Surrogacy

[Raphael]

My husband and I desperately want a child together, unfortunately I have had a hysterectomy due to cervical cancer, I still have my ovaries so I am looking for a gestational surrogate to carry our child. I have no idea where to start or how much it costs. I live in NSW and really need some help to make our dream become reality.

Thank you

[bfkel]

Raphael, you have taken your first steps - you've started the research. It's a long roller coaster but it could take you where you want to go.

Speak with a fertilty clinic. Do they have a surrogacy program? Will they start the embryo creation without a surrogate in mind? speak with many clinics - find out their procedures. do they have the counsellors that are becoming mandatory, or do they want you to seek out independant advce? the same with lawyers. do you have to present to an ethics review board before you can proceed with the medicals?

Start asking yourself what you want from this journey? How much control are you willing to let go and how much will you not? For instance, do you want your surro to be within a certain age / weight / exercise range? How much interaction do you want during the pg, afterwards? How many cycles do you want to try? How many embryos will you implant?
The questions are not important but being on the same page as your surro is.You could be comfortable with transferring 10 embies but as long as your surro is too then it's just fine.
(yes I was being extreme there but you get my drift)

Your research should be the legal side for your state, the medical side for your clinic and the emotional side for both you and your family and the surro side. The forums are good for these because there will often be a subject crop up that you've never thought of. (My IM didn't want me to eat garlic during pg - I thought it was strange but hey, it was her baby).

Read lots of forums - there's a few here in Aust, and although the ones from overseas often have stuff that has no relevance to us (like the US mediacl insurance stuff) it does open your eyes to things that go right and wrong because of mis communication. My saying now is 'if you can't talk about the fear of haemorhoids with your IM, what else are you not discussing?'