On a personal note, this is a difficult episode for me as I wish that I could have done this, where I live here in the United Kingdom. However with the legal situation and the challenges around surrogacy within the UK. At the time, I was lucky enough to be able to go to the United States, to create my family.

In USA, I had a dedicated coordinator at the Surrogacy Agency, that told me it would normally take about eight months to receive a surrogate to profile.

To my surprise, 6 weeks later, a surrogate profile popped into my inbox, filling me with a lot of emotions, of course most of them were happy feelings, and I would be lying if I didn't mention, that I was also anxious.

As advertising to find a surrogate in the UK is illegal, I was worried about how they had found someone so quickly. I had been expecting a longer wait, so receiving this profile a lot sooner than the estimated 8 months, a lot of things were going through my mind. Mainly: had they sent through the first profile they could?

Had they curated the match?

The profile contained high-level information about her and her family as well as insight into why she wanted to become a surrogate. The one thing that caught my attention and made me really like her profile was, that she had a friend who had been a surrogate to help a couple have a family, and thought, that it was an amazing thing to do.

As after reading her profile, I was filled with excitement. And it was such a wonderful feeling as I could already imagine holding my babies.

Working with an agency included a video call for us to get to know each other. Something that would have made me happier, was, if the agency had been on the call to moderate our conversation, as that way, I would have been less nervous asking questions.

I don't know if this was the agency's protocol. As we both needed to approve each other. Were they letting us have an uninfluenced conversation on a genuine level? I was nervous as to this point.

It was all still a paperwork exercise, and then the minute her face came on the call I felt relieved. She was so smiley and had a lovely persona that shone through the screen, which just made me understand what an amazing human being she was to even consider carrying someone else's babies.

An hour after our call, I got an email from the agency saying that she loved our conversation and that she was thrilled to be our surrogate.

Like egg donors. Surrogates need to be medically screened. And this is where the agency stepped in again, to work with the IVF clinic. Even though the agency is in Boston, the clinic in Connecticut and the surrogate in Phoenix, they've arranged all the logistics for her to fly to the clinic for a one day in-person visit. This visit involved a full physical examination drug, alcohol, and blood tests, checking her uterus to make sure that everything was optimal for a pregnancy. Although the screening sounds very invasive, it can empower people about their own health.

With the clinic visit over and all the medical screening done, she flew home, and two days later, the agency sends me an email confirming that she had passed the rigorous testing.

The clinic did a great job on coaching her as to what to do as she was doing this at home.

They checked in with her every week to see how she was doing on an emotional level, and she was physically supported by a pre-approved local doctor who checked how her uterus lining was growing.

After finishing a month of treatment. The agency arranged for her to fly to the IVF clinic two days before the embryo transfer.

Questions to ask yourself:

1) Are you mentally prepared for a surrogate profile to come into your inbox any day after you sign up?

2) Have you got some questions that you would like to ask your surrogates?

3) Will you fly to the clinic to meet the surrogate for the embryo transfer?