Fertility: S01 E27 – Third Party Reproduction – Dr. Foulk

Hello this is Dr. Russell Foulk at the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine and today subject is on what are the more sophisticated areas of medicine that we do in Reproductive Medicine and that is third-party reproduction. Specifically it has to do with gestational carriers and surrogates so let me Define what those two things are a surrogate is an individual who donates their egg and their uterus to the creation of a baby a gestational carrier is a individual who just donate the services to carry the baby not her egg so a lot of people confuse the two we typically use gestational carrier, surrogates are not used anymore just because of the risk of having two components involved in that pregnancy where is gestational carrier or individuals who helped a couple have a child through the use of carrying their baby for them so why do people do this the reason why I just a gestational carrier is needed is because the couple that want to have a child for some reason can’t because the woman’s uterus is no longer healthy so for example if a woman had a hysterectomy for a cancer or disease that is damaged her uterus or medical condition where she’s unable to become pregnant and she needs someone else to carry that baby for her and that situation what we do is we create the embryos through in vitro fertilization using the intended father’s sperm in the intended mother’s eggs create the embryos we need a place to put them in so a gestational carrier comes in and they’re the most wonderful people in the world that offered to do this. And we get the uterus ready and we put the embryo into that person’s uterus. She then carries that for 9 months and after a normal healthy pregnancy will deliver the baby then the baby goes back to the intended parents so as you can see it’s a very sophisticated treatment because you’re combining several different Hi-Tech treatments through a coordinated effort in order to create this baby for this couple on the screening for the gestational carrier consists of making sure she is healthy her uterus is healthy she’s had a successful pregnancy before and in in the screening on the patient side is making sure that they’re comfortable the idea of having someone else babysit their baby for 9 months and not participate in the creation of baby through their womb but the beautiful thing about it is the the joy of creating this child through a third party construct so that now instead of just the couple that would otherwise never be able to have a baby they can now do it with the assistance of another wonderful human being and it’s a very specific carry of our field but as you can imagine it’s one of the most beautiful experiences that you can be involved in because of the involvement of more than just the patients that will eventually end up his parents. So a common question we get is how do you know at what point you need to gestational carrier and the answer is pretty self-evident once you go through treatments if for example you had hysterectomy obviously you’re going to need some of that helps you carry that but in a situation where a woman is tried multiple times and perhaps has miscarried many times and you don’t have an explanation for those miscarriages that’s when you need to explore the option of using a gestational carrier. We have some individuals who have heard about just being and they’re wondering how do you do that and what does it involve it’s actually quite simple I mean the hardest part of course is the pregnancy but a lot of an individual’s love to be pregnant. What is done is this initial screening that takes period about a month or two and then a matching of the couple that will eventually serve as the parents which means developing a relationship with this couple so that there’s a trusting relationship and a good sense between you that you’ll be able to do what’s best for each other if you are interested in becoming a gestational carrier or if you’re a patient that might have need for that please give our office a call at the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine and we’ll be happy to help you navigate through that very exciting field.