Surrogacy

A surrogate is a woman who agreed to carry a pregnancy for another couple, or single. Surrogate in the past used to be used in more extreme situations in which there was no - - , so there was severe problem with - - or the woman could not carry the pregnancy. Now a day we use surrogacy more extensively. And it extended also the situation in which we have women that fail multiple IVF before despite having, for example, great quality embryos. Or women that miscarry and we don’t find a reason, so the use of surrogacy is much more extensive today than in the past. The type of women that decide to be a surrogate, and that’s a very common question, women like myself or anybody else, they come from very different socioeconomic background and they share one common thing. They want to help another couple to be pregnant and to have a child. A surrogate can be found in different ways. Some centers, like ours that have a lot of experience with surrogacy have their own surrogates. Surrogates can also be found through agencies. Surrogates occasionally can be found as friends, or sisters, a family member or anybody that they know that is willing to carry the pregnancy. The process of surrogacy is a very exciting, rewarding and successful process, but it is very critical to choose the right surrogate and this is where we come in place and that’s why it’s so important to work with centers and fertility specialists that are very experienced with surrogates. A very important factor in the success of the cycle is a good match between the surrogate and the intended parent or parents. The matching has to do with the surrogate personality and the relationship that they can have during the pregnancy and also our part of making sure that the screening goes well and she will be a good surrogate for the process. The surrogate goes through a very extensive screening process that includes physical, history, a pelvic ultrasound, imaging of intrauterine cavities, sexually transmitted disease, psychological evaluation, and overall our own impression, is she going to be a good surrogate and can she carry this pregnancy healthy to term. The legal contract is critical in the process of surrogacy. It needs to be done only with lawyers that specialize in surrogacy. And we work with some of the best lawyers in the field that can really make sure to protect the intended parents. Overall, the state of California, one of the best states for surrogacy, because the law here does protect the intended parents more than other states. When we do surrogacy with international couples, we make extra effort to make sure to accommodate their schedule. And we can at times use even frozen embryos that can be frozen in our center or frozen overseas in other countries. And those embryos can be transferred here and we help them to accomplish the transfer successfully. In those situations, when we use frozen embryos, the international couples don’t need to come to the U.S. at all. So the whole cycle can be accomplished without the intended parents ever being in the U.S., other than coming and having the baby at the end. Overall, the surrogacy process is a very rewarding and wonderful journey for both the surrogate mother and the intended parents and we have patients coming from all over the world to do surrogacy in our center. But it’s very important to know this process very well and to have a lot of experience to have the outcome that we want.