Preparing for Surrogacy Delivery
When you prepare for the delivery of your own baby there is a list of “To do’s.” You get the nursery ready, you buy baby clothes, you have a baby shower, you pack your hospital bag with clothes and blankets and install your carseat for the ride home from the hospital. With a Surrogacy birth however, your “To Do” list is radically different. There is no baby’s nursery to set up, or car seat to install. So how do you prepare for a delivery as a surrogate mother? A birth is after all, still a birth.
-Tour the Hospital with your IPs.
This is fun to do if your IPs are local, or are able to arrive a few weeks before the delivery of the baby. Having a tour of the hospital and labor and delivery rooms helps both parties to feel more comfortable on the big day. If your IPs cannot come out to tour the hospital, it might be nice to take photos or video for them and then send it to them after your tour.
-Take a Lamaze class together
A Lamaze class would be fun to take together to give the IPs an idea of what to expect to see you go through physically with the birth. Many IPs are expecting their first child ever through surrogacy and therefore do not have experience with what to expect. Taking the class together lets a third party explain it, and allows some understanding of just how amazing child birth will be.
Touring the hospital and share the experience!
– Pack your bag for YOU
Your hospital bag will be packed with things for you! Without a baby to be in constant care of, you will have time to take a long shower, or even to put makeup on (if you so choose.) I enjoyed packing things like my iPad, or my book to read. I even made little goodie bags with things like pens and hair ties and granola bars for my attending nurses.
-Freezer Meals and visiting friends
The week before my Surrogate baby was born I spent a day or two looking up freezer meal recipes and preparing meals that would be easy to cook while I was healing. I may not have a baby to care for, but I will still be having all the pains of post delivery. It was helpful and appreciated when friends stopped by with meals for our family. If you don’t have a group to help organize this, the freezer meals will greatly relieve some of the physical strain of preparing dinner when you’re home recovering.
Written by Corinne Oestreich
Corinne is on her second journey with SAI and has just been matched with her IP’s!
