Heath Tucker and his husband Carlos Avilas on their path to parenthood
BY MARK ARIEL | PHOTO BY ZIV SADE
Talking to THE FIGHT about their journey to become parents, Heath Tucker reveals that he and his husband Carlos Avilas “always knew that we wanted children. With that said, it wasn’t something that we actively engaged in serious conversation about until after we were married in 2015. At that point, we’d been together a little over six years.”
“In the beginning,” says Tucker, “we were considering all options: fostering, fostering to adopt, adoption, and surrogacy. We heavily considered adoption in the beginning for several reasons: financial, the need of those children and also because my mom was adopted. Ultimately, though, we know ourselves very well and knew that the lack of clarity in the process of an adoption journey would potentially open us up to emotional hurt, and that just didn’t feel like the right path for us.”
Once they settled on surrogacy as their path forward, they attended two “Men Having Babies” (www.menhavingbabies.org) conferences in NYC, and began to frequent their monthly meetings.
“The challenge in selecting surrogacy as our path to parenthood was the overall costs. With that in mind, we applied for Men Having Babies’ GPAP (Gay Parenting Assistance Program) program. We were fortunate to ultimately be one of only 10-15 applicants selected into Stage II and were able to partner with some amazing providers like Same Love Surrogacy (www.samelovesurrogacy.com), Beverly Hills Egg Donation (www.bhed.com), California Fertility Partners (www.californiafertilitypartners.com), and Vorzimer Masserman (www.vmfirm.com) who ultimately provided their services either pro bono or at reduced rates.”
“… Having so many people invested in the life of our child and his existence in the world was the greatest gift we, as parents, could ever give to him.”
“Early on in the process, we were actually exploring potential options for egg donors in a Facebook group specifically for Egg Donors, Surrogates and Intended Parents when I stumbled across a posting of someone who jumped right off the page at me.” reveals Tucker. “I sent her a very long private message explaining who we were and our story and well, apparently she liked us enough to respond back. We started chatting for a bit and grew the connection that way. We ultimately ended up connecting in person when we were in LA visiting family and the rest is history. Even though we found our surrogate independently, we took her under the wing of our surrogacy agency—Same Love Surrogacy—because we knew we couldn’t navigate this confusing world on our own.”
When asked about their relationship with their surrogate Tucker says they “bonded over so many things, the most embarrassing of which is our joy in watching the TV show ‘Big Brother.’ You either love it or you hate it, and all of us love it! Beyond silly things like that, it was her heart and her ability to be great at everything she does in life that really drew us even closer together. We certainly felt like we were very much a part of the entire pregnancy and we’re so grateful to her for making us feel that way. We also had a chance to hang out and connect with her kids too, which was just another layer of the many amazing aspects that these types of journeys to parenthood provide. She will forever be a part of our family and we wouldn’t have it any other way!”
One of the key elements of this process that often gets overlooked is the role of the egg donor, reveals Tucker. “This process is called a ‘surrogacy’ journey, so just by its name it often overlooks the first and key part of this process, embryo creation. Without embryos, there is no surrogacy journey to go on. We were very fortunate to find our egg donor using Beverly Hills Egg Donation. She was an amazing spirit and soul. We had the initial opportunity to meet with her on a video call. In a very unique twist, we ultimately exchanged information after the retrieval and we eventually met in person for drinks in West Hollywood. That meeting only confirmed for us what we already knew about the wonderful person she was and is. We then took it a step further and she met our son and even her mother came out to meet him. This is a really unique dynamic and something I can’t say we initially entered into the process thinking we would entertain, but in the end, as we became more comfortable with the gifts this process brings, we realized that to have so many people invested in the life of our child and his existence in the world was the greatest gift we, as parents, could ever give to him. So as your readers consider whether or not this is the path to parenthood for them, I strongly encourage them to enter into this process with an open mind and a happy heart and I just know good things will come out of this for them. I’m not saying there won’t be challenges, but in the end, this adds a beauty to life beyond measure!”
