# Surrogacy in India - have other IPs faced similar issues with agencies



## HayandDave (Nov 23, 2013)

Hi All,

My wife and I started our Surrogacy journey in India 12 months ago, and have faced a sequence of issues with the Surrogacy agency (detailed below).

We would like to know if other intended parents have faced similar issues when going through Surrogacy in India.

We appreciate your feedback and comments.

Thanks,
David and Hayley

Sequence of events

- Our first SM was selected and after the communication went quiet, we later found out the SM had been also assigned to another UK couple who were using the same agent (who we met later in India). The SM never materialised for either couple, and the local agent was replaced by the International team.

- Our second SM was separated from her husband and not in contact, even though the agency said they only choose married, widowed, or divorced SMs (this affects the parental rights order in the UK).

- One of our EDs was 28 years old to which we questioned if too old to produce enough follicles (was told by our agent that the doctor approved this as okay, then found out later after the ED could not produce enough follicles, that she (doctor) advised not to use the ED in the first place).

- We had a meeting at the clinic with the local operations team and the clinic doctor (our agent was on holiday at the time). When we arrived we met the operations team who asked us if we would consider using a different clinic, to which we said no as we had been with this one since we started. During the meeting an argument broke out between the operations person and the doctor, as they started discussing the current and previous EDs/SM, (in particular the one who was too old) and turned into a 'he said/she said' debate. This resulted in my wife leaving the meeting in tears.

- The agency informed us that on the day of retrieval (3rd SM and 3rd ED), there was not a sufficient amount of eggs (for the OCR). We were given a choice to try and retrieve or start again with a new ED. We chose the latter, only to then be told a day later that they went ahead with the OCR, as the agency had invested a lot of time and money on the ED so far. This resulted in us having no choice but to agree to IVF and then freeze the embryo's as the Surrogate (third one) we were using was not responding to the Progynova and had developed Hypoechoic lesions in the uterine cavity, and we had to use a new SM.

- Our agent emailed us the next day to inform he had resigned over a financial disagreement and our case would be handled by the operations team. When we contacted the operations team and they informed us that for our programme to continue we would have to pay another $13,000 as the IVF had failed. We gave a history of events to the operations team and said we were not happy with paying to continue as the majority of issues were caused by the agency. They came back with a reduced fee of $8,000 but we had then decided to not continue with the programme as we had lost faith in the agency due to the issues over the last 12 months.

As a final discussion with the agency we asked for a partial reimbursement of the cost we had paid so far, due to the majority of issues we deemed had been caused by the agency, and they informed us that this would not happen as they had done everything in our interest and none of the issues had been their fault. They did give a detailed explanation of what they had done so far and referred to the ART Clinic and what part they played. We responded that the issues were not related to the actions of the ART process, but the level of service and the poor decision making of themselves.

We have not had a response to date form our last communication to the agency on 16/12/2013.


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## rosebud_05_99 (Apr 15, 2008)

Hi

So sorry to read what you have been through, very distressing. Im not sure what agency or clinic you used but I'm with surrogacy centre India in Delhi run by Dr shivani and so far all is going well, they have been very professional and we are very happy.

I wonder if you work directly with a clinic and cut out a agency would that leave less room for confusion between them. I wish you every success with future surrogacy arrangements x

Rosebud


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## HayandDave (Nov 23, 2013)

Hi Rosebud,

Thank you for response.

When we started we went with a clinic in Kochi, who were partners with a national agency. We were then informed that a law had passed in India that any clinics affiliated with an agency had to be separated. To this date the clinic have been fully supportive and honest with us, but the issues have been with the agency.

We are unsure of where to turn to next as the last 12 months have been an emotional 'roller-coaster'.

Thanks,
David and Hayley


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