Surrogacy agencies are quite prominent these days and have slowly become an industry itself. There are full fledged ones which covers every aspect of the process to smaller ones that primarily help match the IPs (intended parents) with a surrogate. Given the complexity of surrogacy process, many recommend using an agency which could cost a lot more. Even our fertility clinic strongly recommended that we used an agency. We did talk to a few agencies. The more research we did, the more we felt we could manage the process ourselves. We finally decided to pursue on our own for a few reasons.
1. Putting cost aside, it seemed that the most challenging part of the process is to find a surrogate that matches well (We will share our experiences of finding a surrogate in another post). It is time consuming and requires a careful selection. Matching, as many have called it, is perhaps the most important part of the surrogacy. We simply didn't feel confident to leave it to the hands of an agency and preferred to build a more personal relationship with the surrogate. It is a good idea to find out where the agency recruits the surrogates and their criteria to screen the surrogates. Some simply place online ads for you. Some have a pool of surrogates that they regularly recruit.
2. Other than matching, the rest is pretty much like process management. If you are methodical and organized, you would be just fine to do it on your own. (we will leave another post for our steps :-)
1. Putting cost aside, it seemed that the most challenging part of the process is to find a surrogate that matches well (We will share our experiences of finding a surrogate in another post). It is time consuming and requires a careful selection. Matching, as many have called it, is perhaps the most important part of the surrogacy. We simply didn't feel confident to leave it to the hands of an agency and preferred to build a more personal relationship with the surrogate. It is a good idea to find out where the agency recruits the surrogates and their criteria to screen the surrogates. Some simply place online ads for you. Some have a pool of surrogates that they regularly recruit.
2. Other than matching, the rest is pretty much like process management. If you are methodical and organized, you would be just fine to do it on your own. (we will leave another post for our steps :-)
We do see the benefits of using an agency but the cost simply outweighed the benefit. Plus, there was no guarantee of anything and we had no control.
Final word - Agency or not really depends on financial situation and personal preference. Some agencies could be business like which was not ideal for us. Honestly, there were times when we were confused and really wished we had an agency to take care of all the issues. The good thing is - there are lots of those who have been or are in the process out there in the discussion forums or social media willing to help. For that, we'd like to thank all those who we have never met and went out of their ways to offer their experiences, advice and support.
We are blessed to get to this point!
No comments:
Post a Comment