Deciding to take the route of a surrogate mother pregnancy always brings with it some challenges. In addition to the significant finances involved, it’s also important to find the right surrogate mother partner to work with and, perhaps just as importantly, the right surrogacy clinic to help facilitate this undertaking.
It’s not unusual in the 21st century for hopeful families to decide that the surrogacy journey is something that should be taken to another country. Finances, facilities, and even legal conditions are some of the reasons that make this a preferable option for many people.
However, leaping to work with a clinic in another country, especially for something as expensive and crucial to a family’s future happiness as surrogacy, is a daunting task. To get the best outcome, hopeful families need to work with a surrogacy clinic they can trust at every stage of the journey, but how do you find such a clinic?
How to Work Out Your Surrogacy Needs?
The first step in this process is narrowing down your choices, which means settling on the type of surrogacy you want. Do you want an altruistic surrogacy, where the surrogate mother is supported for medical and living expenses, or do you want a compensated surrogacy, which is more expensive but also provides far more choices? Do you want a traditional surrogacy, using only artificial insemination, or in vitro fertilization, which requires more extensive medical facilities?
Once you know the type of surrogacy you want, this will help eliminate potential choices and give you a more manageable list to work with. From there, you can start narrowing things even further.
Research Clinics With Good Reputations & Reviews
Once you’ve narrowed down your list and are looking at clinics in different countries, it’s time to take a closer look at the individual clinics. Older, more established clinics usually flourish for a reason, so while it may be exciting to take a chance on a new clinic or agency, keep in mind they are unproven, and you are essentially taking on the role of a “test subject” to see how they do.
Older agencies and clinics will typically have a lot of reviews, testimonials, and other evidence of their work over the years. This is always a good barometer for judging whether they are trustworthy. In particular, pay attention to recent reviews, as changes in staff and management can have a positive or negative impact on a facility’s reputation.
Arrange A Talk To See If Needs & Services Align
When you’ve narrowed your choices down to just a few, now is the time to reach out and get a feel for each clinic and more information about them individually. It’s also here where you’ll get your first taste of their ability to communicate. If they can’t communicate with you in the language you prefer, but others can, that may be an early indicator that this isn’t the right clinic for you. Communication, after all, is the basis of trust, and you can’t trust someone you can’t understand or, worse yet, who does not understand you.
This is also where you’ll probably get an early feel for whether or not the clinic—and country of the clinic’s location—is right for you. For example, while some clinics and countries are very open to foreign couples for surrogacy, they may refuse services to same-sex couples. You should find out if your specific circumstance is compatible with a clinic as early as possible. Committing to a clinic only to find later that they can’t help due to situations you hadn’t considered relevant will only waste time and create disappointment for everyone.
Get Informed About Protocol & Success Rates
Honesty and transparency are key items you should look for whenever talking to a surrogacy clinic. If you have questions about how potential surrogate mothers are found and screened but get no answers about this, that should be noted as a red flag.
Similarly, if you have questions about the clinic’s methodology for techniques such as IVF, how many additional clinics, facilities, and medical partners they work with, or a listing of the staff and they are reluctant to disclose these details, that should be another warning. There is no reason a reputable agency or clinic would attempt to hide these details.
Lastly, asking about success rates is important, as is the willingness of a clinic to discuss this. As to be expected, there’s no such thing as a 100% success rate for any clinic, except those clinics or agencies that succeeded on their very first attempt. Honest and reputable clinics will admit there’s no such thing as a perfect success rate over the years, but their methods and precautions can increase the odds. A willingness to be honest about this is a sign of reliability, whereas insisting on a perfect success rate should be a big warning sign to back away.
As with successful relationships, honesty and communication are the secrets to finding a surrogacy agency or clinic you can trust.
