Episode 1: Gestational Surrogacy Basics

Join Carey Flamer-Powell, Founder and CEO of Surrogacy Mentor and Marielle Schuberth, Intake Coordinator for Surrogacy Mentor, as they discuss: 

• Their personal experiences as gestational surrogates
• The basics of how gestational surrogacy works
• How they help surrogates navigate the surrogacy process at Surrogacy Mentor

Let's normalize surrogacy through education and open discussion! 

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• Take our easy 2 minute surrogacy quiz to see if you qualify!
• Share this podcast with the hashtag #NormalizeSurrogacy 
• Contact us with questions or comments at hello@surrogacymentor.com 

Transcript

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Carey Flamer-Powell 0:03

Well welcome everyone to our very first episode of surrogacy mentor podcast. I am Carrie flamer Powell an experienced gestational surrogate, a former surrogacy agency owner, and the founder of Surrogacy Mentor. Also with me is Marielle Schuberth, three time gestational surrogate, and the Surrogate Intake Coordinator for Surrogacy Mentor. Hi, we're really doing this. We are. Our goal on this podcast today is simply to introduce gestational surrogacy, what it is and a little bit about how it works. So I'm going to start off by just giving a very brief description of what it is. And then I also want to give a little bit of a bio on myself and Marielle for everyone listening and watching to understand what we've done in the surrogacy world and why we kind of know what we're talking about a little bit. So in general, a very basic description of what gestational surrogacy is. Gestational surrogacy is when a woman becomes pregnant through IVF with someone else's biological child and carries that pregnancy for either that person or that couple. And I'll get into the specifics of what that means and why I'm being very intentional about saying gestational and biological and all of these things. So let me just tell you a little bit about myself and then I'm going to let Marielle jump in and tell us about her three surrogacy journeys, and her experiences. So a little bit about myself. So I have been with my wife for 18 years. We are 18 years in may of this year, 2022. We have a 10 year old little girl that I carried. So we used my egg and we used the sperm of an anonymous sperm donor. So through that, I was like, wow, this is really amazing that someone else helped us have our child. The sperm donor, you know, didn't even know us was totally anonymous and they did this and that's amazing and I'd love to be able to help another family. So I researched ways and I found egg donation and surrogacy. I don't want to be an egg donor because I don't want to be biologically connected to a child that I'm not raising. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think egg donors are amazing, but for me personally, it was really important for me to not have the biological connection. So egg donation was out for me. Plus at the time I was 36 and that was definitely too old to be an egg donor anyway. So I found gestational surrogacy and like most people I thought, wow, surrogacy. You know, I have to carry this baby and it's going to be my biological child. I was thrilled to find out that was not the case. And long story short, I found an amazing lesbian couple that, for medical reasons on both of their sides could not carry a pregnancy. However, they had created embryos with their eggs and a friend's sperm, and I was able to carry their little boy who is now. Wow, what year are we in? He's going to be eight years. So I was able to carry him. And when I was eight months pregnant for that surrogacy pregnancy, I to back up just a little, I was actually, that was what we call an independent journey, meaning my intended parents that the female couple, and I, we did this surrogacy without the help of an agency. We did it all ourselves, independent of an agency. And we'll talk about what that means and how that's different other episodes of the podcast. So carried their child eight months pregnant decided I wanted to start my own agency and run things the way that I felt things weren't being run with the agencies that I had interviewed. So ran an agency called all families surrogacy out of Oregon for just over six years. And You can look on my bio on our website to find out all about that agency, but we became really well known and very successful. And I am very proud of the work that we did. And through that learned so much through the hundreds of people that we were able to help build their families. And that has now led me to, after selling that agency has now led me to starting surrogacy mentor, where our only goal. Is to help surrogate applicants match with reputable, ethical surrogacy agencies so that they can have a safe, ethical, and enjoyable surrogacy journey. So that's where we are today. And Marielle, if you would like to introduce yourself and tell us about your journeys in brief, as well as how you came to surrogacy mentor.

Marielle Schuberth 5:01

All right. Well, I guess here we go. So my name's Marinell Schuberth, I'm the surrogate intake coordinator with surrogacy mentor. I actually met Carrie when I'm on my second surrogacy journey when I was with her agency, all families and both of my last two surrogacy journeys, which I like to refer to as my dream journeys said from heaven and Kerry and angels above we're through all family surrogacy So with that being said, I've done three journeys. My first journey was for a pair of domestic parents through a different agency. And when I first kind of started looking into my surrogacy stuff, you know, I looked and Google was wonderful and I was under the impression that bigger was better. So I picked an agency that had was very big. And I found out after. My first journey that I definitely wanted something a little more personalized to me. I didn't want to just feel like a number. And we all know that there's anything wrong with big agencies. They're big for a reason, but it wasn't what I was looking for. Kind of in my next journeys, which led me to all families. I also really wanted to carry forward. Members of the LGBTQ community. And with that agency, that was a big focus for them. And I thought that was awesome. And that kind of what I was looking for of my journey. So my last two journeys were actually four, two sets of dads. One in France, one in Israel, and I will say. They were exactly kind of what I was looking for out of my journeys, from everything from matching on down to labor and delivery. And now just the contact and just seeing these awesome families that are so in love with these babies, it just, everything was great. So after that, Yeah, kind of taking a relaxing chill. If I could do more surrogacies, I would do at a hundred more times. I love it. But my OB said no more. So I was you know, again, I always say this is almost kismet. I was starting to look into what can I do to kind of stay plugged into the surrogacy world now that I can't carry anymore. And I was literally kind of looking at stuff online and then. I get a message from Carey asking me if I kind of want to dive into this new venture and help educate and empower women through surrogacy and really helped kind of shape their beginning of their journey so that they can kind of go into everything really knowing kind of what's going on. No, that they're going to agencies that aren't going to treat them like a number. And I think that is just such an amazing way to still be part of surrogacy and journeys, and really just kind of helping sets women off into their journeys, like the best way that they can with all of their questions answered and knowing that they're in good hands with wherever they're going. So it's been a really cool thing to be a part of. And I love it too.

Carey Flamer-Powell 7:38

Yay. Well, I'm so glad you're with surrogacy mentor and I loved having you with all families. You're amazing to work with as a surrogate and amazing to work with here. So, and you just gave me a really good idea for a future podcast episode. I'm going to write it down really quick before I forget it because I am 45. And so the brain isn't quite as. My memory, isn't quite as good as it used to be. So I'm going to write this down, but I'm not going to give it away right now because I want it to be a surprise, but it's such a good topic. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So. Let's go back to the description of gestational surrogacy. So the reason that I was being really intentional about emphasizing the words, biological and genetic and just station all and IVF is because there's a misconception and it's understandable. There's a general misconception among, I would say the majority of people around the world, but definitely in America. That when you say surrogate, you immediately think. The woman is carrying a baby for which her egg was used. Therefore she's the biological mother. And then she's choosing to give up that child as a surrogate quote unquote. And that is not what we're talking about. That is what is currently referenced as traditional surrogacy and that. Still still practiced in America, but very rarely. The overwhelming majority of surrogacies in America are gestational surrogacy seas. And again, just to recap the difference here, the difference. With gestational surrogacy, the embryos are created at a fertility clinic using IVF and the genetic material of either one or both parents or. Donors or a mixture of a donor and a biological parent. So and Mario is going to give some examples of sort of how some of those embryos can be created. What sort of donor genetic materials combinations can be used in are commonly used. But the, the important point that I want to drive home here is. The overwhelming majority of surrogacy journeys, including every surrogacy journey that surrogacy mentors involved in is a gestational surrogacy journey. So as a surrogate, if you're listening and you're thinking, wow, I've, you know, I've never looked into surrogacy, but it sounds interesting. Maybe I could qualify to be a surrogate. Please understand that your genetic material is not used. You are not the biological genetic mother of the child. You are carrying the pregnancy, carrying the embryo that was created via IVF in a fertility clinic. So I just want to clear that up because that is a very common misconception and a concern for a lot of people. So. Why don't you give us some examples, Mario, of how can these embryos be created and what sort of combinations, what sort of parents would go to a fertility clinic and what would be some of the potential scenarios for how the embryos are?

Marielle Schuberth 10:52

Right. So I guess when we say genetic material, it's just a more politically correct way, I suppose, to say sperm and egg, right? This is how babies are made, whether it's through IVF or through the old fashioned way, you need a sperm and you need an egg. So when we're talking about. Combining those things. It really kind of depends on first of all what the situation the parents are in. Right. In my case, I had, you know, two sets of dads. Well, two sets of dads have sperm, but they don't have eggs. So they both sets used donor eggs now depending on. You know, the specific situation with your intended parents, that he may know the egg donor, they may not, it may be completely anonymous. They may be able to go through with the fertility clinic. They have a list of egg donors where you can kind of look like, oh, I want an egg donor that has. Blue eyes like my husband or, you know, whatever. And that, that can kind of make a selection that way. Same thing in your case, you had two moms, so they have their eggs and need sperm. So they can do it that way. Sometimes depending on what your infertility situation is, even in a hetero sexual couple or single parents they may for. Whatever reason, be unable to use their own genetic material like their own eggs, in which case they would need sperm and egg donation. I actually have a friend who did full embryo donation because they couldn't use her eggs or her husband's from. So they were able to. Adopt pre-made like are used, made every O's using neither of their genetic material. So it really is science has come a long way and it's actually really cool. Like how different families can kind of come to be. And it's really just, it's going to depend very situationally on kind of who gets what from where, but what we do know is it's not coming from you. So that's a big one. I feel like, you know, everybody kind of has these. Outdated notions of what surrogacy is, because when it first came out, a lot of them were traditional surrogates because the science wasn't quite there yet. And so between outdated ideals, I think, and awesome things like lifetime movies and things like that, it definitely gives us a skewed view of what surrogacy actually is. I had somebody ask me, which of the dads I had sex with. Like, first of all, at what point do you ever think that's appropriate to ask somebody? But like, I. Was definitely taken it back like new. Not, not how this works at all. Thanks for the comment.

Carey Flamer-Powell 13:19

Oh, wow. Okay. So that's really good. Yeah. That is another misconception. You're right. There is absolutely no sexual intercourse happening on behalf of the surrogate in a gestational surrogacy. And that's important to clarify because. You know, we've been in the surrogacy world for years and we know all of these things, but it's not common knowledge. It's still, even though it's becoming more common and it's becoming more public with celebrities doing surrogacy it's still the, the mechanics of it. And the actual details of it are still kind of a mystery to a lot of people. So that's important. And you gave me another idea for another podcast episode that I wrote down some thank you for that. Okay. So it was full

Marielle Schuberth 13:57

of ideas. I didn't even know

Carey Flamer-Powell 13:59

of ideas. Thank you. All right. So we've established that gestational surrogacy is a method where the surrogate's not the biological mother and it is done through a fertility clinic. There are lots of different combinations and ways that this embryo could come to be. And there are lots of different types of. Family structures that need surrogacy. And there's not just one size fits all, but one thing is constant and that is that the embryos are biologically, genetically separate from the surrogate. So let's talk about The qualifications to be a surrogate. So we have the qualifications on our website, surrogacy mentor.com. I just want to clarify that. You the listener or the watcher or the video might be looking at lots of different websites online and seeing that the there's variances and there's differences from website to website. And I'm going to clarify some of that in a moment. And that's why one of the reasons why surrogacy mentor. It's to help people weed through all of that gray area, because it can look different depending on what website or agency or organization you're looking at, but let's go through some of the the qualifications to be a gestational surrogate on our website. And Marianne, do you wanna read some of those? Yeah. So,

Marielle Schuberth 15:23

We need you to be. Us citizen between the ages of 21 and 40 years old, you need to have given birth to at least one child of your own with uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery history have custody of your children. It's okay. If you share joint custody with an ex their spouse we needed to be able to pass a criminal background check psychological and medical screenings. You need to not be heavily relying upon government assistance. This one that I feel like have a low important touch on it's just because surrogacy income is never guaranteed and we would always hate for you to be without the assistance that helps feed your family or take care of them or with that. So that's why we say that one. Let's see no active military duty or reserves. We like to have a body mass index no higher than 35. This is not a number that we decided. This is like part of. Set standards that are kind of our guiding light for all surrogacy. So it's not just us or like clinics or the agency. It's kind of a higher powers that be that set up kind of some of these standards. And so we screen for what they tell us a valid us driver's license to make sure that you can get to them from your point. No drug use smoking or alcohol abuse for obvious reasons. We also would ask that of anybody living in your home with you. Again, we want to make sure that you're in a safe environment for you and the baby that you will be carrying. Someone to be willing to remove. And I D if you have one for birth control reasons you need to live in a state with surrogacy friendly laws and statutes. There are still some states in the United States that surrogacy is criminalized and could have maybe. Repercussions for parents and you, if you live there or happen to travel there, so being aware of your location and making sure you're in a state, that qualifies is, is key. We need you to be mature, honest, reliable, willing to communicate through your screening phase with us and throughout your entire journey and a full vaccination against COVID-19 is. Preferred most fertility clinics really are requiring it. So we can't force you to get it, but it will definitely be harder for us to find a clinic and things like that. That can kind of work with you if you're not. So that's our big, fancy schpiel about.

Carey Flamer-Powell 17:32

Yeah. So we, I just want to say for those that hopefully will be tuning in for future podcast episodes. We are going to go in detail in a future episode, into every single one of these qualifications, why they're important and explain the, the, you know, wizard behind the screen reasons why these things are important because some of them might sound random. Like why would I need to take out my IUD? Why do I need to have a driver's license on a car? You know, there's just probably some questions. And so we are going to have time on a future podcast. Dedicated, just sticks, leaning. Why are these things in place, but what I do want to touch on or that, and you mentioned it a little Mario, is that the fertility? I'm sorry, the surrogacy agencies and we surrogacy mentor. We do not set these criteria. So there is an organization called ASR M, which is the American society for reproductive medicine. They are sort of the. The guiding light, the organization that sort of sets the standards, guidelines for surrogacy and what qualifications a surrogate should have as well as the process for becoming a surrogate and how the medical process should go. So between ASR M standards and. The fertility clinics, the medical requirements are set at that level. So there are things that surrogacy agencies and businesses like ours, that we don't control. These things. We don't make them up. They are dictated from a medical perspective by mostly fertility clinics who are also guided by SRM standards. So. When you are looking at websites, like if you're someone who's interested in possibly becoming a surrogate or just researching it, you're looking online at these things. And you're like, well, this website says I can have a BMI up to 35, but then this website says only 29 that has everything to do with the fertility clinics that that particular organization or agency works with. And many fertility clinics. In fact, all of them set their own BMI limits and other requirements. So you might have an agency's website that you're looking at that works predominantly with. Two or three clinics and those clinics have a really are farther down, lower on the BMI. So they say, if you're a BMI of 30 or more, sorry, we can't help you. You don't qualify. But then you have other agencies or other organizations who work with other clinics who say, well, we actually are okay with BMI up to 34. So that does vary. And there is some wiggle room in there for the doctors at the fertility clinics to make that determination. So it surrogacy and mentor, we work with all different agencies all over the country. And excuse me, we are able to match and work with surrogates who maybe don't fall within. Certain agencies specific range, and then we can go to other agencies that would be a great fit that do fall within that requirements. So it's good to find agencies who have a wide range of clinics that they work with, or organizations such as ours, who work with lots of agencies so that you have the best chance of qualifying at a clinic and. There are some, and again, we will have another podcast in the future that will go into detail, but there are some on this list that are deal breakers that are just absolute, no matter what agency, what clinic you go to. This one particular criteria is never going to change. And then there are some that have some flexibility. So like what, in my area, what's an, in your opinion, one or two of them that are just absolute deal breakers, they're really not going to change.

Marielle Schuberth 21:22

Really your pregnancy history. If you don't have a healthy pregnancy history, there's nothing that we can do about that. And I would say another one is going to be smoking or drug use in your pregnancy history. If you have any of that, whether you tell us or not, it's going to kind of all come out in the medical records and those, those just certain things that there's nothing that we can do about that. It is what it is. And with your pregnancy history in general, you need to be able to show that, you know, Not only personally can take care of a pregnancy and a healthy way, but that your body can take care of and pregnancy and a healthy way. Because some, for some families that surrogacy is about eliminating risk, right. Cause some, you know, moms cannot carry or for whatever reason. And so if you have a, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for? What

Carey Flamer-Powell 22:07

complicated, complicated pregnancy

Marielle Schuberth 22:09

history. That's not necessarily eliminating risk. Right. And so, you know, there's certain things that as much as we would love to be able to help you realize this dream and your heart is in the right place. There are just certain things that we just, we can't fix that. And it's unfortunate. When we have to say that to somebody who, you know, really it's heart in the right place and just sometimes it's just not, not meant to be that.

Carey Flamer-Powell 22:32

And I would just back up and add to that. Those are definitely deal breakers, but just to be even more elementary about it, the reason it says on every single gestational surrogacy organization or agencies website that you have to have given birth to at least one child of your own. I mean, it, it doesn't seem obvious, but when you say it out loud, there should never be a scenario where you're giving birth for the first time. For somebody else. The first time you give birth, you should be doing that for yourself for emotional, mental reasons. But beyond all of that, there has to be an established pregnancy history that a fertility clinic can look at and say, oh, you've had at least one pregnancy. We can look at all of those records from your prenatal care and your delivery and see that it was either complicated or. Healthy and great if there's no pregnancy, if you've never given birth before, not only do you personally not know how you're going to react physically, you know, are you going to have an easy pregnancy? Are you going to have severe nausea, all of these things that you don't know until you're pregnant? Do you enjoy being pregnant? I mean, all of these things, but you're not going to know how you're going to react emotionally to giving birth and to the postpartum period. And then when you don't know from a medical perspective, if it's even healthy for you to carry another pregnancy. So the very basic requirement that's never going to change for gestational surrogacy is that you need to have given birth to at least one child. Of your own so that there is a baseline for you and the doctors and the parents and the agency for everyone to know you've done this once, you know what you're signing up for and there's the medical record to show how that went. So I have to say that and clarify it because I think people would be shocked at the percentage of applications we get and probably other agencies get of people that have never given. Never. And they don't look at that. The very first line on the websites or the, in our case, on our quiz where it says, please don't take this quiz or please don't apply. If you haven't given birth to at least one child of your own. It's very basic and that's never going to change. So just wanted to clarify that. So, okay. So moving on to our last question for this episode what are some reasons like, well, to say it, the way that I've heard it, why in the world would somebody want to be a surrogate? What possesses someone to want to carry a child for nine months, go through IVF and then. As other people put it, give the baby away as surrogates, understand it. And surrogates have been through it. Put it. We don't ever give a baby away. We give the child back to its parents. We fire onto the embryo. We carried it for them. And now we're just giving it back. Right. So why would someone want to be a surrogate? I'm going to let you answer from your personal experience. Why did you want to be.

Marielle Schuberth 25:37

Yeah, well, I guess mine started very similarly. I feel like too, a lot of women pursuing surrogacy I had some friends two friends actually, who were struggling with fertility issues. And I had always said that I would carry for them if they needed me to. And luckily for them, they ended up not meeting my uterus, so to speak. But it got me thinking like, wow, if I could do. For them, like, why not? So I started looking into it and then I realized, like, it was a really great way for me to, I love being pregnant, but we are done. Having our own family, we've got two kids of our own. I'm one of those annoying women who love being pregnant. I've got pretty easy pregnancies. And so it was kind of like, wow, like if I could do this again while being able to stay at home and raise my family and being able to provide for them well, Providing an awesome gift for somebody. It just kind of seemed like a win-win win for me. Why not? And then after doing it the first time you kind of get this bug, it's kinda like getting your first tattoo, I think, right. You do it once and you just see how awesome it is to be able to have such an impact. And I said, if I could do it 10 times again, I would in a heartbeat, no questions asked. It's just such a cool thing to be a part of. But my initial thing was if I can help them, why not? And if I can, it can help me stay at home and with my kids while they're young, it just seems like why not? It just seems like such an awesome thing to, to be able to do. Yeah,

Carey Flamer-Powell 26:56

that's awesome. And I agree with everything you said. And it made me think, you said you know, you wanted to be pregnant again because you enjoyed it, but you didn't want to have any more children of your own. And, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, my personal one of my personal reasons was that my wife and I had had help from an anonymous donor to have our child. And that made me so thankful. And so wanting to help another family, specifically gay or lesbian family create. To have their child and create their family. But the other piece of it was I was 35 when I delivered my daughter and my wife at the time was 42, 43. And having a second child wasn't really in the cards. It wasn't really, it was something we'd maybe thought about, but really at that age, we were just really happy with one and. Not to mention I had started my agency, my surrogacy agency, and that became my baby. And there was no time for a second baby, but I loved being pregnant. I loved the experience of it. And so that definitely was also a reason that I wanted to become a surrogate was that I got to be pregnant again. I got to enjoy all the awesome things about being pregnant that I loved, and I didn't. I wasn't adding another child to my family and it wasn't biologically my child. So there was none of the emotional or technical or practical preparation for a child. I wasn't getting a nursery together. I wasn't having a shower for myself. I wasn't, you know, preparing all the things, buying all the diapers, all of those things that I'd done once for my daughter and enjoyed, but didn't want to do again. Yeah. So that's really common. And one thing again, we're going to talk about this in an upcoming episode in detail, but one thing you also mentioned was being able to stay home, but also provide for your family. So compensation is something that is legal. Yes. The United States, as opposed to a compensation for a surrogate is legal in many states, as opposed to some other countries where it's actually not legal. So there is compensation involved in gestational surrogacy in the United States. We will talk about the details of that in another upcoming episode and how it works. And when you get paid, how much you get paid and what all the factors are with that. But one thing I want to say as it pertains to this question about motivation and. Why people become surrogates? I want to say that. There is compensation and there should be compensation. And I've always from day one, defended that surrogates deserve compensation. I don't think it should be taboo. I don't think it should be swept under the rug. I don't think it should be hush, hush. But what I do want to say is that if there are applicants that come through and I've screened and worked with and talked to thousands of applicants over the last almost decade that I've been doing this. I can tell you right now, the ones, the app, the surrogate applicants that are motivated primarily by the money are the only ones that don't pass screening, first of all. But that also become very annoyed and frustrated with the process very quickly because they realize that there's so much that goes into just the screening to become a surrogate, let alone the preparation with the IVF process. Plus the pregnancy and the relationship with the parents and the agency, it is a whole life undertaking. And so if you're only focused on the money, if that's truly your main motivation and, and it's really primarily why you're looking into surrogacy and I want to be, I want to be clear. The compensation might be what first interests you, but if all of the other aspects and that's fine, totally fine. But if all of the other aspects, the altruism, the ability to help another family, the ability to experience pregnancy again and get to be part of something bigger than yourself. If those things also don't peak your interest and also don't make you excited, then I think you will be very disappointed because the compensation that comes versus the effort required. I mean, you'd be better off just getting a job at McDonald's or a part-time job. You'd make more money. I mean, my personal surrogacy journey took two years to separate embryo transfers. We lost a twin during one of the pregnancies, there was a six month break in between egg donation or egg cycles for each mom. I mean, this was two years of my life of my daughter's toddlerhood that I was preoccupied with this surrogacy completely worth it. I would have done it a million more times if I wasn't so old, but. For the compensation that I got, which by the way, at the time, which was only eight years ago, by the way, was less than half of what surrogates get now. For that compensation, if I were to work it out on an hourly basis, if that had been my only motivation, oh man, there's no way that would have been worth it.

Marielle Schuberth 31:55

People as well. First things people ask too. It's like the things that people think are okay to ask. And that's why I was saying like, it's a bonus, it's a nice perk, but no, that's not like why I'm doing this and that it's a hard people just can't seem to separate that out. And I don't know. That's why it's so great that we're able to start talking about sort of. Pushing this out there, let's normalize like different alternative ways for people to grow their families. I mean, come on. This is 20, 22, you know? But for some reason that's a really hard one for people to separate out, even just when talking about it, motivations, I think, oh, you must get paid pretty good for that. Right. Again, it's, it's a nice perk. It's it's bright, but no, that's not like why I'm doing this. I'm a big believer in karma and putting good things out there. So I always make a joke, you know that no, it's just putting some good deposits in the karma bank.

Carey Flamer-Powell 32:47

Yeah. And again, I'm in, this is going to be a whole episode because I feel really passionate about this in case you can't tell. Compensation. Absolutely. The surrogates deserve it should get it. I'm all for surrogates being compensated. But it does become a really great tool for people that are anti surrogacy to weaponize it and to say, oh, you're selling your body. Oh, you're selling a baby. Oh, you're just doing it for the money and people it's so easy to say that. Right. Just like with any other propaganda. It's so easy to take a little piece of information that most people don't know anything about. They don't understand it and use that as like a soundbite or a hook. And That's what I don't like. And that's what I, I hope to dispel through some of these episodes that we're going to be doing is, you know, how does the compensation really work and how much of that is motivation for the people that do surrogacy. And we'll talk to other people, not just you and I will talk to other. Other surrogacy professionals, medical professionals, legal professionals people that are in this day in and day out, but also surrogates who have done this once, twice, three times, who can tell you from their own personal experience Why they did it, how did the compensation make that much of a difference in their lives? And if it did, you know, what did they do with that compensation? That's sometimes not really, a lot of times people don't talk about that. And I think that's interesting to understand, like how did this change your life? And. So that's a whole other topic, but I wanted to touch on that because it seems to be one of the most common things people ask is about the money and that's okay. That's what we're here for. Right. And I like what you said. I think that should be one of our hashtags. That should be one of our maybe that'll become the title of this podcast. Cause we haven't actually even named it yet. For real, maybe our title of our podcast should be normalized surrogacy because I really feel like It's really time to get great information out there, personal stories out there and help people understand why this is a viable and respectable and wonderful way to build a family or help build a family. And so that's why we're here.

Marielle Schuberth 34:58

Yeah. And that's a lot more time. And then you would, you would think, I can tell you from my three journeys, I, you know, talking to anybody, they're like, oh, I had a friend who had. It's but nobody talks about it. It's, you know, it's, it's so much more common than you would think, and we just need to not make it weird. It

Carey Flamer-Powell 35:15

shouldn't be weird. Yeah. We'll come back at weird people. I actually have a sign outside my front door. No soliciting, please don't make this weird. And so that's kind of how I feel about this. Like, please don't make this weird. Let's just talk about surrogacy. Okay. Well that went by really fast and we're going to probably have to edit this down a little bit. Cause. A little over the time that I thought we would, but that's good. Right. We had lots to talk about. So that's a wrap on our first episode of surrogacy mentors, normalized surrogacy podcast. I'm liking the way that sounds

Marielle Schuberth 35:48

I do.

Carey Flamer-Powell 35:49

I want to thank everyone for listening or watching or both, and be sure to check us out online@surrogacymentor.com. If you're interested in possibly. Becoming a surrogate or even just dipping your toes in the water, just to see if you would even qualify. We have a really easy peasy, two minute quiz that you can take online from your phone, from your computer doesn't matter. And you will find out right from the get go. Whether you can start that process. If you meet the basic qualifications. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and we will be bringing you one episode a week going forward, talking about surrogacy and normalizing surrogacy. So again, I'm Carrie flamer Powell and Marielle. Thank you for joining me. And we appreciate it and we'll see you guys next time.