Can You Become A Surrogate Mother If You Are Already Pregnant?

Many well-meaning mothers have heard about surrogate motherhood and desire to help another couple complete their family. Unfortunately, a lot of women jump into gestational surrogacy too soon, and really have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

A frequent question that I receive is whether a woman who is already pregnant is able to become a gestational surrogate mother while simultaneously carrying her own child. The variations of this question usually mention that the woman is only a few weeks pregnant, or that she desires to help a friend but doesn't want to go through a second pregnancy.

To the uninitiated, this may seem like a logical solution and a very helpful one at that. But it's simply not medically possible. Baring the science behind it all, however, let's look at the reasons why it would logistically be a very difficult situation.

First, if two differently aged embryos were able to coexist within one womb, the younger baby would be born prematurely, at the same time as his womb buddy. If the surrogate mother was already 6-8 weeks pregnant, this could have dramatic consequences on the smaller baby.

Then the main problems with this scenario happens after the theoretical birth itself. Two babies would be born via surrogate motherhood, yet the two sets of parents would have no idea which baby belonged to which parent! A DNA test would have to be done, and waited for, before bonding could occur with the correct family.

And what would happen if one of the babies died during the pregnancy? Then two sets of parents would be teetering on an emotional roller coaster, wondering if the child they held in their arms was theirs or not. And as the intended parents pay for all things related to the surrogate pregnancy, if the child that passed away was their child, would the surrogate mother then be required to pay back expenses they paid for her to have her own child?

Some women ask if they also can go through IVF and carry "twins" with their intended mothers, like the example above, but with the babies being the exact same gestational age. While this is medically possible, again, we have to examine the same logistics.

Add to that the discomfort of going through an egg retrieval, and the prohibitive costs of an egg retrieval and IVF transfer and this idea is about as workable as the first. The best option is for the woman to complete her own family, and then decide if surrogate motherhood is something she wishes to pursue.

The women who ask these sorts of questions are generally concerned about the required, daily hormonal injections a gestational surrogate mother must take in order to successfully carry a pregnancy. They are worried about taking the shots, and hopeful that they've found a loop-hole. But there are no easy ways out when it comes to the gift of surrogate motherhood.