Do intended parents pick a surrogate, or does the surrogate pick the intended parents?

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: Do the intended parents pick the surrogate or does the surrogate pick the intended parents?

And that's a great question. And it's going to vary from agency to agency. So you want to ask the agency that you are with what their protocol is. I can tell you for hours. What we do is we actually personalize match in the background. So we actually look at everybody's criteria, what they're looking for, and say, hey, I think these people would be a really good fit. And then we show the profiles to each separately, and then they get to each make a decision as to whether they're interested in that profile completely separate from each other, so that there's no harm, no pressure, there's no identifying information, no anything there. Just based on that profile. Once I'm assuming if both sides say yes to the profile, then we'll do an actual match meeting. And so then everybody gets to know each other, gets to have conversations. Some. Somebody from the agency is there. Not because we're creepers and we don't trust people. It's because really, it's like an awkward blind date, and we want to make sure that all the important things get discussed. And of course, we can help, like, smooth over any awkwardness and things like that. Only after that do we ask people if they're interested in matching. And the answer is it has to be mutual. So if either side is unsure or says no, then it's not a good fit, and we just go back to the drawing board and find a fit where everybody feels great about that match. So I hope that helps because the answer is it's mutual. Everybody picks each other.