Hellobee

Most of the comments that I received when we disclosed our surrogate pregnancy were so positive, and I loved feeling all of the support and love when people heard our story. But there were a few comments that would raise my blood pressure quickly, and one of them was, “Wow, it’s amazing how this all just came together for you so quickly!”

This burned me up because while it may have seemed to outsiders that the process was quick and painless (we disclosed the pregnancies around 4-5 months and so to them a baby was to be born only a few short months later), the process was anything but quick and painless. We struggled with infertility for about a year and a half before we decided to proceed with surrogacy, and then we struggled with the surrogacy process for over a year before things finally came together.

These two bumps took a lot longer to create than many people realize! (James Currie Photography)

As I wrote about in this post, our first surrogate experience was not successful and not positive. It also felt slow and delayed. But our second surrogacy experience was amazing and inspiring and a true gift. It also felt very quick, as though everything fell into line at once. I’m laying out each step of the process below, along with the amount of time that each step took for each surrogacy experience. I’ve actually been surprised in writing all of this down as some of it doesn’t match up to how long some of these steps felt while we were in the midst of the process. If you are interested in becoming a surrogate or pursuing surrogacy, you might find some of these timelines equally interesting and surprising.

Time in treatment before surrogacy seriously considered: 18 months

Time to research surrogacy and interview agencies and attorneys: 3 months

Matching

Our agency was very good at providing us promising matches in a reasonable timeframe. Our experience in matching between our first and second surrogate were not much different, as you can see here.

Time it took agency to match us with a potential surrogate: First surrogate experience: 6.5 weeks; Second surrogate experience: 6.5 weeks

Time we took to review potential surrogate’s profile and application: First surrogate experience: 2 days; Second surrogate experience: 6 days

Time we took to interview surrogate: First surrogate experience: 2 days (in person meeting); Second surrogate experience: 2 days (phone meeting)

Clinical clearance and hurdles

Our difference in clinic-related time accounts for the bulk of the delay that we experienced with our first surrogate. I blame this on the clinic that we were working with for our first surrogate, not the surrogate. This particular clinic had very strict rules in place and advised several trials with our surrogate that ended up frustrating us so much that we eventually left that clinic and transferred to one with fewer rules. Specific details on the time spent in this phase of the journey are outlined below.

Time to organize surrogate’s medical records and send to clinic: First surrogate experience: 12 days (surrogate’s OB office was slow to release records); Second surrogate experience: 6 days

Time for clinic to review surrogate’s medical records: First surrogate experience: 15 days; Second surrogate experience: 4 days

Time to organize logistics for surrogate to visit clinic for physical exam: First surrogate experience: 2 weeks; Second surrogate experience: 4 weeks (difference in time here was simply good luck/bad luck as the surrogate has to be in a particular stage of her monthly cycle to schedule the exam)

Time for clinic to get results from physical exam: First surrogate experience: 9 days; Second surrogate experience: 2 days

Time for mock cycles on surrogate to check her response to medications: First surrogate experience: 8 weeks (2 cycles) (Simply typing this out frustrates me as this was a huge loss in time for us with our first surrogate and it is the reason we left the first clinic – see next line item!); Second surrogate experience: 0 days

Time out to switch clinics and doctors: First surrogate experience: 2 weeks; Second surrogate experience: 0 days

Legal clearance

We worked on a lot of our surrogate legal contract while also going through clinical clearance. We spent a little bit more time here with our first surrogate because it was our first time looking at a surrogate contract and thinking through some of the challenging items that it requires you to think about. However, we didn’t save as much time here as I expected the second time around because our second surrogate was out-of-state for us and required us to pull in specific attorney advice that we didn’t need the first time around. Details on the timing of specific steps on legal are below.

Time for our attorney to get a first draft of surrogate contract to us: First surrogate experience: 7 weeks; Second surrogate experience: 6 weeks

Time we took to review surrogate contract and provide comments to our attorney: First surrogate experience: 1 week; Second surrogate experience: 1 day

Time for our attorney to make revisions to contract and send to surrogate’s attorney: First surrogate experience: 2 days; Second surrogate experience: 1 day

Time for surrogate’s attorney to review contract with surrogate and return to our attorney: First surrogate experience: 1 week; Second surrogate experience: 10 days

Time for both parties to officially sign and submit contract: First surrogate experience: 4 days; Second surrogate experience: 4 days

Preparing for embryo transfer and early pregnancy monitoring

Time to prepare for the embryo transfer was largely the same for both of our experiences. Both times we started with a cycle of birth control pills, followed by using patches and injections and pills to control the surrogate’s uterus for transfer day.

Time for cycle preparation and transfer: First surrogate experience: 7 weeks; Second surrogate experience: 7 weeks

Two week wait: First surrogate experience: 13 days; Second surrogate experience: 11 days

HCG tracking through beta tests: First surrogate experience: 22 days (chemical pregnancy; HCG was being tracked all the way to zero); Second surrogate experience: 6 days (positive pregnancy test, HCG was tracked until ultrasound could detect gestational sac).

Overall time

Through the first day of infertility treatment to the day our surrogate baby was born: 1,296 days (that is 185 weeks, or 3.5 years).

First (failed) surrogate experience – from the day we received her profile/application to the day she withdrew from our contract: 223 days (that is 32 weeks, or about 8 months).

Second (successful) surrogate experience – from the day we received her profile/application to the day she delivered us our baby: 371 days (that is about a year and includes a healthy pregnancy).