Glossary of Terms

There are a lot of terms that I think are really important for you to get to know, and I will post those here so that you have all of them. There are five categories that we put all of these terms in, so that you can understand where they start from. The first one is people and roles. The second one is the journey. The third one is medical and clinical. The fourth one is legal. And the fifth one is beyond birth.

So let's dive into it. I'm not going to read all of these to you. There's a glossary here, and you can go through that if you want, but there are a couple that are really important.

People And Roles

Number one, the most important person here: gestational carrier, or GC. The reason we don't use the term surrogate very often is that there are also people called traditional surrogates. Traditional surrogates have a biological relationship to the embryo. They're carrying a baby that their egg is connected to. All of you are gestational carriers. We don't do any traditional surrogacy. Across the country, about one percent of people are traditional surrogates. So generally, when people say surrogates, they mean gestational carriers. There's no relationship between you and the baby: gestational carrier, or GC.

The Journey

The next category of terms is the journey itself. We're going to get into what the journey actually entails in a bunch of different ways in this course, but the general gist is that there are a number of components you need to know about, and they're also listed here. One term that people, and agencies specifically, use in different ways is match: "I'm matched" or "I'm in a match." For Roots, match means that you're pretty far along in the process. We've shared the intended parents' profile with you, and your profile with them. We've taken a pause, and we've gotten your medical records reviewed by the clinic where the embryo lives, the parents' clinic. Then we come back and do a match call to make sure everybody's aligned. We talk through the process and make sure everybody's connected. If everybody agrees, at that point we consider you matched.

Medical And Clinical

The next one is medical and clinical. There are five major terms you need to know, but the one I want to highlight is IVF. In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is the process by which an embryo is either created or taken and put into a person. You're going to go through a process called IVF. The intended mom, or the egg donor in this case, also went through that process by doing a retrieval, extracting eggs and then creating the embryos. So there are two pieces to IVF in surrogacy: creating the embryo, and then putting the embryo into the gestational carrier.

That all happens at the clinic. The clinic is where the parents created their embryos, and it's where you'll have to go at least two times once you're matched with those parents: first for a medical screening, and then for the transfer of the embryo itself. So IVF is the process you'll go through to have the embryo put in, and it happens at the clinic where your parents created their embryo.

Legal And Financial

The next category is legal and financial, and a big component of this is making sure that everybody is protected. In surrogacy, we protect the intended parents, the gestational carrier and the baby, so we think about this in a collaborative way.

One term I'd like to highlight, because it's used all the time, is GCA: gestational carrier agreement. This is the legal agreement between you and your intended parents. You'll have your own attorney, they'll have their own attorney, and the attorneys will talk to each other about this agreement. At Roots, we should have already talked with you and the intended parents about everything that will go into it, so it should be a pretty easy process. You're represented by an attorney, they're represented by an attorney, and together you create a document called a gestational carrier agreement, or GCA.

Beyond Birth

The last category is post-birth, or after you've had the baby. A couple of things to note here: there will be a lot of people in the delivery room, which is a little different from when you delivered your own baby.

I also want to highlight postpartum. It should be a familiar term. Similar to what happened with your own kids, it's the recovery period from just after birth all the way until your body has recovered. Generally speaking, we think of that as the time from birth until about six months later. During that time, Roots provides a number of helpful resources, including postpartum care, pelvic floor therapy and more that we'll get into. That's postpartum: after birth.