Hope you are safe during this Covid-19 epidemic.

Dear Intended Parent,

Hope you are safe during this Covid-19 epidemic.

Staying at home certainly has had its challenges. It has given us plenty of time to think.

For those of you who are dreaming of having a beautiful baby to complete your family, this has hopefully given you an opportunity to evaluate and firm up what you would like to do.

As part of your decision process, you may enjoy reading the article below from the Wall Street Journal about how different Intended Parents and Physicians are viewing the complicated decision of having a baby during this time of Covid-19.

One of our challenges is to consider how we can best help you. We understand that many couples are wrestling with whether to bring a baby into the world now, amid dual economic and health crises.

For those Intended Parents who would like to proceed to have a baby, we continue to offer many important options including egg donors, frozen eggs from donors, low cost surrogacy in the USA and Overseas, embryo adoptions, and referral to excellent IVF Centers Nationwide in the USA and Canada, to help you safely pursue your dream to complete yor family.

Our office has been quiet due to the Copid-19 Virus. The good news is that we will be opening again on Monday, May 19th and are here to help you.

As the next step, please drop us an email requesting a FREE one hour Phone or Zoom consultation to help you explore your options and best next steps for you.

We look forward to hearing from you.

They Were Planning To Get Pregnant. The Coronavirus Complicates Things.

Amid health and economic crises from the pandemic, many couples who were hoping to conceive are now wrestling with what to do. For some women, the decision is particularly fraught.

Holly Smith had been planning for a third baby. The coronavirus changed that.

Ms. Smith says she and her husband, already parents of a 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, had decided to start trying to conceive again in March. But when the family began holing up at home in San Diego that same month amid the pandemic, the couple started having second thoughts. Ms. Smith says she feels conflicted over the ethics of getting pregnant when hospitals are already stretched thin, and worries about the lack of data on the virus’s effect on pregnant women and unborn children.

“I don’t need cold hard answers for everything,” says Ms. Smith, a child-behavior specialist, “but here there’s really nothing.”

Although both Ms. Smith and her husband grew up wanting big families, the couple has agreed to put off trying to get pregnant until at least the fall, when they hope there will be more information about the virus. At age 37, Ms. Smith says she has made peace with the fact that waiting may mean her family is already complete.

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the U.S., women who hoped to get pregnant this year are struggling with what to do. For those in their late 30s and early 40s, the choice is particularly fraught:Keep trying and potentially bring a baby into the world when the economy is crashing and leaving home is dangerous, or stop trying and risk losing what could be their last chance to conceive.

They are wrestling through questions both practical and meditative:Will I be able to get good medical care in a shutdown? Will I still have a job next month? Is it wrong to bring a child into a pandemic?

Some couples take a philosophical approach, thinking it would be lovely to create new life in a time of death. Others joke that a child born during a baby bust will be lucky, getting a leg up in school and work.

‘It’s scary’

Even before the pandemic, America’s population was aging and U.S. births were falling, raising concerns that there wouldn’t be enough workers to support the elderly and retired in years to come. Now, economists expect even more people to delay or perhaps forgo children as they face the one-two punch of a health crisis and an economic collapse.

The coronavirus has been hard on women who were already pregnant when it arrived. OB-GYN offices in many areas had to move some prenatal appointments to video chats. And many women in states like New York and California had to give birth alone after hospitals at times stopped allowing partners into the delivery room.

Undeterred, Kelly McElroy, a government contractor in Alabama, says she and her husband plan to continue trying for a second child.

“I know people right now who are pregnant and what they’re going through, it’s scary,” says the 35-year-old Ms. McElroy. “But at this point it’s not scary enough to not still see my family the way I envision it.”

Alyson Jessel, meanwhile, was considering whether to try for a third baby when the coronavirus made the decision for her.

“I needed a sign from the universe to tell me what to do,” says Ms. Jessel, a 34-year-old physician assistant in Michigan. “And this is a pretty good sign that we’re done.”

Some couples have had no choice but to put their plans on hold. Many fertility clinics have suspended treatments during the pandemic.

But for those who can choose, the decision is made more difficult by the lack of information. Research on how the virus affects pregnancy is sparse and conclusions could change, especially since testing isn’t widely available. What’s more, the virus is so new that doctors haven’t been able to thoroughly study how it affects women who are newly pregnant.

Small studies have examined women who were already pregnant when the coronavirus appeared. So far, they indicate that healthy pregnant women don’t seem to be more susceptible to contracting Covid-19, or to getting seriously ill if they do.

For women who contract the virus, there’s little evidence that the infection could be transmitted from mother to child in the womb, though the research is very preliminary. After a baby is born, parents can pass the virus to their babies through contact, which means infected parents could be separated from their newborns. Some infected women have had preterm births, but it isn’t clear if that was because of the virus.

One more worry

Doctors say women should consider their current physical, mental and emotional health as they decide whether to start or add to their family during this time.

“For some people it might be, ‘I desperately want to have a baby, and I’m 38, and if I wait another year and my fertility drops I’ll never forgive myself,’ ” says Dr. Jeanne Conry, president-elect of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, known as FIGO. “And someone else might say, ‘I’m 34, I’m in great shape, I’ve had regular menstrual periods all my life, I’ll feel OK if I put this off for a year.’”

Bree Giddings and her husband are continuing to try for a sibling for their 15-month-old son. At age 36, she doesn’t feel like she has time to wait. Ms. Giddings reasons it could be a year or longer until another baby arrives, and she expects better treatments for Covid-19 by then and maybe even a vaccine.

Ms. Giddings, a nurse at a Colorado hospital who works with stroke victims, has thought through many of the possibilities of having a baby in a pandemic. Her husband would be disappointed if he couldn’t be in the delivery room. Her parents would be heartbroken if they couldn’t meet their new grandchild right away. But pregnancies, Ms. Giddings says, are hard no matter what.

“Every day something comes up that makes you worry,” Ms. Giddings says. “And the reality is that at any given time something in pregnancy could go sideways. This is just one more thing.”