Jules Von Hep has wanted a baby ever since he can remember. For many people that dream is straightforward to realise – but, as a gay man, he has always known it would take years of saving and searching.

The only way he can have a biological child is to use a surrogate, which costs tens of thousands of pounds, and it often takes years of searching to find the right match. For Von Hep, it has been an “incredibly painful, incredibly expensive” process.

“I’ve always known that surrogacy is the option I wanted to go down. That, really, has led to the career choices that I’ve made, how I’ve worked, making sure that I was always saving money in the bank for fertility,” he said.

Von Hep and his partner, Mark Beverlo, started trying to become parents in 2020. They signed up with an IVF clinic, bought some donor eggs and submitted themselves to rigorous sperm-testing requirements. They soon found themselves facing rapidly mounting charges, starting from £1,000 for single advisory meetings to £13,000 for a round of embryo creation, including a failed attempt along the way.

They then signed up to an agency, where the waiting list for UK-based women volunteering to be surrogates was two to three years. Von Hep had a look at some unregulated Facebook groups, in which prospective parents pitch themselves to potential surrogates. “I just couldn’t bear the idea of pitching our lives, standing there in front of the house with a dog and saying: ‘This is what we’ve got’.”

Eventually, the surrogacy agency matched the couple with a woman and the embryo transfers began, at a cost of £5,000 a go. When these didn’t work, they opted to attempt insemination at home, sometimes referred to as “turkey basting”.

That approach also failed and Von Hep and his partner decided to give up on surrogacy in the UK. They turned their sights abroad: the most popular destination, Ukraine, was closed off due to the war, leaving the US – too expensive at about £250,000 – Canada and Mexico, in which surrogacy was legalised for same-sex parents in 2021.

At a cost of around £60-90,000, they were lucky to be able to afford to go to Mexico. Although the costs are similar to the UK, which has a non-commercial altruistic model of surrogacy in which a surrogate’s expenses are paid, some Mexican states take a commercial approach.

“The difference doing it commercially is unbelievable. The knowledge that the egg donors are being paid, that everyone is – there’s nothing woolly about the situation,” he said.

The cost includes all medical bills and expenses, plus a fee to carry the pregnancy, which the agency they are working with, My Surrogacy Journey Mexico City (MSJMX), said is usually around MXN$388,000 (£16,914).

“[Our surrogate] has been a surrogate before, and she is also trying to build a business. I think that’s where commercial surrogacy helped. She was very open about it. She said: ‘Yeah, I’m trying to build my business, and this is a great way of earning extra money.’

“For me, that answer was really refreshing. I’m like, OK, perfect. We’re all in this together. Everyone is getting what they need. There’s no murkiness.”

The agency the couple is working with is UK-based and helped them find their surrogate, who they met via video call. It’s also queer-founded, which Von Hep felt made it more supportive and sensitive to their circumstances.

There are concerns in Mexico that the patchwork of regulation – two states have banned it, while three have laws governing the practice – has left women open to abuse. Researchers have raised concerns that poor women could “rent their wombs as a survival strategy” and there have been reports of women coerced into surrogacy by abusive husbands.

MSJMX says that “ensuring the ethical and legal protection of both intended parents and surrogates is one of our highest priorities”, and it only operates in “surrogacy-friendly states” like Mexico City. The agency said it works with “highly experienced, independent human rights specialists and leading surrogacy lawyers in Mexico City who have an exceptional understanding of reproductive legislation and family law”.

The couple have shipped their sperm to Mexico, picked a new egg donor and had embryos fertilised. They are now waiting for the transfer to begin.

If everything goes to plan, once their baby is born, Von Hep and Beverlo will move to Mexico for around three to six months while they arrange their baby’s passport – another potentially fraught process. On their return to the UK, they will have to apply for a parental order with the family courts to become legal parents.

Von Hep and his partner have decided this will be their last attempt to become biological parents. Yet he is feeling tentatively excited that this time it might finally work – so much so he has recommended surrogacy in Mexico to other gay and straight couples he knows who are struggling with fertility.

“It feels like the wild west in the UK. The professionalism from the Mexican clinics – I can’t fault it. It’s unbelievable and it costs the same price,” he said.

Despite his frustration with the system, he is incredibly grateful to the women who carry other people’s babies. “Anyone who is willing to be a surrogate is like an angel on earth. Whether it’s to help a friend, relative or total stranger, it’s one of the most selfless acts of kindness and love I can think of. We wouldn’t be able to even dream of having children of our own if it wasn’t for the benevolence of surrogates,” he said.

But mostly he wants to talk about his surrogacy journey to challenge the taboo, and add his voice to the growing conversation on social media around the difficulties gay men face in becoming parents, from adoption to surrogacy.

“I feel like the conversation around gay men having babies, and the money that it costs, and how difficult it is, needs to be talked about so that it’s not as difficult for the generations under me,” he said.

“The more same-sex relationships are accepted and embraced within this country, the more gay men are going to want to have a family, because this social norm is shifting to embrace same-sex couples.”