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The Surrogacy Search

Starting Out

Part One

By Michele St. Martin

While Lucy and the intended parents she worked with were very comfortable with the idea of working with a surrogacy agency, not everyone chooses this route. Money was the reason that Kim, 36, of Alisa Viejo, Calif., and her husband didn't work with a surrogacy agency. "Simply, they charge too much for what we could do," she says. "I did all the work. I already had the embryos and a doctor."

Kim recently entered into an independent gestational surrogacy relationship with a former co-worker. Kim had frozen embryos leftover after a failed IVF, and those were used for the pregnancy that resulted. This is not Kim's first attempt at surrogacy, however. Kim and her husband negotiated with a neighbor for a full year. They were unable to come to an agreement, and Kim's husband was frustrated because "he felt the [potential surrogate's] husband was in it for the money," Kim says. While an agency might have screened out the failed surrogate and streamlined the process, Kim felt she could work things out on her own.

During the year that Kim and her husband were negotiating with their potential surrogate, a co-worker of Kim's approached her and offered to be a surrogate if the first arrangement didn't work out. When the negotiations stalled, Kim approached the co-worker, who had three children, and asked if she was still interested. The co-worker discussed it with her partner. "A week later, she called me and said yes!" says Kim. "Within three months, she saw her doctor and was cleared, did the lab tests necessary, saw the psychologist, saw my reproductive endocrinologist and signed the contract. We did an FET (frozen embryo transfer), and she got pregnant." The surrogate is pregnant with twin boys and due in June. Kim and her husband couldn't be happier.

Want to see more?

• Gift-giver: Profile of a Surrogate Mother
• Dollars and Sense of Infertility Treatment
• Choosing Assisted Reproduction: Social, Emotional and Ethical Considerations
• Talk about it!

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