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Being a surrogate is a noble and rewarding decision. Every yr thousands of new families are conceived with the help of these wonderful women. We admire and respect our surrogates and we accept extra intendance to ensure they are well treated and well paid.

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Y'all tin search on any topic using the search box beneath. Or you can scan the entire surrogacy process in the step-by-step glossary that follows.

If you don't find your answers in The Guide, we invite you to contact u.s.a. straight with your questions at .
Info@SensibleSurrogacy.com

Please note: Information in this Guide is based on personal experience and noesis gained over many years of assisting infertile couples. Notwithstanding any medical issues should always exist referred to a credentialed medical specialist.

Beingness A Surrogate

Becoming a Surrogate

Becoming a surrogate is rewarding, but not always piece of cake. In this article we will explicate what is required to become a surrogate, and what yous should expect along the journey. Nosotros also invite our surrogates to join our online community on Facebook to connect and share their stories. Inside our community is a wealth of knowledge, experience and support, and urge all our surrogates to get involved and share their experiences.

To go a surrogate, read through the information below. Afterwards, delight fill in the Application Class on this website. If yous take questions, our back up team is available to reply questions and guide you forth the process.

How to Become a Surrogate

Check out the criteria in this commodity to see if yous qualify to be a surrogate. If so, then this is the process to become a surrogate:

  • Make full out the awarding: The Become a Surrogate form tin be institute here. Fill out the firm completely. If yous take questions, experience complimentary to ask us. Afterward submitting the awarding, ane of our surrogate managers will contact y'all by email to review the application and move to the next step.
  • Social and medical history information: We volition ask permission for your doctor or health intendance provider to send a consummate medical history straight to our dispensary. This information is kept strictly confidential – and kept just by our clinic. We don't proceed a copy of your personal medical information, and it is never disclosed to any tertiary parties.
  • Physical examination: Y'all will need to have a complete medical checkup to show you are healthy. We tin can provide a total list of fertility and full general wellness questions for your medico to answer.
  • In-home visit: I of our surrogate managers will contact you lot to schedule a visit to your home. This volition include a coincidental inspection of the environs in which the baby will develop. But the visit also gives us a run a risk to run across and go to know you better. The meeting besides gives you an opportunity to ask questions and acquire more than about the process.
  • Groundwork checks: Y'all volition need to consent to standard criminal records and background check.
  • Mental health evaluation: We will arrange for an evaluation with our mental health care professional. The goal is to make sure you sympathize the obligations required of being a surrogate. It is as well of import that you fully understand the emotional impact of surrogacy and that yous are psychologically set up for the challenge.
  • Meeting with the Intended Parents: In one case you bring together our community of surrogates, we will match you lot with possible Intended Parents. We will provide yous with a profile of possible parents, and permit you judge if they are a god match for you. If you agree, then the next pace is to conform a meeting (either in person or by video chat).

The purpose of the screening procedure is to ensure that the pregnancy will be healthy, stress-gratuitous and uncomplicated. While the process may seem onerous, it will save y'all difficulties equally a surrogate equally yous go through the journey.

Practice yous qualify to be a Surrogate?

Becoming a surrogate requires strict medical, emotional, and personal qualifications. Hither is a curt list of the minimum that every surrogate should meet. Read more…

Beingness a Surrogate: Step-past-Step

Surrogacy is a medical procedure, and y'all should be aware of what that procedure includes. Hither is what you tin can wait during your journey every bit a surrogate.

Considering your health is so primal to a successful surrogacy, it volition be closely monitored throughout the entire surrogacy process, from the time you are screened until the delivery of the baby. As a surrogate, you volition exist required to undergo several medical tests and procedures and accept fertility medications throughout the process.

Qualifying as a Surrogate.

Before becoming a surrogate, all candidates will consummate a standard medical checkup and fertility exam. That means both a physical examination and a series of blood tests.

The doctor will test your for sexually transmitted diseases and other infections. If you are in an intimate relationship, your partner will likely also need to be screened for STDs.

Blood tests will mensurate fertility hormone levels, and and so often demand to accept place at the very outset of your natural cycle. (You may exist asked to get off birth control leading up to the fertility exam.)

The medical screening process may besides involve a variety of exams and procedures, including:

  • Pap smear and physical
  • Hysteroscopy, which involves a sparse scope inserted through the cervix to determine the shape and the size of the uterus and ensure the fallopian tubes are unobstructed
  • Saline sonogram, which flushes the uterus with saline solution to check or fibroids or anything else that would interfere with the pregnancy

You may also exist asked to submit to a drug examination, equally will your married man or intimate partner.

Finally, y'all should not take an IUD or other contraceptive implants. If you do take an IUD, it will have to exist removed at to the lowest degree three months earlier whatever attempted embryo transfer.

Meeting your Intended Parents

Once you are approved as a surrogate, we will match you with possible Intended Parents. We will nowadays y'all with profiles of possible Intended Parents, and you volition be asked to accept or reject them based on their personal data. We don't insist that you accept whatever Intended Parent – that choice is completely up to yous.

If yous agree to work with a childless couple, we will draft a Surrogacy Contract and hire an independent lawyer to review the Agreement with y'all. We will make certain yous understand every line and provision of the Agreement, and you will be able to request reasonable changes. If you and the Parents agree on the terms, you volition sign the Understanding and your training for the Embryo Transfer volition begin.

Preparing for Pregnancy

Preparing for a pregnancy requires multiple fertility treatments, claret tests, injections and ultrasounds. The standard fertility protocol lasts virtually 2 weeks from the outset of your natural cycle. The embryo transfer takes place around Day 14 of your wheel.

If the clinic wants to perform a "fresh" embryo transfer (meaning with embryos that have only been fertilized and non frozen), and so yous will exist asked to synchronize and so your uterus is ready on the same day as the fertilized embryos. This synchronization usually means taking nascency control pills to suppress your bicycle until the clinic is ready. Once yous go off the pill, your cycle will predictably brainstorm, and the clinic will begin your "stimulation protocol".

Stimulation will begin on the outset solar day of your wheel, and volition consist of daily hormone supplements (some injected and some oral). Every few days you volition have an examination past the clinic specialist to see how your body is responding to the medication, and if the dosage should exist adapted.

If all goes well, virtually two weeks into the protocol your uterus will be sufficiently prepared to receive the embryo transfer. We measure success of the protocol on the thickness of your uterine lining. It should reach a thickness between 9mm and 12mm on the day of the transfer.

A Mock Transfer

In some cases, the dispensary may perform a "mock transfer" in the month prior to the bodily embryo transfer. In a mock transfer, the reproductive endocrinologist will put yous on the same medications y'all will have to set for the existent transfer. This volition give him the adventure to check your uterine lining and ensure it is responding well to the medications.

The mock transfer also allows your doctor to determine the size, direction, and other specifics of your uterus. Information technology also lets your doctor know if at that place are any potential issues or obstacles to the transfer of the embryo.

The Embryo Transfer

The embryo transfer is a relatively elementary procedure that does not require medication or anesthesia. The doctor will simply employ a long catheter to place a fertilized embryo (sometimes two) into your uterus. The catheter is inserted through the cervix into the uterus, using an intestinal ultrasound to ensure exact placement of the embryo.

Later the transfer, you are free to go home post-obit a brief rest at the clinic.

Ten to 12 days following the embryo transfer the dispensary will perform an HCG blood pregnancy test. You may also employ a home pregnancy test around the aforementioned time to get a (less reliable) preview of the results.

If the clinical pregnancy test shows an HCG level above 75 – congratulations, you're pregnant!

Ii days afterwards, another HCG test will exist administered to verify that your HCG levels are going up; they should double about every 2 days. If the pregnancy is stable, you lot volition immediately go under the prenatal care of the clinic and your own personal obstetrician.

If the pregnancy test is negative, you may repeat the embryo transfer process during your next complete cycle.

Prenatal Care for a Surrogate

During the first few weeks of the pregnancy you lot volition make routine visits to the fertility dispensary for regular claret tests and ultrasounds. Once a heartbeat is heard and a healthy pregnancy is confirmed (around Week vi) yous will exist referred to your own personal obstetrician for the remainder of the pregnancy.

Throughout the pregnancy, you will receive prenatal intendance as you would with any natural pregnancy, with checkups every few weeks during the first trimester, and every month later on.

A number of lab tests are suggested for all women equally part of routine prenatal intendance. These tests can assistance discover conditions that can increase the risk of complications for y'all and your fetus. These may include:

  • A Complete Blood Count
  • Rh antibody test
  • Glucose screening examination
  • Group B streptococci (GBS)

Diagnostic tests may be requested by the Intended Parents to detect birth defects caused by defects. Diagnostic tests for birth defects include amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, and a targeted ultrasound exam. Some diagnostic tests carry risks, including a small take a chance of pregnancy loss.

Yous will be required to share the effect of all the prenatal exams with the Intended Parents. In some cases, the parents may ask to go to the exams with you – it'due south an exciting time for them too equally you, and they will want to accept every scrap of information about the pregnancy.

You and the Intended Parents

Yous will non be alone throughout the pregnancy. In addition to our ain surrogate manager, the Intended Parents are likely going to desire to follow every development, regardless of how small. You should prepare to have two new 'all-time friends' every bit the Intended Parents focus on your care and wellbeing.

Milestones such as the first ultrasound image, the first heartbeat, the infant's early on movements and 3D ultrasound scans, are important events in the lives of the Intended Parents. In some cases, the Intended parents may ask to get with you to the prenatal appointments so they can experiences the pregnancy with you.

The Intended Parents will certainly want to exist present at the delivery. They may ask to exist present in the delivery room when the baby is born. That choice is up to you lot and how comfortable you are with having them present.

In general, the relationship between you lot and the Intended Parents is very personal and every case is unique. Some parents look forward to lasting bond with the birth mother of their child. Some will be securely involved with the pregnancy, delivery, and even your recovery. Other parents prefer that the relationship is kept supportive just professional. Your relationship with the Intended Parents volition exist defined past you both, and we suggest y'all discuss how you lot want to interact with them early on in the pregnancy (or even during the matching phase).

An Important Annotation

Throughout these medical processes and your unabridged pregnancy, you lot volition maintain regular communication with our surrogate managing director and with the Intended parents.

We strongly object to the many surrogacy "agencies" that will hand you off to your personal obstetrician once you are significant and disappear completely. SENSIBLE believes that all our surrogates are part of a special community, and we accept extra care to stay by your side throughout the pregnancy and the delivery.

Our obligation is not solely to the Intended Parents, but to y'all as well. We want to make sure throughout the entire procedure that y'all and the developing baby are good for you and well cared for. If you have whatever problems or complaints during the pregnancy, you should feel gratuitous to call u.s.a.. Our surrogate mangers are e'er bachelor to aid.

  • Author: William Houghton

    Pecker Houghton is the founder of Sensible Surrogacy, writer of the Sensible Surrogacy Guide, 2x surrogacy dad, and a dedicated abet for secure, legal and ethical Gestational Surrogacy. Read Bill's Biography