The Surrogacy Source: How many times is too many to be a surrogate?
Q: I was wondering how many times is too many to be a surrogate? I have a friend who is going on her 5th time and I wonder if that’s healthy especially when she has already had 4 kids of her own!
A: This is a very good question but one for the IVF clinics rather than a surrogacy agency. As a surrogacy agency, we adhere to guidelines set forth by medical professionals in our field. The standard that we follow is that a surrogate candidate cannot have more than 5 prior pregnancies to become a surrogate for a 6th and final pregnancy. We discuss this with our partner fertility practices, but 6 total is our maximum. If you’ve had 6 pregnancies already you may not qualify to become a surrogate mother.
Needless to say there are many factors to be taken into consideration. If a woman has a great track record of easy pregnancies and births, has not had more then three c-sections, and is not over the age of 40 then she may still be a good candidate for surrogacy. We would certainly screen her as we do all of our surrogate mothers but we would leave the health issue up to the IVF doctors to decide. The surrogate mother’s health ALWAYS comes first and we would never do anything to jeopardize that! We keep in mind that our intended parents are spending a lot of money on the surrogacy process and we want the very best, healthiest and dedicated women for our intended parents.
