WINTER PARK, Fla. – Dawn Brugh and Courteney Brugh will soon have the possibility to each carry the same baby.
"We started looking into the whole -- I think it's called gestational surogacy -- and things like that, and that's when we found the whole process," Dawn Brugh said.
It's called InVoCell. The process is done at Fertility Care The IVF Center in Winter Park.
"The purpose of reciprocal egg-sharing from a same-sex couple is to allow them to bond and because that's really the only way that they can share," Dr. Trolice, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist said.
Trolice is helping the couple, who traveled from Jacksonville, make their dream come true.
The procedure involves a 1 1/2 inch device where the eggs and sperm are placed. Then, the device is inserted into the woman for incubation for a period of about five days.
"This replaces the monitoring and the laboratory incubators," Trolice said. "There's really no risk to the woman during that time period with this inside her."
After the incubation period, the device is removed and the doctor retrieves the embryo.
In this case, Courteney Brugh will carry the device with her eggs, then the embryo will be inserted into Dawn Brugh, who will carry out the rest of the pregnancy.
"We didn't know anything like that existed. It's awesome, like the idea of it, knowing that I'm gonna be carrying our baby is amazing," Dawn Brugh said.
It's a sense of renewed hope after the couple said they were turned away by another clinic in Jacksonville.
"We set up an appointment, we went to talk to them and as soon as we sat down, the doctor asked us what we wanted and they were like, 'We can't do that, that's weird, that's odd,'" Dawn Brugh recalled.
But once they met Trolice, their frustration went away. Trolice said through the InVoCell procedure, the treatment is more natural and less costly.
"With InVoCell, we're doing it as an affordable IVF with minimal monitoring, lower dose medication and we're eliminating the incubator in the laboratory with embryology monitoring," Trolice said.
A standard IVF procedure costs about $15,000. Through InVoCell, the amount is under $7,000.
"From the minute I walked in here, I'm glad what happened, happened ... I love it here," Courteney Brugh said.