Hospital's Role in Surrogacy

Surrogacy is generally a medical practice, even though some legal squabbles could also turn it into a legal matter. The general bulk of the procedure is purely medical. The role of the intended couple, the surrogate, and the agency has been discussed at length in other articles already. But we often overlook what the role of the hospital is in this whole process especially in the delivery process.

The hospital plays a very major role in every surrogate pregnancy. Although the IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) is done in some clinic, most of the testing and ultrasound scanning would probably occur inside the hospital. This is not the biggest part the hospital plays in a surrogate pregnancy though. That occurs when the surrogate mother is about to deliver the baby.

There should already be word sent ahead of the arrival of the surrogate mother and that this is a surrogate birth. That should already have been handled by the surrogacy agency that handled this woman's pregnancy. The hospital would then seek to inform the intended parents of the impending birth just to make sure that they know. Although, in most cases the surrogacy agency itself is responsible enough to do this on their own and the intended couple also arrives with the surrogate mother. This is because the intended couple would usually want to take part in their baby's birth. Even if it is not the mother herself who is giving birth, the experience can still create a lasting memory and a special bond between mother and child.

The delivery should then be attended to just like any other delivery, with a full team of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to assist in the whole procedure. Once the baby is born it would be the hospital's responsibility to put identifiers to the baby. This is a little bit more complicated than usual births since there are 2 sets of parents; the surrogate mother, and the intended couple. Hospitals have created a method to deal with these new set of challenges. They created a method called double banding. Instead of tying 1 band around the baby's arm, they tie two. One is for the surrogate mother and other for the names that appear in the pre-birth order, which has been secured by the surrogacy agency from the court.

The baby is then taken away into the nursery so that it can undergo the proper tests necessary for a newborn baby. After this, follows a more or less standard procedure with the surrogacy agency taking care of the extra paperwork needed to facilitate the custody of the baby and taking care of the surrogate mother to make sure that all her needs are met.

Having a surrogacy pregnancy can be long and difficult, but everyone has a role to play in this struggle to provide a loving couple the child that they have always wanted. The hospital is just another member of the team that made all this possible.