How Your “Match Meeting” Changes Everything

During the surrogacy journey there are two, giant, life-changing days – two days that you will remember for the rest of your life. One of those days is the day that sweet baby is delivered and placed in your arms. The other big day on the surrogacy journey is the match meeting. If you are trying to find a surrogate who can help complete your family, the Match Meeting is the moment when that dream of a person becomes a reality. If you want to become a surrogate, this is the day when your journey to help a family really takes off.

Before our Match Meeting, before the day we met the woman who would carry our child for nine months, every conversation about surrogacy felt a little strange. It’s hard to describe – it almost didn’t feel real.

I understood the basics: mine and my husband’s names were on a list at the agency. On the other side of that list were surrogates – women who were on their own journey of generosity to help families like mine. My husband and I, along with all of the other couples, would be matched with one of these incredible surrogates.

I also understood that everyone waiting to be matched – intended parents and surrogates – were all going through similar steps to get to the Match Meeting.

I knew how it all logically fit together, but it didn’t seem real yet. It was all papers and meetings and interesting facts and beautiful stories – until we met her.

Meeting our surrogate changed everything.

I’ll be sharing my match story next week, but I will say this – we felt an immediate connection with our surrogate and her husband. Our surrogate is a generous, ambitious, kind, energetic mom and friend. As I’ve said so many times since our Match Meeting, “She is an angel to us, and I have no idea how we could have met her on our own. I honestly have no idea how we were matched so perfectly.”

I’ve worked with Hope Surrogacy long enough now to know this – the match was perfect for us because the women at Hope have been working in the field of surrogacy for 30+ combined years. Their relationships run deep.

But how do they do it? How do the women of Hope put parents and surrogates together in matches that work nearly every time?

A match is a mix of science and a lot of love.

They don’t match you with just “anybody” or just provide you a list of candidates to consider. They are true match makers. This team listens to your priorities and they consider them alongside the priorities of the person with your match.

There are hard and fast non-negotiables like your views on selective reduction and abortion – very important topics to consider. But there are softer considerations – where do you live, and where does your perspective match live? What kind of relationship do you see developing? What about lifestyle considerations?  The team at Hope knows how to ask the right questions to make a great match. They also know how to talk through the ethical, medical and legal considerations you and your match have to consider before moving forward together.

The women of Hope love this work

Along with their incredible expertise, there’s a LOT of love. They love the magic of family building and have seen time and time again the miracle of a baby born to loving parents with an incredible surrogate by their side. They have dedicated their lives to family building. This isn’t a 9-5 job or a paycheck. It’s taking a call on the way home from the office to hear out a parent’s medical concern or meeting up with a surrogate and her family for a backyard barbecue. It’s crying together if a transfer doesn’t work and celebrating when it does. It’s running to the hospital to congratulate new parents and their surrogate who just delivered. And it’s cheering for every surrogate baby that takes its first steps into their parent’s arms.

They take this love and build it into the matching process. These women listen, and they make sure that everyone involved is heard. They offer questions that help clarify what you want and what you’ll need. If things get tough, they stick with you until everything is back on track. And when they’ve got someone to introduce you to – a surrogate or intended parents – they do it with the care they’d give to their own family.

The Match Meeting is a day that changes everything. It’s a day where you’ll meet the people that help bring a beloved baby into the world. It’s a day built with so much care and love, and it’s a day you can look forward to with Hope.

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We’ve been talking through the steps of the Surrogacy Timeline on our blog. If you’d like to learn more about how surrogacy works, check out this blog post or contact us. We can’t wait to talk with you!