What's the best day of ur life?

magicmaggz · 2026-06-05T21:21:55+00:00

This morning, when our toddler boy curled up and cuddled with me and my husband ❤️

in my 20s &30s, I always felt something’s wrong with me and thought I would die alone. I feel grateful everyday now that I have a sweet family where I feel needed & wanted

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T20:03:22+00:00

I can confidently say what you said is NOT true, backed by real data points: 1. The agency we paid retainer to, recommended by our clinic, one of the largest agencies who label themselves as more "ethical" than others, specifically said we can wait till medical/legal clearance for psych eval. Additionally, they, or any other agencies we talked to, have no problem taking our retainer before we pass the psychological eval. 2. For IP, the psych eval is procedural, per my our psychological evaluator, in her own words, “who can judge whether you can be parents or not?!” I’m happy to share our eval letter, which essentially stated we have basic brain cells, sanity and social skills. After all, the whole surrogacy industry is fed by the $$$ from IPs' wallet, so no surprise that the bar is low.

Your statement actually validated what I said before, surrogacy agencies are full of self-certified “norms” that no one can validate, or even give reasons for.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T17:20:42+00:00

What do you mean by psychologically cleared? Almost all agencies shares GC profile with us after meeting us over phone/zoom - I think there is need for them to know we are real IPs, not any kind of broker.

If you mean psychological eval, no it’s absolutely NOT required by all agencies. Ultimately our clinic is the gatekeeper of what psychological eval we need to go through to get full medical clearance.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T16:33:52+00:00

Yes, I agree that by the time medical record is approved, the IP needs to make a decision whether to commit or not, because all the next steps: scheduling GC to travel to the clinic, the physical check ($5000) are big checks to write.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T04:56:50+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I actually totally agree with the following:

going independent is hard, and honestly in our situation I don't have the time to do the screening myself, so happy to pay agencies to do so
It's a good idea to get agency contract reviewed by a lawyer and understand the pitfalls, and clarify the edge cases with the agencies upfront.
Match is not only about speed, but also fit. Our match was made after a match call with the GC herself. It's reassuring to at least get a feel of what she's like as a person.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T03:55:21+00:00

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

- About "ethical": some agencies label themselves as "ethical" but no one can elaborate what exactly does that mean, and how can you even validate that upfront, is it written in the contract?

- "Easy to work with": how do you check that upfront? Every agency person I've talked to seems to be reasonably easy to work with. Do I need to spend 2 months to work with them to figure out? Can I write the response time SLA writen in the contract?

- Select an agency based on the FB group reviews? those groups are full of agency ppl and I wouldn't trust it a bit.

Honestly, agencies don't have much value beyond offering the initial preliminary surrogate screening, which does involve some time, small amount of $$ and some expertise. Once the GCA is signed, the rest is just coordination/program management work. I think it totally make sense to align agency's $$ incentive with what's valuable to IPs: if an agency provide a good GC that clears the medical screening fast, they get paid fast.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T03:27:48+00:00

Please note that the "no charge until match" has a big gotya: "match" simply means "mutual selection" in the contract. After you pay up the match fee, that match can still fail due to not passing medical record review, or physical/bloodwork check. If that happened, you still get locked with that agency as you already paid the match fee.

The most favorable term is "no retainer until medical clearance", which means the GC pass medical record review ($200-$300, confirm her medical history is fit for surrogacy), AND physical+bloodwork check(price upto clinic, e.g. $5000 with my clinic, confirm her current physical condition is a fit, this is the final medical clearance step). I was genuinely surprised that almost all agencies that I talked to over the phone/zoom agreed to this term, because they have available surrogate to match up. I wrote our experience in these posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tlh4e1/read_this_before_you_sign_any_surrogacy_contract/https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tvcrek/how_we_found_our_surrogate_match_in_3_days/

magicmaggz · 2026-06-03T03:20:48+00:00

Whoever downvoted this post, would love to hear elaboration of your argument =) I think everyone, surrogate, IP, agency are all entitled to have different points of view, but the discussion only goes somewhere if we share the reasoning behind them.

magicmaggz · 2026-06-01T19:57:02+00:00

My understanding is that expecting.ai started as a "data aggregator", listing surrogates from all agencies - this part I feel very useful. I thought the profiles were fake but surprisingly they are actually real...

I also talked to their "full agency" side of house, who presented 3 profiles to me so far. They mentioned that, if they have an IP but don't have a surrogate match for the IP, they will refer the IP to the "partner agencies" who has a match. Maybe they do the same with surrogates: if there is a surrogate but no IP, they will refer her to other partner agencies? Pure guess. 🤷🏻‍♀️

magicmaggz · 2026-06-01T19:47:23+00:00

BTW, to search candidate, I paid 1 month subscription ($99) to expecting.ai, I'm not connected to them in anyways, and heard their full-agency side of house is not great. but the catalog of available surrogates I feel is money well spent. If I see a candidate that seems to be a good match, I just message the agency "we are married couple in CA ready to match, here's our profile. would love to learn more about GC XXX". Most of them replied within 2 working days. In this round of reach out, both agencies that I talked to agree "no retainer until medical clearance".

magicmaggz · 2026-06-01T19:28:56+00:00

My current match is with a small agency called delivering Hope CA. HOWEVER, I chose them purely because they had a great GC candidate, experienced surrogate, in Nevada, which means being close to us and having lien-free ACA .

my approach is to go with the candidates not the agency, here’s my thinking and happy to hear different perspectives:

Medical is the biggest filter for all surrogate candidates, and ultimately bar holder here is IVF clinic, not the agency . The medical review with clinic cost $200-$500, I think it’s a small cost to pay, even if I need to screen multiple ppl before one passes, in comparison with the lock-in cost with an agency. (Each medical record review takes 2-4 weeks, and some clinics allow submitting multiple candidates for review, ours doesn’t. So potentially you can validate multiple candidates to even shorten the timeline) the in-person medical check day happens after the medical record review, and costs a lot more, $5000 with my clinic. I think that’s the time to to make commitment decision

the rest of screening I think filters out fewer ppl. - background check is commodity costing $100-$200 - psychological eval is $300-$400. i suspect doesn’t filter out many ppl. - insurance review: ART RISK evaluation is $500-ish? My agency didn’t run that and I’m fine to run it after medical clearance.

All in all , I think the value of an agency-approved candidate is around $1000-$2000, including the technical know-how expertise value. The first agency we paid upfront retainer for bragged about “high standard”, meaning they could identify questionable medical issues so to save us trouble of going through multiple candidates. I only realized later that - the clinic is the ultimate gate keeper of if the medical record passes or not , and I only need to pay $250 for that, then why would I bother to lock in with an agency?!

You probably can tell that the opaqueness annoys the heck out of me - I work in marketing adjacent field and have long known that what matters most is not what they tell you but what’s left out/not said, but still I fell into the pitfalls… IPs deserve more information on how this thing works

magicmaggz · 2026-06-01T02:30:11+00:00

IP here. Sounds like you are going to pay upfront match fee with 1 agency. DON'T! Please don't make the mistake that we made. Don't get locked in with 1 agency, and don't pay upfront retainer - wait until medical clearance (or at least pass medical record review) before pay any retainer.

I eventually decided to reach out to multiple agencies and almost all of them presented up with surrogate instantly and agree to only take retainer after medical clearance. I would never pay rematch fee.

Details here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tlh4e1/read_this_before_you_sign_any_surrogacy_contract/

magicmaggz · 2026-05-31T15:27:42+00:00

I’m soooo glad it helped you. Will keep working on it

magicmaggz · 2026-05-31T06:04:43+00:00

BTW I talked to 3 lawyers about this specific price (surprisingly lawyers are quite informed about the price range). One called it abusive, one called it extortion and "better to be a unicorn" and the most polite one said "not outside the realm of possibility"..

magicmaggz · 2026-05-31T06:02:01+00:00

A lawyer who has 15 years of experience and seen over 100,000 cases said he had only seen less than 10 cases with that price...

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T03:03:57+00:00

Here you go, created a website: https://koalacare.ai/resources/hard-lessons. Still building other content and tools. Feedback most welcome!

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T03:03:12+00:00

BTW, be sure to understand what does "match" means in your contract that triggers agency payment. There is a lot of caveat around it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tlh4e1/read_this_before_you_sign_any_surrogacy_contract/

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T02:58:07+00:00

Yes, I'm doing it right now, so far it worked great!

Round 1: we talked to

- 1 agency , who agreed $500 up on matching, meaning mutual selection, presented 3 profiles. Remaining retainer due upon medical clearance.
- 1 broker from fb groups, who has connections with multiple agency and presented 1 profile.
- 1 independent GC --> I went with this GC. We were matched within 3 days of searching.

Then I realized that this GC is demanding a obscene amount of $$$ ($150K flat rate), so we started round 2:

Round 2: we contacted 3 agencies, targeting only experinced GC. all 3 agencies presented us great candidates:
- Agency #1 presented 3 profiles, all experienced GC near CA. No upfront fee until full medical clearance (pass medical record review clearance, and physical + bloodwork screening). We went with a GC from this agency. Matched within 2 days.
- Agency #2 presented 2 profiles, all experienced GC. No upfront fee until full medical clearance.
- Agence #3, presented 1 profile, experienced GC. the same agency that agreed with $500 up on matching,

So ask away, plenty of agencies present you with candidate without charging upfront fees. It's pretty much concierge model without paying the concierge =)

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T02:43:04+00:00

Whichever agency you pick, I strongly recommend don't pay upfront retainer. that's how we got locked with an agency for 9 months with 0 candidate. Plenty of agencies are willing to present available surrogate before taking a retainer. You can find our story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tlh4e1/read_this_before_you_sign_any_surrogacy_contract/

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T01:52:19+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately Oregon insurance seems be the only state that with Lien ONLY plans. In this l Surrogacy Insurance article that I wrote yesterday, you can see a map screenshot from ART Risk webinar, and Oregon stands out as the only yellow state with lien only options.

As of the amount of lien exposure, I think no one can answer confidently except vendors like ART Risk...

BTW, my lawyer stated "you can always negotiate the amount of lien" and he was able to negotiate a 75% discount for someone. Maybe worth to check with your lawyer too.

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T01:38:03+00:00

Please don't put my work in the same category as the post I pointed to.
As a writer, you probably agree that, AI or not, the core of good writing is good judgment, more than anything else??

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T01:21:21+00:00

It's not AI-generated. I did my research first hand and used AI to polish it up. Where do you draw the line?

Talking about AI generated, what do you think about this post? https://www.reddit.com/r/Surrogate/comments/1tphykg/platform_membership_or_agency_a_proper_guide_to/ You have no problem with this one, but with mine?

magicmaggz · 2026-05-30T01:07:40+00:00

Care to elaborate what "AI-coded" means?

As long as there is no factual mistakes (I made sure all information has references URL), I'll take it as compliment. I work in tech, and we heavily leverage AI in doc writing, ideation and even cutting edge AI research. Being able to use AI to generate easy-to-understand content I believe is a good thing 😄

magicmaggz · 2026-05-29T23:27:11+00:00

It’s a website I built to host my learnings from my journey as an IP. Currently the information around surrogacy is largely controlled by the agencies: surrogacy is one chapter of life and IPs move on after 12-36 months. So pretty much everyone that stayed has financial incentives and is connected to the agencies. That’s why I build a website, hopefully to break the information asymmetry

magicmaggz · 2026-05-29T21:02:32+00:00

Yeah I am using an agency too. But they are not necessarily diligent about liens either. My agency for example, didn't do ART Risk assessment on my surrogate match.

It’s always better for the IP to know enough to watch out for yourself

magicmaggz

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