Terry Clayton and Steve Oxley had to travel halfway around the world to get their sons, but the journey was worth the effort
TAMMYE NASH | Senior Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
Terry Clayton and Steve Oxley knew early on in their relationship that they wanted to be parents. And after a little research, they decided that commercial surrogacy was the best way to go.
Still, as Clayton notes, surrogacy wasn’t without its potential pitfalls.
“We were certainly concerned about the perils of commercial surrogacy. You hear these stories about the mother changing her mind at the last minute. And commercial surrogacy isn’t legal everywhere. It is legal in some states, but not others,” he said.
The couple, who lived in California at the time, also quickly found another drawback: cost. Although commercial surrogacy is legal in California, Clayton says, they discovered that going through a reputable agency would cost them about $100,000 to $125,000 for the full package of services.
“That just wasn’t affordable for us,” Clayton says.
But he and Oxley weren’t ready to give up on their dream. So they started researching the issue and quickly found online a large community of people who either already had children through commercial surrogacy or were in the process of having children that way.
Clayton travels frequently in his job as senior vice president of sales with a California-based furniture company. He was on a business trip early in 2009 when he found out, through that online community, that commercial surrogacy is a thriving business in India, where the service is available for about a quarter of what it would cost in California.
“I called Steve and said, ‘What do you think?’ And he was all for it,” Clayton recalls. “So I emailed a clinic I found in Mumbai. I chose them because of the price — about $26,000 not including the travel to India — and because they had a really nice website and they specifically marketed themselves to the LGBT community.”
And so the process began. Clayton and Oxley started by choosing an egg donor after studying profiles on the available donors, including their height, weight, medical history and religion. The profile on each included a “tiny head shot,” but no names. Donors, Clayton says, remain “completely anonymous.”
Clayton adds that in looking through the profiles, he and Oxley noticed that many of the women “looked unhappy.” So they decided to find one who “looked pleasant, happy” and who was relatively tall.
Clayton explains that while they chose the egg donor, the biological mother of their children, the clinic itself chose the surrogate, the woman who would carry the children. Having separate women as the egg donor and the surrogate, Clayton says, helps cut down the possibility of an emotional attachment between the women and the child.
The couple also had to decide which of them would be the biological father of their future child. For Oxley, that decision was an easy one.
“I have [siblings] who have children, so my parents already have grandchildren that they have biological ties to,” Oxley says. “But Terry is an only child. I thought it would be nice his parents to have grandchildren that they were connected to biologically.”
With that settled, Clayton began a series of tests that included “a lot of bloodwork,” an HIV test and an analysis of his sperm to ensure he was a good candidate for the procedures. Then about a month later, after paying the full fee up front, Clayton boarded a plane to India.
Oxley stayed home on that first trip to help contain costs, the men explain.
Physicians at the Mumbai clinic retrieved the eggs from the donor mother and the sperm from Clayton, and fertilized the eggs in vitro. The fertilized eggs were then implanted in the surrogate.
The surrogate, Clayton says, got pregnant on the first try, and he came home to California to wait. And then, one day shy of 12 weeks later, they got the bad news. The surrogate had miscarried.
Clayton wrote about the experience on the blog he had been maintaining about their efforts, and soon found out that other couples who had used the Mumbai clinic had been equally disappointed.
“I found two other couples online who were commiserating about that clinic, about how poor their communications were,” he says.
Oxley adds, “We got an email saying she [the surrogate] had miscarried. An email!”
And although the contract said they would receive a refund if the surrogate miscarried within the first 12 weeks, they ended up getting only about a third of their money back.
The men knew they still wanted to have a child, but the sadness of losing the first child made them delay. Eventually though, through an online contact in Australia, they heard about Dr. Shivani Sachdev Gour, a London-trained physician who had just recently opened Surrogacy Centre India in New Delhi.
“She put together a great package for us,” Clayton says, noting that the price this time was lower — only $23,000 — and that instead of having to pay the full price up front, they made payments as the process went along.
So again the couple went through the process of choosing a donor and again Clayton traveled to India. This time, Dr. Shivani took two sperm samples, separating the sperm into four vials and freezing three of them so Clayton wouldn’t have to make another trip if the first implantation effort failed.
This time the surrogate again got pregnant on the first try, but she miscarried at seven weeks. At this point, Clayton says, “We decided we needed to take a breather. We were racking up quite a bill, with all the travel and everything. And we decided to wait a bit before we tried again. We wanted to make sure we were ready, emotionally and financially.”
In the meantime, the couple had decided to move to Texas, where they would be closer to Clayton’s parents and where they could more easily afford a larger home for their soon-to-be-growing family.
When they decided to try again, they chose a third egg donor. Even though the woman’s profile information had been inadvertently left blank except for her photo, Clayton and Oxley knew she was the one they wanted.
“The second we saw her, we knew she was the one. She was 5-foot-5, the tallest of any we had seen, and she looked like an Indian version of my mother,” Clayton says.
The new procedure started out well. The donor produced 32 eggs and almost all fertilized. Four of the fertilized eggs were implanted, while the rest were frozen for possible future use.
Of the four implanted eggs, three took, and the surrogate was pregnant with triplets.
In the U.S., Clayton explains, surrogacy clinics are only allowed to implant two fertilized eggs at a time. In India, doctors can implant four to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy.
However, if more than two of the embryos are still viable at 11 weeks, doctors have to perform what is called a “selective reduction,” since surrogates are not supposed to carry more than two babies to term. That’s what happened in Clayton and Oxley’s case.
“It was awful, just awful,” Clayton says with tears in his eyes. “I can’t stand to think about it even now.”
From that point on, though, the surrogate had “basically the perfect pregnancy,” Clayton says. “If she complained that her toe hurt, they took her to the hospital. They took very, very good care of her.”
At the 36-week mark, Clayton and Oxley packed up and headed together to India. They were able to go with the surrogate for her last ultrasound appointment, and a c-section was scheduled for the next week.
“We had rented an apartment, but when they told us it would be the next week before the babies were born, we decided to go away for the weekend,” Clayton recalls. “It had been so stressful, and we just wanted to relax those last few days.”
But the babies had other plans. The daddies-to-be packed for their weekend trip then went to bed about 3 a.m. At about 6 a.m., Dr. Shivani sent a text to let them know the surrogate was in labor and about to deliver.
By the time they woke up, saw the text and made it to the hospital, their twin sons — Ajay and Jag — were about two hours old.
“Terry held Ajay first and I held Jag first,” Oxley says. “It’s interesting, to this day it seems each of us still has a special bond with the one we held first. We both love them equally, but there’s a bond there with the one we held first.”
The boys’ names, Clayton explains, are Hindu. Ajay means “invincible,” and Jag means “the universe.”
“We wanted them to have a connection to their mother’s heritage, even though we don’t even know her name. We are both Catholic, but we want them to be exposed to a variety of cultures. We want them to connect with their Hindu heritage, too.”
So they had their sons, at long, long last. But Clayton and Oxley still had more hoops to jump through to get their twins home. They spent a total of five weeks in India, paying “expediting fees” to get the babies’ birth certificates and the exit visas necessary to take the children out of India. The government also sent an investigator to interview the couple and the surrogate who delivered the twins before Clayton and Oxley could bring their sons home.
Finally, though, they made it, returning to their new North Dallas home in the first week of October.
Today, Jag and Ajay are just shy of their first birthday, and Oxley’s second-parent adoption of the twins was finalized at the first of June. Oxley, who worked in property management in California, stays home these days to be a full-time dad, while Clayton still has to travel often for work.
It’s hard to be away from his family so much, Clayton says. But he uses the phone and the Internet to be close to them, even when he isn’t physically present. And the grandparents on both sides of the family are thrilled with their new grandchildren as well.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Oxley’s mother was already at their home, and Clayton’s parents were on their way back, for the second weekend in a row.
But the change for Clayton and Oxley is profound.
“We have a family now. As the years go by, we won’t be just two old men growing older, we’ll have a family. We’ll have our children and our grandchildren,” Oxley says.
Clayton adds, “It took a while. We had to go through a lot more than straight couples. But we wanted children and now we have two beautiful sons.
“Everyone deserves to have a family,” he says with a proud smile, “even if it looks a little different.”
__________
__________
Commercial surrogacy and Texas law
Texas is one of the few states in the United States where commercial surrogacy is not illegal. But the Lone Star State does have some strict guidelines that have to be followed, according to CriminalDefenseLawyer.com:
• Texas does require that the surrogate mother be a resident of Texas in order for the surrogacy contract to be enforceable within the state.
• Texas also requires that the surrogacy contract be between the surrogate mother and a legally married couple. That means that same-sex couples and single individuals cannot legally enter into a surrogacy contract in Texas.
• The surrogate mother must be above the age of majority and must be considered legally competent to enter into contacts and to carry a child through to term based on a clean bill of health.
__________
LEGAL ISSUES
The legality of surrogacy in general and commercial surrogacy in particular varies widely from country to country, and even from state to state.
The information below comes from Infertility-Support.org.za:
DEFINITIONS:
• Surrogate mother: the woman who is pregnant with the child and intends to relinquish it after birth.
• Intended parent(s): the individual or couple who intends to rear the child after its birth.
• Gestational surrogacy: a situation in which a surrogate becomes pregnant via embryo transfer with a child of which she is not the biological mother. She may have made an arrangement to relinquish it to the biological parent or parents to raise or to a parent who is unrelated to the child.
• Altruistic surrogacy: a situation where the surrogate receives no financial reward for her pregnancy or the relinquishment of the child (although usually all expenses related to the pregnancy and birth are paid by the intended parents such as medical expenses, maternity clothing and other related expenses).
• Commercial surrogacy: a form of surrogacy in which a gestational carrier is paid to carry a child to maturity in her womb.
LEGALITY:
There is a default legal assumption in most countries that the woman giving birth to a child is that child’s legal mother. In some jurisdictions, the possibility of surrogacy has been allowed and the intended parents may be recognized as the legal parents from birth.
Many states now issue pre-birth orders through the courts placing the name(s) of the intended parent(s) on the birth certificate from the start.
In others, the possibility of surrogacy is either not recognized or is prohibited.
• Australia: In all states in Australia, the surrogate mother is deemed by the law to be the legal mother of the child as well, and any surrogacy agreement giving custody to others is void. In addition, in many states arranging commercial surrogacy is a criminal offense, although New South Wales has no legislation governing surrogacy at all.
• Canada: Commercial surrogacy arrangements were prohibited in 2004 by the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Altruistic surrogacy remains legal.
• France: Commercial surrogacy arrangements are illegal in France.
• India: Commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since 2002. India is emerging as a leader in making commercial surrogacy a viable industry rather than a rare fertility treatment.
• Japan: In March 2008, the Science Council of Japan proposed a ban on surrogacy and said that doctors, agents and their clients should be punished for commercial surrogacy arrangements.
• United Kingdom: Commercial surrogacy arrangements are illegal in the United Kingdom.
• United States: Compensated surrogacy arrangements are illegal in Washington, Michigan, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and New York. Additionally, four states in the U.S. have held that such contracts, while not illegal, are unenforceable.
Compensated surrogacy is legal in Oregon, Texas, Arkansas and California.
California is widely recognized as one of the most friendly jurisdictions for parties desiring to enter into a surrogacy arrangements.
Texas requires the surrogate mother to be a resident of Texas.
Arkansas does not require surrogates to be residents. Intended parents and surrogates resident in any state of the United States can enter into a legal surrogacy arrangement in Arkansas. Provided that the child is born in Arkansas and that financial considerations are dispensed from Arkansas, the contract will be recognized by Arkansas courts and upheld.
__________
Surrogacy Centre of India
Terry Clayton and Steve Oxley chose Dr. Shivani Sachdev-Gour’s Surrogacy Centre of India as the clinic through which to have their sons, Ajay and Jag.
According to the clinic’s website, Dr. Shivani, obtained her license and two degrees from Maharashtra Medical Council and Medical Council of India. She worked and trained in IVF for four years in the U.K., at both Hammersmith Hospital, London and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dr. Shivani says she started Surrogacy Centre India (SCI Healthcare) to assist individuals and couples from around the world to become parents.
Congrats on your babies! My partner and I are currently waiting to hear ” if we are pregnant” with second attempt of four implanted eggs. We are going through a hospital also based in India!!!!
It is really sad that adoption agencies are so expensive. The $100K+ that the adoption agency would have charged these two worthy parents is money that could have been spent on the children instead. Congrats to both of you. I’m sure you will be a wonderful set of parents to these two young boys. (Okay, I just can’t resist throwing in a jab: raise them right and show the anti-gay, bible thumping, “save the children” hetero establishment what it means to be REAL parents.)
Such a great story guys, cant wait to have children of our own. There are so many lgbt couples that want children that are being stopped in their tracks by legal and financial roadblocks. I mean 100k for a child is ridiculous, but with more and more people willing to pay it, the supply and demand continues. So happy for you guys. They are so cute. Congrats on your bundles of joy.
@James: surrogacy center, not adoption.
Ms. Nash, can you provide a bit more information about second parent adoption in Texas? It seems that though we can’t marry, or do surrogacy, same sex second parent adoption is legal here? I hadn’t realized.
I had three rounds at this clinic and two failed, the third was a positive but the surrogate miscarried. All I got was an email as well and a voice message on my machine. 30K down the drain, thank you very much! So yeah, Mr. Clayton may have had a positive experience with this clinic but I don’t think this site should endorse them so blindly. There is an interesting article in the LA Times written recently that gives another view of this clinic. Viewers should go to that site and search Dr Shivani for the article. The article makes several allegations. While I will not comment on them, I believe it is worthwhile for readers to read the article and arrive at their own conclusions
Congrats guys! Hope you are enjoying being daddies
Simon: I know that it is possible to get a second parent adoption in SOME courts in Texas. We will have a special Family Life section in the paper on the last Friday in July, and I am working on a story about adoption for that section. For now tho, if you are interested in a second parent adoption, contact an LGBT-friendly attorney
What a beautiful story Terry and Steve–thank you for sharing!! If readers are interested in finding out more about overseas fertility treatment, http://www.GlobalIVF.com is a free, informational site to help make global fertility journeys less stressful and more successful!
Have heard mixed things about this clinic, either very positive or very negative, so am somewhat surprised and wary that you are providing such a glowing review and endorsement. I initially made an inquiry with them but learned that the compensation rate for their gestational surrogates is shockingly low. Some are paid less than 2500 Euros for a full-term pregnancy, which is a fraction of the pricetag Steve discloses paying. I could not in good conscience deal with a clinic that blatantly exploited its surrogates. In the interests of your readers who are against the global exploitation of women, I must ask that you not endorse this provider or give them free airtime. TX, UK
awesome! so happy for you.
@Karl
LATimes article is a bunch of nonsense and the person who bitched and complained was a business associate of mine, I’ll have nothing to do with her anymore, what a liar! Don’t believe a word of it.
Great story, always good to see families grow.
It’s worth looking at the Blog, lots of happy families with diverse stories.
Congrats for your babies Mr. Clayton and Mr. Oxley ,@Karl-I am so sad to hear about your story which made your experience bad but sometimes its due to some biological problems in the case that make the case so complex but as per our experience we also had our surrogate baby from that hospital only and we had a great experience out there.
@ Karl: I have seen the LA Times article and I believe it has been found to be biased reporting, in the favor of Myleen, once a business associate of Dr. Shivani who started to avenge on her when her (Myleen) business didnt do so good, also if I’m right I read that she is purposely defaming Dr. Shivani as her extravagant stay in India made her exceed her budget for which she hold the doc. responsible..She has been claimed to be posting comments on the LA Times page under psuedo names, trying to have the conversation in her favor.. I feel she is on here too, probably under a different ID. Anyway beautiful babies, Clayton and Oxley CONGRATS..Dr. Shivani indeed is a great help, I speak this out of my own experience.
Congratulations, what a beautiful family. We are with Dr Shivani and 32 weeks pregnant. What a miracle. We’ve had a wonderful time, such good communication, all our questions answered, lots of updates, very different to Rotunda in mumbai who we went with first. dreadful experience! I can’t wait to be where you are now!!! God bless
Congratulations Clayton and Oxley, hope you must be enjoying with your two cute babies and having a great time being their father. Me and my husband also faced many problems at the time when we wanted to have our baby. We approached to many hospitals but our case was very complex that made us disappointed then at last we got to know of Dr. Shivani who helped us to have our baby and today we are a small and a happy family.
Hello trudy, I contacted you and was surprised to learn that you promote the other clinic and you charge 6000 USD for this so its just your business tactics to spread lies.The compensation has to be the same anyone who is running a program knows thatCan you stop it with all the lies and enjoy with amaniGod give you peace
@ Emma: Right, I agree with you, I too have read that LA TIMES post and must say that I hate when people like to ruin a perfect moment like this with their chain messages. It’s selfish and unjust to people who are not looking for people to be settling their differences when they just wish to share their good news.
Mr. Jacob you are right this is not a time for people to be arguing but as we see in this article a good chunk of the article is spent promoting one clinic at the expense of another. I found that very tedious and self-serving to be perfectly honest with you and I don’t understand why the writer used this approach to tell this fascinating story. Mr. Clayton appears to be settling a score himself by virtue of his negative portrayal of the first clinic he used so he may have already set the tone for some of the comments you are seeing. I don’t know what value that added to the story of him and his partner to become parents other than to show they have a great deal of unresolved anger that they feel they must bring into the public arena.
I ask the writer of this article to remove the endorsement and free promotion of SCI and Dr. Shivani Sachdev Gaur as I don’t believe the interests of the metro Dallas LGBT community are being well-served by an article that promotes a single service provider who has been cast in a dubious manner in some mainstream media venues.
One client can talk about a failed business relationship, portraying a clinic in a negative light, but Mr. Clayton cannot talk about the substance of his journey. As far as i can tell, the negative story you refer to is the same one being repeated over and over again ( with considerable slander and malice).
If people choose to read the “mainstream story”, i would also encourage them to read the comments. Anyone undertaking surrogacy, regardless of where, should do their research. The link with this article goes to many many blogs where people tell are sharing their stories and the truth of their experience. This carries much more weight than any story.
People have good and bad experiences with any service. These guys had a bad start and a good ending. A great news story in anyone’s books. The media presents all sides, thats how it works.
Personally i am more influenced by the many blogs that are attached to this service. They are telling their individual stories as it happens.This has truth to it. As the previous writer suggests, this has more weight than any one article, or any one person’s opinion, gossip or innuendo.
@Paul
you are right but where are all the blogs w the negative stories. Surely u r not implying that everyone has a happy ending.
I would like to know if this couple or the writer are being compensated by this clinic in any form? I don’t c a disclosure . This article is a disgrace and should be retracted nothing more than a publicity stunt for an ivf clinic in the third world
please don’t judge!!!
i’m a 33yr old black female with lupus. married for 3yrs. my lupus is under control thanks to the cocktail of medications that i am on. but these medications are not safe during pregnancy and i’m not well enough to stop taking them for a long time so we decided to go the surrogacy route. we have done the required tests and we hope to start the process in a few months. my eggs are good. we need a carrier. we will be using the same clinic as terry and steve. we live in dallas too. we will go praying for the best but knowing that anything can happen. there are no guarantees in any pregnancy. the paper work from the clinic does a good job of outlining the costs, they also warn you that the price might increase in case of unforeseen circumstances. we are very hopeful. pls pray for us.
Terry and Steven Congratulations on the wonderful babies!
@ Eco M and Janice — you are
obssessed with this doctor, I have seen you, its a shame, you will even refer to your own twins who are half Indians by a racist slur. it’s not rationale anymore. It’s going to be so difficult for them growing up with a parent obssessed with speading profanity about them and a doctor and all who work with her. Your bias shines through. Every success story of the clinic causes you pain. Why dont you focus on improving communication which is dismal with Rotunda clinic? Or improving the abysmal frozen success rate?
In response to Tammy Nash. Four years ago I second parent adopted my son through the courts in San Antonio, which was the only county hearing second parent adoptions at the time. The lawyers were from Austin. We had to wait until he was 6 months old though. Unfortunately my partner and I aren’t together anymore and I get the “pleasure” of being a part time mom.
@Eco M: It is indeed a very sad picture that you draw, your words reflect an approach where you feel that if someone has something good to say then he is paid as you just cant seem to get over your pre-set notion that in third world countries people can be easily bought and the services are not up to the mark, what you need is a change of attitude and though process..
Congrats for your babies Clayton and Oxley, @ Jon we also had a lovely experience of surrogacy in India. There we were provided with the state of art facilities and we didn’t face any problems regarding exit VISA as we did everything in sync with the law