Surrogate mothers should be taken care of long before the pregnancy test proves positive. And unfortunately, simple medical screening and medical treatment of the candidates’ diseases will not be enough. The surrogate mother should always be watched by qualified specialists who’d see that she observes the doctor’s prescriptions and gets appropriate nutrition before the egg transfer because well-balanced nutrition is crucial when carrying a baby.
During the period of embryo transfer, the surrogate mother is to remain under constant control in Moscow, you should never accept any offers on her part to come to Moscow a day or two before the transfer takes place. At this time the surrogate should be taken special care of, because the first three days after the transfer are especially important for pregnancy to be achieved.
There are two completely separate ways to maintain pregnancy.
Way 1. Vanity of Vanities
There is a Russian saying “if you want to have something done you’d better do it yourself”. There are couples that take this saying for universal truth and accommodate the future surrogate mother for their baby at their place even during the preparatory period to establish complete control over her life and nutrition. On one side, that seems to be nice, however, there are some disadvantages, too.
- The surrogate mother, often a provincial comer, has her own understanding of the right household use and her particular way of life. About in a week after she has settled down in their house, the intended parents might notice certain coldness in their relationship with the surrogate, in another week they start to think of finding a separate accommodation for the surrogate mother. Sometimes the couple and the surrogate mother would have little fights which might result in interruption of the programme.
- Even when everything seems to be going fine and you are getting on well together,some surrogates tend to think their role in your life is a way more important than they imagined it. They take your little gifts for granted and their demand is constantly growing. They would reproach you for not giving them sufficiently expensive presents whereas they have done you such a service. Sometimes the surrogate would think she is already a member of your family. In this case, most intended parents do not have the guts to bring her down a peg or two for fear of offending the one who does them such a service. When the surrogate mother realizes that being on friendly lasting terms with the parents is quite unlikely, she ends up in frustration, psychological collapse which can’t but affect the pregnancy. Some of them even threaten to interrupt the pregnancy because they do not want to carry the baby of such ‘beasts’ (that quotation comes from a real surrogate mother who agreed to give service to a nice couple from Moscow who paid her $30,000 and rented a separate two-room apartment for her in Moscow as well as hired a nurse to help her in maintaining pregnancy).
- You take a great deal of responsibility on you, certain parents even take ‘surrogate-care’ maternity leaves. You will spend a great amount of your time and strength on seeing the doctors with her, buying the ‘right’ food products for her and so on.
- The surrogate would often flirt with your husband. And that’s quite understandable due to intensified sexual activity at certain stages of pregnancy. The question is whether you can accept it?
- The surrogate mother would often come to your place to cuddle your baby saying that he (or she) is flesh of her flesh! (which is wrong even from the biological point of view because the surrogate’s and the baby’s blood systems never communicate).
Forget about lifelong friendship. Remember that a surrogate can never become a member of your family, she will always remain an odd person out. You will feel ill at ease when she comes to your house, you will be jealous of her when she touches the baby, even though carried by her but belonging to you and no one else.
Sometimes contract liabilities bind us to forget our personal feelings: when the programme is implemented, it’s high time you shook hands with the surrogate mother and forgot her forever. Your baby would hardly like the fact that he or she has got two moms. It’s desirable to restrict the communication with the surrogate mother to two meetings, ‘the first one and the last one’, and these meetings should be arranged by professional lawyers.
Way 2. Sinecure
In Russia there is a company which has been dealing with surrogacy issues for six years. It offers its clients various legal services to assist them in pursuing parenthood, including surrogate search and selection and delivery. Another similar agency has come on the Russian market quite recently and there might be some more of them in the nearest future. Cooperation with professionals is more practical and efficient for many reasons, such as:
- You avoid dealing with a pile of issues concerning medical screening, surrogates’ housing and transportation, surrogates’ preparation for IVF, doing medical tests on time and so on.
- If a company offers you an option to pay a lump sum or in installments, that’s one of the indices of the company’s reliability.
- You do not have to watch how the pregnancy is going, professionals will take care of that for you.
- The success of the programme you’re implementing rests upon the company you’ve turned to for help.
- Our company hires a constant curator for your surrogate mother who makes sure she follows the doctor’s prescriptions.
- You exclude personal contact with the surrogate mother and thus any blackmailing on her part.
- You will receive weekly accounts of your curator about how the pregnancy is going.
The only drawback here is a comparatively high cost of the programme, not anyone can afford that.