Tag Archives: parenthood

Surrogacy in Ukraine

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Ukraine is considered as one of the most popular surrogacy destinations for heterosexual couples. We are going to introduce some of the interesting details and then try to decide, whether Ukraine is a suitable choice to consider.

 

Ukraine is one of those very few countries in Europe that are accepting surrogacy. The capital Kiev is a safe, active, developed and a beautiful city. The development of the country matters in our case, because it is connected with the quality of medical service as well. No worries, in Kiev there are several professional surrogacy agencies and a number of clinics with high quality service and equipment. There are medical centers in other cities as well (Odessa, Lviv, Kharkov and so on). Success rate of IVF is as high as up to 60%. Doctors are professional and caring. Pricing whatsoever is relatively affordable (up to 50% lower) in comparison with USA and Canada.

 

Surrogacy in Ukraine is legal, which obviously means that it is regulated by the law. Regulations are indeed advantageous for intended parents for the following reasons :

 

  • No need of adoption

Ukrainian law allows to issue birth certificates with intended parents’ names. No matter what the real biological tree looks like, baby’s documents will only have the names of IP(s) in them.

 

  • No disputes

Thanks to regulations, there has not been recorded even a single dispute about the custody over the child. Actually, it is not allowed for surrogate mother to be an egg donor at the same time. No genetic connection of a surrogate with a child, contributes to the absence of conflicts as well.

 

  • Families don’t experience delayed stays 

No complications with documents + no dispute about parental rights = no delayed stay in a foreign country.

 

Requirements for intended parents (IPs)

 

In order to participate in a surrogacy program in Ukraine, IPs have to be married. Additionally a  couple has to provide surrogacy agency and clinic with medical reports. They should prove that the couple’s decision to proceed with the program is reasonable. Conclusion should be the following – intended mother is not able to bear a baby herself, without a surrogate mother. Reasons may include :

 

  • Absence of womb
  • Deformation of uterus that makes pregnancy and delivery impossible
  • Diseases that do not allow to bear a child, because it may become fatal for mother
  • At least 4 unsuccessful IVF attempts with embryos of high quality

 

Surrogate mothers’ age should be between 20-40 years. They are required to have at least one child previously.  

To sum up, let’s list pros and cons of Ukraine as a surrogacy destination.

 

Advantages

 

  • Professional doctors
  • Well equipped clinics
  • Professional surrogacy agencies
  • Low costs
  • Simple collection of documents

 

Disadvantages

 

  • Ukraine is not a member of European Union (strict legal EU protection does not apply to clinics).

 

Verdict : When intended parents make right decisions concerning clinics and agencies, there is no need to worry about membership of EU. You can read about how to choose a right surrogacy agency on our blog. We will be offering more information gradually. Taking into account all of the advantages that the country offers, the answer is –  yes, parents can and should consider Ukraine as an attractive option for surrogacy.

 

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

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Polycystic ovary syndrome is a hormone imbalance that can lead to fertility problems in females. It is in the list of treatable causes of female infertility and can be the result of wrong lifestyle choices.

 

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition, when females have elevated male hormones (androgens). Hormone imbalance can cause a change in appearance as well as in overall health. Problems can reach and involve ovaries, which as we already know, are responsible for releasing eggs during the ovulation. If eggs are not released and a healthy menstrual cycle is affected, then we may be facing fertility problems.

 

PCOS can develop at anytime during the childbearing age (18-44 years) and affects up to 10 % of females. Common symptoms include :

  • Irregular menstrual cycle
  • Hair growth  in unwanted areas *
  • Hair loss on the scalp*

*  Thicker and excessive body and facial hair , as well as thinning hair on the scalp are results of extra male hormones.

  • Acne
  • Weight gain, metabolism problems that result in the difficulty to lose extra kilos.

 

As we have already said, PCOS is caused by high levels of androgens. Another contributor is genetics. If mother or sister have experienced the polycystic ovary syndrome, then it is inherited. Males might be carriers of PCOS as well. Environmental factors are also found to be contributors to the disease.

 

Apart from genetics and environment, there are several risk factors that can be controlled in order to prevent PCOS :

 

  • Obesity , not enough physical exercise and activities are on top of the list of risk factors.
  • Smoking females have higher androgen levels that may contribute to PCOS symptoms.
  • Females with  unhealthy eating habits may develop insulin resistance which is  also the cause of  PCOS.*

 

*  Insulin resistance means body’s inability to respond to this hormone appropriately. Insulin is responsible for “supervising” the transformation of food into energy. When body becomes resistant, the number of this hormone becomes excessive. It is a common symptom of not only PCOS but leads to type 2 diabetes as well.

 

However, being diagnosed with PCOS doesn’t mean that a female won’t be able to get pregnant. First of all, we have already mentioned that it is one of the treatable causes of infertility.  Doctors will need pelvic exam, blood tests and most likely pelvic ultrasound in order to confirm the disease.

 

How is polycystic ovary syndrome treated?

 

Unfortunately, there is no cure to PCOS, however, after observing the case and causes doctor will work on the treatment plan. With the help of this plan, patients will avoid further complications (such as diabetes,heart diseases, high blood pressure). Additionally they will feel a great relief, break their syndromes in smaller parts and find the remedy to each of them accordingly. Patients should know following :

 

  • Birth control pills reduce the symptoms.
  • Metformin helps to regulate menstrual cycles.
  • Fertility medicines will be prescribed if female has trouble getting pregnant.
  • Exercising and losing weight help to relieve symptoms. Additionally, accomplishing these tasks are usually followed by self-satisfaction and confidence that help females to fight depression, which is commonly the part of PCOS.
  • Quit smoking to not increase the number of male hormones,androgens, artificially.

 

Acne and extra hair might need some time to diminish but gradually, females will see them disappearing as well. Patients must not forget to check up regularly and treat their symptoms as soon as possible.

 

With timely appointments, correct attitude and lifestyle, PCOS will no longer be a reason of depression, unsatisfactory health, appearance and what’s most important -infertility.

 

 

Female Infertility

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The word infertility, at first glance, may sound like something terrifying. Couples become stressed after several unsuccessful efforts and start to give up their hope. Rule number one is to never overreact  and don’t get depressed about the situation that has many solutions. Parents might not even have a serious problem and their negative attitude will only intensify the tension. So let’s discuss what infertility is and what are the factors that cause it.

 

Couple might consider visiting specialist – reproductive endocrinologist, after unsuccessfully trying to conceive after a year of unprotected interourse. So where is the problem hiding?

 

Steps leading to pregnancy

 

  • Release of eggs from female’s ovary, known as ovulation.
  • Male’s sperm joining and fertilizing the egg.
  • Fertilized egg going towards the womb and attaching to the inside.

 

Problem is hiding and occurring in one of these processes. Normally we can not say in advance which parent is having a fertility issue as both genders are likely to have one. Sometimes it can happen that both parents are completely fertile, but they simply can not make it together. Specialists will do all of the necessary tests to spot the source of a problem. According to the results and prescription,  parents will then know how to continue their way to parenthood.

 

In today’s world, infertility is quite common. People tend to discuss it more, as the means of solution, including the existence of surrogacy agencies, have changed the attitude of society towards the issue a lot.

 

Today we will be focusing on female infertility.

 

What are the risk factors to be aware of?

 

  • Age *

 

As women get older, their chances of getting pregnant decrease. This happens due to several reasons :

  •  Ovaries are less capable of releasing eggs.
  •  The number of eggs left are small in number or are not healthy enough.
  •  With age, female is more likely to have a health condition that causes fertility  problems.
  •  Chances of miscarriage are increasing.
  •  Menopause  – age specific condition when female period is becoming irregular.  Ovarian function is declining and so are decreasing the chances of pregnancy.

In order to avoid issues connected with age, women are advised to have a child until the age of 35.

 

  • Extreme change in weight
  • Physical and mental exhaustion
  • Smoking
  • Frequent alcohol consume
  • Drug use

 

As you can see, leading healthy lifestyle and taking care of your mental state can contribute a lot to overcoming/ not experiencing fertility problems. However there exist several health conditions that result in infertility.

 

Common medical reasons of female infertility

 

  • Pelvic inflammatory disease – infection of female reproductive organs
  • Polyps in the uterus
  • Endometriosis –  tissue that normally lies inside of uterus, grows outside of it.
  • Fibroids – tumors in female reproductive system
  • Chronic illness
  • Hormonal problems
  • Irregular and painful periods – females with irregular periods are likely not ovulating.

 

When one of the above mentioned issues are present, then women have to act exactly according to doctor’s treatment. It may vary from taking medicines to medical procedures.

What we can say without doubt is that all of the above mentioned problems have a solution and with the right treatment and attitude all of the couples are just one step away from becoming parents. Please don’t forget to take care of your health on regular  basis and you will make the best contribution ever !

 

How to Choose your Surrogate Mother

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Should we choose surrogate mothers ourselves or should we give the freedom of choice to our surrogacy agencies?  For the sake of transparency and reliability there is a tendency in many parents to gather information and choose the surrogate mother themselves. However, we would recommend that you give the flexibility to your trusted agency and let them help you with the choice.  Reasons behind that decision are several and vary from possible complications to the need of changing the surrogate.

 

Some processes during surrogacy happen independent from our efforts and expectations. Fresh embryo transfer may need to be cancelled due to the unexpected start of surrogate’s period or vice versa, a long delay in cycle may cause uncertainty and the need to plan a new sequence of procedures. Lining of the uterus, also known as endometrium, might not reach the essential thickness for pregnancy or even more, surrogate may need to withdraw from the program due to personal reasons.  This kind of disturbances are not always the case and are not large in number but why should parents experience inconveniences?  If there is even a slight chance of complication and delay, we should always have the plan B. Professional agencies have a pretty logical solution to these problems – they have backup surrogates. Experiences show that agencies that have thought about backup choices of surrogates in advance, have much higher success rate in comparison to ones that stick to only one and the same surrogate mother. They have the ability and resources to fix unforeseen obstacles on time.

 

On the other hand, some unpleasant surprises may emerge if we do not have enough information about the surrogate mother. Agencies and partnered clinics should already have collected  and revised the following data but parents should also show interest in them :

 

Surrogate mother MUST NOT :

  • Have miscarriages and stillbirths in her medical history
  • Be a smoker or alcohol consumer

 

Surrogate mother MUST :

  • Be healthy, medically and mentally

 

Surrogate mother is recommended :

  • To already be a biological mother to a child

 

Opinions about the surrogate already being a biological mother are controversial. It is considered that once a mother, she will have higher chances to conceive the second time. Moreover,  already being familiar with the process of pregnancy and the labour itself, it is less likely that the surrogate experiences any kind of attachment towards the child.

 

Opposite to the above mentioned beliefs, we can bring the examples of Cambodia, Nepal  and Thailand. When law didn’t use to regulate surrogacy in these countries, the main requirement from the agencies was that surrogate mothers were single. For that reason, most of those women didn’t have families and accordingly, neither did they have biological children. However, this fact has not caused any kind of complications neither from medical , nor from mental point of view.

 

To sum up, assuring that surrogate has already experienced parenthood is not a must. Moreover, having one child doesn’t guarantee the 100% chance of getting pregnant twice(take the example of secondary infertility pathology) and court cases in USA and UK prove, that neither does it guarantee that surrogate is not going to get attached to a newborn.  

 

What parents should learn from examples and experiences of others, is that if they trust the agency, they should trust it completely and do it for the sake of making right choices and avoiding irreparable situations. Also parents should read our blog to know what to expect and which information to request from their  agencies. 🙂

 

Choosing the Right Surrogacy Agency

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Parenthood is no doubt one of the most life changing experiences . People tend to plan and prepare for it years in advance. While realizing that one has faced fertility issues that can not be solved without the inclusion of the surrogacy agency, then the first job is to find the reliable one. The aim is to find the service provider that will make this exciting and significant process as light, joyful and effective as possible.

 

Of course there are several ways that will help to identify in advance whether the agency is going to be trustworthy, proficient and how much effort they tend to put in your advantage.

 

Customer service

The agency has to provide prompt qualified responses to any of the customer’s requirements. Customer service should be always at your disposal and manage to earn trust and positive attitude from the very beginning of the collaboration. You should never feel that service provider simultaneously deals with multiple cases and you are just the part of their daily working routine.

 

Ability to listen

Of course every agency has its own plan. They provide you with terms and conditions, legal and financial information, follow the system that will manage all the formal parts of the agreement. However, when we put the formal routine aside,if you don’t feel the individual approach to you as a customer, then you should consider further alternatives. As we always mention, our cases and concerns are different. Agency should patiently listen to each customer  to share their very individual worries, points of view and express readiness to find the most appropriate approach.

 

Transparent financial policy

One should know what one pays for. Some of the agencies tell their customers the fixed price that they have to transfer straight to the agency’s account. The best of agencies provide parents with the detailed description of all costs clearly defined in relevant sheet with payment system and timing.   The paper has to differentiate the medical and the surrogate mother’s service fees and should be tailored in a way to make it possible the surrogate mother’s commissions to be paid directly to her. Transparently disclosed financial policy protects the customers from undesirable and unforeseen financial surprises.

 

Proper medical screening

Surrogate is going to have one of the most important roles for the next several months. The agency has to ensure that her mental and physical health are fully corresponding to the requirements and she is completely ready to proceed with the agreement.Parents should never feel uncomfortable to request all kinds of information about the state of their entrusted person.

 

Pregnancy care

During the pregnancy  female body is undergoing a number of changes, both physical and mental. Surrogate mother needs to be monitored on regular basis to ensure that the process is going on without any complications. For that reason, it is of greatest importance that the agency provides the service of individually assigned pregnancy care coordinator. This person has to be in charge of controlling surrogate mother’s systematic visits to the clinic and delivering results and up to date information to the parents. Pregnancy care coordinator is supposed to be eyes and ears of clinic, surrogate and parents throughout the whole process.

 

After birth care

After the delivery of the baby, it may be required to travel to the foreign country. Journey to a completely strange country might have some complications. Agency must be helpful after birth as well and provide the service until needed.

 

Sharing experience

The common behaviour before purchasing any product is to ask for reviews from other customers. Same works in the field of fertility.The agency should be ready to connect you with the previous customers who would like to share their positive or negative experiences, happy or sad stories regarding the whole process.

 

If the agency you were considering corresponds to all of the requirements listed above, then you are more likely to get positive experience and desired results.

 

ABC of Egg Donation

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In the field of fertility, egg donation is the process when a female donates her eggs to help other women conceive and provide help in reproduction. Not to confuse our readers, we will explain the procedure in the simplest way. The collection of eggs from the donor takes place in clinics and is done through the short surgical procedure. The collected “product” then can be fertilized in the laboratory, using the “in vitro fertilization”(IVF) technique or can be frozen and stored until the later use.

 

Egg donor ⇒ Eggs X Father’s sperm ⇒ Surrogate mother

Egg donor ⇒ Eggs X Father’s sperm ⇒ Mother

Egg donor ⇒ Eggs ⇒ Freezing and keeping until one of processes above needs to occur

 

Parents may consider finding an egg donor for a number of reasons including :

 

  • Eggs of the female partner can not lead to pregnancy (This can happen due to number of fertility issues)
  • Parent is a single male
  • Both parents are males

 

In case of traditional couples, as you have seen in the second scheme, the absence of ability to become a genetic mother does not necessarily mean that a female can not carry a child.  There are a lot of cases when a couple uses egg donation for fertilization but embryo is developed in mother’s uterus.

 

As you may have already noticed, children born with the donation procedure have genetic inheritance from egg donors and for that reason, it is of greatest importance that parents don’t choose the candidates independently. A lot of details need to be taken into consideration and donors are usually found with the help of agencies that own all of the essential data to help parents with the suitable choice. Data we are talking about, apart from appearance, includes proof of mental and physical health. We will discuss the process of choosing egg donors as well as suitable agencies step by step in our later posts.

 

Parents should not be doubted about the motivation of egg donors. Researches have shown that there are two reasons females choose to participate in the reproduction process – Altruism, monetary interest and of course the combination of both. Egg donors have no right to request any kind of information about parents or children and are out of the process once their contribution is compensated. However, it’s parents who may choose to get in touch with donors out of interest, reassuring in their choice or the intention to inform their child about genetics later.

 

However, the process is not as simple as it may seem as laws regulating egg donation vary from country to country. It may be completely restricted in one place, partially regulated in another and somewhat simplified in the third one.  As you have been shortly introduced to egg donation, we now are ready to discuss above described procedures in details.

 

ABC of Surrogacy

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To start with a bare definition, surrogacy is a process when a surrogate mother carries and delivers a child for intended parents. It may seem complicated and unclear at first , but we are going to break the process into pieces.

What we already know is that there is a surrogate mother, a female, who with the help of medical procedures is intended to get pregnant and deliver child to biological parent(s). The process is called surrogacy and may be achieved in more than one ways.

Gestational surrogacy is the process that uses the technique called “in vitro fertilization”(IVF) to impregnant the surrogate. It is as simple as that – Eggs from mother are fertilized with the sperm of father and later transferred in surrogate mother for development and delivery. You may find this simple scheme easier to comprehend :

 

Mother’s eggs X Father’s sperm ⇒ Surrogate mother

 

Child does not inherit genetics from the surrogate mother and does not develop any kind of attachment towards her. Surrogate mother does not offer anything but  the environment for embryo to grow and develop until ready for birth. This technique comes in handy when biological mother does not have fertility issues but because of other medical problems, she is not able to carry a child herself.

It is also possible to gather eggs from a donor, fertilize them with sperm of a father and place them in surrogate mother’s uterus. This technique is a perfect solution for LGBT parents, single males or traditional couples, in which females due to medical issues are not able to become biological mothers. You can read about donation on our blog here. 

 

Donor’s eggs X Father’s sperm ⇒ Surrogate mother

 

These and many other combinations have made parenthood possible for hundreds and thousands of people who could not adopt a child or could not make it themselves because of fertility problems.

If you are considering surrogacy as an option, there are a number of agencies that provide service from the very beginning until the end. Terms of service may vary , but usually a surrogacy agency is responsible for :

 

  • Finding  and choosing an appropriate surrogate mother
  • Connecting parents and surrogate to the clinic where they receive all of the essential medical procedures
  • Supervise the health care of the surrogate and collect her medical transcripts from clinic on regular basis
  • Planning the birth
  • Planning the trip if needed (Surrogate and parent(s) may reside in different countries)
  • Ensuring that child continues life with parents without any complications

 

If you are not able to find the service in every country, do not be surprised. A lot of legal processes are included that vary from place to place. For that reason you may need to travel to a foreign country and the agency will help you to arrange the trips as well.

 

 

LGBT Parents and Surrogacy

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Parenthood is a sensitive issue for LGBT people worldwide. Doesn’t matter in couple or single, people representing non traditional sexual orientation often have to face the obstacles that would otherwise not be present at all. Before the increasing popularity of surrogacy, couples of the same sex were struggling to adopt a child. Nowadays, it is possible for them to have biological children as well, but the journey towards parenthood may turn out complicated if parents are not informed appropriately.

Law that regulates parenthood rights for LGBT couples is different in every country and may restrict adoption or surrogacy. For that reason surrogacy agencies simply have no other option and offer their service only to people with traditional sexual orientation. On the other hand, there are countries where LGBT people are not limited by the law, but agencies still refuse to assist them  because of their terms and policies.

Despite a number of possible difficulties, there are a lot of agencies that wholeheartedly welcome LGBT parents in countries, where the whole process is lead legally, without any complications or restrictions. These surrogacy agencies do not discriminate people and divide them into majority and minority. They fully acknowledge that children there are raised in loving atmosphere and reliable hands.Throughout our blog, we will be gradually discussing as much options as possible for LGBT parents to experience the joy of parenthood and achieve this with ease.