.
Making family-building easier
In January of 2022, after Walter had been a part of his family for nearly a year, Porteous accepted a new position as the chief growth officer at Maven Clinic, which means his everyday professional priorities are now focused on helping others build a family and manage their family's health.
"When I was [in the interview process], I actually teared up at one point, because I didn't realize Maven had introduced a surrogacy and adoption track," he says. "Because, God, I would have loved to have had a surrogacy coach to talk to, just to tell us what to do and help make these really difficult decisions easier."
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Maven is working to ensure
"Beyond just the emotional support Maven can provide, our platform — if we use surrogacy as an example — helps users understand the journey in terms of timeline, outcome and cost, and the surrogate is invited to join the platform as well, as a maternity member," Porteous says. "So they're also getting that support, which drives better outcomes."
Additionally, a component called Maven Wallet serves as a reimbursement program that allows employers to contribute funds to an employee's adoption or surrogacy fees.
"We're here to manage the various components. Sort of how you'd hire a general contractor if you were building a house — it just makes for a much smoother process," Porteous says. "[Maven] helps take you through the journey and better understand the decisions you're going to make, and it shows employees that the company is thinking about their needs and understands the potential challenges various communities may face."
