The six stages of the surrogacy path (a map for the overwhelmed)
Surrogacy is not one decision — it's a series of seasons. Here's the whole path, stage by stage, so you know where you are and what's coming.
When you first start looking into surrogacy, everything arrives at once: agencies, lawyers, clinics, acronyms, costs, and a thousand personal stories that don't quite match yours. It helps to know that nearly every path moves through the same six seasons, and that you only ever have to live in one of them at a time.
1. Researching
This is the season of tabs: dozens of browser tabs. You're learning the difference between gestational and traditional surrogacy, what agencies do (and what they charge), and whether this path is right for your family. Nothing you read here commits you to anything. Questions that feel "too basic" are the exact questions everyone else had too.
2. Matching
Matching is where surrogacy stops being a concept and becomes a relationship. Whether through an agency or independently, you're looking for the person you'll trust with everything. It's part interview, part friendship, part leap of faith, and the right match matters more than the fast match. Timelines here have been getting longer industry-wide; that's normal, not a sign something is wrong with you.
3. Legal & medical preparation
Contracts, screenings, and clearances. It's the least romantic stage and one of the most important: a good legal agreement is an act of care for both sides. Every state treats surrogacy differently, so this is where specialized attorneys earn their fee.
4. IVF & transfer
Cycles, medications, appointments, and holding your breath. Transfers don't always work the first time: a fact that surprises many intended parents and weighs on many carriers. If a transfer does not take, know this: it is common, it is not anyone's fault, and grief and hope can share a room.
5. Pregnancy
Forty weeks carried together. The relationship you built in matching becomes daily life: scan photos, milestone celebrations, and figuring out how much closeness feels right for everyone. This is also where logistics come back: birth plans, hospital policies, travel.
6. Birth & after
The moment everything pointed toward, and then the season after it, which nobody prepares you for. Recovery for the carrier, first weeks for the parents, and the question of what this extraordinary relationship becomes next. Many of these relationships grow into lifelong friendships. All of them deserve a soft landing.
Where to go from here
Wherever you are on this map, there are people a few steps ahead of you who remember exactly how it felt. That is what the Extraordinary Seeds community is for: rooms organized by these very stages, where you can ask anything, with your name or without it.