Surrogacy, Hospitals and NICU

Where the surrogate mother is going to deliver your baby is a very delicate topic that you should talk with her from the beginning. There are surrogate mother that want to have a natural delivery at home, other that wish to do it in a midwifery and not in an hospital because it´s more comfortable for them. This is an important topic that sometimes is not discussed in advance and that can create a lot of anxiety afterwards.

hospital surrogate mother

Sometimes the surrogate mother lives near a smaller community hospital with a nice L&D unit but no NICU and the nearest NICU (level 4) is an hour away. What you can do? Many Intended Parents consider in-house NICU non-negotiable, even if the pregnancy is singleton and there’s no apparent increased risk. Why is this? Abundance of caution coupled with many Intended Parents having histories of trauma or loss? Or concern for increased risk of complications with IVF pregnancies? Basically – is it an emotional decision, or one supported by numbers?

Some agencies put in their contracts that all surrogate mothers deliver at a hospital with a NICU – not up for discussion but sometimes it´s up to the intended parents and even it can be  an emotional decision because sometimes  it is not based on statistics or data. Intended parents feel like everything that could have gone wrong in the past few years has gone wrong, and that scares them. They want to have every protection in place in case something unexpected happens. It’s their way of protecting their baby.

Although it can be emotional decisions you need to think about quick transfer capabilities between hospital and what that really means (time to make the decision, get the flight crew dispatched to the room, load the baby on the ambulance, sign off on paperwork, etcetera) , you need to know that the idea that the decision is made and suddenly you are in the air and your child is where they need to be perhaps is not 100% accurate.

Discuss openly this subject with your surrogate mother and ensure both are on the same page.

More info about surrogacy here