Think about the paperwork, compliance, legalities, and deadlines involved in your previous trip(s). If you work with a good agency, they handle them and make it easier for you to meet your responsibilities. It’s also likely that they’ve done a lot of behind-the-scenes work that you don’t know about. Until you have to do it yourself you can find out all the things your agency has done for you.
An agency also acts as an intermediary between surrogates and intended parents. As you already know, working with your partner to build a beautiful family requires a strong and unique connection. Talking about money and trying to coordinate extra activities can complicate this relationship. Plus, if one party has more experience with surrogacy than the other, most of the work may fall to them. This can easily lead to resentment.
Our concern for experienced surrogates working independently is that they are already making a huge sacrifice in carrying the pregnancy. We do not believe that surrogates should add the labor of coordinating this complex process to the burden they carry.
Intended parents also balance many responsibilities on their journey, and many go through a lot of work and pain before coming to surrogacy. We think that intended parents deserve to build their family with guidance that can minimize, or avoid, any additional obstacles.
Even if you are not satisfied with your previous agency, don’t burden yourself this time. Not all agencies are created equal, and every journey is different.
Heartland successor Samantha comes to us for her third trip. He worked with another agency for his first trip, and decided to go it alone to match a second. Unfortunately, the second trip did not go well and the match went to arbitration. He said he wasn’t interested in “being indy” again, and had a great experience with us managing his third trip!
