I’ve come to think of choosing a surrogate as a series of stages, with each one building upon the last, gradually moving you from loss toward hope, and from searching for the “perfect match” to building the right relationship.
Often there is an outward focus on finding the “right” woman, but with that focus, some important preparatory steps can be missed. In reality, the journey begins by looking inward.
Am I ready?
Before all the logistical steps and assessments, it’s worth considering your own level of readiness. Not that anyone can be completely ready for something they have never done before, but certain questions are useful to consider:
Have I taken time to grieve what brought me here?
Have I begun to shift from surviving infertility to preparing for parenthood?
Am I emotionally ready to enter a relationship that requires trust, vulnerability, and shared uncertainty?
A lot of patience and discipline is required to not rush through these questions while you’re dealing with a lot of tiredness — the tiredness of repeated medical interventions, the waiting, the hoping, and the loss. The thought of finally moving forward towards a different ending can offer much-needed relief.
But its worth slowing down, as this person will carry your baby and has the potential to form one of the most unique and meaningful relationships of your lives.
Stage One: Making Space for Grief
Almost nobody arrives at surrogacy because it was their first choice.
Surrogacy is usually reached after multiple rounds of failed IVF, miscarriages, recurrent implantation failure, and sometimes years of hoping that the next treatment would be the “one.”
Yet, before all these feelings can be resolved, many intended parents move to choose a surrogate before they’ve had time to fully acknowledge what they’re leaving behind: their ideas and story of the pregnancy and birth they imagined.
While this step isn’t about “getting over it,” it can be important to rest, even for a few weeks, to feel what you need to feel and to acknowledge the tremendous flexibility it has taken to choose a new path.
Making space for this is important because grief that isn’t acknowledged has an uncanny way of showing up later. Some of the same feelings you’ve experienced before can begin to surface as anxiety, a need for control, unrealistic expectations, or difficulty trusting the process.
After all, it can be difficult to hand over something as important as a pregnancy to someone else. A delayed response to a text may create far more anxiety than expected. A surrogate making a choice differently from how you would make it yourself may feel unexpectedly threatening. Or the excitement of finally being matched may come with sadness, or even resentment, as this is not how you imagined becoming a parent.
These reactions do not necessarily mean that something is wrong. Sometimes they are simply signs that experiences from the journey that came before are precipitating into the one that is beginning.
The goal before matching with a surrogate is to recognize that grief and hope can exist together.
Stage Two: Moving From Urgency to Intention
“I just want this to work. I mean, we’ve waited SOOO long, been through multiple rounds of sh@t. I need to be done with this.” — Tracy
You probably recognize this feeling. When people have experienced repeated disappointment, it’s understandable to feel a sense of urgency.
It’s not about getting rid of that feeling but rather making sure your actions aren’t being driven by overwhelm. Urgency can quietly become the loudest voice in the room.
In reality, this can manifest as a question: “Can we make this work?” rather than “Is this the right match?” Those are very different questions.
The best decisions come when there is enough emotional space to be curious and honest rather than simply relieved.
Stage Three: Looking Beyond the Checklist
Of course, medical screening matters, previous pregnancy matters, and clinic approval matters. But those things don’t build a relationship.
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Surrogacy is one of the few experiences where two families walk together through enormous uncertainty.
The real questions become:
Can we communicate when things don’t go according to plan?
Can we repair our misunderstandings?
Can we tolerate uncertainty together?
In short, psychological flexibility often matters far more than similarity. You don’t need someone who shares your hobbies, but someone who shares your willingness to navigate the unexpected with honesty and respect.
Stage Four: Listening to Your Nervous System
After meeting a surrogate, I often ask intended parents a question they don’t expect:
“How did you feel when you left the meeting?”
Not what you thought, but what you felt.
Did you feel calmer? Did you feel heard?
We can sometimes register a sense of emotional safety or unease before we can easily put into words why. And while that feeling shouldn’t make the entire decision for you, it does deserve your attention. Understanding what feels comfortable or familiar to us, and why, can give us useful information when making this decision.
Stage Five: Knowing When to Stop Searching
Surrogacy matching can create the illusion that if you ask enough questions, read enough profiles, and meet enough potential surrogates, eventually you will feel clear and pick the right one.
This makes sense given the context. After infertility, uncertainty feels traumatic. So much has already gone wrong that it makes sense to want reassurance that this time you are making exactly the right decision. As a result, it can become tempting to keep looking for the person who removes every doubt.
But there is no perfect surrogate, just as there is no completely predictable pregnancy or surrogacy journey.
At some point, choosing requires a different psychological task: moving from evaluating to trusting. That doesn’t mean talking yourself into a match that doesn’t feel right. It means recognizing the difference between a genuine concern and the understandable wish for absolute certainty after years of uncertainty.
Something to ask yourself:
Is there something about this person that genuinely concerns me, or am I frightened because choosing her means I finally have something to lose again?
Sometimes readiness isn’t the absence of doubt.
The Journey Before the Journey
People often ask me what makes a good surrogate match. While there isn’t a standard answer, I usually respond with a question:
“Who are you now, before you begin looking?”
I ask this question because choosing a surrogate isn’t only about finding the right person, it’s about understanding what you are also bringing into the relationship—your grief, hopes, biases, fears and fantasies, and your understandable wish for things finally to go right.
The goal isn’t to arrive at matching perfectly—that’s unrealistic—but rather to know your feelings well enough that they don’t drive the bus for you.
And that work begins long before the first profile is ever opened.
