Building Your Support Network During Surrogacy

For patients building a family through surrogacy, the path to parenthood can get a little more complicated. In these cases, it’s even more important to make sure you have the right support network in place. We’re sharing insights on how to make sure you have the support you need from professionals and your loved ones from Brittney Sobel, a lawyer who specializes in family law and surrogacy and who is launching a new venture, It Is Sloane, that will make family building, and surrogacy, more accessible and affordable . She understands the surrogacy journey from a patient perspective, too, as she welcomed her daughter to the world via gestational surrogacy five years ago. Learn more about three key ways to make sure you have the support you need for surrogacy below.

1. Find the right professional team to guide you.

Surrogacy is complicated logistically, financially, and emotionally. Intended parents need the right team of professionals who can help them maneuver through challenges and find the pathway that is right for them. Your surrogacy agency is your partner in finding and working with your gestational carrier. The surrogacy agency you choose to work with can have a big impact on how quickly you find a surrogate and how much the entire experience costs your family- agencies have different cost structures, timelines, and success rates. Brittney remembers how overwhelming it can be to find the right agency, “About seven and a half years ago, I began my IVF journey and knew that I needed to use a gestational carrier to have a child. So, I turned to my reproductive endocrinologist for a recommendation for a surrogacy agency.This was before the legalization of surrogacy in New York, and I didn't know anyone personally who had been through the process, so I didn’t interview any other agencies or ask around.” This quick decision had a big impact on the rest of her journey, which Brittney describes as “a very long and burdensome process, though ultimately worth it.” 

Brittney recommends finding an agency through someone you trust. “With the prevalence of surrogacy now, you're likely to know someone who has gone through surrogacy”, she adds. “It could be a friend-of-a-friend, a cousin-of-a-friend. It doesn't have to be firsthand knowledge, but if you know somebody who used that agency and had a good experience, that's a good place to start.” It’s also important to have a team of professionals that can devote time to your family’s unique needs and provide unbiased opinions on different aspects of your family planning journey. Brittney elaborates, “I would be wary of agencies that offer all-in-one services, where they are providing not only their agency service, but an attorney and mental health professionals.” These all in one services can pose conflicts down the road, as “there is an inherent bias when an attorney is retained by an agency.” Retaining independent legal counsel can provide the flexibility and extra considerations that intended parents deserve when navigating unchartered water.

2. Make sure you have comprehensive legal protections in place.

Drafting the right legal documentation makes sure that you’ve protected your parental rights. Brittney recommends intended parents retain legal counsel to draft two important documents: a gestational carrier agreement and a pre-birth order. The gestational carrier agreement is drafted before the embryo transfer takes place. Brittney describes a gestational carrier agreement as a document that “clearly delineates the intended parents’ parental rights to their soon-to-be born child. It establishes that they are the parents, as opposed to the gestational carrier.  The agreement also outlines the roles, responsibilities and expectations of all parties involved during the surrogacy process.” This agreement can also define the terms and conditions of the relationship between the gestational carrier and intended parents, including compensation, as well as their plans to handle different situations and challenges, like a life threatening complication. 

A pre-birth order establishes parental rights during the pregnancy, ideally in the first trimester, depending on state laws. Brittney adds, “A pre-birth order establishes the intended parents as the parents legally on the birth certificate when the child is born, so there's no question that you will leave the hospital with your baby.” These legal documents are essential to make sure that intended parents protect their parental rights and outline how they wish to handle the pregnancy and their relationship with their gestational carrier.

3. Be prepared to educate your friends and family.

Many intended parents have friends and family who are supportive of their journey to parenthood from the outset. Others worry about the reactions and judgments about surrogacy 

from their loved ones. Brittney reassures intended parents that it’s common to be concerned, saying, “understand that judgment is normal with any way that you build your family, even with doing something as routine nowadays as IVF.” She suggests that intended parents try to brush off unsolicited opinions, since “People are going to have opinions about how you start or build your family, and that's okay.” Brittney shares, “Sometimes judgment comes from ignorance, and people are passing judgment because they don't understand surrogacy. You should educate yourself and be prepared for the judgment to come, so that when you're faced with negative comments, you can respond with facts in a calm and confident manner.”

When embarking on gestational surrogacy, you need the right professional and personal team to support you. Thanks to Brittney from It Is Sloane for sharing her insights on how to make sure you get through your surrogacy journey with the support and care you deserve.