The Interview

February 24, 2011:

Journal entry:

"Sandy from NWSC called me today, talked a little bit over the phone and scheduled a meeting/interview for next week! Ahh! This is really happening, isn't it? All of it went from a thought, to now meeting with one of the co-founders of the agency! I am going to be anxious until Tuesday! I just have to call my OB-GYN and have them send my medical records from the pregnancy and my laparoscopy over. She said she needed the records before/on Tuesday. Let's hope my OB office can make that happen!"


I was so excited to hear something! It'd been a week since I sent over the huge packet to Tabitha and I was starting to get anxious again.

Side note: I had a laparoscopy about 9 months prior due to my OB thinking I may have endometriosis. Thankfully, that was not the case. Having it would have "disqualified" me from being a surrogate, and also caused me to have a more difficult time getting pregnant myself in the future.

March 1, 2011:

Journal entry:

"Well, today is the big day! A meeting that could ultimately seal my fate of being able to actually do this. I brought pictures of Peyton and I to share, like she had asked. Most of the interview was with Sandy, the co-founder and also an adoption attorney. I think I was there for almost two hours. Big topics of conversation: 1) Termination of Pregnancy 2)Selective Reduction (which by the way, I had NO idea what that was). 


Before going to the interview, I knew we would talk about termination. Scariest. Subject. Ever. Personally, I think abortion is HORRIBLE and way too often used as a birth control method for far too many women. I did, however, agree if there were a health risk to the baby(ies) or to myself I would be open to termination. ONLY if there were a health risk. The same applies for selective reduction, if babies or me are at risk, totally ok. No health risk = NOT ok. 


I also met Tabitha, whom I had spoken with first, and Molly who is in charge of the financial aspect of it all. Speaking of finance, Sandy went over all the things that I, as I surrogate would get "compensated" for. WOW. That's all I could say."


Meeting Sandy and the team at NWSC was absolutely amazing. I could talk to them as if I had known them for years, and still to this day enjoy calling and chatting with them throughout the process.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the subject of selective reduction that was mentioned, here is a definition:

Selective reduction (or fetal reduction) is the practice of aborting one or more fetuses in a multifetal pregnancy, say quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy.


From what Sandy mentioned, the typical embryo transfer only includes 2 embryos so the likelihood of a triplet or quadruplet pregnancy would be very small. However, still a chance, hence the question.

When I left the NWSC office there was so much going through my mind. When I first signed up, I of course knew that there was some sort of compensation financially, but it was the furthest thing from my mind. I literally was in it simply to help provide happiness to a family, and any financial compensation was extra.

If you are curious, there is a generic surrogacy compensation form at the NWSC website. Here's a link:

http://www.nwsurrogacycenter.com/surrogate_mother_compensation.html