Intended parents who choose surrogacy often find it a journey of hope. They are finally going to fulfill a major dream for their life and watch their family take shape.
And yet that doesn’t make it an easy journey. Beneath the joy and anticipation are complex emotions, questions, and changes in relationship dynamics.
Counseling in surrogacy is invaluable. It is not a box to check or something to get through but a true place to express concerns, worry, reservations, challenges, and overall well-being.
Attending and really putting time into counseling during the surrogacy process aids in a healthy, enjoyable surrogacy experience. Here’s why.
The Emotional Complexity of Surrogacy
While it is an incredible life-giving process, surrogacy is also a unique reproductive path because it involves another individual in the process: the gestational carrier.
During the process, the intended parents, their families and the surrogate and her family all become interconnected in a complex emotional system. Each party has its own motivations, expectations, and concerns.
Research demonstrations that surrogacy presents unique psychological considerations for all parties involved. For some parents, it raises identity, attachment, and interpersonal relationship questions. While outcomes overall are strong in the research, the right support network makes all the difference in determining those outcomes.
For surrogates, the feelings might range from pride and fulfillment to fatigue and despair. Intended parents can deal with anxiety, lack of control and the fear of the unknown, especially when the intended parents have been through a long fertility journey before landing on surrogacy as the method for growing their families.
And while these feelings are all normal and understandable, without guidance through them, they can become overwhelming. Counseling provides structure and space for all parties involved in the surrogacy journey to share and process their emotions. This can help prevent unnecessary stress and conflict.
Why Counseling is Valuable Even Before Surrogacy Begins
Even before you begin your surrogacy journey, counseling provides immense value. It helps you get started on sound footing and prepares you for the ups and downs of the process.
Starting early also helps you fully evaluate whether surrogacy is the right next step for you before you make a commitment to it.
The best time to start counseling is before making surrogacy arrangements. This is helpful for both intended parents and for women considering becoming a surrogate. It ensures that the whole family is ready to undergo the process.
During this early phase of counseling, you’ll cover some key areas.
- Reasons for pursuing surrogacy: For surrogates, this helps them evaluate why they would want to carry someone else’s child. For intended parents, it helps explore all options for starting or growing a family.
- Expectations for the process: Counseling will help you enter into the surrogacy journey with clear boundaries, communication preferences, roles throughout pregnancy, and goals for the baby’s birth. If these are not thoroughly discussed, considered and aligned before the process is underway, it can lead to misaligned expectations, which can make it harder when your surrogacy agency asks about these preferences for your contract.
- Risks involved: After guiding many families through surrogacy, quality counselors know how to help prepare intended parents for the risks involved in surrogacy and reduce the risk of increased stress, anxiety, and mood-related struggles. Having a strong support system in place that also knows the risks and associated emotions can help prepare parents for this process.
Your counselor will also be a vital part of going through the agreement phase of surrogacy. It’s hard to imagine growing your family feeling so clinical as to put it into a legal agreement, but a counselor can help you express what matters most to you so you have no regrets in this early surrogacy phase.
Counseling Support Throughout the Pregnancy
Surrogacy journey starts with drafting agreements, but then comes the emotional and sometimes trying experience of going through pregnancy.
For surrogates, carrying someone else’s child can present unique emotions. Even though you know going into things that the child is not yours and you share no biological connection with it, pregnancy hormones can influence your mood and attachment to the child. Counseling serves as a valuable way to talk through those emotions and come through the process healthy both mentally and physically.
Intended parents also experience a range of emotions throughout pregnancy. Commonly, those emotions include excitement and uncertainty. But they also might feel a lack of control or distance from the process. Counseling can help intended parents bond with the baby, manage anxiety and maintain a solid relationship with the surrogate.
Everyone involved benefits from counseling during surrogacy because it guides healthy interpersonal relationships between intended parents and surrogates for better communication and respect.
A Guide for Naviagating Relationships and Boundaries
Surrogacy is complex in that involves respecting boundaries that are new to the family. You’ll have to answer complex questions like how often the intended parents and surrogate communicate, what medical appointments the intended parents are invited to, and specifics around the baby’s birth.
Every surrogacy arrangement is unique, and having a neutral party to talk to about how you’re feeling or whether your boundaries are being respected is extremely helpful.
Counselors are skilled at facilitating honest conversations and building healthy boundaries while managing expectations. Plus, should you encounter any problems throughout your surrogacy experience, counselors can serve as good mediators for conflict resolution before small misunderstandings become larger issues.
Post-Birth Support
Counseling in surrogacy is beneficial even once the baby has arrived. At this point, a whole new phase of life has begun for intended parents. The transition to parenthood can be filled with joy, but also overwhelm. Continuing counseling can help new parents work through any issues they might be facing.
Likewise, surrogates benefit from continued counseling after the birth as they recover physically and emotionally. Taking time to reflect on the pregnancy, work through the immense hormonal shifts that take place postpartum and discuss changes in interpersonal relationships is helpful.
Counseling in Surrogacy Benefits Both Surrogate and Intended Parents
Ultimately, counseling helps ground everyone throughout the surrogacy process. It helps build resilience, foster trust, and make the experience a positive one for everyone involved.
Integrating counseling into the surrogacy process can help:
- Promote emotional well-being
- Strengthen communication and relationships
- Ensure informed decision-making
- Provide tools for managing stress and uncertainty
- Support long-term mental health for all parties
Accel Conceptions is a surrogacy agency that has guided many families through the surrogacy journey, including recommending good counselors experienced with helping families through the process.
Start your surrogacy journey with Accel Conceptions now by getting in touch today.