Diego & Mikey's -Baby Fund

Hello!

 

Chances are that if you received this link, you know who the two of us are, but just in case... We're Mike and Diego Andrade, a gay Mexican- American couple from Southern California who have been together fifteen years. We're in the middle of a fund-raising journey to become parents. We’ve known since early on that we wanted to eventually create a family together and now we're in a place in our lives where we feel like it’s the right time.

 

But, it’s not easy for queer people to start families. Most insurance coverage geared towards fertility and family planning tends to focus on heterosexual couples. Under many carriers, we'd be denied coverage for things like IVF or surrogacy. According to their terms, we're not technically an 'infertile' couple - we could at any given moment 'choose' to have children with women. Yeah. There are queer focused grants and other funds, but most come with strict qualification requirements and lengthy follow-up processes.

 

So we’ve decided to save money and build this little family ourselves. With family support we’ve been making changes to our lives to be able to save money and we're slowly but surely adding to the baby fund.

 

Recently we've been disclosing our goals to close friends and family recently. And while we're committed to doing everything we can independently to make this happen, many people have asked if there was a way they could contribute.

 

That's what this GoFundMe is for. It's for anybody in our lives who wants to contribute to our goal of becoming parents. And we're grateful for any contribution anybody is willing to make.

 

The funds raised here will go towards the family planning option Mike and I have decided on - after researching and holding consultations with a few agencies. We're pursuing gestational surrogacy: which is a combination of sourcing an egg donor and creating embryos via IVF to be carried to term by a surrogate, who will be a separate individual from the donor. We don’t have a set timeline, but we’re hoping we can begin the process soon.

 

If you decide to donate anything, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The outpouring of emotional support we've received from close friends and family has been amazing. So any financial help (no matter how big or small) would mean the absolute world to us.

 

Additionally, as a special token of our gratitude, we'll send you a little something: a print of one of our family portraits (photographed by Mike) integrated into a cool calendar layout designed by my brother Santi.

 

Just fill out this Google Form with your details, and we'll send it out (which could take a hot minute, since we're doing this all ourselves... but that's why we have a 2023 option).