I was totally shocked at how many Surro agencies are out there! I started with the HUGE worldwide companies I quickly found out that they treat their surro's like cattle...just herd them through to the next dept. and push them down the line. There are a lot of requirements to even become a surro...you have to meet their age requirements, have a healthy BMI, not be on govt assistance, have given birth, some agencies want insurance, some its not required. It certainly looks better for the IPs (Intended Parents) if the surrogate insurance since that is one less expense for them.
Speaking of expenses; I know everyone wants to know the fees, well the agencies have fees, the carries (surrogates) have fees, there are allowances for clothing, travel, housekeeping, lost wages and fees for the unforeseen items like multiples, miscarriage, transfer fees, selective reduction fees, ect. I am not too versed on the agency fees however the surrogate can usually set her price ranging from 20-25k for a first time surro without including any of the additional above fees or unforeseen items which get added on.
Given the high stakes for all involved, the agencies and IP's certainly have every right to be picky with who they want in their program. Once I got everything in order that the agencies require, my insurance, medical records, profile info, photos ect I was a registering machine with multiple companies...Some right off I bat I just thought, "oh my I do not agree with how these people do business!" and nicely told them I didn't want to proceed with the process. Turns out that my healthy body was in pretty high demand. So this all went on for about a month until I thought...Ok I need to step back and take a look at this a little differently. I am certainly not the "herding cattle" type and I want to have a personal relationship with the agency and the IP's because this is a pretty amazing thing! I started looking at WI agencies and I found 2 in WI and another in MN. I began talking to all 3, now remember I did this dance many times with these other huge agencies so at this point I had a decent handle on what was expected of me and what I was expecting from them.
When I exchanged emails with Pink and Blue surro I thought right away wow this women is on it!! She is passionate about what she does, gets back to me insanely fast and THIS is the type of person I want to have behind me in this journey! It all moved VERY VERY VERY Fast once we connected and she got all my info.
I was leaving to go out of state for a wedding and before I boarded the plane I got an email that said once she had my profile ready she already had IP's interested! Awesome news for me especially since I was ready to start as soon as I was matched :-)
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