Why an independent journey?
I guess the first question is what is an independent journey? That means is that we are not going through an agency. We made the decision to have an independent journey after consulting with multiple previous intended parents and surrogates to get a really good understanding of what it meant to be with an agency vs. without. What being independent means to us is having the flexibility to choose the services and supports that best fit our needs and our surrogate’s needs.
When someone signs with an agency, you sign on to use their mental health supports, their lawyers, their accounting software etc. It is sort of like when you install a piece of software and you get the choice between installing with the typical settings, or customizing your settings. Most people choose the typical settings, because it is all done for you. That is a great choice for them! For us, we chose to customize our settings. It means more work for us (not the surrogate!) but we get exactly what we want.
For surrogates, the most important question is, does an independent journey mean you are less protected? Absolutely not! The legal contract between us and our surrogate will protect the surrogate! Our surrogate will have their own lawyer, and will be able to add in anything they need (want counselling services or pelvic floor physio after birth? Add it in!). We will ensure that our surrogate is and feels completely protected. We encourage anyone thinking of being our surrogate to reach out to the support networks below to ask questions to previous surrogates!
How have we done this?
First we found Baden with Not My Tummy who is a social media guru. She is helping us learn the ways of Instagram and Blogging so we can find our perfect surrogate.
Next we found Marissa at Defining Journeys. She is going to be our go-to surrogacy coach and consultant. She is ensuring we navigate through this adventure smoothly.
We have met with lawyers and will be working with Sarah Cohen. We have a list of potential lawyers for our future surrogate to choose from and we will we have a contract in place that protects everyone. We are also happy to support whatever lawyer a potential surrogate feels most comfortable with for themselves.
We are consulting with an insurance company for life and short term disability insurance for our surrogate. This is a huge benefit of going independent as we can select whatever insurance the surrogate feels most comfortable with.
We will be hiring a bookkeeper to help with the financials. We know that talking money is the more awkward part of this journey. We also know that the surrogate should be 100% covered and not have to worry about submitting receipts and being reimbursed. So we are taking the awkwardness out of the equation by hiring a bookkeeper and planning to use the Myreceipts app as suggested by multiple independent surrogates.
We have money in the bank for our surrogacy journey and are ready to support our surrogate throughout the process.
Finally for future surrogate’s mental health support, we have several options ready to suggest including Notthebabymama support group. But more importantly, it is ESSENTIAL that the surrogate fit well with their mental health support. Be is a registered psychotherapist, social worker, or psychologist, we know that fit is really important. By going independent, our surrogate will have the option to see who they want to see, what type of support they want, how often they need support.
As you can imagine, pulling everything together is likely more work for us, but it is custom built for us. We get to work with people we trust and like. We have built a strong system to not only support our journey, but our surrogate’s as well.
