Surrogacy and newborn baby - does it impact the baby?

[Lemonaade]

Seen a few threads recently on this and I’m just intrigued- some people say it’s not fair to the baby. But how does the baby know? Apart from later in life when they find out.

Do they know as a newborn they’ve been taken away from its mother? What is the impact on the baby?

@Ricco12 it wasn't damage from being removed from the mother it was damage form being exposed to high levels of cortisol "the stress hormone" intrauterine caused by mum being in extremely dangerous and toxic situations throughout pregnancy.

Also, it's odd that people are comparing to puppies and kittens. We take them away at 8 weeks old and expect them to be ok

@glasshole "There are lots of studies that show that some babies DO go on to have issues after being born prematurely and /or being separated from their mum. That's why we all know it's so important to keep mum as baby together wherever possible." I'd be interested to see these studies, I wonder how the researchers where able to differentiate and consider causality between say lack of oxygen at birth, too much oxygen over the course of treatment, the impact of the baby having TPN nutrition over breast milk or formula for a sustained period of time, the use of antibiotics as a preventative treatment, the use of steroids specifically Dexamethasone to get babies off ventilators, blood transfusions to counteract the amount of times gases are run each day to monitor the obs against the separation from their mother. Just a thought.

Just to say that as a fellow preemie mum I find this all hard to read. It was very difficult to feel that we had already damaged our baby irrevocably as soon as they were born.

Aware of the risk of attachment issues, we ourselves took comfort from books like Philippa Perry's, who writes that attachment is a process, the culmination of months and years, not just the question of a golden hour/fourth trimester.

My dgd wouldn't breath when she was born until her father spoke to her.

When DD was born I was very poorly after a long labour ending in EMCS. The labour and surgery exacerbated an existing health issue and left me with some new ones too.

For the first week- ten days I essentially fed her and family had to do the cuddling and nappies. It plays on my mind and upsets me a lot. I feel so sad that I let her down when all she would have wanted would have been me.

It’s really distressing to read on this thread that my fears have been realised and this separation will have done her serious harm.

There are so many babies who need to be separated from the people who gave birth to them due to safeguarding reasons and for people who are adopting from birth or parents who have adopted from birth. All fine and does not impact their relationships at all. Children are incredibly resilient as long as they are loved and cared for by someone.

You clearly have no understanding of adoption, where there is significant weight given to the trauma of removing an infant from their birth mum. Children are deeply impacted by adoption.

It’s really distressing to read on this thread that my fears have been realised and this separation will have done her serious harm.

Do you mind me asking how old she is now?

I had a similar sounding birth to you, followed by NICU for ds and a bout of postpartum psychosis for me. Dc1 is 8 and I think absolutely fine. I'm not. His birth nearly killed me, cost me my career and very nearly my marriage (dh is a Saint, I'm not) but we muddled through.

I think as NICU mum and a quite frankly bonkers mum I have a load of guilt. I should have fought harder to be listened to. I shouldn't have got to 80 plus hours after my waters broke. I shouldn't have lost consciousness on the operating table. I should have held on to my sanity harder. However the root of what's being discussed isn't individual babies removed from their mothers temporarily because of a medical need...it's creating babies with the intention of doing that because someone has paid cash for them. Just because we find these conversations hard, doesn't mean they shouldn't be had.

At the opposite end of the scale my paternal Grandmother was left with her Grandmother as a newborn until she was five because her mother couldn't cope and my paternal grandfather never knew the identity of either birth parent. Apparently it was their abandonment as babies which brought them together (according to my Aunt). Despite both being raised with love and affection in secure family units, fucked up doesn't come close to describing them and their own ability to parent when my Dad and his sister were born.

Clearly no idea whatsoever. Good grief!

I was in the same situation, it's hard but I presume when you say you fed her that you were able to hold her?

Newborns need their Mums, separation is trauma.

I don't know. I haven't seen any studies on it, so I'm not in a position to give an informed opinion.

Yes, I held her to feed but would hand her over for winding and to sleep on other people because I felt so out of it. I’m sorry you were in a similar position.

Someone said that adopted children always thought they “knew” before they were told. I can confirm this. And I didn’t even look that wildly different to the rest of my family. (Not so much that a child would notice and think about it) I was just such an outsider.

I think my parents adopted me because they are narcissistic and liked to engage in performative “altruism”. I never ever felt a bond with my mother.

I didn’t feel robbed of anything until I had my own children. Sometimes now, I do feel a deep sadness that nobody has ever loved me the way I love my children. It’s so intense and profound.

Anyway, I digress. These connections are real and necessary. They are ingrained, as a survival mechanism. Some babies are separated from their mothers for a variety of reasons, including birth prematurity but it is in the best interests of as many full term and healthy babies to avoid it.

If both parties are happy with it, what's the problem?

Both parties being the adults on either side of the agreement I suppose? And what about the baby? Your thoughts on this make the baby appear as a commodity.

@QuiltedHippo yes I feel quite upset now. My baby doesn’t seem bothered about me and we were separated a lot at the beginning as I was very ill.

I feel this is all about woman not wanting to feel disposable. You have to take the emotion out.

Personally, I think surrogacy is a choice and proper research needs to be done to see if there is any impact. The ancecdotal “ my baby cried when they were 1m away” doesn’t really matter.

My brother was premature when he was born in 1972, 5 minutes after he was born a midwife ran upstairs to NICU with him in a tinfoil blanket. I was sat in the corridor with my dad & grandparents & my mum had asked the midwife to show him to me as she went past. My mum didn't see him again for 24 hours & was discharged home the next day. Parents were not actively encouraged to visit, there was no communication, my mum went in daily to learn how to tube feed him & one day when she arrived he wasn't in the space where he usually was, he had become very poorly, had to have a blood transfusion, got some kind of infection & nearly died, yet they had never contacted my mum & dad, we weren't on the phone but they had a neighbour's phone number for emergencies. He was there for over a month, came home & 4 days later was admitted to the Children's hospital for another week, again parents weren't allowed to stay unless it was end of life care. My brother is the most independent person you could know & has been ever since he was a child. I honestly think all children & babies need is love, it doesn't matter who from, there aren't enough babies for adoption & think surrogacy should be regulated & allowed.

No not the thing I seen it wasn't just one baby they looked at it was many and it was due to being removed from the mother at birth.

These comments are really harsh for mothers of prem babies and mothers who have adopted. Are you posters saying that if you had not been able to conceive a child by any other means you would never had considered surrogacy? Not all surrogate parents are celebrities. My neighbour carried a baby for her sister .

there aren't enough babies for adoption

This just sums it up doesn't it. Absolutely abhorrent.

What do you mean by "not enough"?

Not enough to fulfill the needs of adults who want one. Do you think it's a shame more babies aren't relinquished at birth or born into families who can't look after them for some reason.

Sorry the supply of human babies isn't high enough to fulfill demand.

Yuck

Independence can be a sign of reluctance to depend on anyone as everyone , even their mum, was ultimately unreliable.

Look, sometimes the baby can't stay with the mum. Mum visits as often as possible, and baby manages. Eventually baby gets to be with mum again and they repair.
Baby still knows mum, still gets reassured by mum visiting and then being fully present, Baby repairs. Baby wouldn't have survived without the special treatment.

Can you not see how different that is from healthy baby leaving mum and living somewhere else forever? Can you not imagine the baby's stress until new bonds form with the new caregivers?

A huge difference between prem babies and surrogacy is that surrogacy is permanently removing babies from their birth mothers. And it’s done intentionally!

Mothers of premature babies visit their babies, talk to them, sing to them - they spend as much time with them as they can. Most hospitals now recognise that kangaroo care helps improve babies chances. Everyone is doing their absolute best for that baby and there is no question of otherwise.

surrogacy is deliberately creating a baby to be permanently removed from its mother. There is no opportunity for that relationship to be repaired. They aren’t comparable.

I fostered two babies who went to an adoptive home together. For about a year, eighteen months, I was mum to the babies. One of them, I met at six weeks taking him home from hospital. The other I visited from birth and spent as much time at the hospital as I could until he was ready to come home.

Poor little dabs had a wretched start in life, including congenital developmental delay.
They are now happy, healthy and greatly loved teenagers in their adoptive home.

I've seen the behaviours of babies separated from their mum and then from me. I've felt the pain of giving away a baby I loved.

You can't discount things because they are upsetting.

Creating babies deliberately with the intention of separating them from their mum is wrong.

Imagine a scenario, as a medical ethics/philosophy professor has done, where babies are carried in the wombs of women in a vegetative state.

A ward of women who are unaware, each of them pregnant with someone else's baby. These women aren't suffering, they are unaware.

Babies are plucked from their bodies at term and given someone else.

In theory, that ought to be ok assuming the women gave consent before they became ill- like carrying a donor card.

But it's actually revolting- deeply disturbing. To use one woman's body as a temporary host for a baby...
It somehow reduces the baby to a parasite, and the mum to a functional womb.

Just because the functional womb is walking and talking doesn't make it less wrong.