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 https://www.brightfuturesfamilies.com/ask
Hi, it's Janelle Ibarra at Bright Futures Families Surrogacy with Ask a Surrogacy Expert. Our question is: Do intended parents pick a surrogate or does the surrogate pick intended parents? Now, this question, the answer to this may vary across agencies, but Bright Futures families does personalized matching, meaning we are creating profiles and taking mental notes all throughout the process of intake, trying to come up with the best fit. We say there's lid for every pot. And so as we create these profiles, we will submit them to either party one at a time based on, well, we think this might be a good fit. So we're going to present that as a match. Now, of course, the other party could say no, and then we would not proceed with the match meeting.
But if both parties say yes, I'm interested in pursuing a journey with this person potentially, and I want to meet them, then we would set up a match meeting which is facilitated by a member of our team. And that's done because it's kind of awkward. It feels like a. An awkward blind date. And so we just have somebody to facilitate the conversation and ensure that important things are talked about. And then after that meeting, each party is asked individually or each side, whether they are comfortable moving forward. Matches are presented one at a time. There's no flipping through a book or a slideshow or anything like that you may have seen. It is a mutual decision. So if one party is not comfortable, then it's probably not going to be a good fit.
And so we just like to respect both parties and letting them both have a say. So from there, either a match is created or we go back to the drawing board and we just say, okay, we're going to try and match again. And there's a number of things that factor in with matching. You can visit our website to see kind of what that process is like or find answers to additional questions you may have. If you have any other questions that you'd like to ask us directly, feel free to contact us.