How long does the surrogacy process generally take?

by Jamie
(Troy, MO)

I have friends who have been trying to have a baby for almost 10 years now, and they've just lost their twins at 10 weeks. I'm considering offering to be a surrogate for them, but I was wondering how long the process takes, outside of the 9 months pregnancy, of course. I'm currently in college and I'll have enough credits to start working in 15 months. Is it reasonable to assume that I could carry their child(ren) and give birth in this amount of time?

Reply by Rayven

The surrogacy process can take just a couple months to get going, or could take more than a year; it depends on several factors.

Fist, how ready are you both to getting started? Do they have a clinic in place? Is there clinic ready to interview/test a surrogate? Do you both have attorneys for your contracts?

After that first wave of organizational stuff is done (it can take a few weeks to get all that together) then there are contracts and testing. Contracts can be slow; it depends on your lawyers and if there are any issues with the contract that need to be hashed out. Testing can be slow if you go through your OB and have to wait for an appointment. Plan on a couple weeks to a couple months for these steps.

Once that is all done, then you need to get with the clinic to coordinate the transfer and get in sync with the intended mother or egg donor. How quick is this? It really depends on the clinic. Could be less than one month, could be three months.

Then, you may not have a successful first transfer. It could take 2 or 3 tries (spaced 1-3 months apart, depending on the clinic) before you are successful, if at all.

So it depends on a lot of factors.

I'd say, if you are all past that initial stage of organizing that I mentioned, if everything goes well and you are successful at your first transfer, then you should be able to complete a journey in your time frame. But you need to be prepared for the fact that it might take longer than that.

Best wishes!