When you feel ready to start a family, and share your love with a child, you want answers, not roadblocks. Dr. Robert A. Kaufmann, has been serving the gay and lesbian community for decades, offering his expertise as a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist to same-sex couples that wish to have a child of their own.
Fort Worth-based Dr. Kaufmann will employ the same advances in reproductive medicine that enable straight, infertile couples to get pregnant. As a gay couple, you obviously need an egg donor and surrogate to complete the reproductive circle, and Fort Worth Fertility provides you access to an in-house surrogacy program to expedite the process.
From the first call to Fort Worth Fertility to bringing home a precious new baby--biologically united with you ---we are committed to making gay pregnancy a joyful and fulfilling experience.
Your step toward starting your family is scheduling a semen analysis. Results will verify
sperm health, and enable Dr. Kaufmann to plan next steps for fertility treatment.
• Normal Semen Analysis: If the semen analysis shows a promising sperm count, and normal mobility and morphology, the IVF cycle proceeds as usual.
• Abnormal Semen Analysis: If the semen analysis results in a low sperm count, or reveals issues with mobility or morphology, the IVF cycle may include intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to overcome male infertility. IVF with ICSI tasks embryologists in our IVF lab with injecting a single sperm into the egg to achieve fertilization. ICSI has helped thousands overcome male infertility.
A critical element to gay pregnancy involves arranging for egg donation and the right surrogate. Egg donors, either from a known or anonymous donor, are highly screened for physical and psychological criteria. Fort Worth Fertility provides assistance and guidance throughout the entire process.
Gay surrogacy brings together intended parents and the woman who will carry the baby during pregnancy. There are two types of surrogacy: traditional and gestational.
Traditional surrogacy involves a woman artificially inseminated with donor sperm. With traditional surrogacy, the woman shares a biological link (her own oocytes/eggs) with the baby she is carrying.
Gestational surrogacy will utilize donor sperm and donor eggs to create viable embryos for implantation in a cycle of IVF. With gestational surrogacy, the pregnant woman will not share a biological link with the baby. She selflessly serves as a carrier, or host uterus.
In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is the culmination of the careful planning you’ve done thus far. IVF for gay couples employs any number of technologies designed to overcome the odds: ICSI for male infertility; donor egg and donor sperm; and genetic screening and preconception testing.
Higher level genetic screening, when paired with in-vitro fertilization, can help bring peace of mind to the gay pregnancy process. The IVF Lab Director at Fort Worth Fertility has performed over 2,500 preimplantation genetic diagnosis screenings, lending his expertise to your fertility cycle.
Nothing matters more than the birth of your healthy baby, so Fort Worth Fertility offers leading-edge genetic screening to test for inheritable genetic disease and abnormal chromosomes (DNA):
• Preconception testing
• Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)
• Preimplantation genetic screening (PGS)
From overcoming male infertility, to the reassurances genetic testing offers, Dr. Kaufmann is committed to making gay pregnancy both possible and positive. Contact Fort Worth Fertility to get started on your path to becoming a father.
1 in 5 gay and lesbian couples are parenting children under the age of 18.
