How to Record and Share Your Surrogacy Journey With Friends and Family

In this age of social media, we’re used to sharing details about our lives. Birthdays, weddings, nights out… most of us have even shared photos of what we had for dinner!

For parents, there’s nothing more exciting than sharing the birth of their baby. Facebook and Instagram are rife with pics and videos of baby bumps, baby toys, baby moments, and yes – babies themselves.

But what if you’re an Intended Parent and not actually carrying your baby yourself? Can you still share photos of the journey? In a word: YES! 

If you want to document your surrogacy journey from start to finish, then you definitely should! Sharing your journey is not only a great way to keep your family and friends updated, but it’ll help to spread awareness of what surrogacy is. Seeing your journey will help to start many more conversations. Best of all, it’ll give hope to other couples and individuals who might be wondering how they too can become parents.

As Intended Parents, you might have already encountered a few misconceptions about surrogacy and what it involves. That’s why sharing your story will help to shed light on the process and help others understand the miracle it is.

First things first: talk to your surrogate

Before creating that Facebook page about your pending son or daughter, it’s important to speak first with your surrogate. After all, she’s at the center of your story, too! You’ll need to make sure both of you are happy about the information you’ll be sharing with friends and family – and with strangers – on the internet.

Surrogacy is a very intimate experience, and some people are more private than others. Chat to your surrogacy specialist about what details you should or shouldn’t share, and what other Intended Parents have done in the past.

This will help you maintain a healthy, respectful relationship after signing the contract.

Now for the fun part! But how exactly do you share your surrogacy story? And how much should you share?

Here are some easy and fun ways to make it happen.

Social media

There are lots of ways to use social media to document each step of your journey. It’s also the easiest! Nearly everyone you know is likely to be on Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Tiktok, or Twitter, which makes sharing information a breeze.

If your surrogate is comfortable about it, go ahead and share! Photos, videos, your thoughts, and any other kinds will make for fascinating material.

Another great thing about social media is that it allows friends and family to ask questions about the process in their own time and space.

And if you’re willing to make your journey public, you can use hashtags to connect with other intended parents, surrogates, and anyone else involved in surrogacy. Tags such as #surrogacy, #fertility, #infertility, #surrogates will help you to spread your story even further.

Get a photo-sharing app

Of course, not everyone wants to share their journey with the world – and that’s perfectly fine. But there are still ways to record this exciting time and keep it private. And photos are so important: your little one will one day want to learn about how they were created!

Photo-sharing methods such as Dropbox or Shutterfly provide a secure and private means of sharing photos. You simply upload the photos to a file and then share the file link to the people you choose. Even if you don’t print the photos, you’ll still be able to access them anytime you want in the future – and that’s important for any parent!

Start a blog

You don’t have to be a literary master to write a blog! All you need is a blogging platform and a willingness to write about your journey.

A blog is a fantastic way to let your friends and family know what’s going on at each stage of the surrogacy process. It’ll also allow you to open up a little and explain why you’re doing this, and how you feel.

Depending on whether you make your blog private or public, you’ll be making a difference to other peoples’ understanding of surrogacy. A written account of your experience could be enormously beneficial to other individuals and couples who are wondering how it looks ‘from the inside’.

And best of all, you’ll be able to share this blog with your child later on in life!

Create a memory book

A surrogacy memory book isn’t just for you – it’s for the little person you’re bringing into the world.
One day, your son or daughter will have questions about why you chose a surrogate and all the people involved in their creation. A memory book is a great way to help them understand how you reached the decision to have a baby and everything that happened along the way.

You can design your book any way you want. It can be a physical book made of paper, or it can be an online document. You can include photos of yourself, your partner, your surrogate, video logs of appointments, and – if you want to – some (discreet!) footage of the delivery.

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to talk to your surrogate and get their thoughts on how much they’d like to be involved in your records.

You might also like to write letters to your future offspring and include them in the book. This is a wonderful way to communicate with them directly and share your thoughts. When they’re old enough, these letters will be very precious to them.

If you’re still a little unsure about how best to record your surrogacy journey, your Family Source Consultants case manager will be available to talk it through. They’ll tell you about their experiences with other Intended Parents, and the easiest way to make everything happen smoothly.

Remember – recording your journey is also for YOU! This is an exciting time that must be remembered. One day you’ll want to look back and remember everything you went through and what you felt at the time. Good luck!