How do I explain surrogacy to friends and family?

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 https://www.brightfuturesfamilies.com/ask

Hi, it's Janelle Ibarra at Bright Futures Families Surrogacy with Ask a Surrogacy Expert. Our question is: How do I explain surrogacy to friends and family? 

There are a lot of ways to do this, but a simple explanation is that surrogacy is when an individual or a couple needs some help growing their family and you have someone that we refer to as a gestational carrier or a surrogate steps forward and does an amazing thing for them, which is carry their pregnancy and grows their family that way. It's also important to know that our surrogacy agency does gestational surrogacy, not traditional surrogacy. So that means that there's no genetic relation between the gestational carrier and the baby. It's either donor gametes, that's sperm and egg, or those of the intended parents. If you have any other questions or if you want further elaboration, please let us know.