What is your best advice for the matching process? Is it more the intended parents' choice, the surrogate's, or both?

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

Hey, it's Janelle Ibarra with Bright Futures Families Surrogacy. Today's Ask a surrogacy Expert question is: What is your best advice for the matching process? Is it more the intended parent's choice, the surrogate's choice or both?

Great question. It is mutual. So what happens is we gather information on all parties, create like a profile for each one and then we're doing some legwork behind the scenes trying to match preferences, personalities and so based on what we know about each side, we will say, hey, this could be a good potential match. And so one at a time we present them. So the intended parents would receive information about the surrogate, surrogate about the intended parents. They look that over and decide if that is somebody that they want to move forward and meet, meet with and have a match meeting. And then based on that match meeting, how it goes, both parties decide whether they're interested in moving forward as a match. And, and the best advice I would give throughout that process is to be honest. So think about what your preferences are, think about what you would like in your journey, the just the big issues and some of the smaller ones that you would have as non negotiables and really be honest and not answer questions based on the speed at which you could get matched, but rather the quality of the journey. Because that's what we want, is a smooth journey and a good experience for everyone. Not necessarily just rushing through and trying to match quickly. If you have any questions or any more specifics you'd like to know, please let us know.