Become a Gestational Surrogate

A gestational surrogate mother, either through independent matching or with help from a surrogate agency, will, after a surrogate pregnancy, delivery a baby to the waiting arms of her intended parents.

If you’d like to become a surrogate and help another family while earning stay at home mom income, then this is a good place to start for the information you will need.

The surrogacy section of this website is several pages.

It includes information about gestational surrogacy, traditional surrogacy, and egg donation, as well as information about how to qualify to become a surrogate.

There are also links to How to Become a Gestational Surrogate Mother and the Stay a Stay at Home Mom sister site: 

They say that it takes a village to raise a child; well, in this case, it takes a village to give life to one.

I have delivered 6 children, but am the mother of only 2 of them.

I delivered twins in 2007 and a brother for them in 2008. And I delivered a little girl for another couple in 2011.

I’m sure your natural response to this news is “congratulations”, but don’t congratulate me. They aren’t my children. They never were. You see, I am their gestational surrogate mother.

There are two types of surrogacy:

  • Gestational Surrogacy
  • Traditional Surrogacy

Modern Medicine

A gestational surrogate goes through an IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) procedure to become pregnant with a surrogate pregnancy. This is a medical procedure where embryos are created in a lab from the father’s sperm and the mother’s eggs, then the complete embryos are implanted into the uterus of the woman carrying.

A gestational surrogate has absolutely no biological link to the child or children she carries. It does not matter if she has had her tubes tied, because it is not her eggs that are being used.In addition to the IVF procedure itself, a gestational surrogate mother has a much closer tie with modern medicine than a traditional surrogate.

In order to become a surrogate, for several weeks prior to the procedure, as well as through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, the gestational surrogate is required to be on multiple types of medication. Most of these medications require daily and/or weekly injections. These injections can be done by the surrogate herself, or by her partner.

My husband did mine, and I know he took perverse pleasure in the fact that he got to cause me pain each night by shoving a large needle into my backside. These medications are necessary to convince the body that it is pregnant and to sustain the surrogate pregnancy itself.

Surrogate Pregnancy

Gestational surrogacy also has a higher chance of multiple births. It was not coincidental that I carried twins during my first surrogate pregnancy. Twins, triplets, and even quadruplets or more are quite common with IVF procedures.

You see, the cost of IVF is so great, and so often the procedures fail to result in any pregnancy, that doctors encourage parents to transfer more than one embryo into the woman carrying. In my case, we transferred two embryos, and both embryos successfully attached to my womb for the first journey. The second journey we transferred one embryo and were given a 40% chance that it would result in pregnancy. It did. Some women transfer more; three, four, even six is not unheard of. Some of these transfers result in multiples, others, one single baby. Still many others result in no baby at all.


The Gestational Surrogacy Process

The entire gestational surrogacy process is quite lengthy. In addition to the typical 9 months of pregnancy, gestational surrogacy requires months and months of legwork: interviewing, testing, lawyers, possible involvement with a surrogate agency, coordinating with a surrogacy clinic, and IVF transfers.

It is not uncommon for a surrogate pregnancy to require more than one IVF transfer, as so many are failed.< Then there is the issue of money, or stay at home mom income.

Becoming a surrogate mother requires a huge commitment of time, and physical and emotional stress. There is compensation involved, but a woman cannot go into this process with money as her main motivator.

Everything in your life will be affected. You’ll be hormonal and pregnant, your husband will need to be there for you, your children will have to understand, you might have to change travel plans (I missed Christmas at the in-laws), you will have normal pregnancy restrictions (alcohol, foods, exercise), you might experience postpartum depression.

All the normal nuances of pregnancy will be upon you. >Plus, many women do not have it in them emotionally to carry a child for 9 months and then to give it back to its biological parents. For some women, the emotional strain would rival that of a woman putting her child up for adoption. These women should not become gestational surrogate mothers.

When you examine everything that goes into gestational surrogacy, there is simply no way a woman can expect this to be a job, to be something she is doing “just for the money.” A woman has to be devoted 100% to this process, and has to truly want to give of herself, unselfishly, to help another family. Having said that, if there was not compensation involved, many surrogates would find it impossible to be able to commit to this process due to the time and family support issues. 

Bottom line:
Don’t view gestational surrogacy as an easy way to make a lot of money. View it as a huge commitment, a sacrifice for your entire family, and a precious gift that will benefit two families.


Have you ever thought about surrogacy? What qualities do you have that you feel would make you an excellent surrogate mother?

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