‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ C4 10pm tonight

You're right Alabama the managing around the baby being a gift rather than a purchase and compensation rather than payment.

The couple clearly borrowed a lot of money (from friends and family?) to pay for the surrogacy and the tv appearances etc were paid so it's a way of raising some cash. Jake might be out of work but Hannah would be getting maternity leave payments?

I’ve also learnt that altruistic surrogates in the UK have a very strong preference for male, gay couples over heterosexual couples which I find a little weird and somewhat unsettling.

Maxes the virtue, presumably?

I’m pretty infertile due to endometriosis. I’ve had two rounds of privately funded IVF. Infertility - of the non-self inflicted kind - is a medical condition and that’s what’s IVF is there to treat.

However I struggle with the concept of surrogacy - it just seems so wrong. Carrying a child and childbirth comes with not insignificant health risks (from dodgy pelvic floors through to death) and it seems so strange to me that it’s ok to put someone else through that risk.

From the IVF groups I’m on, I’ve also learnt that altruistic surrogates in the UK have a very strong preference for male, gay couples over heterosexual couples which I find a little weird and somewhat unsettling.

Jake described a surrogate having a baby for them as a gift (still pretty dehumanising in my book) but seeing as they paid Laura, it wasn't a gift, Millie was a purchase.

But no one pro surrogacy wants that truth shouted about.

It seemed the documentary makers wanted to avoid any difficult issues that showing the surrogacy may raise - and so really avoided showing Laura and her experience at all.

It was as if they wanted to pretend the Laura did exist. She was just a person involved in them getting their baby, and not actually a human and a mother that just put her body and mind through a gruelling experience.

I'd guess that Lauras motivation was financial, which doesn't fit the narrative of, women are so kind and giving they just want to make babies for others. Pro surrogacy people want to ignore the ugly truth that most women surrogate because they need the money.

And her children. What must they think about it all? Jake talking at Laura’s bump and then cajoling the kids to talk to the bump was excruciating!

That's the point at which I had to turn it off, when Laura's kids were being asked by Jake to look after her.

Just to note, it was NI not Republic of Ireland- so UK laws are applicable.

The car thing was because they stayed for 3 weeks in Ireland before the baby was born, so took they baby stuff the bought, even eggs I saw being packed!

They would have to go back to collect the car I guess and register the birth (within 6 weeks, I believe that has to be done by Laura but you'd hope they would go together, support for her was noticeably absent so I hope there was more, we just didn't see).

They did certainly seem to be in a big rush to get home to London, Millie being hours old on a plane during Covid with feeding being barely established before her ears are exposed to air pressure changes. Even Hannah I think it was that said something about 6 hours and the call saying Millie was born rather than the Labour was starting was interesting. Other cases of surrogacy during lock down (Sophie Beresinner, The Times) had both the husband of the surrogate mother as well as both commissioning parents in the room for the birth, but that was a different hospital - I think it's down to the midwives and I'm glad they appear to have had Laura's (the actual patient) interest at heart. I hope she got time alone with Millie before she had to say goodbye. My heart breaks for her. Surrogate mothers have said it is addictive so I expect she will do it again, the money is a big incentive and Ireland has no law around surrogacy.

And yes to PPs noting the age of her own children, definitely not grown up at all! I wonder what conversations were had, if any, with the ex husband as whilst he has no legal responsibility for Millie if they are divorced, if he was an involved parent he should have questions about the impact of this situation in his own children. I hope they are ok too.

I thought it was because they had so much stuff with them. The car was packed

I don't get why they didn't just fly over to Belfast and hire a car, why get the ferry? I guess its because they thought they would just be able to sit in the car

It did all come across as rather insensitive
On other programmes with surrogacy in I think it's come across better
But then I also just really didn't like Jake

'obviously the mother isn't in the hospital, the mother is sitting here in the car'

A male person cannot be the mother of any child.

At the start before the pregnancy, her saying something like her own children are ‘now grown up’

Yes I wondered that as soon as Laura said it. She's 32, not likely to have 'grown up' children.

I've had a thought about the leaving the car in Northern Ireland and flying back. They took the ferry from Holyhead and Wales had pretty strict lockdown rules about travelling back into England. I bet they thought flying was the only, and quickest, way to get Millie back to London.

They obviously didn't want to spend a minute longer in Northern Ireland, or with Laura, than was necessary.

Oh no, I can't stop thinking about Laura now either. Even if she was just visibly very upset as she said goodbye, which is a totally normal human reaction to saying goodbye to a baby that you have carried for 9 months in your womb, it would have looked really bad. Because it would have made her look like an actual feeling human being, rather than just a baby carrying vessel.

She barely spoke at all throughout the programme did she? ChattyLions post is spot on - they didn't really go into any depth about her feelings about it. The way she just had to stand there outside her house with her kids while Jake did the big 'it's your daddy here' show, talking to her tummy.

Argh, it's made me really cross now actually!

Yeah, I wondered about the editing - they made it look so cold. When Jake said 'obviously the mother isn't in the hospital, the mother is sitting here in the car' The way they stalked into the hospital with the car seat, fuming because they couldn't get their hands on the baby, apparently no regard for Laura at all, she will have been recovering, it sounded like maybe the hospital were doing the right thing? The comment about latching onto Laura's breast being 'awful'. I also thought Jake came across as a completely arsehole when he wouldn't get out of the car on the ferry.

And yes, given that they had actually showed the implantation, which is a very invasive procedure, and a pretty 'intimate' moment of the whole journey, it was strange that they didn't show a goodbye... I'm now wondering if its because Laura was really upset and it wouldn't have looked good?

Laura was very much portrayed as just a tool in their journey wasn't she, not an actual person.

The thing is, Jake and Hannah are obviously happy with the editing and how it came across. Presumably they would have watched the programme before it aired and they have been endlessly plugging it - so they must think they came across well.

Christ, it really does show the misogyny actually doesn't it, that people don't even notice this stuff?

Great observations Chatty

The documentary makers didn’t show the actual leave taking with the baby and goodbye to the surrogate. I thought that would have been emotionally key to the whole film. I wondered why not?

No conversation shown about whether and how they include Laura and her kids in the baby’s life going forward.

And Laura:

At the start before the pregnancy, her saying something like her own children are ‘now grown up’ (I think they were 8 and 10?!) then later on, saying her kids are really young.

Could be editing but: she asked no real questions of them, how the relationship would be with her, the risks to her, nothing about the baby’s welfare or upbringing. She was shown very passive, silent, never talking about how she is feeling ever. Is never asked.

Not filming at the surrogate’s home, not including any adults from her family, just showing her chatting on some land outdoors with her kids in their school uniforms, being really positive about the baby.

Whereas the couple’s nice home interiors and Hannah’s supportive middle class parents are shown in detail, like going off to get the MBE and preparing for the baby’s arrival. The couples feelings about things are given so much focus.

The gaping wealth and social capital chasm between the couple and the surrogate.. and how in the film-making as if that somehow justifies everything. Otherwise why are some key questions left in explored?

The silent tears rolling down Laura’s face and her lack of any speech in the film after giving birth. I just keep thinking of her.

So many things here.
So little experience of relationships, first and only relationship, I love you on first date, then meeting online and two weeks later full steam ahead with the surrogacy
The constant gender stereotypes.
The ambivalent relationship with Laura, the surrogate- I thought she was looking to them for kindness, or concern for her wellbeing or health, or friendship or gratitude and thanks- Yet the restaurant, pregnancy test, meeting her kids scenes, all felt so awkward because she seemed to be seen as such a transactional figure to the couple.

The shifting goals of personal identity validation: implying that first you always wanted to be read as male, but now to be read as a father is a major goal. Or that the goal is being allowed by society to become a dad, (I think a lot of parents have that feeling) but then the goal being that everyone is actively positive about you being a father or mother (who expects that?!). Other people’s reactions coming in via media or social media seem to be so much felt as the yardstick of personal worth or success.

Much unresolved-seeming emotional struggles, fragile sense of self, whereas parenting gives little space for preoccupation with selfhood or working out your emotional issues.

The never seeming to think outside own experience: this may be editing but no appearance of care for the surrogate : no ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘does it hurt?’, ‘thank you for letting us be here in the room with a camera crew while you’ve got a speculum, womb catheter, vaginal ultrasound in’, ‘oh no, how awful for Laura to have to give birth alone because of corona’, no ‘thank you‘ to her until baby is taken from her, no ‘thank you Laura we’ll be in touch’ at the end, no ‘will you be ok?’

The documentary makers asked the couple a question on gender stereotypes which was good. However they did not ask Laura any questions at all, not even about why she did it- so her words. ‘I just like the feeling of being pregnant’ and ‘would you believe some couples ask me to do it for free?’ went unexplored.

Her experience or voice was only mediated by the couple’s subjective interest in her. There wasn’t the same journalistic objectivity for her. That gives the impression either because she isn’t seen as a real, equal person to the couple or that if she voiced her motivations and situation the motivations wouldn’t have been seen as palatable or the scenario so sympathetic to watch?

In life, relationships, anything, it’s often a big red flag if you are going ahead with doing something that you can’t even talk really freely about, isn’t it?

I haven't watched the programme but I'm hugely uncomfortable with the idea that this seems to represent that everyone has a right to have a child. A child is not a commodity to be bought with a surrogate or IVF and is not a right. A world where we abort thousands of unwanted embryos but also use technology to produce babies where a couple can't naturally have them, either for fertility reasons or because they are in a same sex relationship, seems a strange dichotomy to me. These assisted reproductive methods are not wrong per se but they can produce a warped view of reality.

So Laura didn't tell them when she actually went into labour then. That was interesting cos in surrogacy that usually tell them at the start of labour

I'm confused how they went home by plane when they brought their car there?

I didn't warm to Jake. I don't think he listens to Hannah and I think he dismisses her concerns a lot. I didn't take to him

A good proposal that the Law Commission made was that children born from surrogacy should be given a legal right and a way to find out about the woman who gave birth to them. So if they made that into law, the child could get access to any info that the surrogate had been willing to share about herself or her contact details. I think like people born from sperm and egg donors can do now.

www.lawcom.gov.uk/surrogacy-reforms-to-improve-the-law-for-all/

This would only cover UK surrogacy, but at least if the UK started keeping the info officially for future access it would feel less erasing of the surrogate’s contribution to the child’s personal history and more like the law treated the pregnancy and birth as something meaningful.