Reviews

Read reviews from Intended Parents and Gestational Carriers that have worked with Independent Surrogacy Support LLC.

Intended Parents

A&A- Jan 2021

Baby boy born in Dec 2021

"We highly recommend hiring Shannon as a consultant to help match with a Surrogate or Gestational Carrier. Going through this process is so emotional and intended parents are typically in a vulnerable place during this time. Shannon explained to us her journey in starting this consultant role and her intention is helping families grow without charging extreme fees. She is very professional, was patient with us, and very responsive to our feedback. We were very direct in what we wanted which I think is very important. We also loved her personal experiences as a gestational carrier, and found her helpful even after we matched to support us through the process."

K&P

Baby boy born in 2024

Hello! I wanted to provide a review about a surrogacy consultant that my husband and I worked with on our journey. I am an Intended Parent (IP) and the name of the agency is Independent Surrogacy Support (ISS) (Surrogacy Consultant for Independent Support and the owner/consultant is Shannon Wooten. My husband and I started our journey to grow our family in early 2019. Our wonderful Gestational Carrier (GC) delivered our baby boy in January 2024 and helped make us parents!

Now that we got the basics out of the way, let's rewind back to the beginning for context and background. We researched and educated ourselves on the different pathways we could take starting in April 2019. This information will hopefully help give you an idea of our overall journey to show how long everything took. I have seen many reviews where the process was either very quick or very long and I think we fell somewhere in between.

We first spoke with Shannon around the end of 2019 when she was first starting out (we may have even been one of the first or second couples to connect with her after starting her business) before we had attempted IVF or made any embryos. Overall, we went through 7 rounds of IVF from October 2020 to November 2023 and created our 3 (yes, only 3 out of 7 rounds but we got our baby boy!) embryos around September-October 2021. In between all those IVF rounds, we spoke with large scale agencies (Conceivabilities, Circle, etc.) and we spoke with a few consultants and small-scale agencies as well. We wanted to be well-informed, of course, and we were also on a budget. We were thinking about whether to go independent or with a consultant. We reconnected with Shannon in 2021 as well to see if she available to help match us with a GC but I believe she was working with a few other couples then and wasn’t taking on new clients. That was okay though because we were still working on embryo creation. Fast forward to December 2021, we had embryos ready and were ready to match with a GC. I created a biography post and posted to as many surrogacy matching Facebook pages as I could find since we were aiming for an independent match. Around March 2022, I came across our GCs post and we hit it off immediately through chat and our GC happened to be working with Shannon - it was almost as if working with Shannon was meant to be! We didn’t think twice and signed on with Shannon and agreed to work with our GC as they knew each other as well. We all lived within close proximity to each other and met in person a few times to hang out.

Shannon was really helpful in the process of guiding our GC with getting medical records and med clearance steps completed (April 2022-July 2022). Shannon was in constant contact with our clinic and gave us recommendations on who she had worked with in the past for psych and lawyers as she was a previous GC herself in our state (August 2022-December 2022). Shannon was also a great resource to our GC for questions on the process, meds, appts, etc (Transfer #1 - March 2023, not successful; Transfer #2 - May 2023, successful). She was always there to answer questions for me and my husband and checked in with us periodically even after our contractual obligations were met. A memory I will always keep with me is when Shannon came to visit all of us in the hospital after our son was born (January 2024) and hung out with us and my family. We all, Shannon, GC, GC’s husband, my family, me and my husband really became close through the process and I continue to keep in touch with everyone.

Overall, it was a really great experience with ISS and I would work with Shannon again in the future should we choose to embark on a sibling journey. We are located in Maryland, as does Shannon, but I believe she also works with GC’s and IP’s in other states as well. She is expanding her business now with a new communication platform which I think would have been great when we worked together but email worked just fine too! We couldn’t have asked for a better setup with our consultant and GC and are glad we went through this process as I know it is a long and arduous one for most. It was for us too but there was/is a light at the end of the tunnel and we had some great help along the way! Take your time and look for a great match in a GC and agency/consultant and things will work out

Surrogates

Carrier L- Jan 2021

Delivered a baby boy for 'A&A' in Dec 2021

Shannon Wooten is amazing. We met when we did our first surrogacy journey. When we decided to do it again she was there for me every step of the way. When I had to back out on my IP she was there for me. Trust me it wasn't an easy decision but there were major issues. I was her first client and feel so lucky to have her by my side. She helped me find new IPs, and they were amazing. Shannon is very knowledgeable. I would recommend her to anyone. I can't say it enough but she's amazing.

Carrier B- March 2021- delivered in 2022

2nd Journey 2024

Hello! I wanted to share my experience with Independent Surrogacy Support. As a surrogate, I've had the pleasure of working with Shannon on my first and current journey. I was hesitant to go through a large agency and tried independent matching, but it wasn't successful. Then I found Independent Surrogacy Support which is a smaller business that offers consulting services as well as matching. Shannon has been a beacon of professionalism and communication from the start. She promptly responds to all my queries and effectively communicates with medical professionals, making the process seamless for me. After my first surrogacy, she showed genuine care for my well-being and gave me space to decide on my next journey. When I decided to pursue another surrogacy, she was equally excited to support me. Her personal and professional approach has made this experience even more comfortable. We're currently preparing for a transfer in September for my second journey.

My first journey began January 2021 when I reached out to Shannon and told you I was ready to begin my first surrogacy journey. After a few weeks of getting things together for setting up my profile to show potential IPs as well as taking a two weeks of a break due to some family matters we finally were able to move to the matching phase in February 2021. She had a wonderful set of IPs who were interested in a meeting almost instantly and after having a zoom meeting and discussing it after with my husband we all agreed it with be a great fit. We had a few hang ups with doctors and lawyers being on the slower side, but we officially signed contract in October 2021 and had our first and only transfer in January 2022. This journey resulted in a beautiful baby girl in October 2022.

In November 2023, a month after celebrating my first surrobaby turning a year old, I felt ready to begin my second and current journey. Shannan had a set of IPs who had recently reached out to her and we set of a match meeting within a week we decided to match. This journey has gone much smoother, but still had a few hiccups with doctors communicating again. We were able to have contracts signed and ready to begin the next stage of our journey in April 2024. We were able to transfer in July 2024 which unfortunately resulted in a fail and are now preparing for our second transfer in September 2024.