There are two types of surrogacy: Traditional Surrogates and Gestational Surrogates. If surrogacy were put in video game terms, the first involves two players, the other involves three players.
Traditional Surrogates are women that are inseminated with you or your partner’s sperm and conceive a child with their own egg. These women are biologically connected to the child they conceive and are prepared to give the baby they birth to you based on a surrogacy agreement that both parties work out beforehand, typically using a surrogacy agency as a middleman.
Gestational Surrogates are women who are implanted with an embryo fertilized in a lab by your sperm and an outside donor’s egg using the process of In Vitro Fertilization. Essentially, gestational surrogates provide a comfortable home – their womb – for a child genetically unrelated to them. Gestational Surrogates are more commonly used than traditional surrogates because there is less of a chance that a gestational surrogate will balk on the surrogacy agreement or cause other complications with adoption once the baby is born since she is not genetically related to the child she is carrying.