When to Start Your Surrogacy Program

• The date you choose will become the keystone for the clinic’s schedule for fertility treatments for your surrogate, stimulation treatments for your egg donor, the date of the egg donation, IVF and embryo transfer. Until you decide on a date for your first visit, there is little the clinic or your agent can do to move the process meaningfully forward.

• It requires 6 to 8 weeks to prepare your egg donor, so you should not consider a start date less than 6 to 8 weeks in the future. That said, it is possible that your clinic or donation agency have donors available who are already in the midst of preparations. In this case, your agent may approve a more rapid start date, but don’t assume this will be possible.

• Many egg donation agencies send their donors to overseas clinics in scheduled groups. In this case, your donor may have a predetermined time when she is able to travel, and you will have to arrive in Bangkok to leave your sperm sample before her donation date.

• If you choose a date far in advance, the medical evaluation of your egg donor may no longer be valid. Don’t expect that your chosen egg donor who had a stellar medical evaluation this month will also have a similar evaluation several months from now. You should choose your egg donor within a few months of the donation date, while her medical circumstances are known and reliable.

  (Also some egg donation agencies will not reserve a donor more than 6 months in advance. Reserving a donor for so long essentially prevents her from being hired to another couple – and this represents a potential loss of a qualified donor [and of revenue] for the donation agency.)

So while it’s perfectly reasonable to reserve a spot at your clinic for next year’s holiday season, be prepared to wait until closer to your start date to see any real action take place from your clinic and agent.