If you can’t afford a surrogacy agency, then I will teach you how to find a surrogate on your own. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Finding a surrogate independently requires good old-fashioned hard work, patience and luck. You will have to become your own public relations agency and get comfortable telling your story.
How to find a surrogate on your own
1. Tell everyone you know that you’re trying to find a surrogate
IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE, THIS WOULD BE THE MOST IMPORTANT! Share your interest in pursuing surrogacy with friends and family one-on-one as you see people and ask if they know of anyone who might be interested, which will also serve to ask them indirectly as well. If people don’t know of your struggles, don’t know that you are trying to build your family and if they don’t know that you are specifically looking for a surrogate; how on earth would they offer to help or connect you with the right person? The more information, the better. People really do want to help. They will emotionally connect with your story and will want to help you. If you can’t share your story and intentions far and wide, you are stacking the odds against yourself. Many intended parents use a family member, a friend or a friend of a friend as their surrogate. They got the word out and someone volunteered. This is where the luck part comes in, but we aren’t all that lucky, so if not, keep reading.
2. Talk to your clinic
Make sure your clinic knows that you intend to pursue surrogacy and you’re looking for a surrogate. Ask them if they know of anyone interested.
3. Post on Social Media
Post about it on social media. This requires you to be open about it, but if you want to find a surrogate on your own, you will have to break out of your comfort zone.
4. Post on surrogacy articles
Set up a Google alert for surrogacy and check out articles in major newspapers, magazines or websites published online regarding surrogacy. If it allows comments, say that you are looking for a surrogate and share your URL or email. A friend did this for me and I was contacted by seven women right after she did that. They were all over the country and who knows how serious they were, but it opened many doors.
5. Consider creating a website
You can use wordpress.com, which is free and easy. Use this to market yourselves to potential surrogates. We created a website to market ourselves for potential surrogates and for adoption matches. My surrogate found me via my personal blog because I wrote an article about how to pursue surrogacy independently in Virginia. How did I know? Because I had been through the whole process with a failed attempt. See below for the comment she left on my site and then shortly after, she sent me a private message once she realized we were no longer matched.
6. Create a Facebook page
Create a Facebook page and ask friends/family to share — we had 300 likes in 3 days. (A bunch of strangers liked our page, which was perfect because it expanded our reach.)
7. Make a pitch to your local media
Make a pitch to local media (TV, magazines and newspapers). Share your infertility story as a means of infertility awareness. You never know who might be watching and want to help.
8. Join my free independent surrogacy meet-up group
I created a low-compensation surrogacy matching group on Facebook to help intended parents and gestational carriers find one another. (Mention this blog post when answering the questions to join for quicker admittance into the group.) The group is an unregulated, informal gathering place, so use good judgment. It’s geared towards low-compensation matches, which should help as well. Low compensation means on the lower end of what you would pay or reimburse a surrogate. Also, you can search for other Facebook groups on surrogacy.
9. Post on Surrogacy forums
There are many forums and I checked them out, but never felt good about using them. These sites seemed so spammy and the surrogates there seemed to be in it for the money only. Not only could we not afford a high rate, but we didn’t want someone who was only doing it for the money. I never could get into these websites, but there might be some decent ones out there.
Finding a surrogate is hard, but don’t give up
Finding a surrogate can be frustrating because sometimes despite your best efforts, you can’t do anything to move the process along. This is why I said you will need patience. It took us a year and a half to find a surrogate and get started. In the end, we got lucky with our surrogate, but that first year and a half was fraught with many failed matches and heartache. We thought it would never happen.
