After more than two decades of surrogates, one would assume that all of the wrinkles would have been ironed out. This would be a bad assumption. Even the best agreements involving surrogates can fail if the birth mother decides not to relinquish the child.
When considering taking the surrogate route to have a child, couples need to proceed with caution and ask the right questions up front. Likewise, the surrogate mother needs to ask questions of her own to feel good about surrendering the child at the conclusion of the pregnancy.
When preparing to use a surrogate to produce a child, couples need to arm themselves with the questions that will give them the best picture of the surrogate mother. Start the question process by asking why she is willing to be a surrogate. This must be answered in a plain and simple way. She should be looking for an opportunity to make a couple happy and perhaps earn a livelihood for herself during the period.
The surrogate needs to be willing to walk away from the arrangement without continuing to keep involved with the couple or the child at the end of the process. To find this answer may require that a psychological battery of tests be administered. A look into her personal and family history of being able to remain stable in difficult times would be helpful in this effort. A check for possible genetic problems is needed if her egg is used in the fertility process.
Obviously, money and other considerations need to settled in advance of the pregnancy. Along with this, it is important to make sure that the mother is willing to go to all doctor's appointments and take the vitamins that are required for good prenatal care. She should be in good health before the pregnancy starts.
Questions need to be asked about her personal habits. Is she a smoker? Does she use drugs? Is she a drinker? Does she sleep around with multiple partners? The last question in a list of this type would be to find out if she is able to give up these vices during the pregnancy. If this question cannot be answered with a certain yes, this is not the woman to carry your child.
Questions regarding living arrangements, type of work she might do, and who she will be associating with are legitimate questions. These questions will not fix problems, but they may help you to avoid candidates with built in danger areas.
The surrogate mother needs to ask her questions, now. She will want to know what type parents she is carrying a baby for. If she trusts the parents, it will make it much easier to give the baby into their care when the time comes. She also needs to check on the parents' ability to meet their financial commitments to her and the baby.
She needs to know exactly what the parents expect of her if they have not adequately spelled it out ahead of time. Questions about who will cover the medical bills if the pregnancy prematurely aborts are very important.
The last questions to be asked will be asked by the parents of themselves. Are they willing to make the lifetime commitment to this child even if it is not everything that they hoped it would be? They will even want to confront the question of why they want a child bad enough to go through this expensive ordeal to produce one. It would not be a bad idea to look at their marriage and relationship to make sure that it is stable enough to bring a child into.
