What is surrogacy?
The development of medicine across the world left virtually no diagnosis (in the area of human reproductive functions) that cannot be treated with the help of some type of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Surrogate (substitute) motherhood, in particular, has become a solution for families that cannot conceive their own children any OTHER way, due to ametria, for example. We will touch upon the practical sides of the surrogacy program.
If you are performing an IVF procedure for the first time, you may encounter the same fears and failures that women that go through standard protocols. You will go through all the stages, except for the embryo transfer: your embryos will be transferred into the uterine cavity of the surrogate mother. By the way, at the present time, it is quite common practice to transfer embryos into both you and the surrogate mother.
Obtaining a doctor's "referral" or making a conscious decision in view of the inability to conceive and carry a child to term independently due to medical reasons.
Preparing the married couple psychologically to this type of a solution to their problem (researching websites, other successful examples, communication with couples, who are going through the same problem, preparing relatives and friends, if you are not planning to stage a pregnancy for their benefit, or looking for ways to hide your 3-5 month seclusion or isolation from your relatives and friends).
Researching the legal database regarding this issue, consulting lawyers who specialize in this area. As a general rule, specialists in the area of ART are also professional providers of surrogacy services.
Financial preparation for the program. You need to fully understand that a surrogate mother's participation in the program, as well as all medical, pharmacological and everyday expenses will be your responsibility.
Candidate search.
Consider your own family first, think whether any of your female relatives would be able to act as a surrogate mother for your child. This way has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that here you are unlikely to run into any difficulties with obtaining a surrogate mother's consent to register your and your spouse's names as the child's parents. You are also likely to save some money on compensation for a surrogate mother. One of the disadvantages is that your relative will continue seeing your child after the birth. Is that something you need? Nevertheless, having a close relative take part in the surrogacy program is definitely the simplest and cheapest way to go.
If you have to search for a surrogate mom outside your circle of relatives and friends, you will have to do it independently.
You can turn to a clinic for help in selecting a surrogate mother. Some reproductive clinics have databases of surrogate mothers. Generally, it is a list of women with their contact information, age and name. This method differs little from an independent search.
You should try to find a reliable company that specializes in full surrogacy support. When evaluating a company, the first thing you need take into account is how long that company has been in existence, and it doesn't hurt to find out the number of cycles they conducted and the number of children that were born through their program. When you turn to a professional, you need to understand that the more the company does for you, the higher will be the cost of their service. The best companies work on an all-inclusive basis (in other words, they are unlikely to only provide you intermediary services in choosing a surrogate mother, for instance).
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Surrogacy
In this section we would like to talk about how one can find a surrogate mother, which methods of searching for surrogate mothers are the most preferred, and which methods are positively not recommended to be used.
Egg donorship
Egg donorship is used in the course of infertility treatment in cases when a female patients ovarian reserve is depleted (during menopause, for example), or the oocytes are of poor quality and cannot be used in an IVF cycle. As in the case of a surrogate mother search there are several solutions to this problem.
IVF
In vitro fertilization technology has been in use all over the world over the past several decades. The chances of becoming pregnant with the help of IVF are increasing, because ART methods are constantly being improved. Nowadays pregnancy after IVF occurs on average in forty percent of cases.