Ladies, your biological clocks aren’t the only ones ticking.
Meet Dr. Conrad Cean. He figured he’d be married by 33 or 34, but as his career took off, it didn’t happen.
“I had just finished my fellowship and was trying to get the lay of the land in the business of medicine,” he tells TODAY. “I thought I would meet the right person, but I didn’t want to force anything.”
With his 40th birthday approaching, Cean took matters into his own hands: he turned to IVF and a surrogate in Panama. And now, he’s dad to 18-month-old twins Konrad Fritz II and Kennedy-Josephine Marie.
“The desire to be a parent is similar, whether you are gay, straight, in a relationship or not," explains Philip Werthman, MD, director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Vasectomy Reversal in Los Angeles. “For these men, they are getting older, they have the resources and the love to give and they want to go ahead. Technology gives them the ability to have children outside traditional means.”
But the nontraditional route is expensive. The final price tag — including an egg donor and a surrogate mother — could be up to $150,000.
“I had to qualify for loans and lines of credit,”says Peter Gordon, 48, now dad to three-year-old twins Noah and Olivia. “I vetted agencies. I was meeting surrogates and getting an egg donor. It was all a blur. … Still, I was determined.”
Gordon decided that if he were still single by age 44, he would look into alternative ways to starting a family. But has hasn’t given up on finding the one.
“I still think it will happen,” he says. “And it would be great to share this with someone.”
(via TODAY)
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