What to Consider When Selecting Your Gestational Carrier

Surrogacy has allowed countless babies to be born when carrying a pregnancy is not possible or provides high risks for complications or miscarriages. 

Gestational surrogacy has grown rapidly in popularity since its introduction about 30 years ago. With gestational surrogacy, you and your partner (or a donor) provide the eggs and sperm. 

Embryos are created in a lab and then implanted into the carrier’s womb. She gestates and delivers the child, but she is not genetically related to the child (unless she’s a relative of yours or your partner’s).

Carefully choosing the woman who will help you build the family of your dreams is essential. At OC Fertility in Newport Beach, California, our fertility experts Sharon Moayeri, MD, and Nidhee Sachdev, MD, work to screen the potential surrogates.

If you’re thinking about using a surrogate to grow your family, here’s what you need to know.

All surrogates must be evaluated

Even if your close relative or friend has volunteered to be a gestational surrogate, they must still undergo physical and psychological evaluations to ensure that they’re able to commit to the process. Tests for surrogates include:

• Comprehensive physical exam
• Health and family history 
• Hormonal tests
• Infectious disease tests
• Psychological evaluation
• Uterine cavity evaluation

A surrogate must also sign legal contracts indicating that the resulting baby is legally the intended parent's child.. Our OC Fertility team helps you navigate finding an agency, reproductive lawyer and therapist to complete all the necessary screening involved.

If you don’t have a female relative or friend that you want to be your surrogate, we recommend surrogates from reputable local agencies. Surrogates who are enrolled at these agencies have already been carefully screened.

Qualities of a good surrogate

If you prefer to select a surrogate from your own circle, you and your partner can help determine if she’s a candidate to move on to the next step of being officially screened for the role. A surrogate should have:

• A healthy body mass index (BMI)
• US citizenship
• A history of healthy, uneventful pregnancies
• A healthy lifestyle free of drinking, drugs, or smoking
• An altruistic nature 

Any surrogate should also be between the ages of 21-42. Older maternal age would put the pregnancy into a “high-risk” category, which is not appropriate for surrogacy.

If you don’t have eggs…

You can avoid the potential complications of that situation by using both gestational surrogacy and donor eggs. Surrogacy is a wonderful gift to give ... and receive.

If you’re ready for surrogacy and want help selecting the right type and person to grow your family, contact us today at 949-706-2229. You can also book an appointment online.