The process of surrogacy essentially involves a couple who hire another person to carry their child in her womb for full-term. The necessity for such a complex and sensitive procedure can be borne out of various types of needs.
Why Get a Surrogate?
For some couples, the woman simply isn’t physically capable of carrying a child in her womb because of an existing condition to her own health. While her eggs can very well be fertilized, the risk is in the nine months that the egg will be growing and developing into a baby. Sometimes, the couple simply cannot fertilize an egg, and so would require a medical provider to create an embryo through IVF and would require a surrogate to complete the process.
Whatever the cause of the difficulty may be for the couple, what is important is that there are now various options for them to take to increase their chances of having the family they have always dreamed of.
As for the surrogate, if you want to learn how to become a surrogate mother, the first thing you should know about are the different types so that you can identify what kind of surrogate you could be.
Traditional vs. Gestational
The traditional process is the one described above wherein the couple is not able to fertilize an egg. The traditional type of surrogacy requires of the surrogate mother to provide the egg. For it to be fertilized, she will be artificially inseminated with the biological father’s sperm.
The gestational process, meanwhile, already provides the fertilized egg from the couple. This will then be implanted into the surrogate mother’s womb, and hopefully, it will nestle in just fine to grow in to a healthy baby. This latter type of surrogacy is actually the more popular one simply because it guarantees the couple their very own biological child. Alternatively, donor gametes are used when necessary, but not the egg of the surrogate.
Sources:
Surrogate Mother Facts. Livestrong.
Using a Surrogate Mother: What You Need to Know. WebMD.
