Bonding with your unborn baby is especially challenging for international intended parents. However, we live in the 21st century and survived a global pandemic. Our lives have never been more remote-friendly, so it’s easier than ever for queer IPs to bond with their surrogate and unborn baby from the other side of the world. Read here about technology and options for you to enjoy and be as present as possible during your pregnancy.

Social surrogacy refers to a surrogacy arrangement where the female intended parent (IP) has a gestational carrier (GC) even though the female IP has no medical reason not to carry a pregnancy. A recent opinion piece was published in ASRM’s Fertility and Sterility arguing the pros and cons of having physicians engage and facilitate social surrogacies. In this article, I will review the opinion piece and share my own perspective as a gay man and physician on his own surrogacy journey.

There is little research on the women who become gestational carriers or surrogates. What is their life like? What is their educational background? Do they work? Do they keep in touch with the intended parents (IPs)? Why do they become gestational carriers? New research attempts to answer these questions, and this BabyMoon Family article reviews the results of the study and discusses implications for future research and policies related to surrogacy.

Underrepresented but growing. This summarizes the current state of medical research on queer family building from the largest U.S. conference on assisted reproduction. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) had its annual conference in Denver Colorado from October 19th to the 23rd, and there was an abstract presented that reviewed the last decade of research on LGBTQ+ family building. In this week’s BabyMoon Family article, I review the abstract and share a summary of some previous BabyMoon Family articles on other scientific publications related to rainbow families.

The Dehli High Court has granted permission for parents of a deceased man to use his sperm to have a grandchild. Should this type of posthumous procreation be allowed? What are the ethical standards that we should have for this type of procreation? How could this impact assisted reproductive technology (ART) for queer intended parents? Read more to find out.

A new scientific journal article described the racial and ethnic breakdown of sperm donors and compared this to demographics from the United States census as well as sperm donor recipients. The results are surprising from a racial and ethnic perspective, but I also learned from this article that men who have sex with men (MSMs) are prohibited from donating to sperm banks in the U.S. In this article, I discuss the implication for this and how assisted reproductive technology (ART) in general needs to be more queer friendly.

As a physician, clinical research, and intended gay dad, I am thrilled whenever there is a new study on gestational carriers (GCs). However, sometimes news articles sensationalize medical results, taking the conclusions out of context. In this article, I want to review a recent study on medical complications in GC pregnancies to highlight what the study results are actually showing, and what we can learn from this research.

My husband and I are about to make embryos, and our clinic will be using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) as the procedure for fertilizing the eggs with our sperm. Because of that, I wanted to do a review of ICSI, covering what it is, how it works, who is it for, and how this all measures up with our own reproductive journey.

It’s been a decade since the first human uterus transplantation that resulted in a successful pregnancy and delivery. Since that time, science has progressed, and researchers have begun discussions about how to approach uterine transplantation (UTx) for transgender women. If transgender women could then get pregnant and carry their own children, what about cis, queer men such as myself? The scientific and ethical implications are discussed in this article.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI). What is it? Who is it for? How much does it cost? How well does it work? How does it compare to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracervical insemination (ICI)? So many fertility acronyms, and this article has them all and all the answers to important questions about IUI.

This continuation of the BabyMoon Family journal club explores the largest sample of gestational carriers (GCs) and investigates their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. What was it like to be a GC during the pandemic, and what can be done to improve the experience going forward? This article discusses the results and implications of this first-of-its-kind study.

Gestational carriers (GCs) are the limiting factor for any surrogacy journey. They are incredible, and they are also incredibly rare. What are the qualifications required to become a GC? And, using these criteria, about how many American women would qualify to become a GC? We go through the numbers in this article to come up with a general rough estimate of the number of women who would qualify and want to be a GC.

Recent experiments with mice have allowed two male mice to have genetically related offspring. This process is called in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG. This article discusses how IVG works, the results of the IVG experiments in mice, when IVG could be used in humans, and what this could mean for same sex couples and assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the future.

Intravaginal culture (IVC) and ‘shared motherhood’ through a novel technology called INVOcell allows lesbian mothers-to-be to each carry their child. How does IVC work? Is IVC as good as IVF? What are the benefits and challenges of IVC? All these questions are answered in this article.

New scientific research shows that gay parents outperform straight parents in terms of health and well-being of the children, coparenting, and the overall dynamics of the family. In our first BabyMoon Family journal club, I review the study in this article.

What is it like to donate your eggs or ovaries? This article aims to describe this process for women, and also to provide more understanding and empathy for intended parents (IPs). It’s important to know medical details and challenges that women go through in order to make the incredible donation of ovaries.

The ‘Pod Generation’ is a movie that dives into the not-to-distant future to explore what it would be like to have a child through an artificial womb, or pod. How close are we to this technology? In this article, I dive into the most recent science to see when (not if, because they will be developed) artificial wombs would become a reality. It’s an amazing field of research, and artificial wombs would be a game changer for queer men having babies.

What does ChatGPT know about surrogacy? In this article, I give ChatGPT a prompt regarding gestational surrogacy for queer men. I then share its its output as well as my critical review of the contents. Let’s see what AI knows about surrogacy, and what it can still be taught from humanity and the Internet.