Surrogate motherhood is a process where a couple who is unable to naturally conceive a baby and carry it to term, giving birth nine months later, finds another woman to take on this task. This is usually done for more serious medical situations, such as when a couple wishes to have a child, but the mother puts herself and the child at risk by attempting a pregnancy. It’s also a good solution when a hopeful mother has had surgery that makes carrying a child impossible, such as uterine removal, or when a same-sex male couple has no one biologically capable of pregnancy.
Surrogacy is a great solution for people that wish to start families, but want a newborn of their own, or more specifically, a newborn with a genetic connection to the parents. Adoption, while also a possibility, does not meet these requirements. But finding a surrogate mother, and undertaking the process of surrogate pregnancy can be a daunting task. Fortunately, there are surrogacy services that can help hopeful families through this process, but what exactly can they do?
Expert Guidance
The first and most important assistance that a surrogacy service can provide is helping you to navigate through exactly what you need for the surrogacy experience that you want. Some people may want a gestational surrogacy where an egg and sperm from the hopeful parents are both used, while others may prefer a traditional surrogacy, where the egg of the surrogate mother herself is used.
If you’ve never been through a surrogacy experience before, you’ll have many questions about how the process works and what steps should be taken. A surrogacy service can answer all of them, and help you to best plan your individual surrogacy hopes and expectations.
Surrogate Mother Selection
This is probably one of the most important things a surrogacy service can do for you. A surrogate mother is the cornerstone of the entire surrogacy experience. Without a good surrogate mother, no meaningful progress can be made. However, there are a lot of very strict medical, health and emotional requirements for a surrogate mother to meet before she may be considered a suitable candidate.
A surrogacy service provides the vital mechanisms of easily selecting from a wide range of available candidates. You don’t have to worry about searching yourself, then going through a rigorous screening process of medical exams and interviews. A surrogacy service can handle all of this so that the only thing a hopeful family has to worry about is meeting and interviewing candidates, and then collaborating with the one that is the most compatible.
Travel Organization
If you live in a country where surrogacy is illegal, or you want more options for surrogate mothers by using compensates surrogacy, rather than compassionate, but only compassionate is legal in your country, you may need to travel. A good surrogacy service can even help in this regard, by assisting in the payment, organization, and handling of travel and accommodation.
Any stable country with legally compensated surrogacy, such as Georgia, will have surrogacy services in place that handle these demanding client needs. It means that rather than you having to coordinate between handling your travel plans and making sure they coincide with your surrogacy requirements, the surrogacy service itself can ensure that everything is lined up.
Specimen Transport
If you are going the In Vitro Fertilization route of using an egg and sperm from other sources, this may be an issue. Some hopeful families had egg/sperm samples collected and cryogenically preserved before surgery took place that would make bearing a child impossible. Now that it’s time to put them to use, they need to be safely transported to the lab where the IVF procedure can take place.
As these specimens are incredibly delicate and must be transported at the exact temperature to ensure viability, this requires special handling. A surrogacy service can be invaluable in making sure these samples arrive at their intended destination, or, in some cases, if desired, the samples can be taken at the service, either from the hopeful couple or from a selected donor.
Legal Assistance
A final important service a surrogacy service can provide is good legal counsel to ensure the safe status of the newborn. Depending on the country a hopeful family comes from, having a child born through a surrogate mother, and then attempting to bring that child back to the country of origin may result in the child being given a “stateless” legal status. This means the baby is not recognized as a citizen of the country of origin, and therefore has no rights or may not be eligible for admission into the country.
However, a surrogacy service can also provide legal counsel and put the wheels in motion to ensure that when the time comes to return home, the newborn can also return, as a citizen of that country. For these and other forms of assistance, try to find an agency that offers the services and support that you’re looking for.