Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

Waiting list for surrogates at record high in Idaho

Source KTVB.com

Nationwide Egg Donation and Surrogacy in Meridian is seeing fewer women sign up to become surrogates, causing long waitlists for people hoping to become parents.

MERIDIAN, Idaho — Many people dream of becoming a parent, whether it’s a couple or an individual. Those who experience infertility, pregnancy loss, or cannot safely carry a baby to term, turn to surrogates to help them achieve that dream, but there aren’t enough surrogates to meet the current need.

“A surrogate is someone that is carrying somebody else’s biological child,” said Tiffany Valentine, president of Nationwide Egg Donation and Surrogacy. “So, the surrogate is not carrying a baby that does not have any genetic relation to her. She’s just the amazing person carrying it for a family.”

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India, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

India – Health Matters: Dashing Hopes of Parenthood, New Surrogacy Policy Likely to Create Illicit Baby Market

Source News 18

Surrogacy was back in the news after celebrity Priyanka Chopra announced the birth of her daughter via a surrogate mother. The concept of having a baby through surrogacy is usually linked to celebrities.

A person who hasn’t yet faced an incurable infertility issue may not know that thousands of Indian couples from humble backgrounds resort to the option of having their own biological child via a surrogate mother every year.

For couples who were planning to opt for it, the New Year started on a dismal note, as India banned commercial surrogacy, apart from introducing several other regulations.

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Australia, Egg Donor, Gay Parenting, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

Australia – A single gay man just made history with the birth of his son via surrogacy

Source Upworthy

A single gay man from Melbourne, Australia, is finally living his lifelong dream of fatherhood with the birth of his son via surrogacy. Despite a long and challenging journey, Shaun Resnik made history as the first single man in the Australian state of Victoria to become a father via surrogacy, following the arrival of his baby boy Eli Michael on March 22 this year. The process took three and a half years, but he could not be more thankful for his newborn son. He hoped that his story of fatherhood would open doors for other single folks who wish to become parents, The Daily Mail reports.

‘My heart is so full’: Surrogate baby Eli makes Victorian history
birth.

Eli is the first biological child born to a single man in Victoria through local #surrogacy. His father, Shaun Resnik, was the first such man

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India, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

India – The ART of surrogacy

Source

The purpose of the ART Bill is to address the gaps that exist in the industry and protect women and children from exploitation, writes Dr Rita Bakshi.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) includes all techniques that attempt to obtain a pregnancy by handling the sperm or the oocyte outside the human body and transferring the gamete or the embryo into the reproductive go together. To undergo an ART treatment, a surrogate is involved in case the woman is not medically fit to bear the baby.

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother, Ukraine, War

Ukraine war: Couple’s bid to make safe home for surrogate mother

Source BBC

Heather Easton (right) has built a close friendship with Vita Lysenko

A couple are trying to give the Ukrainian surrogate mother of their baby a safe home in the UK.

Heather and Mark Easton, from Rugby, Warwickshire, returned from Kyiv with baby Sophie two weeks before Russia invaded the country.

They have found a sponsor for Vita Lysenko and her family who fled to Belgium last week.

But the family do not have passports and have found getting visas “extremely difficult”, Mrs Easton said.

After having a hysterectomy Mrs Easton decided to use a surrogate to have a child.

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Scotland, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

Scotland – ‘Change the law and smooth the path to surrogacy’

Source STV News

Claire Kelly knows more than most about surrogacy – she has carried three babies for two different couples.

She was inspired to join Surrogacy UK after watching a documentary while she was pregnant with her own second child.

“I started attending surrogacy socials and I met loads of people – both couples and surrogates – and I’ve been part of it ever since,” she says in Thursday’s episode of Scotland Tonight.

“The couple I met at a social – at the time I was pregnant with my second son – they thought I was carrying for another couple…

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intended parents, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

As the Need for Surrogates Soars and Availability Drops, Intended Parents are Paying the Price

Source Newswires

As more and more couples and individuals turn to surrogacy to fulfill their dream of a family, the surrogacy market is booming. But while the need for surrogates soars, finding one is becoming harder and harder due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

After months of lockdowns and quarantines, many women who qualified as surrogates have pushed the pause button, taking some time to rethink their next step, while others refuse to get vaccinated, have increased their BMI during the pandemic or have lost their financial stability, and no longer qualify as surrogates.

Naturally, the increasing challenges to find a candidate also affect the cost of surrogacy, which spiked since the start of the pandemic. Still, probably the most significant effect of the surrogate shortage is the time it takes to find available surrogates, and many intended parents wait for months just to take their first step in this long, complex and emotional journey.

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intended parents, New Zealand, Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

New Zealand – Make sure new law doesn’t make surrogates ‘useful wombs’

Source Newsroom

The Law Commission estimates that around 50 children are born through surrogacy each year, including through international commercial surrogacies. Photo: Flickr/Sergio Santos

Anne Else looks at the Law Commission’s proposals for new surrogacy law, and the key legal issue: how the intending parents become the legal parents

Agreeing to be a birth mother in a surrogacy arrangement is a precious gift to people wanting a child. But if it’s poorly regulated, it can lead to women being seen as just useful wombs.

No one knows exactly how many surrogacy arrangements have been made or how many children have been born this way to New Zealanders since the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act was passed in 2004, because no comprehensive records are kept. But surrogacy makes up less than 1 percent of fertility clinic treatment cycles here. There’s no guarantee of a live birth.

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother, UK

UK – ‘It’s been the greatest honor of my life’: Selfless mom becomes a surrogate for strangers MONTHS after giving birth to her own twins – having seen a friend go through a devastating miscarriage

Source Daily Mail

A selfless mother decided to become a surrogate after she witnessed the pain of her friend’s miscarriage whilst she was expecting twins herself so she can enable couples the ultimate joy of becoming parents – something she calls the ‘greatest honor’ of her life.

Tierra Nelson, 23, from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and fiance, Marty, always knew that they wanted to be parents when the time was right and after six months of trying to conceive were delighted to find out they were expecting twins, Isabella and Claire, who were born in October 2016, weighing 6lb 11oz and 6lb 12oz at 37 weeks.

Soon after discovering she was pregnant, Tierra found out that one of her closest friends was also expecting and they were both delighted. But this delight soon turned into heartbreak as Tierra’s friend sadly suffered a miscarriage. 

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother, UK

UK – Most surrogates want to give up their parental rights from BIRTH, reveals survey

Source Daily Mail

Surrogates remain the baby’s legal mother until a parental order is granted, which can take months.

But a survey has now revealed 69 per cent of surrogate mothers feel the law – which has existed since 1990 – should be changed.

Surrogacy UK, a support network, has described the law as being ‘outdated and in dire need of reform’.

The current laws are under review by the Law Commission, which is to publish its updated proposals in the coming weeks.

The survey by Surrogacy UK was conducted on 102 surrogate mothers, The Times reports.   

Only two of the women who were polled revealed they thought they should be the legal parents at birth. 

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

Surrogate mother who refused abortion launches effort to change laws

Source KHOU

Stephanie Levesque was at the center of a surrogacy story that made national headlines one year ago. This is the first time she’s speaking publicly.

DALLAS — Stephanie Levesque is an ardent supporter of surrogacy because the process brought her and so many other families immense joy.
She is finally ready to talk about the pain she endured over the last year. “There’s been a lot of mourning. There’s been a lot of heartache,” she said.
On December 21, 2017, Stephanie gave birth at Medical City Dallas.
Sixteen weeks into an otherwise normal pregnancy, doctors had discovered a serious heart defect in the baby.

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Surrogate Mother, UK

UK – Surrogate mothers could be allowed to charge cash

Source The Times

Legal reformers are looking at whether to change the law so that surrogates can profit from having babies for others.

The Law Commission is consulting on the subject and is to publish proposals in the new year. Sir Nicholas Green, chairman of the independent body, said that the existing laws, which were drawn up more than 30 years ago, were not fit for purpose.

Surrogacy, he said, had increased ten fold in ten years. The main problem was that the law was “quite cumbersome” and often required people to go abroad.

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Surrogate Mother

Surrogate mother, 26, who advertised her ‘womb for rent’ announces her pregnancy for a couple struggling to conceive

Source Daily Mail

A surrogate mother who playfully advertised her ‘womb for rent’ has fallen pregnant after she made the gracious decision to help a couple struggling to conceive.

Michelle Griffin, from Perth, turned to social media to find the perfect couple who were desperate to fulfil their dream of being a family.

The 26-year-old professional birthing coach already has two children – four-year-old daughter Leilani and son Issac, aged three.

But the doting mother-of-two said she enjoyed pregnancy so much, she wanted the childless couple to experience the joys of parenthood.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Michelle – who’s currently 15 weeks pregnant – opened up about her selfless decision to help those struggling with fertility.

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Surrogate Mother

New Mom Sobs as Her Best Friend and Surrogate Delivers Her First Child

Source Pop Sugar

Erin Boelhower has had a difficult journey to achieving her dream of becoming a mother. After six years of infertility, IVF, and losses, the mom welcomed her rainbow baby girl thanks to her best friend of 10 years, Rachel Checolinski, who offered to be her surrogate. Following a 12-hour labor, Rachel finally delivered baby Scottie, and Erin sobbed through the whole thing.

However, they weren’t all exactly happy tears — some were out of Erin’s concern for her friend. “How could I do this to somebody?” Erin said to Inside Edition of her thoughts during Rachel’s labor. “She just looked miserable, and I know she wanted to do it and would do it again, but it was really hard seeing someone you love doing this for you in that kind of pain.”

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

NZ – Surrogacy: A roller coaster ride to parenthood 

Source NZ Herald

Sometimes when Amira Mikhail is caught up in the chaos of everyday life, getting her two young sons ready and out the door, she has to pause and remind herself what it took to be where she is today.
For while Mikhail always longed to have a family, her body was never on-board with the plan.

Becoming a mother has involved years of medical procedures, setbacks and heartache and, through it all, she held on to her dream, fiercely determined to see it realised.

“Honestly I didn’t have a plan B,” admits the Christchurch vet. “I just could not imagine not having kids. There was nowhere in my mind where I grew old and had no children.”

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Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

How to Find a Surrogate Mother

Source Fatherly.com

A surrogate mother is a woman who carries and delivers a baby on behalf of a couple. That makes surrogacy a multifaceted arrangement with a number of medical and legal implications, both for the surrogate mother and the parents. And those implications don’t even include the tricky task of finding a surrogate mother to carry the baby.

“The surrogate can be a person that the couple knows and they recruited themselves, like a sister, or somebody from the family, or a childhood friend,” explains Elena Trukhacheva, MD, MSCI, who is the medical director of Reproductive Medicine Institute in Chicago. “Most of the time, a surrogate is recruited by the surrogacy agency. And the couple uses the surrogacy agency kind of as a middleman, to navigate the process and protect them, to some extent.”

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Australia, Surrogate Mother

Australia – Meet the Aussie mum who’s ‘renting’ out her womb

Source Lifestyle Yahoo

An Aussie mum who advertised her womb for ‘rent’ is now expecting for the first time as a surrogate, telling her kids the baby “is not ours to keep”.

Michelle Griffin, 26, shares Leilani, four, and Isaac, three, with her hubby Trent, but is now 13 weeks along with a bub for a couple who have struggled with fertility problems.

The professional birthing coach from Perth told Yahoo Lifestyle she has always been ‘honest’ with her kids, who are just as excited as she is about helping another family.

Surrogacy, Surrogate Mother

IVF Was the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done, and I Want to Do It Again

Source PopSugar

Nothing could have prepared me for how hard the IVF process is. No amount of chats with my doctor or time spent online reading other women’s stories were enough to truly help me understand what it would be like. Kind of like how I couldn’t really know what parenthood involved just because my coworker had a baby. Nope, it wasn’t until I went through IVF that I learned just how much the experience would test me physically and emotionally. From that first blood test that measured my hormone levels to the day I got my pregnancy test results, I would be pushed to the brink of what my mind and body could handle. And yet, knowing what I know now, I would still do it again. In fact, I want to do it again.

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