It’s a question we hear often, and it’s not surprising either. Our surrogates are motivated to become surrogates for a great many reasons, but nearly all of them tell us, they become surrogates out of altruistic origins. They want to give the gift of family to someone who is unable to do this for themselves. They often feel as though if they are able to help someone, they should. The goal of this journey is building your family and giving you a child.

Every single Growing Generations surrogate is a mother, and in some cases done growing her own family. This means she has already gone through pregnancy and birth, and she understands just how special babies are and how important family is.

Gestational surrogates, sometimes called gestational carriers, bear no genetic link to the child they are carrying. This lack of biological connection also contributes to a lack of an emotional maternal link to the child. Dr. Kim Bergman explains, “Surrogates see themselves as basically babysitting your baby, inside their body. They are crystal clear that the baby they are carrying is not theirs and can’t wait to see you holding your baby at the end of the journey”. As the process moves forward, a sense of pride, self-worth, and accomplishment begins to grow in these women. They are intensely proud of the choices they've made to help you grow your family.

Surrogates also realize that surrogacy can be financially helpful to their families. Many use the compensation from the surrogacy to start their own business, go back to school, put a down payment on a home, or pay off debt. This compensation opens doors for them that may have otherwise remained closed. As a result, these women are often as grateful to you as you are to them.

When you pair the desire to help others, pride, lack of genetic and emotional connection to your child, and financial compensation, it becomes easy to understand how surrogates quite easily and naturally send your baby home with you at the end of the journey. Surrogates respect family and life, they’re on your team by choice, and they want to work with you towards your goal of having a family.

In nearly 30 years of operation, Growing Generations has never had a surrogate change her mind, talk about changing her mind, or need to be talked out of changing her mind, never, not once. This is due in part because of our extremely thorough psychological and medical screening process and because the women who become surrogates are serious about helping someone else have a family.

Human pregnancies are counted in weeks, with 40 weeks being considered full term. Many people don’t realize that when using IVF, you don’t begin counting those 40 weeks on the day you transfer the embryo into your uterus. Gestation is determined by the age of the egg as opposed to the time spent carrying it. In this way, you are transferring an embryo into your uterus that already has an age assigned to it. 

In a traditional pregnancy, gestational age begins accumulating on the last day of your menstrual period. By the time conception occurs, the gestational age is already somewhere around two weeks. Therefore, gestational age in IVF, and by virtue in surrogacy, begins accumulating well before transfer.  

HOW OLD IS AN EMBRYO WHEN IMPLANTED WITH IVF?

The nature of IVF allows for more specific date stamping. In these instances, the exact date of ovulation, fertilization, and conception are known. This adds up to a clearer picture of gestational age. Here are 2 examples:

• Transferring a 3-day embryo will leave you 2 weeks and 3 days pregnant as you leave the office. 

• A 5-day embryo is equivalent to a gestational age of 2 weeks and 5 days. 

At the close of the 2-week wait between transfer and beta pregnancy test, you could be up to 5 weeks pregnant, depending on the age of your embryo at transfer. (You can learn more about an embryo's development before and after transfer in our related blog post.)

WHEN IS MY DUE DATE WITH IVF?

Due dates for surrogates are determined based on the individual circumstances of the baby and mother. As you may have guessed, calculating your due date requires a slightly different approach when you've conceived via IVF compared to a spontaneous pregnancy. With IVF, the estimated date of your baby's arrival will be based on your embryo transfer date.

CALCULATING YOUR GESTATIONAL DUE DATE

Calculating gestational age and due date in IVF can be confusing. A number of terrific online calculators are available to help you get an accurate age and due date. More reliably, your case specialist or nurse should also be able to help you nail down a specific date and gestational age. 

DETERMINING IVF GESTATIONAL AGE & DUE DATE

An exact gestational age and estimated due date will be determined at the first ultrasound based on the size of the gestational sac and the fetus inside. Multiple pregnancies are more common in IVF. These pregnancies are often delivered before 40 weeks gestation.

Contact Growing Generations for more information.

The distance between your home and your surrogate’s home is often very large and can present a bit of a challenge when it comes to bonding with your surrogate baby in utero. Despite the distance, many intended parents still desire to form a bond with their unborn child. 

HOW TO CONNECT WITH YOUR BABY IN THE WOMB

The good news is that there are many ways to form a connection across the miles, it just takes is a little creativity! Here are some bonding options that can help you get to know your growing baby.

SOUND

Perhaps the easiest way to introduce your child to you is through the sound of your voice. Research continues to show that fetuses are able to hear voices (and music) from the outside world while inside of the womb and will often recognize those voices after birth. 

Products such as “Belly Buds” allow intended parents to record their voices from one location and then send them to another standard audio device located anywhere in the world. The surrogate then places “ear buds” on her belly and plays your recording. Using products like this you will be able to read, sing, or simply talk to your growing baby. This can help your baby to recognize the sound of your voice at the time of birth.

WORDS

Consider writing letters to your unborn baby or keeping a journal for the child. List how you’re feeling through each stage and practice talking to your child. Getting into the habit of communicating with your child now can help create a feeling of familiarity at birth. You can also send your letters to your surrogate and ask that she read them to the baby. Even if you keep these thoughts just for yourself, you can begin to build a relationship with the baby by this routine act of communication.

PREFERENCES

Perhaps your baby gets very active every time your surrogate eats peanut butter. Maybe it’s Cheerios cereal that gets your little one moving. Is your future child a night owl or an early bird? Try asking your surrogate about your baby’s food preferences and times of activity. Then try mirroring those preferences. Try eating the foods that your little one likes and being active when they are most awake. You could be getting an early look into their sleep schedule and personality!

INSTINCTS

Many women will tell you that they had an inkling into their newborn’s personality before the baby was ever born. Will the baby be peaceful or antsy? Will he sleep soundly or lightly? 

Talking with your surrogate about any suspicions she has about your baby’s personality could offer insight into their personalities, even if it is just a guess and far from scientific. Even if your surrogate’s guesses wind up completely wrong, you can still have fun imagining the baby’s personality this way. (Learn more about building a strong relationship with your surrogate to facilitate these types of interactions in our related blog post.)

THE JOY OF BONDING WITH BABY

However you choose to form a bond with your growing baby, have fun with it! Pregnancy is an exciting and brief time in the grand scheme of parenthood, and enjoying every moment will help create a bond all of its own.

GETTING STARTED

If you haven't yet started your surrogacy journey to parenthood, we welcome getting to know you. You can get started by completing our intended parent application form. 

Pre and post-birth orders are items of extreme interest in gestational surrogacy. Both assign parentage to the intended parents and remove any rights or obligations from the surrogate. These birth orders can also cause a great deal of stress for both intended parents and surrogates when they’re not properly understood.

In the simplest of terms, a birth order is a legal document assigning parentage to a child. Depending on the state in which your surrogate lives, these documents can be started in the fourth month of pregnancy and are often signed by the seventh month in pre-birth order states. In post-birth order states, intended parents are usually seen in court within three to five days following birth.

The most important thing to understand about the pre-birth order is that while it may be issued by the court prior to the birth, it is not effective until the birth occurs. So, while having this court order signed two to three months prior to the birth may offer you some peace of mind, it is not an absolute necessity and should not cause you distress if early labor occurs before your pre-birth order is finalized. Parentage will be protected by other guardianship documents even if the pre-birth order is not in place at the time of the birth.

Some states do not offer the option of a pre-birth order. These states, post-birth states, do not allow the filing of parentage documents until after the birth of the baby to file parentage documents. In these post-birth order states, there will typically be a court hearing held after the birth, and the intended parents may be required to attend. Even if a hearing is required, know that these hearings are typically a formality and agreed upon easily by the courts as all parties are in agreement over the desired parentage of the child in question.

Court hearings can just as easily be required in states offering pre-birth orders. This reality, paired with the fact that pre-birth orders aren’t considered active until the birth of your child, makes the real-life difference between pre-birth and post-birth order states insignificant. In general, don’t let fear of working with a post-birth state scare you away from someone who could be your ideal surrogate. If you do choose a pre-birth state, everything will work out with or without your pre-birth order in hand at the time of the delivery. Additional questions about birth orders should be directed to the attorney's office helping you establish your parental rights.

For the safety and health of all involved in egg donation and surrogacy, egg donors are carefully screened—and that includes screening for sexually transmitted diseases and infections. If you're wondering if you can donate eggs if you have (or had) an STD or HIV, this post will explain what you need to know.

FDA-REQUIRED SCREENING

The FDA has created a list of communicable diseases that they require all IVF centers to test for in order to deem a candidate qualified to donate human reproductive tissue—in this case, your eggs. Diseases on this list include: 

• Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

• Hepatitis B& C

• Syphilis

• Chlamydia

• Gonorrhea

The FDA gives IVF clinics the ability to screen for additional diseases at will, so from time to time, additional tests may be ordered. 

You can learn more about medical screenings and other concerns on our Egg Donor Requirements page.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU TEST POSITIVE FOR AN STD?

If your STD screening comes back positive for one or more of these diseases, it can mean a potential end to your journey to egg donation. 

In other cases, this diagnosis will only cause a pause in your donation. Many sexually transmitted diseases are able to be treated and cured with medications from a doctor. STDs in this category include bacterial infections like chlamydia, gonorrhea, and some early stages of syphilis.

In these cases, once the transmission has been treated and cleared, there is no viable reason to deny a donation from this donor. If you find yourself in this situation, we will ask that you have the STD or STI treated and reapply when you have been clear of positive screening for a minimum of one year. 

Any additional questions about STDs and egg donation can be discussed on an individual basis with your admissions specialist during the screening process. Learn more about what to do (and not to do) in the days leading up to your egg donation in our related blog post.

Get Started

If you're ready to become an egg donor, please contact us online or apply today.

Becoming an egg donor means donating your DNA in order to help create a family for someone else. This huge responsibility motivates us to ensure that our egg donors are genetically sound as well as physically healthy. This means our potential egg donors need to be tobacco free. Research has shown time and time again that using tobacco products can have an adverse effect on fertility. Specifically, studies have shown that female smokers will produce fewer follicles, fewer usable eggs, and fewer eggs capable of fertilization when stimulated for IVF treatments. There is also a link between miscarriage and tobacco users that could be the result of poor egg quality. That research, compounded with the negative effects of tobacco on the overall health of the user, serve as the basis for our tobacco free requirement. 

As part of our responsibility to our intended parents, we require our egg donors to pass a tobacco screening during their application process. Apart from helping to make you healthier, the absence of tobacco and other additives found in cigarettes will make your eggs a better quality as well. Within six months of stopping smoking your lungs will begin to repair themselves and your body will be free of nicotine and other harmful additives found in cigarettes. If you are a current smoker and wish to donate your eggs with us, we encourage you to look into stopping smoking. Once you have been tobacco free for a minimum of six months, we invite you to apply with us and move through the screening process. Do note that a failed tobacco screening will disqualify you from moving forward. 

If you are interested in becoming a donor with Growing Generations apply today.