easier for a friend to keep their emotional distance than it is for a family member, who’s at hand for every major holiday and birthday.
If you’re involving a friend — even a really good friend — in your future child’s creation, it’s very important to make sure all your legal Ps and Qs are in order. Friends break up more often than families do, and keeping this part of your friendship as more business than sentiment is essential.
Acting as a gestational carrier requires a huge time commitment, as well as a possible loss of income for a time period. Asking someone you know to be a carrier is asking a lot, but even so, a friend or relative who loves being pregnant — it’s really best if your carrier has already had a child — may jump at the chance.
Working with an agency
If you want to have a paid egg donor or gestational carrier, that is, someone that you don’t know, you’ll need to find an agency to work with. In some cases, this could be a local fertility clinic. Additionally, some agencies are devoted strictly to matching egg donors with recipients, or finding gestatonal carriers or surrogates. Lawyers who specialize in reproductive law may also work with certain agencies to find intended parents the right match. You can also look into agencies that work in other countries with women who donate eggs, act as gestational carriers, or serve as surrogates. Although this may be cheaper than working with an agency at home, a greater number of risks may be involved. In such cases, doing your research and having a solid legal plan in place is essential.
Drawing up a contract
The agency you choose to work with may already have a lawyer that handles all their legal paperwork. Although that makes things simpler, it doesn’t mean you can’t also have your own lawyer look over the contracts. Some issues that the contract should cover include, among others:
Monetary compensation
Insurance coverage, yours and the carrier’s
Contact information, including whether you’ll be able to be present at doctor’s appointments, the delivery, or other times during the pregnancy, in the case of a carrier or surrogate.
Creation of an escrow agent to handle money transfers between you.
What will happen if the baby has any health issues discovered during the pregnancy
Plans for the baby if your relationship dissolves for any reason, or if you die (yes, grim but essential)
Nutrition, travel, and lifestyle guidelines for your carrier, including how much say you’ll have in any or all of these things
You’ll also need to file a court order that establishes your child’s parentage so that your name can be placed on the birth certificate. This is called a pre-birth order. If you don’t have this done, you may need to adopt your own child after she’s born.
Deciding how involved you’ll be in the pregnancy
How involved you’ll be during the pregnancy should be spelled out in your legal documents. However, things can change during the pregnancy: You and your carrier may really hit it off and find yourselves going out to dinner once a week and calling each other on a regular basis. Or you may find that you’re not crazy about each other and keep contact to the bare minimum. If you’re dealing with a family member, you probably already have established routines for how often you see each other. In either case, realize that awkwardness wll probably be part of this new relationship.
Becoming comfortable with a stranger
It’s always a little strained when you’re getting to know someone new. It’s especially awkward when that person is carrying your child. This is something you really have to feel your way through; a legal document only covers so much. As the pregnancy goes on, you may feel more comfortable with each other and find that talking about constipation, swollen feet, and sex is more natural than you thought it would be. Or not.
It’s important to let your carrier take the lead on this, though. If she’s not comfortable letting you in on all the details of her personal life, you’ll have to accept that. If she wants to overshare and you’re really not that into knowing all the details of what she did last night, you may have to grin and bear it in order to maintain a good relationship. Don’t expect to be best friends right out of the gate. And don’t push for too much when you’re still basically strangers. Hopefully, over the next nine months, you’ll work out a comfortable balance between friendship and business relationship.
Maintaining boundaries with a friend or family member
Friends or family members can present a different sort of problem. With friends and family, you most likely have already set some boundaries in place in your lives, even though you might not think of it that way. When that person is carrying your baby, the rules may shift, sometimes to the point that one or the other of you isn’t comfortable with it. For example, your partner’s sister might not want both of you — or either of you — at her doctor’s appointments. Your best friend might not want to share all the details of her sex life with you now that she’s pregnant with your baby — even if she always did before.
Boundary setting won’t just involve your carrier. Your parents, other siblings and other friends may want to put their oars in the water and tell you how you should be handling things or what they think about the situation. Parents, in particular, often can’t seem to help but share their opinions about what’s going on in your life, especially when a new grandchild is in the offing. Think this through ahead of time, considering what you already know about your family or friends, and set limits, at least in your mind, on how much interference couched as advice will be acceptable.
Being Involved When You’re Not Able to Be Around
Sometimes, even in traditional mom-dad-and-baby families, you aren’t able to be around during a pregnancy. Your job might take you to another part of the country, or out of the country altogether. Dads today expect to play a much bigger role as a support person and active participant during pregnancy than they did a generation ago. Being unable to be as involved as you want can make for a difficult pregnancy, for both of you.
Fortunately, it’s never been easier to stay involved when you can’t be there physically, in most cases. No, it’s not the same as actually being there, but it’s better than it was 20 years ago, when today’s stay-in-touch technology was just a gleam in someone’s eye. With a little work, you can stay in the loop and involved during a long-distance pregnancy.
Keeping up to date when you’re out of town — or country
No doubt you already have the basics covered — setting up accounts on Facetime, Skype, Whatsapp, or Zoom, if you can. If you’re a servicemember, video chats are difficult, if not impossible. The timing can be off, especially if you’re on the other side of the world. You’re also presumably away to do a job, a job that may not be very flexible as far as sitting in the front of the phone or laptop goes. Getting your schedules synched can take some doing, especially if your partner is also still working on the other side of the world at a job without a lot of flexibility. And for some assignments, particularly in the military, you may be completely out of touch for weeks at a time.
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