As the Need for Surrogates Soars and Availability Drops, Intended Parents are Paying the Price

Surrogacy costs are spiking and available surrogates are hard to come by. The solution? A new startup created a free online database with hundreds of surrogates

CRESSKILL, NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES, January 11, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- As more and more couples and individuals turn to surrogacy to fulfill their dream of a family, the surrogacy market is booming. But while the need for surrogates soars, finding one is becoming harder and harder due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

After months of lockdowns and quarantines, many women who qualified as surrogates have pushed the pause button, taking some time to rethink their next step, while others refuse to get vaccinated, have increased their BMI during the pandemic or have lost their financial stability, and no longer qualify as surrogates.

Naturally, the increasing challenges to find a candidate also affect the cost of surrogacy, which spiked since the start of the pandemic. Still, probably the most significant effect of the surrogate shortage is the time it takes to find available surrogates, and many intended parents wait for months just to take their first step in this long, complex and emotional journey.

In an attempt to provide an effective solution, bring transparency and credibility to the fertility market and digitize the still largely analog surrogacy process, a new tech startup that only recently closed its seed funding round raising $1 million, offers a new way to find available surrogates, egg donors and fertility providers.

The Advanced Tech Solution and Vision

Expecting.ai is a free online network of US surrogates and international egg donors, created to help intended parents find their ideal match easily and digitally. The startup connects intended parents from around the world with US fertility clinics and agencies, allowing them to set advanced filters and specific preferences when they search for surrogates and egg donors. This saves hopeful parents a lot of time and helps them start their journey much faster than traditional methods.

The startup’s vision is to streamline the process for both intended parents and fertility providers. To that end, Expecting.ai also digitally recruits surrogates through a smart tool that allows potential surrogates and egg donors who pass an initial screening process to apply to numerous agencies online.
“Surrogacy is not something people tend to talk about openly, because the topic of infertility is still taboo”, explains Ronny Schwartz Dgani, Expecting.ai’s co-founder and CMO. “We believe that needs to change through open dialogue and more transparent information, so that people won’t give up on their dream of parenthood. As a new year begins, many people are looking for ways to give back and help others, and it’s important that women know they have the option to help others start a family”.

Commenting on the current surrogate shortage, Schwartz Dgani says that “there are many women who are ideal surrogacy candidates, but are not aware that this possibility exists. Our surrogate recruitment efforts include providing potential surrogates with information about the benefits of giving others the gift of family and about the challenges she may encounter”.
Expecting.ai also offers additional digital services, such as:
Private psychological and medical screening of surrogates and egg donors, available to intended parents who want to make sure they are not compromising on reliability and stability.

Specialized legal advice and services to intended parents and surrogates.
“We see more and more intended parents who feel lost at the multitude of choices, pros and cons to consider, who aren’t certain of their next steps and feel that their dream of starting a family is getting further and further away from them”, says Victoria Gelfand, owner of a prominent Israeli law firm specializing in reproduction law. “As attorneys who assist intended parents on their surrogacy journey, it is apparent that since the beginning of the pandemic there are significantly more balls we need to keep in the air for our clients from the legal, administrative and logistic perspective. Thus, being able to compare their options and optimize and shorten their search and research, we hope we will encourage more families to find a way to turn their dream of a child into a reality.”

The startup’s database is rapidly growing, despite the low numbers of women who are willing to step forward as surrogates in this current climate, and already has over 500 surrogates and more than 5,000 egg donors in its online network.

“The third party reproduction market is changing rapidly”, says Nadav Raanan, Expecting.ai’s Co-founder and CEO. “Many intended parents who put their plans on hold due to the pandemic and are now ready to start their journey, have found out that they must wait yet again until they can find an available surrogate. By creating an extensive surrogate database, we allow hopeful parents to find exactly what they’re looking for and finally start their journey. No more researching and navigating countless agencies, no more waiting in line for months and sometimes over a year for available surrogates - now all the options are online and easily accessible.”

Ronny Schwartz Dgani
Expecting
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Find a surrogate with Expecting.ai