After donating her eggs to a gay couple, Carolina Azevedo said she wanted to help more LGBT couples start families with her own business
OPENING HER HEART | Carolina Azevedo, pictured with twin girls Leonie and Leona, decided to donate her eggs to a gay couple before she started her own fertility consulting business.
When Carolina Azevedo decided she and her wife wouldn’t have any children of their own, she opted to give the gift of children to a couple who couldn’t have kids.
Azevedo donated her eggs to a gay couple in California in 2012, but while she was willing to help them, she had the requirement that the children had to be told who their biological mother was if they wanted to know when they turned 18. Luckily, the dads-to-be wanted an open relationship so the children would meet and know Azevedo from early on.
“So because I wasn’t going to have any children, I wanted to help other people have them,” she said.
While some may think donating eggs would be difficult if they’ve thought about having children and then decided against it, Azevedo said she knew what donating meant, but was glad for the open relationship to know the children.
“I was psychologically prepared for what I did. I felt very lucky that they wanted an open relationship,” she said. “Having an open relationship is so much fun because you get to see the gift you gave someone and how you’ve turned their life around. You gave them something no one else can.”
The couple wanted six children eventually, and using two surrogates had a set of twin girls last May and twin boys in June. The experience of donating her eggs made Azevedo want to help more couples create families. So while visiting the twins last summer, she started working with Dr. Gary Ramsey at the Pacific Fertility Institute in anticipation of starting her own company. She then launched Family Fertility Solutions, aimed at helping straight and lesbian couples and which has a separate program for gay men called Two Dads and a Baby.
Her agency serves as a liaison between the intended parent or parents and fertility and adoption specialists. Azevedo helps set up everything involving doctors to lawyers and even booking flights and hotels for adoption for surrogacy situations. She also helps people find services for egg/sperm donors, surrogates, in vitro fertilization (IVF), fertility yoga and acupuncture, weight management programs, or anything else parenting-related a client might need. She said her partnerships with agencies help lower the cost of expensive options, like a surrogacy agency that offers her clients a fee of $15,000 instead of the regular $25,000.
She said her consulting agency helps couples understand the difficult processes that come with fertility options, especially for LGBT couples. And her agency is one that specifically reaches out to gay and lesbian couples. She’s even worked with couples internationally in China and Brazil to help them with surrogacy and adoption options and laws in their country.
“I want a make a difference in Dallas since I live here, but I also want to make a difference worldwide,” Azevedo said.
Azevedo’s egg donation also sparked something else in her besides entrepreneurship; she’s decided to have children of her own now. She said her wife is 21 years older than her, so they decided against having children. But after seeing the twins born last year, she said the experience made her realize she wants to be a mother herself, and she and her wife plan to start a family in the future.
Azevedo also wants to make Dallas a place for gay parenting and parenting in general. She’s now a co-chair of the Dallas HRC Family Project Committee and said that since LGBT equality is gaining momentum, it’s time for LGBT families to be loud and proud.
“I think the next step is gay families, and I want to be the one to provide that in my city,” Azevedo said.
For more info, visit twodadsandababy.com or familyfertilitysolutions.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 17, 2014.