Understanding how a surrogacy admission department works helps potential applicants with the next steps after they submit their application.
When a woman submits her application to become a surrogate, it goes directly to the surrogacy admissions department at an agency. Knowing what happens in this department can help an applicant understand the overall process.
Why A Surrogacy Admissions Department Educates
Most surrogacy agencies agree that applicants don’t know a whole lot about surrogacy. This means that the admissions team steps it up to educate its applicants.
Team members in this department explain to applicants what an embryo transfer means. More importantly, they share with women how gestational carriers are not biologically related to the baby they are carrying. The eggs are either from the future mother or egg donor. Once fertilized, a surrogate has an IVF procedure to transfer this embryo.
Paperwork and More Paperwork
While future surrogates would love to hit the ground running, they need to brake a bit because there is a lot that happens behind the scenes. If the process moves slower than expected, that’s normal. A surrogacy agency and clinic are working on collecting information such as the surrogate’s medical history and clearance letter from her doctor to add to her medical file.
Women who apply to become surrogates need to understand this part of the surrogacy journey and more. It’s the job of the admissions department to explain everything to potential gestational carriers such as their medical and psychological screening, the matching process, medications, and more.
The Pre-Qualification Process
Once an application is received, the admission department goes through a pre-qualification step. This means that if an application looks promising, someone from the admission department will call an applicant and verify some items. If the applicant wants to move forward, then a phone interview is next.
The Phone Interview: Just Be Yourself
Surrogacy agencies have a piece of advice for an applicant on the calendar for a phone interview: Just be yourself.
Any woman dedicating ten months to help someone achieve the dream of parenthood through surrogacy is terrific already. The interview is a time to learn more about surrogacy and to figure out if it’s right for a woman at this moment in her life. An example of revisiting surrogacy later is if she has plans to have another child in the future.
The phone interview usually lasts 30 minutes to an hour. Every admissions team member has a goal of making sure an applicant has all her questions answered. The common things discussed during the interview are the following:
- Her preferences in carrying for future parents (i.e., single parents, gay couples…)
- Views on a medically necessary reduction (i.e., reducing a pregnancy from triplets to twins)
- The type of relationship she would like with her intending parents
- If she is ready for the time and commitment required in the arrangement
There are no wrong or right answers in this interview. It’s just an opportunity for the surrogacy admissions team to learn more about their applicants.
