Gestational and Traditional Surrogacy

There are certain instances where the only way to become a parent is to use a surrogate mother.

Surrogacy is very common today, and it involves basically using a gestational carrier, a woman who has a normal uterus, to carry someone else's embryos to have a child. Many of our patients, gay couples, or women who have damaged uterus, will have to use surrogacy to have a child.

There are two types of surrogacies. There is traditional surrogacy, whereby sperm is used to insert inside the surrogate uterus to produce a pregnancy. Much simpler and much cheaper. And there is gestational surrogacy, whereby the surrogate has no genetic link to the child. In traditional surrogacy, the surrogate is using her own eggs and the sperm is producing the offspring. While in gestational surrogacy, you're using someone else's eggs and someone else's sperm to conceive and have a child. Gestation surrogacy is much more expensive because it involves in vitro fertilization, while traditional surrogacy involves simple intrauterine insemination.