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

I haven't but a good friend has. Their little boy is now 5. My friend and her husband have a close friendship with the surrogate and her family.

The DC in question is a very happy little boy. They are a lovely little family unit and he wants for nothing.

I also have a friend who is going through the process to become a surrogate for a childless couple.

@Hoppinggreen not always "buying" a human. I offered to do for my brother and no money would have been changing hands. I did so out of love. Unfortunately it didn't work out for us but he would certainly not have been "buying a baby" from me

Why didn't it work out @bladebladebla1 ?

Would it have been genetically your baby?

My friend used surrogacy and the surrogate mother had a horrendous birth that resulted in emergency surgery. You'd have to accept the risk of that. Could you live with it for the rest of your life? It's something you'd carry with you every day.

Also lots of extra health risks in surrogate pregnancies including 4 times more likely to get pre-eclampsia which can be life threatening.

Finally there seems to be a very low bar in the vetting process in the uk so you might struggle to find someone suitable. I know someone who is going to be a surrogate mother and she loves a drink, morbidly obese, a smoker and had a mental breakdown a couple of years ago. And yes she's been approved by the agency and she's going ahead with it. The risks to mother and child are going to be huge, i still can't believe she's allowed to do it.

@OhHolyJesus My SIL got really sick so they have had to rethink starting a family and probably won't ever do it now

I wondered if you made attempts and struggled with the pressure of delivering on a 'promise' or miscarried, which would have been far worse. Thanks for clarifying. I'm sorry for your SIL.

@OhHolyJesus I have had a miscarriage of my own many years ago which whilst horrific, imo isn't worse than the feeling of potentially losing my SIL. Not arguing, just being honest

I used to be pro surrogacy. I know of an altruistic surrogacy arrangement which seems as lovely as is possible - mother still very much in the child's life etc.

But I have also learnt a lot about early childhood, babies' in utero experiences and trauma.

Quite apart from the (usually exploited) women, surrogacy quite literally knowingly commissions a traumatic event in a baby's life eg removing it from its mother, the only thing it has known and it's first attachment.

You can't expect people not to mention that, I'm sorry. Surrogacy only exists because we live in a misogynist world which does not confer equal rights to women and children! You simply cannot expect a women's forum not to speak up about this. It would be like talking about considering fox hunting on an RSPCA forum and saying people were stupid for mentioning the cruelty.

Happy 3 and 5 year olds don’t necessarily turn into happy teens or adults.
Parenting a teen is hard enough - I can imagine how difficult it could be with a teen born through surrogacy. It’s already such a difficult time. I think people are so consumed with wanting a baby, but the reality is that you are responsible for bringing a new person (eventually adult) in to world and have that responsibility forever.
I’ve had adopted friends go through the heartache of finding their biological parents and either being unprepared for the emotion of it (how could you be prepared) or being rejected by a parent.
Children born through surrogacy must go through the same surely?

Organ donation is quite different in at least a couple of significant ways

• the donated organ just stays in the new body and performs the same bodily functions as before and never acheives autonomy or consciousness

• fertilised eggs/sperm/embryos can ultimately grow into entire new human beings with feelings, thoughts, desires, roles and relationships in a way that a kidney or lung could never do

This ^

Of course - completely different situations. Additional stress of a risky pregnancy through surrogacy in the family would no doubt make things worse, even if it gave them hope, there would be lots to consider about the future.

(I heard of one child who was born through surrogacy and she is a now a young carer for her legal mother, though that wasn't why she was conceived.)

A miscarriage wouldn't prevent a woman from being approved by an agency but the mental health aspect should surely be a key concern as has been noted by a PP.

There was a woman who had a stillbirth and went on to have a baby for a couple, but they met on Facebook and didn't go through an agency - but still, there should be checks in place, her grief was clearly tied into her decision. It must have been so traumatic to give up a baby having lost one so recently.

@HarrietJet hadn't got that far

@Soontobe60 serious harm to whom?

The child? Absolutely zero evidence of this! Please find and link evidence that surrogacy does any harm to a child. All 'evidence' I have come across is based on adopted children with complicated attachment disorders.

The surrogate? Provided the surrogate is going into it fully informed and consensually then she isn't being abused. There is risk involved in any pregnancy and if the surrogate knows, understands and accepts the risk then frankly it's her body with which she can do as she pleases.

My friend put a down-payment on a foal a couple of months ago but she's not allowed to take possession until Christmas, for the sake of the horse. Makes you think.

People always come out with the old chestnut 'what about the child? They will suffer because they'll know they were born through surrogacy.' WTF? No they won't!

Are people seriously suggesting that every child NOT born through surrogacy has a lovely trouble free life with no woes or unhappiness, and never ends up with problems in life??! And the birth mother who carried said child (and the father!) will be just so perfect, never neglect the child, never shout at them, never get angry with them, never criticize them, always be soooo perfect?!

Do people also say the same about adopted children? Should we stop that too? What about the poor birth mother who has had to give away her child? What about the future of the child? How will she/he feel when they discover they were given away?

Surrogacy is no different to adopting. In fact it's better in many ways because it often uses the egg and sperm of the people who become the legal parents... Ya know - the biological parents! How and WHY is anyone going to be emotionally fucked up - or upset when they find their parents used a surrogate to carry their foetus? Most people won't give a flying fuck, seriously!

The mother who carries that child throughout pregnancy isn't an inert incubator. Removal at birth is a traumatic event for the baby. It is cruel to inflict unnecessary trauma on a newborn.

It’s interesting that very few people have given you what you want. Maybe you should think about that.

The rest of you are weirdos.

Says the poster who came to a parenting site expecting to hear negative, as well as positive, accounts of surrogacy and told women (mothers - clue is on the name) not to talk about the ethics.

Parents who have had their children through surrogacy are hardly going to confess here 'god it was terrible I wish I'd never done it, the surrogate was a right bitch and the kid is a nightmare, screams all night like I've kidnapped her' are they?!

Your research will need to extend into places where the ethics around surrogacy is discussed OP as those 'using surrogates' aren't going to tell you honest accounts. The surrogate mothers are mostly bound by their actions but the stories of regret are there, go read the links and research properly if you care to look in a truly unbiased way.

The irony of your request and your rejection of what you don't want to hear isn't lost on me, as someone reading 'from both sides' that you've 'done your research'.

A 'legit' experience for you OP, posted in the first 35 mins of your request.

Without wanting to derail the thread further, the difference between surrogacy and adoption is that with surrogacy you are deliberately creating a baby, knowing that it's going to be separated from its mother. There are plenty of studies which suggest this early separation can be detrimental to the baby.

With adoption, it's the next best possible solution for the baby because the alternative would be being brought up in care, and we all know how bad that is.

Adoption happens because individual circumstances mean that the baby/child can no longer remain with its biological parents. No one pretends that adoption is the perfect situation, or that it's without complications.

Of course there are many adopted children who are just fine. But there are plenty of stories of adopted children who never come to terms with their adoption, even though they may love their adopted parents very much.

If adoption was such a perfect solution, why are there so many stories of adopted children searching for their birth families when they're adults?

There's the same potential for all of these problems with surrogacy (ignoring all of the other additional problems that are inherent in surrogacy).

Infertility is heartbreaking and I understand why women (especially) seek out any possible solution but let's not pretend that surrogacy is just an alternative birth option without any potential issues.

For one Khole Kardashian has got nannies to look after her kids maybe that's why she didn't bond with him so fast

I'd imagine she does, but she spoke of the instant bond she had with her first who she grew and birthed herself, and I'm sure she could afford nannies then too.

"You wouldn't be against surrogacy if you couldn't carry/have a child of your own!"

I wish people would stop saying this perpetuating the myth infertile/childless people are all thoughtless, selfish, baby crazy whack jobs.

I've had three rounds of IVF and don't have any children. I would never do surrogacy. Going through fertility issues has given me a lot of food for thought about the ethics of surrogacy and egg and sperm donation and what we ask of supposed 'altruism'.

I would rather be childless than go against my own personal moral code and do something I believe is deeply unethical.

If someone chooses to do something unethical in the selfish pursuit of a child that's about them - not a reflection on many of us who make different choices