The most important way to define any relationship is by how you communicate with the other person. Your relationship with your gestational carrier, the surrogate mother who will help bring your baby into this world, is a short-lived but very intense relationship.
A lot will be happening in a very short time.
Good communication will ensure that the experience is positive for everybody involved in the process.
So what is your role, as the intended parents?
From the outset, communicate your expectations to your gestational carrier. What do you want from the experience? What do you want to know? What details are important to you? How much is too much information?
For instance:
Do you want to know every time a medical appointment occurs? Probably. After all, what the doctor tells your gestational carrier could be important for the growth of your child.
Communication Boundaries in Surrogacy: Finding the Right Balance
Do you want to know every time your gestational carrier takes a vitamin? Probably not. There is such thing as too much information. Although your surrogate is giving up much of her privacy, chances are that she won’t want to give up that much.
In between those two extremes, there is probably a happy medium where both you and your gestational carrier can agree on communications. For instance, you might like to hear once a week about progress. You might ask your gestational carrier to keep a diary that she can share with you.
So much for what you want to know and when. The how can get … touchy.
Do you want reports by email or by phone? Email reports might be fine to get the information to you, but they probably won’t be enough. You will surely have questions, and that means discussion. And you might be excited and just want to talk.
And some of the time, you will probably want to meet face to face, to have a real discussion. That’s when we get to the touchy part: the baby bump.
Connecting with Your Child: Navigating Touch Boundaries in Surrogacy
You, the intended mother, will probably want to come as close as possible to touching your child. After all, if the child was in you, you would be touching it all the time.
This should not be a problem. Most pregnant women let people touch their bellies, and even revel in the attention and the sense of support this brings. The question isn’t whether you can, but how much is too much. You might want to be in as constant contact as possible with your child. Can there be too much of a good thing?
Yes. There is such thing as too much touching the surrogate mother’s belly.
Your gestational carrier will want to draw a line so that she has some privacy. The question is where to draw that line.
These are topics to discuss and agree upon before entering a contract. It is important that both intended parents and gestational carrier agree on how much access the one group gets to the other one’s time, space and body.
Get this right before you start, or the whole experience could prove to be very negative for all parties.
