It Was Hard for Us to Buy a Home

My husband is in the military so it was hard for us to buy a home, especially with two children because I wanted to stay home with them. His salary covered our regular expenses but we just weren’t saving. A few months before he was set to be sent overseas I was talking to one of the moms at school, her family had just bought their first home and she was ecstatic.

I asked her how, since her husband was also in the Military Wives Surrogacy, they managed to save enough money for the down payment. She told me about surrogacy and how the $40,000 she had made by being a Surrogate last year was their down payment. Well, that made a light bulb go off in my head. I got more information from her and went home to talk to my husband about it.

After some discussion back and forth we met with the woman I’d been talking to and her husband to see how it really worked for them. They discussed the pros and cons with us for a long time but what it finally came down to was they felt like RSMC,  the medical center and Physician’s Surrogacy, the surrogacy agency she was a Surrogate for, was extremely supportive of them throughout the process. They even helped out with babysitting when I needed to get to an appointment. The money for the down payment was their primary reason for her decision to become a Surrogate but, once she got to know the family she would be helping, she felt like she was helping a friend too.

That evening the other mom “recruited” me, and made $1,000 just for bringing me to the surrogacy agency. We called the office and made an appointment to talk to a surrogacy counselor, within a week I was in the office passing the medical exam. I was matched with a family within two months and started the process. Luckily I got pregnant on the first implantation and the pregnancy was pretty uneventful, just like my other pregnancies had been. The difference this time was that, even though my husband was overseas and not home to support me, I had a team of people at the surrogacy agency helping me through.

Once my husband returned from his tour overseas we started looking for a home for our family. Homeownership had always been our dream and now, thanks to the money I made being a Surrogate, we now have a permanent home for our family. I talk to other military families frequently and, when they ask, tell them how we got the money to buy the house.

I’ve recruited some of them and the $1,000 recruiting fee helps buy things for the house that we can’t quite manage otherwise. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a surrogate again but I will definitely continue recruiting other military wives as surrogates. With our husbands gone for long stretches of time, it’s hard for us to take care of our children and work full time so surrogacy is the ideal job for us.

—C.C., San Diego