Sometimes, the infertile couple needs a surrogate to have their baby. Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby for a couple who cannot conceive or carry a child themselves for medical or physical reasons.
There are two types of surrogacies:
Traditional Surrogacy: This is a pregnancy where the surrogate is genetically related to the baby and becomes pregnant through artificial insemination. While this used to be common, most surrogacy arrangements today involve host surrogacy.
Host surrogacy: It is when IVF is used, either with the eggs of the intended mother, or with donor eggs. The surrogate mother therefore does not use her own eggs and is genetically unrelated to the baby.
There are three stages to ‘host’ surrogacy:
∙ Egg donation: The female intended parent, or an egg donor, undergo special procedures to extract a number of eggs.
∙ Fertilisation: The eggs are fertilised with sperm in the laboratory, resulting in embryos.
∙ Embryo Transfer: The embryo is transferred into the womb of the surrogate mother.
The embryos can be transferred to the surrogate either ‘fresh’ or after having been de-frosted from storage.
Moreover, for legal rights related to surrogacy, it is advised that any patientseeking this treatment must seek independent legal advice before entering into the surrogacy arrangement.
References:
- https://mft.nhs.uk/app/uploads/sites/4/2018/04/What-is-Surrogacy-January-2018.pdf