I’m an SMA carrier. Two rounds of IVF in Hangzhou, and we never even got to a transfer. For a long time I blamed the clinic, the protocol, my own body. It took me way too long to accept the real problem: my husband and I are BOTH carriers, and no amount of stimulation cycles fixes that. So we rerouted—from Hangzhou to Thailand—split the whole journey into six steps, and finished in about 14 months. This post follows my actual timeline.
Why I Stopped My Third Stimulation Cycle After Getting the SMA Genetic Report
The doctor at our Hangzhou center was refreshingly honest. The day our second batch of blastocysts all failed, he said it straight: both of you are SMA carriers, so even if we grow blastocysts, we’d need PGT testing (third-generation IVF) to filter out affected embryos, and there might be very few left after screening. We had sent 5 blastocysts for testing—3 came back usable, minus the mosaic ones, only 1 was transferable. I did the math: two or three more stimulation cycles after 35, and we’d most likely get the same ratio.
The day I decided to stop, I sat outside the consultation room for half an hour and, oddly, felt lighter. It wasn’t giving up—it was switching tracks. My advice: get single-gene carrier screening for BOTH partners first, bring the report to your doctor, and ask upfront how mosaic and carrier embryos get classified. Don’t wait until after you’ve sent embryos for testing like I did.
Why Thailand Instead of the US—I Did the Math Down to the Airfare
Honestly, we looked at the US first. The legal framework is the most solid, but the full package—agency fees, surrogate compensation, insurance, travel—quoted north of 1.8 million RMB across the board. Thailand’s legal medical route, plus pre-planned parentage recognition, ran us about 850,000 to 950,000 RMB total. The difference is mostly in surrogate compensation and legal fees.
I built a spreadsheet with 11 expense line items and compared them one by one. The Thailand option saved roughly 900,000 RMB—which happens to cover our first two years of raising the baby. Time-wise, the US route starts at 18 months; Thailand took us 14. Practical tip: confirm your visa type first. We used a medical visa, 60 days per entry and renewable, which saved us one extra border run compared to a tourist visa.
The Six-Step Surrogacy Process—and How Many Days I Wasted at Each One
The real surrogacy process is much longer than any agency’s brochure. Step one, matching a surrogate: the agency gave us 4 candidates. We reviewed medical exams and pregnancy history and picked a 28-year-old with two prior vaginal deliveries. That step took 23 days. Step two, psychological evaluation and lawyer meetings—we met twice, revised the contract through two rounds, 31 days total. Step three, stimulation and egg retrieval: my eggs were frozen in Hangzhou and shipped over. This was the biggest trap—cold-chain paperwork and shipping permits bounced back twice for missing materials, costing us 17 extra days.
Step four, embryo culture plus PGT-M testing targeted specifically at the SMA locus: 28 days for results. Step five, the surrogate’s transfer preparation cycle—worked on the first try. Step six, pregnancy management: video updates synced to me every 8 weeks alongside her prenatal checkups. Every pitfall I hit was paperwork-related, so here’s your checklist: dual authentication of the marriage certificate, notarized English translation of the genetic report, and the shipping permit. Get all three done before you leave home.
The Three Contract Clauses I Deleted from the Agency’s Draft—Then Added Back Myself
I read the contract draft line by line over two nights. The original left prenatal care costs uncapped; I changed it to a single-pregnancy budget ceiling of 450,000 Thai baht, with any overage requiring written confirmation from both sides. The pregnancy risk clause originally only covered surrogate breach—I added medical decision-making terms: who signs in an emergency, and how much weight my opinion carries. And I added a parentage confirmation process after birth, with a hard deadline written in as a specific number of working days post-delivery.
All three of these came from a lawyer friend, by the way. An agency’s draft will NEVER voluntarily include clauses that limit the agency. Here’s a rule you can use immediately: if any contract leaves surrogate medical decision-making authority and cost caps blank, send it straight back for a rewrite.
Our baby is four months old now. Looking back at every step of those 14 months, the single most valuable lesson is this: paperwork first, money later. Confirm the genetic report, notarization, visa, and contract caps before you talk about matching or transfers. If you’re standing where I stood—two failed cycles, both partners carriers—stop pouring money into repeats and map the whole route before you spend another yuan.