The primary role of intended parents in the initial phase of surrogacy is good planning for a successful surrogacy journey.
Methodological responsibility
Surrogacy planning is a huge task that involves a number of legal, medical, and procedural requirements. All these activities require lots of time to communicate and coordinate with professionals and surrogate mothers. Following are some activities intended parents need to do during surrogacy planning:
Finding a surrogacy attorney and negotiating a contract in accordance with state laws
Finding a fertility clinic
Coordinating with those professionals, as well as with the hospital where the selected surrogate plans to deliver
Managing relationship with the surrogate, including talking about and handling finances.
Handling health insurance for oneself, surrogate and delivering children.
Finding appropriate counseling services for intended parents and surrogate
Busy or inexperienced intended parents often hire a surrogacy agency to get the one-stop solution for all these specialized activities. However, intended parents need to do lots of own research before finalizing the surrogacy agency for further actions. Intended parents must be aware of their wishes and needs when choosing the right option for them.
A tip for searching surrogacy agencies is a quick online search can return results across agencies in the intended parents’ state and between agencies operating nationwide. It may be a good idea to list them and then talk/try each of the client’s narrow options to find the one that suits best. After all, intended parents will work with this group for a year or more to create one in which they will feel comfortable and at ease.
Gestational surrogacy is the only option for intended parents to have a genetically linked child in case of failure of other fertility treatment options such as IVF, IUI, or ICSI.
The intended parents who opt for gestational surrogacy usually try to involve throughout the pregnancy. An emotional attachment starts from the initial stage of conception to the delivery of the child.
Intended parents become a part of every stage of growth of the fetus; even they can reach beyond through their emotional attachments.
They start dreaming of their child. Such emotional bonding is quite similar to the natural conceiving process.
The mental stress level is quite high for intended parents due to their inability for natural conception, along with these stringent rules and regulations and tedious clinical procedures involved in surrogacy.
The factors like compliance with the country-specific rules and regulations, searching for a gestational carrier, relationship with the gestational surrogate throughout the gestational period, familial acceptance, and general social attitudes are the significant roles of intended parents. And balancing all these challenges requires significant emotional strength of the intended parents.
If a child is born as a surrogate, there must be an emotional transfer from the surrogate family to the intended parents. This emotional shift will cause the child to begin to connect with his parents and vice versa. Therefore, intended parents have a significant role in preparation for an emotional transition.
Responsibility toward emotional transition
While intended parents may not have the same experience with prenatal connections with their new children, there are many things intended parents can do to prepare for a child’s emotional transition and ensure that both of them are ready to develop healthy relationships.
Emotional transport to the hospital is the culmination of an alternative journey, which is an emotional time for all involved. The key to a successful emotional transition is to focus on the child’s needs. Throughout the process, the child should be emphasized instead of the intended parents, who should be the parents, leading to better intimacy and the union process.
Ravi Sharma is a self-motivated, successful entrepreneur and has a solid experience in the fertility segment. and he is the director at ARTbaby Global (ARThealthcare). He is a pharmacy graduate with post-graduation in business administration and has 14 years of rich experience in the field of infertility segment. He loves to write about IVF, Surrogacy, and other ART (assisted reproductive technology) news, issues, and updates. He is a Pharmacy graduate (B. Pharm) and M.B.A (marketing).
His most recent success includes the successful launch of the medical tourism company, ARTbaby, which offers treatment options for infertility, egg donation, and surrogacy. He likes spending time with his family and writing about various aspects of IVF surrogacy and donating eggs.