Episode 168 – How do I support my surrogate?

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I support my surrogate. There are many ways for IPs, intended parents, to support their surrogate and her family. And they will depend on the different stages of your journey, her wants and needs, how far away from you she lives, did you know each other before surrogacy, and the communication style of all team members. In Australia, we do altruistic surrogacy. So the payment for a surrogate is not a financial one made with the currency of money. Rather, it’s an emotional payment and the currency

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is time, friendship and love. Here are some things to think about. How was she juggling days off work to attend appointments? How can you help in terms of loss of wages, helping with childminding, school pickups? What medications and vitamins are needed? What maternity clothing and underwear? Can you help with this research and purchasing? This often helps to take some weight off her plate as it can be time consuming to plan all of this.

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And of course, paying for all of these items isn’t expected support from IPs on this journey. What is her preferred method of communication? Text, phone calls, time in person, heartfelt cards. Consider the five love languages and do that quiz together as a team. How can you repay her for her time? Taking her kids to the park, helping with chores, thinking ahead to help with logistics, things like doing grocery shopping. How can you help with food? Perhaps batch cooking.

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preparing food for her children’s lunch boxes, paying for takeaway when she’s too ill or tired to cook. How can you help her physically? Vouchers for massages, physio, water therapy, hiring a cleaner, household chores, folding, washing, things like that. And how can you support her partner? Babysitting the kids so that they can have a date night, helping with a project around their house to free up some of their time, and also spending time together, of course. An example from another surrogate.

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When pregnant, she took the test for gestational diabetes and it took up to four hours of her day. Not only that, but it’s pretty yucky to have to do all of that as well as the multiple blood tests. I didn’t do it for my own second pregnancy or when I was a surrogate, but each to their own. Let’s say the surrogate worked part-time, so she did the test on a day off from work while her kids were at school. This means the IPs didn’t have to cover her lost wages, but what about her lost time?

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So that’s six hours of her child free time. What would she usually be doing in those six hours? Washing clothes, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, life admin types of jobs too. Are you able to repay your surrogate with time to make up for this, help her out in some way? So that’s one example of the logistics to navigate if your surrogate is local to you. There are very different logistical and financial commitments that need to be made if you’re interstate or long distance from each other. These ideas and more,

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can be found on the websites of some of our leading psychologists who specialize in surrogacy. One is Narelle Dickinson in Brisbane. Narelle is the leading clinician with Lotus Health and Psychology. And on her website, there’s a section called Surrogacy Counseling, where you can find more ideas to discuss as a team. If you head to our Surrogacy Australia website and the section called webinars, within there is something called Further Reading.

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And there’s a list of links, which is a bit like homework if you like. Remember, I’m a high school maths teacher as my other job, so I issue homework. And in that list, you’ll find something called discussion topics. And that’s a great thing to work through as a surrogacy team in the lead up to the mandatory counselling, but also to revisit about ideas about how to support your surrogate along the way. Supporting a surrogate in Australia is a tough gig for IPs. There’s no doubt about it.

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It will cost you a lot of money to do surrogacy and it will also cost you a lot of time. So before you decide surrogacy in Australia is the right path for you, consider if you also have the time for this because that is what your surrogate is looking for. Time, friendship and love. If you are finding these discussions useful, I would love it if you could leave a review wherever you listen to this show and you can find more information at surrogacyaustralia.org.

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If you’re looking for more guidance on how to navigate surrogacy in Australia, please check out SASS Surrogacy Australia Support Service so you can have me as your navigation tool on this journey. Until next time, welcome to the village.