Has anyone had a baby via surrogacy?

[highsexdriveonhol]

Posting for traffic as no one replied to the surrogacy area (fully aware probably the worst place to post but need answers!)

Disclaimer: this is NOT a thread about the ethics of surrogacy - please don't come here with posts about how you don't agree with surrogacy blah blah it's not what the thread is for and you'd be wasting your breath.

I'm exploring all routes of starting a family and to be honest, not convinced this route is for me but I feel only right to consider everything before drawing a line.

So I wanted to hear about positive and negative experiences of surrogacy from parents that did this to have a family.

Did it go well or not well for you, would you do it again?

Are there trauma issues for the child in your experience? Did you struggle to bond with the child?

Ideally looking for couple that used their own sperm and egg where possible.

Thanks in advance x

@Clymene you're still buying a child

@Clymene the risk of dying in childbirth is no greater than in a car accident so should you be annoyed if someone came to pick you up and died on the way? Because they took the risk driving the car. Don't be so ridiculous

This.

Your post is 'i don't want to talk about the ethics of surrogacy'.

Just how disgusting is it to be unwilling to talk about ethics as if they are inconvenient, a nuisance or something that can just be swept under the carpet.

Ffs some people on this thread are so stupid
The irony...

I know two women who have been surrogates. The first did it for a close friend (using the friend's embryo). She was very upset throughout her first and third trimesters that she was neglecting her own 4yo because she felt so unwell, I would say that she had serious regrets during the pregnancy tbh, but the birth went smoothly, she recovered well, she's still very close friends with the family etc. She says she doesn't regret it, but she definitely wouldn't do it again.

The other woman was a surrogate for her sister. The sister never ever should have asked, and the woman herself should have said no- she'd already had a miserable pregnancy with her own child, horrible HG, and very significant PND, all of which resurfaced in her surrogacy pregnancy. Lasting negative impacts for the surrogate mother, her child and husband, and her relationship with her sister and niece.

Yes, yes they are
Which ones is a matter of opinion

I follow a woman on Instagram who documents her surrogacies. I find this really interesting because in Canada surrogates are only allowed to be paid "expenses" and yet she's found another way to monetise the process (through insta).

Anyway, she's always going on about how much she loves being a surrogate, and how it's all so misunderstood etc etc. And yet, she also goes on about how surrogates in Canada deserve to be paid "properly" (like they are in the US) because it's such a difficult thing to do 🤷‍♀️

How is ivf buying a child? I didn't pay for mine, the same way I didn't pay for cancer treatment. I couldn't create a baby on my own (even with dh help), same way I couldn't cure my own cancer.

Ivf is not like surrogacy. Going through treatment with your dh, where you then carry, birth, and then raise your own child is completely different to surrogacy.

Genuinely interested in your thoughts about the ethics op? What were your conclusions with your research

So centralising ethics and making ethics the heart of any conversation about ethics is 'stupid'?

I stand by what I say about trying to dismiss ethics at every opportunity because it's inconvenient, a nuisance and what you don't want to hear being disgusting.

Tbh OP the ethics should be the ONLY thing. Once you've looked into the ethics and discovered all the big ethical issues you'd surely want to end it there? You can't just put those to one side.

It's a bit like asking 'I'm thinking of going into human trafficking, ethics aside, is it a good business?'. It doesn't matter, the ethical concerns mean you shouldn't do it.

There are other risks.

But I'm ducking out now because you're unspeakably rude and quite honestly I don't think anyone should give you the time of day.

FWIW you'd make an awful parent given you think throwing insults around is a good way of getting your point across.

What @Clymene said. Your posts are frankly appalling, op, and they give an insight into your character you'd probably do better to keep hidden.

hope you’re ok, OP. You asked a perfectly reasonable question and some absolute idiots/ blinkered/ know it alls have jumped on your thread bombarding and bulldozing their views and selfishly putting you and anyone with a remotely sensible answer down. I appreciate that some may have some limited experience to back up their views but there are plenty of opposing views and experiences that others have pointed out.

I’d be asking similar questions in your position. Nothing you’ve said would suggest the personality flaws suggested by some of the recent posters, I think they need to hold a mirror up to their own behaviour.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

About 6-8% of pregnancies experience life threatening conditions.

Rates of maternal death increase with maternal age. Rates in 2021 were 20.4 deaths per 100,000 live births for women under age 25, 31.3 for those aged 25–39, and 138.5 for those aged 40 and over.

In the U.K there is an almost four-fold difference in maternal mortality rates amongst women from black ethnic backgrounds and an almost two-fold difference amongst women from asian ethnic backgrounds compared to white women. These disparities are statistically unchanged from 2018-2020. (From MBRACE.)

In the US black women have had the highest maternal mortality rate of any racial or ethnic group since at least 2014. In 2021, their rate was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 births, more than 2.5 times higher than the rate for white women (26.6) and Hispanic women (27.9).

The life of the surrogate mother isn’t the priority for commissioning parents during or after the birth (roughly 40-45% of maternal death occurs up to 24 hours after the birth), but in some cases even a live baby isn’t either. Brittney Pearson who was a surrogate mother and was diagnosed with breast cancer in May at 22 weeks. The commissioning fathers not only asked her to terminate at 24 weeks, rejected the child due to being born premature but they also would not agree to having the child born and adopted.

Here's some more real life experiences for you OP.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12254637/Surrogate-claims-gay-dads-told-terminate-pregnancy-24-weeks-cancer-diagnosis.html

Women who have died whilst carrying a surrogacy pregnancy are not limited to:

Michelle Reeves
Jenny Craft
Lydia Cox
Crystal White
Brooke Brown
Natasha Caltabiano
Premila Vaghela

And an anonymous woman who died in May 2021.

Why would they?

@ThePianists because posters keep talking about 'buying' a baby. Isn't IVF buying a baby?

There are huge ethical questions around ivf too but people seem content with that one - probably because many posters used it themselves

Isn't IVF putting the needs of parents over babies if we are going to go there. In fact isn't almost EVERY conception putting parents needs before babies unless it was accidental?!

Parents seem to think they didn't conceive because of their own selfish reasons which in many cases is bollocks because the baby didn't ask to come into the world - the parents did.

You use your own body to gestate the baby with IVF, op, not someone else’s.
Extremely strange they you keep comparing the two.

Actually, if someone had a car accident and died on their way to pick me up from somewhere, yes, I probably would feel bad about that. Because, you know, empathy.

Also, your stats are wrong.

I have no qualms about IVF but I think there are ethical considerations about egg donations too, but not of an order of magnitude of taking an infant from its mother and handing it to its buyer.

No.

IVF involves medical intervention to allow a woman to carry a baby.

It doesn't involve paying another woman to gestate and birth your child.

In IVF the baby goes home with its birth mother. The woman it lived inside.

In surrogacy the baby is taken at birth from its mother and given to some other people to raise.

These are fundamental differences. Are you absolutely sure you've looked into the ethics of surrogacy? Because these are differences are quite clear to anyone with even a basic knowledge of what IVF and surrogacy involve. It might be worth talking to a clinic so you can understand the difference.

IVF is your baby in your body. It’s not comparable at all.

I don’t have particularly strong views on surrogacy but I can see why people do.

IVF allows the advancement of medical science to assist in and attempt reproduction for those with infertility (+surrogacy for same sex couples with or without infertility.)

Having an embryo made of your DNA implanted isn't the same as a having a donated egg embryo implanted, both medically and ethically. (Not procedurally.)
They are in the same realm but these two different scenarios are not the same. Surrogacy and IVF can overlap but they are not the same though there are ethical issues with both.

Having medical science assist in eradicating hereditary disease is in the same realm, but not the same as, for example, having geneticists ensure your baby is born with blue eyes. Both come under genetic engineering, but the motivations, ethics and procedures are not the same.

These false equivalences are used to deflect from the issues some do not want us to discuss.

So far

IVF
Organ donation
Maternal death vs car accident stats

...haven't detracted from the core of what surrogacy is but we haven't yet had abortion or body autonomy yet, though I'm sure they are next on the list.

So with IVF whose life are you risking?

NOT SOMEONE ELSE's.

The problem with surrogacy that you CAN NOT get around is that you NEVER get Hollywood Women acting as surrogates. Its always the ultra rich who buy off the poorer.

OR you have this emotional issue where someone asks a close friend or family member. And the problem with this is you can't get away from the guilt issue and feeling of obligation to help. However this may risk the relationship because of the emotions and stress involved and/or may be coercive in nature. It is IMPOSSIBLE to separate which arrangements are done totally freely and which are done out of a sense of having to or duty / coercision involved.

THEN there is the issue of whether the surrogate has older children. And the implications if there are birth injuries involved with the birth. And the issue of if they DON'T have kids whether they can make an informed choice about what they are doing (remembering giving birth could risk their ability to have any children of their own in the future).

The MERE FACT you think you can compare this with IVF says a fuck tonne about your moral compass and the fact you see a baby as a commodity rather than a person and that the process of giving birth is really fucking risky and can have long term implications.

GO BACK AND TRY HARDER. You REALLY bloody need to get real and understand what you are actually asking another woman to do.

AND THATS BEFORE you consider the implications for the child.

Its monsterious to be making a parallel with IVF.