When to Consider a Surrogate

There are any number of reasons why you or your partner may not be able to physically bring a child into the world, but that doesn’t mean that your family-building dreams are over. Through surrogacy, we can help you create the family of your dreams.

At NOVA IVF, our team prides itself on offering our clients a wide range of options to help them achieve their goals. Under the direction of Drs. Meera Shah and Richard Schmidt, we offer everything from in vitro fertilization to surrogacy, so we can meet most every fertility challenge.

Here, we explore how surrogacy works and when it may be your best option moving forward.

Defining surrogacy

At its core, surrogacy is the use of another woman to carry the pregnancy. There are two types of surrogacy:

Traditional surrogacy

With this type of surrogacy, the surrogate donates her egg and carries the child. The egg is typically fertilized with a specific donor (an intended father) or donor sperm and the fertilization occurs through intrauterine insemination.

Gestational surrogacy

If you have eggs that you’d like to use, but pregnancy isn’t possible, you can turn to a gestational surrogate, which is someone who carries a pregnancy that doesn’t involve her own eggs. In most cases, we use in vitro fertilization to create the embryos, which we implant in the carrier.

When surrogacy may be appropriate

There are any number of reasons why you may choose the surrogacy route, including:

Pregnancy issues

If your fertility problems stem from an inability to become pregnant or carry a child to term, surrogacy is a great way to overcome your hurdles. Around 3% of women can’t sustain a pregnancy, which may be due to:

• A hysterectomy
• Damage to the uterus
• Repeated miscarriages
• Medical issues that preclude pregnancy

Through surrogacy, we can work around these issues to help you become a mother. 

Same-sex couples or single men

For men who are involved in a same-sex relationship or who are single but want to father a child, surrogacy is really the only path forward, for obvious reasons. We can use your sperm and either the surrogate’s eggs or donated eggs to create an embryo(s) that the surrogate would carry.

For same-sex couples involving women, perhaps you want to use the eggs of one partner, but have the other partner carry the pregnancy. In these cases, we turn to gestational surrogacy.

Lifestyle choice

Some people want to have children, but a pregnancy isn’t possible because of lifestyle considerations. In these cases, you can turn to a surrogate to accomplish the pregnancy.

Finding a surrogate

If you think that surrogacy is a good option, we’re happy to sit down with you to discuss how to move forward. Some of our clients already have a surrogate in mind, while others need to go to a surrogate agency.

Our role in all of this is to help with the fertilization aspect to ensure that your dreams of a family are met. 

If you’d like to explore your surrogacy options further, please contact our office in Mountain View, California, to set up a consultation.