Traditional pregnancies, as everyone knows, take time. However, when couples have medical circumstances that make it difficult or even impossible to conceive naturally, that alters the timeline for starting a family considerably. If you’re interested in undertaking the surrogacy journey, here’s a rough guideline for the surrogacy timeline you may be facing.
Consultation
The first step is looking for a surrogacy agency or clinic to work with. There are a lot of factors at play here, such as whether a hopeful family decides to remain in their country of residence or go abroad to take advantage of economic factors, such as currency conversion in their favor. Once these preferences have been sorted out, it’s time to interview or “audition” perspective agencies and clinics and narrow down the list.
This process can take as little as one week or last up to two months. However, it’s an important preliminary step as getting this right ensures a much higher success rate for the endeavor. Be sure to consider factors such as communication in your preferred language as well as access to the techniques and facilities you’re interested in. Once the needs are understood, it’s time to meet them.
Surrogate Mother Search
The usual timeline for this can be anywhere from two months to ten months or even more, depending on preferences and availability. For example, waiting for an “altruistic surrogate” who is volunteering and expects no financial remuneration can increase this timeline considerably.
On the other hand, opting for compensated surrogacy, with a willingness to invest in significant financial recognition for the surrogate mother, often shortens this timeline. There are still other factors at work as well, such as the currently available pool of surrogate candidates, but as a rule of thumb, compensation tends to go much faster than altruistic for resolving this phase. Once the search is concluded and an agreement is reached, it’s typical for a legal contract to be drawn up.
Medical Treatment
Once strategies have been outlined, relationships have been established, and contracts solidified, it’s time to put plans into action. The surrogate mother herself is likely to undergo some type of medical regimen to enhance fertility in preparation for whatever technique is going to be used. There are also some major differences in the timeline based on the fertilization techniques planned.
For example, artificial insemination in traditional surrogacy requires little preparation time, as the only requirement is donated sperm and appropriate timing with the surrogate mother’s reproductive cycle. However, gestational surrogacy requires far more preparation, depending on circumstances. A couple may only need to donate sperm and egg for fertilization in a lab, then implantation in the surrogate mother. On the other hand, the couple may want Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD, to screen for congenital diseases that may be an issue, such as cystic fibrosis. A couple may even need sperm or egg samples to be safely retrieved from cryogenic storage first before being prepared for lab use.
All of this means that the medical treatment phase may take as little as one month or last up to four, depending on needs. Every family’s journey will be different here based on their needs and circumstances.
Pregnancy
Of course, this is the most conventional portion of the journey. Upon successful completion and confirmation of pregnancy, the surrogate mother and baby now have nine months of growth and gestation ahead of them. Of all the components in the surrogacy timeline, this is the one that is the most constant and reliable, barring any medical emergencies.
Of course, the reason a surrogate mother is chosen is because a medical evaluation has deemed that woman suitable for pregnancy with a high chance of success. So, in one sense, this is all part of the package when couples decide to invest.
Birth
On the day the baby is born, the hopeful parents will be present if the timing and birth scheduling go smoothly. At this point, depending on the country of residence to which they return, some legal protocol might need to be observed. For some countries, these legal considerations for granting citizenship to a child may be prepared ahead of time. In other cases, the work can only begin after birth has occurred.
Every hopeful family’s journey is going to be a different one based on their timing and needs. If you’re interested in working with a surrogate mother and would like to know how long does surrogacy take in your case, your best chance for an accurate answer is to work with an experienced surrogacy agency. In some cases, they will have many of the required pre and post-birth processes all in-house, under one roof. This type of consolidated service can go a long way toward streamlining your own experience and giving you some potentially significant timeline reductions in your own surrogacy experience.