What if the intended parents haven’t arrived when it’s time for the surrogate to go home?

Learn the answer to this week's user-submitted question about surrogacy in this week's installment of Ask a Surrogacy Expert! Have a question about surrogacy that you'd like answered? Submit it at brightfuturesfamilies.com/ask

Hey everyone, it's Jennifer White, CEO of Bright Futures Families Surrogacy, with this week's question, which is: What if the intended parents haven't arrived when it's time for the surrogate to go home?

And I think this is probably everyone's nightmare scenario on all sides, both intended parents and gestational carrier side. It's again, like a lot of these questions, it's very, very complex that hopefully, obviously if people know that this is anticipated to happen, then they are reaching out and they have an agency surrounding them to help. If it is because they are going to be just delayed because of weather or things like that, oftentimes hospitals are actually willing to wait and help, you know, kind of let the carrier stay just a little longer. Also on extraordinary circumstances, they may be willing to take the baby into the nursery for a limited number of hours. If it's the situation where intended parents don't show up, then in that case, then it could be that the your child goes into the custody of Child Protective Services. Of course, if you have an agency, reach out to an agency. We never want any of these things to happen. Oftentimes if your agency is local to you, has somebody nearby, even if they don't, if they have somebody who can travel, they will show up and at least help take temporary custodial care of the child during that time frame. Definitely reach out, ask your agency. It's a situation nobody wants to happen. Honestly, intended parents have dreamed for and want this baby so much, they want to be there and be soaking up every single second. So very rare situation, but something that we could talk through any individual situation in that time frame. So I hope that helps. Hey everyone.