by Stephanie Caballero
Paul Chavez
LOS ANGELES - The bouncing, little baby looks like any other with those chubby cheeks, hints of drool and gah-gah sounds.
This infant, named Joseph, is a bit different, though. He’s a foster child with two gay fathers.
Ken Martinez, 39, brought the baby to a recent “Parenting with Pride” conference where prospective gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender parents mingled with others who already have started families.
The conference was started nine years ago by the “Pop Luck Club” - a Los Angeles-based support group for gay fathers. The group has about 275 families, including 250 children, said Larry Riesenbach, a group member.
Each year, the conference draws foster agencies, adoption lawyers and surrogacy and egg donor companies, Riesenbach said. Last year, the conference added a resource fair with 20 workshops for gay parents and their children.
Martinez, who also has a 2-year-old boy he adopted with his partner, said the conference helped allay his fears that his children would endure hardships for having gay parents.
After listening to the experiences of children with gay parents, he realized his own children would be fine.
“Hearing them talk today and be proud of who their family is was a great experience for me,” Martinez said.
Children of gay parents
Meredith Fenton, a program director for COLAGE, a support group for children of gay parents, held workshops at the conference for youths ages 8 to 16.
“We give them a safe space to talk about their experiences, school and what our experience was on coming out about our parents,” said Fenton, whose mother is a lesbian and whose father is straight.
The group has been participating for the past four years in the conference and has grown over the years with some of the same children returning year after year to share their experiences.
“All of them thought they were the only ones; just meeting was revolutionary for them,” she said. “Now they know, at least hypothetically, that there are other families with LGBT parents.”
Bi-mom
Katrina Thompson, 31, says she has a 4-year-old son from a previous relationship and as a bisexual woman came to the conference to meet other parents like herself.
“The most useful part for me was the workshop on coming out and how it’s a continual process on coming out to yourself and your kids and your whole family,” Thompson said.
“That was useful to me to know I’m not the only one going through these kinds of things.”
Monday, September 03, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
40 Women In Japan Apply To Be Surrogates
By Stephanie Caballero
The Yomiuri Shimbun
About 40 women in their 20s to 50s have applied to a maternity clinic in Nagano Prefecture to offer themselves as volunteers to become surrogate mothers for couples receiving infertility treatment at the facility, the clinic's director said Thursday.
The Suwa Maternity Clinic in Shimosuwamachi, Nagano Prefecture, headed by Yahiro Netsu, sent out a questionnaire to applicants to check whether their family members would consent to their surrogacy despite the potential risks involved.
Netsu reported the findings of the questionnaire Friday to a panel of the Science Council of Japan covering assisted reproductive medicine.
According to Netsu, all of the applicants had given birth before. However, since surrogate birth can endanger the life of the mother and baby and can restrict the daily activities of surrogate mothers for up to about 10 months from pregnancy to birth, even if women want to be surrogate mothers, they might face problems if they lack the support and understanding of their families. The applicants were asked to confirm whether they have husbands or children, and whether their husbands, their parents and their husbands' parents would accept any illnesses or even deaths that occurred as a result of their surrogate pregnancies with the proviso that a system of remuneration or compensation had been established.
Netsu said that while the rigorous nature of the questions might reduce the number of volunteers, there were still plenty of women who could become surrogate mothers.
"I'd like these findings to be used as a reference for the government when it discusses surrogate births. I'll interview the applicants to pick them, but as long as a surrogate birth compensation system has yet to be established, I have no intention of going ahead with surrogate births [using these women]," he said.
The clinic has helped five infertile married couples give birth using surrogates. Since the surrogates were the wives' sisters or mothers, no major problems had occurred, Netsu said.
===
Mukai briefs panel
A panel of the Science Council of Japan discussing assisted reproductive technology held a closed-door hearing Friday with TV personality Aki Mukai, who made a statement about surrogate birth.
The panel's hearings are open to the public in principle, making the closed-door session somewhat unusual.
The panel asked Mukai, who has twin sons born using a surrogate in the United States, to give a briefing at the panel, but Mukai said she would only brief panel members in private. The panel decided to hold a closed-door hearing in compliance with the condition set by Mukai.
Mukai has published a book about her sons. A member of staff at her office said she did not want to go public this time because she was asked to speak as a private citizen residing in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, who had taken advantage of surrogate birth and not as a TV personality.
(Aug. 25, 2007)
The Yomiuri Shimbun
About 40 women in their 20s to 50s have applied to a maternity clinic in Nagano Prefecture to offer themselves as volunteers to become surrogate mothers for couples receiving infertility treatment at the facility, the clinic's director said Thursday.
The Suwa Maternity Clinic in Shimosuwamachi, Nagano Prefecture, headed by Yahiro Netsu, sent out a questionnaire to applicants to check whether their family members would consent to their surrogacy despite the potential risks involved.
Netsu reported the findings of the questionnaire Friday to a panel of the Science Council of Japan covering assisted reproductive medicine.
According to Netsu, all of the applicants had given birth before. However, since surrogate birth can endanger the life of the mother and baby and can restrict the daily activities of surrogate mothers for up to about 10 months from pregnancy to birth, even if women want to be surrogate mothers, they might face problems if they lack the support and understanding of their families. The applicants were asked to confirm whether they have husbands or children, and whether their husbands, their parents and their husbands' parents would accept any illnesses or even deaths that occurred as a result of their surrogate pregnancies with the proviso that a system of remuneration or compensation had been established.
Netsu said that while the rigorous nature of the questions might reduce the number of volunteers, there were still plenty of women who could become surrogate mothers.
"I'd like these findings to be used as a reference for the government when it discusses surrogate births. I'll interview the applicants to pick them, but as long as a surrogate birth compensation system has yet to be established, I have no intention of going ahead with surrogate births [using these women]," he said.
The clinic has helped five infertile married couples give birth using surrogates. Since the surrogates were the wives' sisters or mothers, no major problems had occurred, Netsu said.
===
Mukai briefs panel
A panel of the Science Council of Japan discussing assisted reproductive technology held a closed-door hearing Friday with TV personality Aki Mukai, who made a statement about surrogate birth.
The panel's hearings are open to the public in principle, making the closed-door session somewhat unusual.
The panel asked Mukai, who has twin sons born using a surrogate in the United States, to give a briefing at the panel, but Mukai said she would only brief panel members in private. The panel decided to hold a closed-door hearing in compliance with the condition set by Mukai.
Mukai has published a book about her sons. A member of staff at her office said she did not want to go public this time because she was asked to speak as a private citizen residing in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, who had taken advantage of surrogate birth and not as a TV personality.
(Aug. 25, 2007)
Monday, July 09, 2007
Mother's Eggs Give Daughter the Chance of a Baby
Mother's eggs give daughter the chance of a baby
JOHN VON RADOWITZ
THE first mother-to-daughter egg donation was announced by doctors yesterday.
If the Canadian girl, now aged seven, ever uses the eggs to have a baby she would effectively be giving birth to her own half sister or brother.
Flavie Boivin, from Montreal, was born with Turner's Syndrome, a genetic condition that causes impaired growth and learning difficulties. It also destroys eggs, leading to an unusually early menopause.
A patient's fertility can be preserved by freezing her ovarian tissue or eggs before the disease progresses. However, this carries a high risk of miscarriage or babies being born with genetic abnormalities.
Another option is egg donation, often by a second- degree relative such as a cousin or aunt. In Flavie's case, her mother stepped in by making a gift of her eggs - the first time this has happened.
Her mother, lawyer Melanie Boivin, 35,
said: "The role of a mother is essentially to help her children and if I could do anything in my power to help Flavie I had to do it, and because of my age I had to do it now.
"I told myself if she had needed another organ like a kidney I would volunteer without any hesitation, and it is the same kind of thought process for this."
Dr Seang Lin Tan, who led the team, presented details of the egg donation at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyons, France.
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1038432007
Last updated: 03-Jul-07 00:36 BST
JOHN VON RADOWITZ
THE first mother-to-daughter egg donation was announced by doctors yesterday.
If the Canadian girl, now aged seven, ever uses the eggs to have a baby she would effectively be giving birth to her own half sister or brother.
Flavie Boivin, from Montreal, was born with Turner's Syndrome, a genetic condition that causes impaired growth and learning difficulties. It also destroys eggs, leading to an unusually early menopause.
A patient's fertility can be preserved by freezing her ovarian tissue or eggs before the disease progresses. However, this carries a high risk of miscarriage or babies being born with genetic abnormalities.
Another option is egg donation, often by a second- degree relative such as a cousin or aunt. In Flavie's case, her mother stepped in by making a gift of her eggs - the first time this has happened.
Her mother, lawyer Melanie Boivin, 35,
said: "The role of a mother is essentially to help her children and if I could do anything in my power to help Flavie I had to do it, and because of my age I had to do it now.
"I told myself if she had needed another organ like a kidney I would volunteer without any hesitation, and it is the same kind of thought process for this."
Dr Seang Lin Tan, who led the team, presented details of the egg donation at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyons, France.
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1038432007
Last updated: 03-Jul-07 00:36 BST
Friday, June 22, 2007
Assited Reproduction: Twins--and More!
See the following article, Fertility Treatments Bring Twins—and Trouble, based on a book on infertility treatments, Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World that appears to be relevant and well-researched. As a woman who used assisted reproduction and third-party reproduction to conceive my children, I am always appreciative of balanced reporting and literature and the following article and book appear to have achieved those goals.
Fertility Treatments Bring Twins—and Trouble
by Joanne McNeil
These days, everyone has twins. Julia Roberts has twins. Holly Hunter, Patrick Dempsey, Lance Armstrong, Cheryl Tiegs, Joan Lunden—and don't forget the President and First Lady. Since 1980, the number of twins has climbed 75%, from 70,000 to close to 130,000 in 2003. Women over 35 are likely to have a multiple birth at a rate of 1 in 18. With in vitro fertilization (IVF) births, the rate of multiple deliveries is 1 in 3. That means more than half of all IVF babies are born in a "set."
But Liza Mundy, Washington Post reporter and author of Everything Conceivable, shows that these multiple births come with a risk. The likelihood of cerebral palsy, developmental delay, and other brain and nerve disorders increases. The infant mortality rates of twins are four to five times that of single births, and for triplets the rate is higher still.
Mundy's book steers a clear path through many of IVF's complicated implications. She provides a thorough history of IVF’s scientific progress, along with engrossing anecdotal narratives and commentary on ethical dilemmas.
Mundy's book steers a clear path through many of IVF's complicated implications.
Women that use IVF are often characterized as selfish, career-driven, and shortsighted: If they wanted so badly to be mothers, couldn't they have done it at the age of 25? Mundy quickly dispels this stereotype, reminding us that while feminists might have secured a place for women in the workforce in the 1980s, few policies back then allowed for a family/work balance. Maternity leave was unheard of, and workdays were not flexible. "Women responded by not taking maternity leave and by not asking for flexible workdays. They responded—to a complex set of incentives, including the fact that their partners and husbands were really liking this extra paycheck thing, this high-earning spouse, this chance to endlessly dine out and travel—by not having children, yet.”
And there are other reasons for couples to delay having families. Richard Paulson, chief at the fertility clinic at the University of Southern California, gave Mundy a hypothetical example of an infertile woman born in 1943, "[In] 1983 when she was forty, IVF technology was starting to percolate into clinics in the States, but they were only taking women under forty. In 1988, she was 45 and her eggs were not going to work. Then she turns fifty and the technology of egg donation was now available. She finds that technology has finally caught up with her, and at the age of fifty, she can go in and have a baby.”
Data show adoptive parents are as loving—in some research even more loving—of their children as biological parents, but technology is further blurring that binary distinction. If a woman conceives a child, produced from the egg of a donor and her husband’s sperm, is she any less of a “biological” parent than her husband?
Still, the use of donor eggs remains the ultimate IVF taboo. Not a single celebrity, 40-something new mom has confessed to using a donor, although at that age it is almost impossible to conceive with one's own eggs. When Slate magazine speculated that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards, used a donor to conceive her twins (she was 48 at their birth, he was 50), she admitted to "shots," but said that disclosing any more would not be "ladylike."
Mundy's account of the dilemmas posed by unused frozen embryos is the most compelling. She interviewed one couple that pays $2,000 a year to two separate clinics to keep their unused embryos stored in liquid nitrogen. "The range of choices is dizzying: Should they donate these excess embryos to another couple to gestate and bear? Their own daughters' full biological siblings, raised in a different family? Should they donate the excess embryos to scientific research? Or should they authorize both clinics to remove the glass straws containing the embryos from the liquid nitrogen? Knowing how difficult pregnancy is for her?"
As one doctor tells her, “Even cancer patients aren’t as motivated as fertility patients.”
Fertility clinics often suffer the consequences of deadbeat IVF patients. They hire collection agencies to get former patients to make an executive decision, but if the clients can’t be found, the clinics are stuck. One fertility clinic chief told Mundy he fears what will happen when he retires. “The person buying [the clinic] does not want to inherit embryos. That’s the rule. People do not want to inherit embryos. So what do you do with them? I have embryos that have been here since 1992.”
Not without controversy, fertility clinics in Great Britain are ordered to destroy unused embryos after five years. In reality, IVF technology is so new that we don’t even know if there is a natural expiration date. Mundy reports a San Francisco couple gave birth to child who, as an embryo, was frozen for thirteen years.
While one might not sway with some of the regulatory proposals Mundy subtly hints at, her book is nevertheless illuminating, exhaustingly researched, and, most importantly, sympathetic. Assisted reproduction has helped couples achieve their dreams of parenthood, but it has also further broken the spirits of others. As one doctor tells her, “Even cancer patients aren’t as motivated as fertility patients.” Thanks to this book, many of these would-be patients will not proceed on their quest to have children quite so blindly.
Joanne McNeil is science and technology editor of Brainwash. She is also a frequent contributor to Bookslut and The Washington Times.
Fertility Treatments Bring Twins—and Trouble
by Joanne McNeil
These days, everyone has twins. Julia Roberts has twins. Holly Hunter, Patrick Dempsey, Lance Armstrong, Cheryl Tiegs, Joan Lunden—and don't forget the President and First Lady. Since 1980, the number of twins has climbed 75%, from 70,000 to close to 130,000 in 2003. Women over 35 are likely to have a multiple birth at a rate of 1 in 18. With in vitro fertilization (IVF) births, the rate of multiple deliveries is 1 in 3. That means more than half of all IVF babies are born in a "set."
But Liza Mundy, Washington Post reporter and author of Everything Conceivable, shows that these multiple births come with a risk. The likelihood of cerebral palsy, developmental delay, and other brain and nerve disorders increases. The infant mortality rates of twins are four to five times that of single births, and for triplets the rate is higher still.
Mundy's book steers a clear path through many of IVF's complicated implications. She provides a thorough history of IVF’s scientific progress, along with engrossing anecdotal narratives and commentary on ethical dilemmas.
Mundy's book steers a clear path through many of IVF's complicated implications.
Women that use IVF are often characterized as selfish, career-driven, and shortsighted: If they wanted so badly to be mothers, couldn't they have done it at the age of 25? Mundy quickly dispels this stereotype, reminding us that while feminists might have secured a place for women in the workforce in the 1980s, few policies back then allowed for a family/work balance. Maternity leave was unheard of, and workdays were not flexible. "Women responded by not taking maternity leave and by not asking for flexible workdays. They responded—to a complex set of incentives, including the fact that their partners and husbands were really liking this extra paycheck thing, this high-earning spouse, this chance to endlessly dine out and travel—by not having children, yet.”
And there are other reasons for couples to delay having families. Richard Paulson, chief at the fertility clinic at the University of Southern California, gave Mundy a hypothetical example of an infertile woman born in 1943, "[In] 1983 when she was forty, IVF technology was starting to percolate into clinics in the States, but they were only taking women under forty. In 1988, she was 45 and her eggs were not going to work. Then she turns fifty and the technology of egg donation was now available. She finds that technology has finally caught up with her, and at the age of fifty, she can go in and have a baby.”
Data show adoptive parents are as loving—in some research even more loving—of their children as biological parents, but technology is further blurring that binary distinction. If a woman conceives a child, produced from the egg of a donor and her husband’s sperm, is she any less of a “biological” parent than her husband?
Still, the use of donor eggs remains the ultimate IVF taboo. Not a single celebrity, 40-something new mom has confessed to using a donor, although at that age it is almost impossible to conceive with one's own eggs. When Slate magazine speculated that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards, used a donor to conceive her twins (she was 48 at their birth, he was 50), she admitted to "shots," but said that disclosing any more would not be "ladylike."
Mundy's account of the dilemmas posed by unused frozen embryos is the most compelling. She interviewed one couple that pays $2,000 a year to two separate clinics to keep their unused embryos stored in liquid nitrogen. "The range of choices is dizzying: Should they donate these excess embryos to another couple to gestate and bear? Their own daughters' full biological siblings, raised in a different family? Should they donate the excess embryos to scientific research? Or should they authorize both clinics to remove the glass straws containing the embryos from the liquid nitrogen? Knowing how difficult pregnancy is for her?"
As one doctor tells her, “Even cancer patients aren’t as motivated as fertility patients.”
Fertility clinics often suffer the consequences of deadbeat IVF patients. They hire collection agencies to get former patients to make an executive decision, but if the clients can’t be found, the clinics are stuck. One fertility clinic chief told Mundy he fears what will happen when he retires. “The person buying [the clinic] does not want to inherit embryos. That’s the rule. People do not want to inherit embryos. So what do you do with them? I have embryos that have been here since 1992.”
Not without controversy, fertility clinics in Great Britain are ordered to destroy unused embryos after five years. In reality, IVF technology is so new that we don’t even know if there is a natural expiration date. Mundy reports a San Francisco couple gave birth to child who, as an embryo, was frozen for thirteen years.
While one might not sway with some of the regulatory proposals Mundy subtly hints at, her book is nevertheless illuminating, exhaustingly researched, and, most importantly, sympathetic. Assisted reproduction has helped couples achieve their dreams of parenthood, but it has also further broken the spirits of others. As one doctor tells her, “Even cancer patients aren’t as motivated as fertility patients.” Thanks to this book, many of these would-be patients will not proceed on their quest to have children quite so blindly.
Joanne McNeil is science and technology editor of Brainwash. She is also a frequent contributor to Bookslut and The Washington Times.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Birth Battle: Couple Says Surrogate Mom Won't Give Up Baby
As an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of California, my first response to the article below is who was the drafting attorney? It is the drafting attorney's responsibility to ensure that the Intended Parents and the Surrogate execute (sign) the contract before any legal clearance is issued. Which leads me to my next question: Who was the IVF physician? The majority of IVF physicians that I work with (I know of only one) will not perform an artificial insemination (IUI) or an in vitro procedure (IVF) without receiving legal clearance from the drafting attorney.
Further, I always counsel my IPs that if they are going to work with a traditional surrogate, they are leaving themselves open to the very real possibility that the surrogate could change her mind and decide to keep the child. In California, the court would side with the surrogate and she would be declared the legal mother (see Johnson v. Calvert).
Also, the surrogate should have had a consult with a licensed psychologist who specializes in assisted reproduction. Perhaps this couple would not be in the predicament that they face today. I am not licensed to practice law in the state of Florida, but it is my understanding that there are some laws that protect couples who enter into a traditional surrogacy agreement.
The contract was not executed, however, the parties should have at least signed consent forms in the doctor's office, which would be evidence of the parties' intent, which controls in California (see Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Buzzanca). One can only hope that the doctor involved, if there was one, had the parties execute those documents.
By Grayson Kamm
First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A couple paid a First Coast woman to have their child because they couldn't conceive on their own. Now, they say she won't give them the baby.
It's a birth battle that stretches across Florida. The couple that wants to bring this baby to their home says it's fraud, extortion, but -- most of all -- it's heartbreaking.
In a home near Orlando sits a baby's bedroom, trimmed out with a Tinkerbell theme. It was all lovingly built by the Lamitina family for their new baby girl, Rochelle Amber.
But that baby may never lay its head in this crib.
“My biggest fear is that we may not be able to bring her home. That's what's so hard,” said Gwyn Lamitina, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
The Lamitinas say they had a great experience having a surrogate mom give birth to their two-year-old son TJ, so they were thrilled to try it again. Through a website, they found and hired a surrogate mother from Jacksonville.
But they say this fairy tale turned foul.
"I just kinda hope -- I pray everything will work out all right," said a tearful Tom Lamitina.
Last year, the couple says it signed a "surrogacy contract" with the Jacksonville woman. But they say since they trusted her, they never checked to see if she signed the document.
Then, two months into the pregnancy, the family says their surrogate started asking strange questions. "Personal questions, like how much money I made doing this, doing that. And then how much money I made at the end of the year," Tom remembered. "My first surrogate never asked me how much money I made."
And then, a letter arrived from the surrogate mother's lawyer.
It says this case is now a "child support issue."
"We didn't think anybody would be that low to use a child as a way to scam people out of money. That's pretty -- I mean -- I just didn't think anybody would be that low," Tom said.
We went to the mother's home in Argyle Forest looking for answers. As we did, a woman sped away. In the back of her minivan was what looked like the handle of a baby's car seat.
At the doorstep, a hand reached out from inside the house and stuck a sign on the front door. It said "No comment," and suggested we contact the surrogate mother's attorney.
So we did.
The surrogate's lawyer, Kelly Hampton, declined an on-camera interview, but said over the phone, "Under the laws of the State of Florida, surrogacy is like adoption. The surrogate mom has the option to keep the baby."
We asked, "Is she asking for child support?" The attorney said, "I'm not going to answer that."
Both sides agreed to a DNA test. A document provided to First Coast News by the Lamitinas showed the test was performed by a company on the First Coast and that the test determined a 99.9999 percent probability that Tom Lamitina is the baby's father.
Tom says the surrogate did cash their $1,500 deposit check.
But still, the couple says the surrogate, who provided the egg, never signed that contract. To them, the motive's clear.
"Fraud. Very fraudulent," Gwyn said. "It's almost like extortion... I have the baby, and you have to do what I want."
For now, like their hearts, the baby's room is empty.
"I have been praying a lot and I've got a lot of people praying for me. It's gonna be all right," Tom said.
The Lamitinas' attorney says he plans to go to court soon, filing a suit to give the family full custody of the baby.
Further, I always counsel my IPs that if they are going to work with a traditional surrogate, they are leaving themselves open to the very real possibility that the surrogate could change her mind and decide to keep the child. In California, the court would side with the surrogate and she would be declared the legal mother (see Johnson v. Calvert).
Also, the surrogate should have had a consult with a licensed psychologist who specializes in assisted reproduction. Perhaps this couple would not be in the predicament that they face today. I am not licensed to practice law in the state of Florida, but it is my understanding that there are some laws that protect couples who enter into a traditional surrogacy agreement.
The contract was not executed, however, the parties should have at least signed consent forms in the doctor's office, which would be evidence of the parties' intent, which controls in California (see Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Buzzanca). One can only hope that the doctor involved, if there was one, had the parties execute those documents.
By Grayson Kamm
First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A couple paid a First Coast woman to have their child because they couldn't conceive on their own. Now, they say she won't give them the baby.
It's a birth battle that stretches across Florida. The couple that wants to bring this baby to their home says it's fraud, extortion, but -- most of all -- it's heartbreaking.
In a home near Orlando sits a baby's bedroom, trimmed out with a Tinkerbell theme. It was all lovingly built by the Lamitina family for their new baby girl, Rochelle Amber.
But that baby may never lay its head in this crib.
“My biggest fear is that we may not be able to bring her home. That's what's so hard,” said Gwyn Lamitina, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
The Lamitinas say they had a great experience having a surrogate mom give birth to their two-year-old son TJ, so they were thrilled to try it again. Through a website, they found and hired a surrogate mother from Jacksonville.
But they say this fairy tale turned foul.
"I just kinda hope -- I pray everything will work out all right," said a tearful Tom Lamitina.
Last year, the couple says it signed a "surrogacy contract" with the Jacksonville woman. But they say since they trusted her, they never checked to see if she signed the document.
Then, two months into the pregnancy, the family says their surrogate started asking strange questions. "Personal questions, like how much money I made doing this, doing that. And then how much money I made at the end of the year," Tom remembered. "My first surrogate never asked me how much money I made."
And then, a letter arrived from the surrogate mother's lawyer.
It says this case is now a "child support issue."
"We didn't think anybody would be that low to use a child as a way to scam people out of money. That's pretty -- I mean -- I just didn't think anybody would be that low," Tom said.
We went to the mother's home in Argyle Forest looking for answers. As we did, a woman sped away. In the back of her minivan was what looked like the handle of a baby's car seat.
At the doorstep, a hand reached out from inside the house and stuck a sign on the front door. It said "No comment," and suggested we contact the surrogate mother's attorney.
So we did.
The surrogate's lawyer, Kelly Hampton, declined an on-camera interview, but said over the phone, "Under the laws of the State of Florida, surrogacy is like adoption. The surrogate mom has the option to keep the baby."
We asked, "Is she asking for child support?" The attorney said, "I'm not going to answer that."
Both sides agreed to a DNA test. A document provided to First Coast News by the Lamitinas showed the test was performed by a company on the First Coast and that the test determined a 99.9999 percent probability that Tom Lamitina is the baby's father.
Tom says the surrogate did cash their $1,500 deposit check.
But still, the couple says the surrogate, who provided the egg, never signed that contract. To them, the motive's clear.
"Fraud. Very fraudulent," Gwyn said. "It's almost like extortion... I have the baby, and you have to do what I want."
For now, like their hearts, the baby's room is empty.
"I have been praying a lot and I've got a lot of people praying for me. It's gonna be all right," Tom said.
The Lamitinas' attorney says he plans to go to court soon, filing a suit to give the family full custody of the baby.
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