What surprised me most in my journey wasn't seeing "how a surrogacy process really works" — it was discovering the medical processes happening "behind the scenes". When you really think about it, there's a miracle taking place here that until a few years ago was the stuff of science fiction. To this day even I am a little stunned when I tell people how it is that I have two daughters from the same pregnancy carried by our surrogate, created with an egg donor we chose, with each twin genetically tied to one of us — and they are truly sisters; that we could choose the embryos' sex; that all of it happened on the other side of the world; and that we're all friends to this day...
So I learned a great deal about the medical, social and personal processes... but nobody prepared me for the fact that, like the military, in a surrogacy journey every term is going to have an abbreviation. For example — almost every surrogacy agency's name is made of several words, but everyone in the field uses the shortened name, and suddenly a list of agencies reads like a riddle: NWSC A4SS AFS USS PLS GRS — and that's just one example, the tip of the iceberg.
So to make the terms easier, here's a small list of the most common ones (that aren't agency names... :)
IVF — In Vitro Fertilization — the medical process of creating the embryos in the lab
ET — Embryo Transfer — transferring an embryo to the uterus
FET — Frozen Embryo Transfer — transferring a frozen embryo to the uterus
DET — Double Embryo Transfer — transferring two embryos to the uterus
SET — Single Embryo Transfer — transferring a single embryo to the uterus
ACA — Affordable Care Act — the US patient-protection law, also known as Obamacare, which regulates health-care coverage for US residents
RET — Egg Retrieval — the retrieval of the eggs
IP — Intended Parent/s
IM — Intended Mother
IF — Intended Father
GC / GS — Gestational Carrier / Gestational Surrogate — the surrogate
ED — Egg Donor
DP5DT — Days Past 5 Day Transfer — the number of days since the transfer of a 5-day embryo
EDD — Expected Due Date
