In the long-haul TTC group chats I’ve been in for years, the number one question isn’t about cost—it’s about time. Especially for the combo route of single-women IVF plus surrogacy in Russia, the estimates online range from 18 months to 3 years. So I broke down my own timeline month by month. Line yours up against it and you’ll know exactly where you stand.
The 3 Months Before Your Cycle Take Longer Than the Stimulation Itself
Honestly, I assumed signing the contract meant starting my cycle. In reality, from choosing the clinic to starting stimulation took almost 90 days. Matching and screening surrogates ate up nearly half of that—I interviewed surrogate candidates over two rounds, then waited 5 weeks for her medical checks and psychological evaluation. As a single woman doing IVF, there’s an extra document step too: I had my passport notarized and my single-status declaration double-legalized (apostilled through the chain), and the mail round-trip alone took 20 days.
Actionable tip: run three things in parallel before you sign—document legalization, surrogate medical screening, and sperm freezing (if needed). That alone saved me at least a month.
From Stimulation to Frozen Embryos: 23 Days in Practice
I spent 16 days at the clinic in Moscow, with the down-regulation phase done back home beforehand. Stimulation ran 9 days, egg retrieval came 36 hours after the trigger shot. I got 13 eggs, 11 mature, and ended up with 4 blastocysts sent for PGT testing—3 passed. Better than I expected, but fair warning: blastocyst rates are never guaranteed. I’ve seen someone retrieve 20 eggs and end up with just 1 transferable blastocyst.
Actionable tip: before you fly, have the clinic send you the stimulation protocol to confirm, and learn to self-inject at home. Once you’re there, you won’t waste days queuing at the clinic for every shot.
From Embryo Transfer to Birth: What to Watch During Those 10 Months
Our first embryo transfer to the surrogate worked on the first try. From there I tracked the pregnancy checkpoints: NT scan at 12 weeks, the detailed anatomy scan at 20 weeks, and after 28 weeks, prenatal reports every two weeks—I required an English version of every single report. There was one scare: at 31 weeks the surrogate’s blood pressure ran high, and the doctor prescribed a preterm-labor prevention plan early; two extra weeks of bed rest and it stabilized. In my surrogacy contract I specifically added a clause: after 32 weeks, I had to be able to fly over at any time, and I wrote the flight budget into the total.
Actionable tip: hard-code the reporting frequency and language requirements into the contract. Don’t wait for a problem to arise before adding clauses.
Post-Birth Paperwork: Don’t Underestimate Those 4-6 Weeks
The baby arriving does not mean the process is over. Birth certificate, parentage determination (especially critical for single parents), passport, embassy travel documents—it took me 5 weeks. This is where the surrogate’s nationality actually matters: Russia’s document chain is relatively straightforward, but for a single father or mother, confirm with your lawyer in advance whether a court ruling on parentage is required. My case went through a simplified procedure and saved roughly 3 weeks.
Actionable tip: lock in your local lawyer’s and translator’s contact info a full month before the due date, so the paperwork process can start the day the baby is born—don’t wait until discharge to start looking.
Add up my timeline: 90 days of preparation + 23 days for stimulation and retrieval + roughly 280 days of pregnancy + 35 days of documents. That’s about 14 to 15 months end to end. If you want to compress that, the leverage isn’t at the clinic—it’s in the parallel prep before your cycle starts and the document handoff after birth. Grab a piece of paper right now and list three columns: document legalization, surrogate matching, lawyer. Whatever hasn’t started yet? Start that one first.