What if I told you that applying to become a Surrogate isn’t the first step on your surrogacy journey. It’s true! There are seven steps you need to take before your journey even begins. In this Surrogacy Talk, Frank will walk you through what those steps are and the ways they will set you up for success on your surrogacy journey. Above all, Golden wants every woman who chooses to become a Surrogate, to start their journey with as much information as possible.
What if I told you that applying to become a Surrogate isn’t the first step on your surrogacy journey. It’s true! There are seven steps you need to take before your journey even begins. In this Surrogacy Talk, Frank will walk you through what those steps are and the ways they will set you up for success on your surrogacy journey. Above all, Golden wants every woman who chooses to become a Surrogate, to start their journey with as much information as possible.
Welcome to Surrogacy Talk with me, your fabulous host and family building expert, Frank Golden. I'll be talking about surrogoacy, IVF, and making babies. Hello and welcome back to my Surrogacy Talk. I am Frank Golden, the agency director and founder of Golden Surrogacy. And today I have a fantastic segment I'm going to be talking about Surrogates, where to begin your surrogacy journey before you begin your surrogacy journey. So kind of like the prequel, I guess you could say, to a surrogacy journey. But before I begin, I would like to remind all of you to please like and subscribe. And we can also be found on Spotify, YouTube, and anywhere that you can stream podcast. Now, I've already got segments recorded where I talk about Surrogate criteria and requirements and compensation and what the process looks like. But the purpose of this segment really is to talk about preparing to take that plunge, and it usually is not discussed often enough anywhere on the Internet. And Surrogates jump right into a journey by signing up with an agency and really aren't sure on the process overall. And they're hoping that the agency that they embark with will explain everything and everything will be perfect. But there are some steps that I certainly encourage you to take. First, research, research, research, research. And that may not be something that you expected me to say. Right? As an agency owner, you might be expecting me to say, sign up with Golden and we'll help match you yada yada. No, what's important to us here at Golden is that the Surrogates who apply to our agency fully know what they are about to embark upon. That begins with research. Find out if you qualify, right. So look at the requirements. Listen or watch my segment about Surrogate requirements or take a look at our website and look at the baseline of beginning a surrogacy journey requirements. If you have a significant other at home, make sure that you have had those conversations in that they are also on board with your decision to become a Surrogate and fully realize what that commitment means for you and your family unit. Secondary to all of that would be what else is involved? Okay, so you've got the medication component, you've got Intended Parents, you've got clinic, where's the clinic? Do I have to travel? On the medication side, for example, knowing that there are medications. And how as a Surrogate you will achieve pregnancy? Well, with medications, of course. And the fact that at most clinics the medication protocol involves injectable medication. So what does that mean and what are the side effects to these medications? And why do I have to take them and what response is my body going to have? That might precipitate a lot of other questions, which then might have you wondering, well, maybe I should speak with a medical provider first just to make sure that I can do this and what are the risks and am I okay with that and my comfortable with taking those risks? Then the Intended Parent component, what kind of relationship would I like to have with my Intended Parents? Can I have a relationship with my Intended Parents? Will they be local? There are all of these questions that you would need to answer for yourself in. This helps with relationship building and setting expectations for what kind of relationship you would like to have. And this is again, part of that research phase. The other item, like I mentioned, would be the fertility clinic. So the fertility clinic might not be local. You might be in Illinois, and there might be a clinic that your Intended Parents are working without in California. So how do you get there? Can you travel? Are you someone that is a little bit iffy about flying on airplanes? These are, again, these are things that you will determine on your path through research, and I would encourage you to do the research and have all of the answers to these questions first before you sign up with an agency and start talking about compensation and where is the agency? And do I want to work with a local agency or an agency that somewhere else in the country? And is that important to me? And all of the other questions that may come about research, research, research. So how do we research? There are online support groups that you can join. You can speak with former Surrogates and present Surrogates about their surrogacy journeys to gain that perspective, because that is very important. Ask how their journeys are going and pitfalls. Pros and cons. It's really important to speak with many people to understand different scenarios because no two surrogacy journeys are exactly alike. So, for example, maybe you speak with one person and they say they had a great journey, or you had a friend that was a Surrogate. So that's your that's your motivation for becoming a Surrogate and you'd like to dive right in because you think it will be perfect, too. That's wrong. You really need to speak with multiple sources of information. And you might find this interesting as well, maybe even go into some of these support groups and speak with previous Intended Parents or Intended Parents who are on a journey and ask them questions about how their journeys are going. This would also give you a perspective about the Intended Parents side and why is that important? Well, you will be if you embark on a surrogacyjourney, interacting with Intended Parents and understanding kind of their psyche and how they are approaching a journey might also lead to you having a successful experience on your surrogacy journey. So these are all pieces of the puzzle that, again, I encourage you to do the research and have answered these questions for yourself before you just dive right on in. You can reach out to us here at Golden. We would love to answer questions for you as well, but if you haven't done the research, we aren't going to jump right into signing you on with our agency. We really want what's most important for us to make sure that you have done all of that research and that you feel comfortable and confident before you embark on your surrogacy journey. That is so important. And anyone that you speak with, either in the industry or in an online support group or through friends and family, the advice the sage advice should always be to take a step back, make sure you qualify, but then get all of your facts together and make sure that this is right for you. Because at the end of the day, it's not just about helping someone else create their family, but it's also about you doing it in a well-informed way and also having a fulfilling experience. So that that is really important. It's important for me. It's important for all of us here at Golden. If you have questions, I would definitely encourage you to send those in and that's really all I have for you on this topic. If you would like me to dive in and tackle other components of this, maybe you have additional questions and you'd like me to expand upon something, send those in. You can tweet me @GoldenSurrogacy. You can send in DMS to my Instagram. It's @Golden_Surrogacy and I am here to answer all of your questions and make sure that you start your surrogacy journey off the right way. Once again, I'm Frank Golden here, Golden Surrogacy, this is my Surrogacy Talk, and I'm reminding all of you that Everyone Deserves a Family.