Stephanie Levich is the founder and president of Family Match Consulting, co-author of From the Start: A Book About Love and Making Families, and a dear friend of mine, and I’m so thrilled to have her on the podcast today.
Stephanie has worked in the world of fertility for over 20 years and started her own LA-based egg donor and surrogacy agency. She was adopted herself, gave birth to her two children with IVF, and is a huge advocate and source of support for the many different ways that families can come to be.
Stephanie has helped over 3,000 people find egg donors, surrogates, and even sperm donors. She’s super passionate about helping people find the right match, and that’s one of the reasons we’re friends.
This conversation was so inspiring and Stephanie is providing people with such amazing support and resources through her work. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!
Dr. Aimee: I am so excited to have my dear friend Stephanie Levich here today. Hi, Stephanie.
Stephanie Levich: Hi, Aimee. Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Aimee: You are so welcome.
You have so much going on. I want you to talk first about your inspiration. What made you get into this field?
Stephanie Levich: I have some personal stories that made me interested in this work. I’ll share the first one, which is the fact that I’m adopted and have the best parents in the world, and I wanted to help people like them create their families. I didn’t know what path that would take, but it ended up being egg donation, sperm donation, and surrogacy.
The story of my adoption, I’ll share a little personal background of what that looked like. It’s interesting because people think infertility is a difficult time of having a pregnancy, but there are so many reasons that people pursue these other paths to have their children. My Mom’s looked a little different. At the age of 13, she had a tummy ache, so she told my grandparents, and they took her to the hospital. They discovered the most random fluke infection that got so bad that the only way they thought they could save her life at the time was to give her a complete hysterectomy.
From that age, she knew that having children in the future would not look a certain way. It’s crazy because she met my Dad and they fell in love, but she thought he might leave her if she told him she was unable to have children, so she kept it a secret. Then, to her surprise, one day he proposed marriage. He got down on one knee with the ring and asked if she would marry him.
She said, “Before I answer, I need to tell you something,” and she shared with him the update that she hadn’t. I get chills every time I tell this story because he said, “So? We’ll adopt. What’s your answer, are you marrying me or not?” They got married, and later went on to adopt me and who became my brother and my sister.
Again, I just have such amazing parents that I wanted to help people like them, but then infertility touched me in another way personally. After working in the field for 10 years, I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. We tried for years to conceive, nothing worked. IVF finally did, and I am so grateful. I have my little 7 and 9 year old miracles as a result of it.
This is all to say that I am so personally and professionally invested in this work that I’m so lucky to be able to do.
Dr. Aimee: I feel the same way. I’m also inspired to do the work I do because of my mother as well. I have a feeling that maybe your Mom was an inspiration for your book, too. Tell us about the inspiration behind your book.
Stephanie Levich: Yes. My Mom is an inspiration for so much that I do, the book included. A big part of it for me with the book was being asked so often by clients for my advice on how to tell their children that they were born through egg donation or surrogacy. I’d love to be able to give them resources, and there are some that exist, but none of them encompass all of the amazing ways families can be created.
While there are children’s books that speak to surrogacy or adoption, for example, I think that’s really great and important, but it really doesn’t give children the full picture of family building and allow them to put their story in the context of this bigger picture. So, I wanted to create something that any family, any parent who conceived through egg donation, sperm donation, IVF, had their family through adoption, any person that was single, married, same sex, hetero, whatever it is, any person can pick up this book and read it to their child, have it apply and tell their own story.
Dr. Aimee: I love the first three words, “From the start.” I think donor-conceived people have been begging for that. Not just from age 18 or age 30 through a 23andMe test. Right?
Stephanie Levich: That’s right.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you for writing this book. What would your advice be (and I probably just gave it away) to a parent who has a donor-conceived child? How would you tell them if the child asks?
Stephanie Levich: My best advice comes from my personal experience with my adoption and how my parents shared my story with me. The way they opted to do it was very early and often. They said words that I didn’t understand, like adopted. I didn’t know what that meant, but they explained it in the best way they could for me as a child.
When people ask me, “When did you find out you were adopted,” my answer is always the same. I have always known. I think that is the best way to tell any child their story, early, so that one day when someone asks them that question, they say, “I don’t know. I’ve just always known,” and so it’s not a big secret that is told later on.
We don’t want to treat these things as secrets, because that has a negative connotation, and children feel that, they can sense that. So, the more open and honest we are, the more comfortable the children will be in their story and how they came into this world. That ultimately helps them psychologically, going forward as an adult, just being comfortable in their skin and who they are and where they came from.
Dr. Aimee: For people who are listening who don’t know this, your husband has actually been on Shark Tank, and Family Match Consulting has a little bit to do with that journey. Can you tell us about how you went from Shark Tank to Family Match Consulting?
Stephanie Levich: Yes. It was a very strange path, but it ultimately is what sparked me to start Family Match. Thank you, Dave (my husband).
As you said, I’ve worked in the field a long time. I started and ran a large egg donor and surrogate agency for many years. I sold the agency, wanting to get into some other path within the field, and I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like yet. Within this interim of figuring it out, my husband who owns a novelty eyewear company called Sunstashes that makes these fun glasses that make you look like different characters, like Batman or Superman, said, “We need help. We’re growing. Can you work with us for a period of time?” I thought, gosh, this is so not even close to what I do, but I’ll do this, I’m going to help him.
What I didn’t tell him was that I had a very specific goal of wanting to get him and his two partners on Shark Tank. They have such a fun product. They are three best friends, business partners, and super fun guys. I thought they were perfect, so I started the application process. I produced a video for them. They were like, “We are hands-off. If you make this happen, we will show up.” It kept going and going, and we kept making it through the different stages. Next thing you know, they aired on Shark Tank, and they made a deal with Daymond John. It’s been really exciting and it was a lot of fun.
Then the dust kind of settled from Shark Tank, and there I was at my husband’s office selling novelty eyewear online. I thought, “Gosh, honey, I love you so much, but bye-bye, I’m going back to the work that I love.” That was it. I just knew even more with conviction after that that my path needs to be in the fertility world, that’s where I belong, so I started Family Match Consulting.
Dr. Aimee: What is it, what do you do for people?
Stephanie Levich: We are a consulting firm that helps clients find the best egg donors, surrogates, sperm donors through a network of agencies, which I can talk about. We also offer ongoing consulting and advocacy for clients as they make their way through this process.
Dr. Aimee: What do you love about the work that you do?
Stephanie Levich: I love so many things about it. I love when clients come to us after going through so much and trying to find a donor unsuccessfully, or not knowing what to even be looking for, and being able to really guide them and get them to a place of feeling comfortable.
Even more so, sometimes we see clients go from, “I can’t do this. This is so hard and daunting and emotional.” I tell clients when you find the right donor, it might not be excitement like “woohoo, let’s do egg donation,” but it really changes in their mind from “I can’t do this” to, “I can, and this feels good and comfortable.”
Finding that right match for them is what changes that, and we love being able to see that shift.
Dr. Aimee: Why should someone work with you when they can just go directly to an agency to do these things for them?
Stephanie Levich: Years ago, for so long, the path of finding a donor or surrogate was thought to be you go to an agency and find somebody through that agency. Really, one of the big reasons I started Family Match was when I owned my agency, clients would call all of the time and say, “I’m looking for this surrogate,” or “this egg donor,” and we didn’t have that candidate. I had to say, “Sorry, we don’t have someone. Good luck,” and there was nowhere to send them. I could give them 10 other agencies, and they could still have the same outcome.
So, I wanted to create a one-stop shop where anybody embarking on any part of this process can call and be helped because we are not married to any candidates that we have. What we’ve done is created a network of over 100 different programs that we know, we trust, and we’ve vetted. We have a long list of agencies we won’t work with. They come to us, we help them understand what they’re looking for, get a feel for it, and then we get to cast a really large net to help them find the person they’re comfortable with.
The thing about surrogacy, I want to speak to that for a moment because it’s very different from egg donation. Surrogacy, a lot of agencies, the way the process looks for intended parents is you pay a large deposit, you retain the agency, and they put you on a waitlist to find a match. That might be the path for some people, but I tell clients when we consult together, “That is one way. I don’t want to have this conversation and push you to work with us. That’s not what it’s about for me. I want you to understand the options that exist so that you can make the most informed decision as far as the path that makes sense for you.”
What a lot of people don’t know is that’s not how you need to go about finding a surrogate. There are other ways. There are agencies that don’t require a retainer that we work with, that give us access to their surrogates. Another big part of why I started this program was that for me, the idea of going to an agency and marrying yourself to the candidates that one agency has available didn’t approach it the way that I would want to as an intended parent.
I asked myself the question, “As an intended parent coming into surrogacy, what’s the most important thing?” Hands down, I believe it to be the surrogate. It is the person that they’re trusting to do this most epic thing. So, the idea of just being married to and limited to one agency’s candidates didn’t approach it in the way that I would want to.
We really turned the focus over to finding the best surrogate while still making sure that the agency meets a certain threshold of care, which is of course very important.
Dr. Aimee: I think what people think is that to find a surrogate you just find an agency. I always tell people that no one at the agency is carrying the pregnancy for you. You find the surrogate first, then you match with the agency. They’re like, “That’s not what all my friends told me.” I’m like, I know, but that’s what I’m telling you.
I’m so glad that you’re aligned in the same way because I feel bad for all of those people who are still waiting 12 months for a surrogate because they paid upfront to an agency for a match. Who knows when they’re going to see a profile that is suitable for them?
Stephanie Levich: It’s true. To bring in another big reason for that, we’re in this weird time right now in COVID where obviously it has impacted the whole world, but surrogacy is no different. A lot of those big agencies that require retainers are struggling more than they ever have because a lot of surrogates are not willing to vaccinate, and most intended parents want a surrogate who is vaccinated or willing to be. So, those wait times are longer than they’ve ever been in my career.
Dr. Aimee: I have a “no vaccine, no transfer” policy for surrogates. I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had that kind of situation. I think it’s because the agencies know that, so they’re not presenting me any profiles of anyone who is not vaccinated.
This is such an emotional process. I feel like much of what I do is navigating the ups and downs emotionally for my patients. I imagine you do the same for your clients. How do you suggest that future parents approach the mental health side of this equation?
Stephanie Levich: I think really leaning on the support of you, Aimee, as their doctor. I think anyone going through this should really lean on their doctor as much as possible to just understand where they are in this, get any resources, and then also reach out to mental health professionals. There is help out there. There are people who understand this.
RESOLVE has support groups all over the country. I think also plugging into somebody who is open about their journey, who has been through it, to really understand and connect with somebody who has been there can be really helpful.
Dr. Aimee: I also wanted to add one thing that people might not know about what you offer from a sperm donor matching standpoint. Can you share a little bit about what sets you apart in terms of finding a sperm donor for people who don’t know?
Stephanie Levich: Absolutely. It’s interesting because we work in both fields, and we see the differences of how we approach both. It’s very unique in that there is so much information available about egg donors and there are photos, whereas in the sperm world, it’s more limited and oftentimes there are no adult photos.
I find that it’s especially challenging for clients who are looking for both. They just come off of a donor search with us where they’ve seen 100 profiles of amazing candidates with all of these pictures, and maybe they’ve even had a Zoom meeting with an egg donor before choosing her. These are things that you can do in egg donation that don’t really exist in sperm donation. When they come from that to finding a sperm donor and going through traditional sperm banks with just childhood photos, it can be really difficult.
What’s very exciting, I think, that is happening in our field is that there is starting to be a shift. I think we’re going to see more and more of it where there are programs starting these “fresh sperm” donor programs where it’s treated more similarly to egg donation in that a client can choose a sperm donor. Sperm is not at a bank frozen somewhere, but the sperm donor instead goes through the whole vetting and screening process with their fertility doctor, and because this is a one-to-one match, there’s this opportunity now for more information to be shared, for more photos to be shared, for there even to be a meeting between the two parties, which didn’t exist very much in the world of sperm donation.
It’s a very exciting time and we’re going to see more and more of these shifts, which I very much look forward to.
Dr. Aimee: I’m so excited to hear more about all of the ways that you’re making things better for families who are doing creative family building out there. Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing so much of yourself today. I learned so much about your parents, what a cute story, your husband on Shark Tank, and how sperm donation is changing. You guys heard it here first, Stephanie Levich from Family Match Consulting. Thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Levich: Thank you so much, Aimee.
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