Surrogacy 101

How to Identify a "Bad" IVF Clinic - A Guide for Patients Going Through IVF Treatment

If you have been doing any research you know that IVF has become a big business today.

How can you protect yourself from poorly equipped inexperienced doctors, who set up IVF clinics just to make money? It can be very hard for patients to differentiate between a "good" IVF clinic and a "bad" IVF clinic because they all seem to be the same - and patients are not sophisticated enough to be able to make out which offers a better service.

For example, many IVF clinics will advertise that they have bought the newest machine and have the latest technology . However, these are often marketing gimmicks to get media publicity - they do not really help the patient or improve success rates in any way. In fact, many of these "high tech wonders" often end up collecting dust in the lab, because they are never used after the first flush of excitement over their novelty value dies down.

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. Just going by a clinic's reputation does not help (some big name clinics are just money making mills) - and even checking the success rates can lead you astray especially since they are 2 years old by the time the SART reports are available.

I feel the only effective solution is to be well-informed about what an IVF treatment cycle involves, so that you know the clinic you select provides state of the art technology.

Do they cryopreserve embryos?

Do they offer vitrification?
Do they offer blastocyst transfer?
Do they provide photographic documentation of your embryos?
Do they offer PGD ( preimplantation genetic diagnosis) and PGS (preimplantation genetic screening)


Here are some of the red flags which should warn you the clinic may not be very good.

They depend upon an out of town doctor who travels to the clinic for a few days every month to do the clinical procedures
They perform less than 100 IVF cycles every year
They do not have a full-time embryologist
They "batch patients" because they don't have the required expertise in-house and need to "import" qualified people for the treatment
They do not document their medical treatment protocols
They do not provide you with a medical treatment summary
They do not answer your questions
They do not provide you with photographs of your embryos

I feel the last is critically important. While the clinical outcome of an IVF cycle is always uncertain, since doctors cannot control embryo implantation, producing good quality embryos is a function of the IVF clinic, and correlates directly with the skill and expertise of the IVF lab. Good IVF clinics take pride in their skills - and by documenting the embryos they produce in their lab, they can show their patients that they are transparent and skilled!

 

Of course there are exceptions in every situation such as a good clinic may be small and only preform 50 transfers....or they may batch patients to make the cost more affordable. But there is no excuse for lack of documentation, unanswered questions and not providing medical treatment summaries. Do your research and then decide what clinic is the best fit for you. 

 

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6 Tips for Losing Your Surrogacy Weight a Guest Post by Samantha Giermek of Made in the USA Surrogacy

No one wants to have a baby for another family and be left with over 40 lbs., sometimes closer to 100 lbs- however, as women, this is something that we must deal with!

So what is the best way to make sure the baby weight will fall off and quickly? Here are 5 tips for losing your surrogacy pregnancy weight.

#1 – Pump Your Breast Milk, and Regularly

It’s no small secret that breast milk has many nutrients for babies- essentially all of the nutrients they need to grow and maintain their health through 6-12 months.

However, if you are a surrogate mother or you would like to become a surrogate mom – what do you do if you are unable to breastfeed the child due to the fact that it is not your child?

Go get a breast-pump and pump as often as you would a child. We recommend every few hours.

The reason being – every mom will burn around 200-500 calories per day just by breast-pumping and breastfeeding.

Breast pumping or Breastfeeding will cause the fat in your body to literally be sucked out to feed the child. Many women report that breastfeeding has helped them lose the baby weight in as little as 3 weeks.

Give it a try – pump consistently and regularly to keep up the milk supply, thereby keeping up the weight loss and caloric deficit.

Another question related to this breastfeeding/pumping is whether or not a woman should increase her daily caloric intake in order to do this method.

Our suggestion is that if you are trying to lose the baby weight, your focus should mainly be on maintaining your normal caloric intake.

It may be hard to understand why you don’t need to “up your calories”- but when you think about taking in more calories to compensate for calories lost during breastfeeding– surrogates have more of a chance of gaining weight (since it’s easy to overcompensate the number of calories lost, and therefore eat more than this amount).

#2 – Find a Yoga Class

It seems so simple, but it’s totally true- group fitness classes and Yoga classes are an excellent way for a surrogate mother to lose her surrogacy weight.

Not only is Yoga a good way to deal with the emotional feelings after your surrogacy (through meditation), but your body will experience healing in the heated room and with stretches.

Yoga and instructed classes are also a helpful way to lose baby weight because as a busy mom who just gave birth – you don’t have time or energy to go to the gym and “figure out” what your workout will be.

You need an instructor to take the burden of “what to do” off your shoulders so you can have a great workout.

#3 – Eat Properly

It goes without saying, but you won’t lose weight without eating properly. Not to mention, being a surrogate and having the emotional stress of hormones running through your body will not help your body to trigger weight loss.

If you go straight for the donuts that you were craving all throughout your pregnancy, you may find they won’t be treating you right while trying to achieve your pre-pregnancy weight.

Unfortunately, you have a whole other task on your hands, losing the baby weight. If you maintained a healthy diet (protein-rich foods, and properly proportioned meals) while you were a surrogate, it should be easy to maintain after-birth of the surrogate child until you are at your pre-pregnancy weight.

Fill your diet with nutrient-rich foods such as the following:

• Kale
• Spinach
• Assorted Berries (blackberries/blueberries)
• Avocados
• Eggs/Egg whites
• Bell Peppers and onions
• Protein filled meats and grains such as fish, chicken, quinoa,

#4 – Get Checkups with Your Doctor

At Made in the USA Surrogacy, we know how hard it is for surrogate mothers going to all of their appointments constantly- what a pain it is for 10-12 months!

The last thing you may want to do is saunter back into the doctor’s office and wait for an appointment. But doing some blood work after a few weeks could help you understand your hormone levels, where there is a need for improvement in your diet, and how you may be able to change those numbers.

If you’re off in one area – it may prevent you from reaching your weight loss goals!

Recently, we have had a few surrogate mothers tell us that they’ve been stressed through the process and after birth, it feels a little out of control getting back to their life. We suggested getting some blood work for cortisol – it turns out that high cortisol can lead to increased levels of belly fat and all kinds of imbalance!

This can easily be addressed with an adrenal supplement or other treatment that your doctor suggests.

If you’re not losing your pregnancy weight, don’t hesitate to take another trip to the doctor’s office.

#5 – Find a Personal Trainer

Unfortunately for most of us, we are lazy at attempting to lose weight! Between managing our kids, going to work, cooking meals and bedtime routines, losing weight becomes our last priority.

Thankfully there is something called a “personal trainer” at your local gym or even personal trainers who are independent of a gym.

It’s likely that 50% of surrogate mothers will need the help of someone else on their weight loss journey, so why not use some of the compensation you received to offset this weight gain?

#6 – If you haven’t already- use a calorie tracker to track your eating

The 21^st century has seen the likes of so many technological advances and wonderful innovations. One of the best daily calorie trackers is an app called “My Fitness Pal” with the full backing of Under Armour fitness clothing company.

We encourage everyone to use this app to track their daily caloric intake, as it is not only a healthy practice to do so, it’s literally a fundamental part of losing any surrogacy pregnancy weight!

How can you lose weight if you don’t know how many calories are in your food? My Fitness Pal has repeatedly shown to have the widest database of foods so that you will not be disappointed when you decide to commit to losing that baby weight!

Made in the USA Surrogacy is committed to finding quality surrogate candidates. If you think you would make an excellent candidate for surrogacy, you love being pregnant, and you’re ready to embark on a journey to give back – please fill in this surrogacy contact form or give us a call today!

If you’re a parent looking for a surrogate or have just started your journey to find a surrogate, we would love to hear from you. Please fill out our parent inquiry form to find a surrogate today!

 

SAMANTHA GIERMEK

Welcome to Made in the USA Surrogacy Blog. I’m Samantha, an experienced surrogate, mother of 2, wife, massage therapist, Psychology major, and lover of family! I’m a woman of faith and passionate about all things family, babies, and doing business well.