Wow, first of all lets take a moment to celebrate the decision to become a surrogate! This is such a big thing and a point to start celebrating yourself.
So first things first, you’ve now made the choice and hopefully all of your research has landed you to a great agency so you can get started. So I’m going to take you along the beginning process I went through with New York Surrogacy Agency.
First I had set up a time to speak with Joe who is the main point of contact for surrogates so that I could ask questions and make sure this agency was the right choice for me. After the call I was sent in the surrogate application. This application was very detailed and asked for information on yourself, family, medical, and interest on matching points for IPs. When that was completed I moved onto collecting all my medical records. This is where you can reach a small delay as you’ll need all OB, birth, and plain medical records. When all of those are received the agency will have reviewed by a professional to see if anything sticks out that could potentially disqualify you from being approved by a fertility clinic. For myself this process went fairly quick as I’m looking to do a 2nd surrogacy journey so I already knew what was needed and gave my Dr.’s a heads up. You will also need to see your OB for a full STD/HPV panel and pap. This is also a good time to take the OB. recommendation letter and get it filled out in the office to speed that process along. I knew this step was needed so I emailed Joe to get the clearance form to bring to my Dr.’s office! After all the records and OB clearance have been received and looked over they will start to look at your medical insurance and do a review to see if surrogacy (pregnancy) is covered or not.
When all of these steps are done and approved you’ll move to creating a profile and start the matching process! This for me is when I would recommend having a list of important things to you so they can help match you.
I personally was beyond ready for this point, being a prior surrogate I had in my mind the type of couple I was looking for and couldn’t wait to finish all the paper work end so I could officially get to this point!
