Adam Kay and his husband’s babies

[MatildaTheCat]

Apologies if this has already been covered.

I read in the paper this morning that AK and his DH have welcomed TWO babies into their lives, born to two different surrogates. One child is six months old and their sibling is two months old.

I genuinely cannot wrap my head around this. It seems so very odd to me. Is it a case of ‘one each’ or ‘get the baby stages over asap’?

Obviously nobody but the two parents can answer this but AIBU to find this really quite disturbing?

Yes, absolutely parents who have children through surrogacy should do life story work with their child and include photos and details of their biological mother.

I'm not sure why you think I'm contradicting myself - I think being open with their child about their life story, and giving them the tools to understand their identity and life story, is incredibly important in all scenarios.

That's a really good point. Lots of work is done with adopters these days so that they can have open, age appropriate conversations with their children about the child's origins and how they came to be adopted. Including really difficult stuff like the child being abused by birth parents, or the product of rape. Is anyone coaching users of surrogates on how to age appropriately explain that they were purchased from a Ukrainian woman who was then left behind in a warzone, or a very poor Indian woman who was kept on a baby farm? Are they heck.

Yes but my point is that knowing about it and having all manner of “tools” doesn’t mitigate the reality of it. Nothing you can ever do or say or dress up nicely will change the fundamental fact that these children have been separated from their biological mothers at birth.

And the fact that in a surrogacy context you will be brought up by a biological father doesn’t necessarily help in circumstances where you will also have to confront the fact that your biological father paid to exploit your biological mother. What a great guy.

I think commercial surrogacy needs an ironclad contract that protects the mother who is pregnant and compensates her for all the health impact of being pregnant, including all birth after effects, plus a hourly rate for being pregnant. The mother also has end decision on her body, including the fetus until birth, and the purchasing people have zero decision rights.
The contract also should contain a mandatory insurance for death and serious injuries, paid for by the purchasers.

Only then can I even begin contemplating seeing renting a woman as an incubator and purchasing the end product as a viable commercial transaction.

The mother doesn't just 'carry' a child.

A mother feeds her baby, nurtures it, develops and grows the child in a deeply interconnected relationship; her body carefully calibrating and adjusting to cater for the needs of the foetus/baby as it grows. The baby learns her voice, smell, heartbeat in the womb.

'babies can tell the difference between the voices of their mothers and the voices of strangers ... listening to mom may increase a preterm infant’s autonomic stability, and promote healthy weight gain ...

https://parentingscience.com/how-do-children-respond-to-a-mothers-voice/

She then labours, and births the baby. Various other interdependent processes play out, including rooting for the breast, latching, grooming, and many other instinctive and unlearned acts and actions performed by both mother and baby, processes which build on each other to create as a whole the safety, responsiveness and care that a child needs for a good psychological start in life.

All of this is the most intricate and (I'd say) amazing process or series of processes and interactions, all of which speak to the importance of the mother/baby dyad, which is the foundational relationship of our lives. As mammals this is just how we have evolved - a strong mother/baby bond is very important for the wellbeing of a baby.

To imagine that a woman is some kind of anonymous oven that can carry a baby and then pop it out and pass it over with no effect on the mother or the baby is a very sad and grim misunderstanding.

Our understanding of adoption means the trauma of mother/child separation is understood and acknowledged. In surrogacy, this trauma appears to be being strenuously denied. Babies born of surrogates do not seem to have this understanding or acknowledgement of their trauma - I suspect because most of the parents buying babies don't want to admit that they've knowingly and deliberately inflicted this trauma on the baby they're charged with caring for.

Agree with this.

If you choose to describe something very negatively then of course that will have an impact on the way a child perceived the situation.

Saying to a child that they were bought, trafficked, torn from their exploited mother etc etc is never going to be a good idea… How about they were wanted so much that lots of people had to come together to bring them into the world? As others have said, this is very different to adoption so I don’t buy the argument of the child being forever, irretrievably damaged.

I do agree though that there is lots of scope for exploitation when it comes to surrogacy. But that doesn’t mean every single surrogacy arrangement is exploitative. If the right processes are followed, the right checks made and so on, then it should most probably be a positive experience for everyone (but there will always be exceptions and risks, as with anything).

Cutesy language might work for pre schoolers, but a 14 year old isn't going to be placated with 'lots of people came together to bring you into the world'. Sooner or later the purchasing parents are going to have to have a conversation about having paid for the child to be created and removed from the birth mother; OR the child will have to cope with the confusion and pressure of that being unspoken because their purchasing parents can't face going there and leave the child to try to make sense of it all. Either way I think there is a lot of potential for distress in this scenario are the children get older.

I don't even know that words can fix what is going to be at root a biological, instinctive response/trauma, tbh. Not sure how much it matters how you try to present the 'story' of a surrogate birth as a positive, feel-good event; the trauma is likely to be at a very deep, pre-verbal level.

Very true. It's not a positive, feel good event for the baby, quite the opposite. And pre verbal trauma is very hard to mitigate.

And many surrogates are not any of those things as others have said in this thread.

To be honest I’d be interested in knowing how many of those standing in judgement of those who use surrogacy as a means to have a family are sitting surrounded by their own children as they type. Compared to those who are anti-surrogacy who have experienced infertility and the utter desperation it brings.

This is just emotional manipulation.
The heartache and pain of infertility is enormous, beyond words. There are plenty of people who have posted on these threads before who are infertile and will never have biological children who are still anti commercial surrogacy. My dearest best friend is one of those people. I cannot even begin to imagine her pain but she says her pain doesn’t give her a right to do something she believes in immoral. It’s a particular concern where the surrogate isn’t the egg donor as they are then anonymous.

This is just emotional manipulation.

It is and blackmail of the worst sort. No-one is owed children, parenthood is not a right. Essentially you @adviceneeded1990 are saying that because someone really, really wants a child and is unable to have one then it is right and acceptable for them to use someone else's body and to purchase the resulting child. Other women's bodies are not there to service someone else's wants, a child is not an object to be traded.

I’d say curiosity rather than manipulation as it’s far easier to judge people when you’ve never experienced their pain.

I don’t know where I come to rest on this issue. I’m struggling to conceive and I can’t honestly 100% say I’d rule out surrogacy if it was my only option. Luckily, I have many options left to explore. And yes, I’d want it to happen in a well regulated way that protects vulnerable women from exploitation, but if a friend or a sister offered in an altruistic way, I can’t be 100% certain I’d say no. If that makes me a monster then so be it.

I’d just be intrigued to know how many of the judgemental people have experienced the pain you mention your friend experiencing, as I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And as I said I’m fairly early in my journey compared to
many. I can honestly say I’ve contemplated suicide at the thought of never being a mother. I’ve met people via support groups who have had similar thoughts. It’s a visceral pain where you feel broken and incapable and like something has ripped a hole through your very being: I’d never judge anyone for how they explore their options relating to making that feeling disappear.

Experiencing pain oneself doesn't give anyone the right to inflict pain on another, I'm sorry.

This

It took me some time to conceive which was excruciating and I don’t even pretend to know how it must feel to be in the position of anyone struggling longer term with their fertility. I don’t judge anyone for passing thoughts “oh my sister easily has babies, I wish she’d have one for me!”. Those sort of thoughts and feelings are very human.
The commercial surrogacy process is series of stages. It isn’t a passing thought or feeling.

Those poor babies

I'm an adopter, my children are not biologically related to me. I did not have them from birth and they and I are dealing with the effects of their early trauma and their removal from their birth family, which was for their own safety.

I am 100% against surrogacy. Being unable to have birth children yourself, no matter how painful that might be, does not give you the right to exploit another woman or to cause potentially serious and life long trauma to a child. Your pain doesn't give you the right to do that, and doesn't make doing that okay. So yes I do judge those who use surrogacy.

I wouldn’t judge a desperate woman, and I would feel pleased for her happiness, even if to myself I don’t think surrogacy is a good idea.

I do not doubt that you have experienced great pain. I do have children but suffered years of recurrent miscarriages and considered my options during that time. But the thing is - your whole post is about you - how much you want a child, the pain you feel, how you want that pain to disappear.

If you had a child via a surrogate you would be doing it because of your need for a child and despite the fact you’d be putting another woman’s life at risk and be parting a baby from its biological mother.

No one has a right to a child. No one has the right to use another woman’s body. No child deserves to be created to order to be taken away from their mother.

I understand the sentiment but how far do we go with that? To what level to we “not judge”?

Well by that logic should we also not judge a woman who steals a baby from a maternity ward? If she's desperate and it makes her happy?

I agree in the case where women are
exploited and used. But where a women has acted as a surrogate altruistically and without coercion, I can’t see that as using a women’s body or risking their life, not if they have volunteered.

I agree my longing for a child is selfish. All conception is self-centred. No one brings a baby into the world because it’s best for the baby; we try to conceive because WE want children. Despite many circumstances of conception being less than ideal.

I’m not refuting the idea of post birth/removal trauma at all, I’m sure it occurs, as it does in the case of adoption. But to me there isn’t yet enough research to say it occurs in every case. I also disagree with paid/transactional surrogacy.

But as the above poster says, should we judge what anyone does to create their family? Is it more altruistic or morally worthy to accidentally create a life, a real life person, who may experience trauma, as a teenager who doesn’t use contraception? As a women who is financially struggling and can’t feed her existing children? As an addict? Plenty of women in these situations become pregnant by choice. Is it more morally worthy to do so? I’m not sure. Which is why I don’t and won’t judge.

I would never judge a woman I knew, or post a negative judgement in reply to a particular woman who wanted to use a surrogate who happened to come on here, say. But I would do other things to stop it, as a general trend if I could.