am I being unreasonable to offer to be a surrogate after failed IVF

[MiniMischiefMakers]

My bother and SIL have struggled with infertility for almost ten years and has come to the end of the road with IVF. After many failed transfers, they don't want to try again. They still have some high quality frozen embryos, and they've ruled out adoption. I'm in my mid thirties with a four year old and a seven month old, and I feel our family is complete. I conceived quickly both times and had healthy, uneventful pregnancies and births.

I'm seriously considering offering to be their surrogate. I understand pregnancy and birth always carry risks, but given my history I'm comfortable with them. My brother and SIL are a wonderful aunt and uncle and would make incredible parents. It would be purely altruistic, and I wouldn't want or expect any compensation. I’m a SAHM so it wouldn't affect my work. I just love them so much, I can see how much they’re hurting and want to do whatever I can to take it away. I also can’t help but feel that I’m effortlessly living their dream life and I feel some guilt over that (all on my end, they have never said or implied that at all, even when we announced our second pregnancy). It just feels so much joy could come from nine months of my life, they’d have their long awaited baby, I’d gain a niece or nephew, my children would have a cousin. It just feels right to me to offer.

I know they may well decline, having already been through so much. If I do offer, I want to be completely certain first so I'd love to hear from anyone who has been an altruistic surrogate, been born or had a baby through altruistic surrogacy, or has experience of it with family or friends.

KindlySurfiingPlatypus
You make some really good point's there. I personally would worry about me wanting to keep the baby, I never thought about it from the baby's attachment side though.

Only if the adoption therapist is treating under 18s.

The difference is, your children weren’t treated as commodities and given away.

Well, in fact, when it was first introduced it covered everyone (and I was talking about when it was introduced) but it was changed in 2023 to just cover under 18s. I didn't explain all the ts and Cs because I didn't think OP needed to know but yes, you are right.

I wonder why the government back tracked on a safeguarding measure?

I think that adult adoptees and even adopters were finding it hard to see therapists because if they mentioned adoption, the therapists turned them away as they weren't registered. So i think it was pressure put on the gov to relax the rules by adults for adults.

We keep puppies with their mums for 8 weeks by law. Babies are born not being able to regulate their emotions or themselves, they rely on mum and the heartbeat and smells they have known for 9 months. It’s fucking abhorrent to take a newborn from that because someone wants a baby.
A baby might form attachment to a new person, but that is from survival necessity.
We give animals more protections than babies, I’m guessing because the people fuelling this practice tend to have money and connections.

I would 100% do it in your position

There is a difference between having a third child and having a child for someone else. You are creating a timebomb for the family even if you tell the child as soon as it’s old enough to understand.

OP you are clearly determined to do it so I’m not sure why you posted.

But as a few posters have said, people only ever think of this kind of thing from the point of view of the adults and don’t consider the implications for the child

And actually the impact on your own children. Mummy is carrying a baby but she is giving it to uncle and aunt.

That takes away any possibility of keeping it secret from the child.

It comes down to whether you place more importance on two people having a baby or the potential impact of their actions on that baby and other children in the family.

OP, how will you feel if they parent different to you? Are you really going to sit back and let them do it their way?

You can tell the posters on here who would put the child first and those posters who put the adults first

Yes - depressing isn’t it!

I don’t believe surrogacy is ever done in the interests of the child.

To the people who are asking what if they divorce or move away or parent in a way that I don’t, that’s their decision just as it it would be their decision if their IVF had worked. I won’t have any additional say because of being a surrogate. The only thing that I would want is honestly about how the child came to be, because all the evidence is that children have better outcomes when they have honestly about their origins. If they choose to head off to Australia, drop all contact and never mention the surrogacy, that’s their choice as parents. I’d be devastated but I’d also be devastated if they headed off to Australia and cut all contact without having a baby either, or with a baby they had themselves if IVF had been successful for them.

I’ve said before and I’ll keep saying it. The welfare of any child born matters enormously to me. They aren’t an afterthought. I posted this earlier on the thread, and I don’t know how to expand really beyond this. I’ve read a lot of anecdotal experiences of surrogate children (positive, negative and neutral) and read studies which tend to not find notable differences between surrogate born children and their peers, however every study I’ve found has been small in nature and I’m aware that no evidence of harm is not the same as evidence of no harm. Altruistic surrogacy is rare and there are so many factors which affect child wellbeing beyond birth that a large scale study corrected for all other factors may never be a possibility. But with the information I have, on balance I think being another child into our family even if that is from surrogacy is a positive for the child. Is it in the best interests for the embryo to have the chance to grow in my uterus and be born into a loving family where they will be cherished and adored, even though that’s through surrogacy. There isn’t one answer to that. I can’t know for sure, just I like I can’t know that my children will be happy we chose to bring them into the world. No child consents to its existence. As with any child, there’s an element of hoping they agree their existence is worth it.

If a dog or cat is a bad mum, their puppies and kittens are often given to another new mum. That’s why breeders will often have multiple cats or dogs pregnant at the same time. If it is too difficult the babies still get a mum and new litter mates.

In this case the baby still gets a mum, the OP is just the body in which it will grow, the mum is her sister in law.

It’s probably not worth continuing, there is no amount of words you can use here to get some anti-surrogacy posters to put down their pitch forks. Especially when they talk about the baby not having choices, like any of our children had the choice about whether or not they were born 🤷‍♀️

There are some topics where people will debate their opposing views, or even walk on by from a thread whether their opinions aren’t really needed or relevant, but surrogacy isn’t one of them.

FWIW I think it’s a lovely thing you are considering and whether it is accepted or not, I would expect they will receive the offer in the loving way in which it is intended.

You say that as though everyone is allowed to adopt or it’s an easy process. People have been denied adoption because they have health conditions, live in a flat or even due to age or being overweight.

As an adopted person I find it abhorrent to deliberately have a baby to then give it away. There may be positive stories about DC born through surrogacy but there are others where similar trauma to being adopted has been recorded

Babies should not be treated as commodities, to be produced purposely to then be automatically given away

Shows a horrifying lack of knowledge of basic biology.
A baby in the womb will learn the sound of its mother’s heartbeat, not just “a heartbeat”, that specific heartbeat. Through the amniotic fluid it is exposed to and becomes familiar with its mother’s smell, and it hears her voice, movements and bodily rhythms constantly for 9 months.
A newborn is not a blank slate that comes out of the womb equally attached to whoever happens to be standing there. In those first weeks they are biologically primed to seek the person who has carried them, whose voice and smell they know, and whose body has been regulating theirs throughout pregnancy.
Yes, babies can and do form attachments to other people. That isn’t the point. The fact that a baby is capable of forming another attachment doesn’t mean that deliberately removing them from their mother immediately after birth is biologically neutral.
If a mother dies, cannot care for her baby, or a baby has to be separated from her for some unavoidable reason, that is one thing. Deliberately creating that separation because someone else wants the baby is a completely different ethical proposition.

A baby being capable of surviving and attaching after separation is not evidence that the separation itself is harmless.

Can I ask why you have asked the question then? You are clearly determined to offer so nothing anyone says will make any difference. Did you want different views or did you just want people to reinforce what a good person you are?

You have ignored comments about the complications of this kind of thing. You clearly think that it is in the best interests of everyone in your family for you to do it and people who have spoken about the possible consequences for the child have been discounted.

You don’t know for certain what sort of parents they will be - will you really bite your tongue if they discipline the child in a way that you wouldn’t?

It sounds more like this is to fulfill a need in you even more than to help your brother.

Anyway you are determined to do it anyway so go ahead. I hope it turns out better than most.

I completely agree

Poor husband. Even the fact the OP “forgot” to mention him in her OP. She will offer this come what may.

I suspect though that if she comes across as she has on this thread, the offer will be politely declined

I don’t understand why you are engaging with me? I won’t change my opinion, nor do I have any intention of debating biology with you because honestly 1) I don’t care enough, and 2) I have no intention to do the research needed to have a conversation at the level that would make it worth having.

Using biological bonding claims doesn’t mean that someone shouldn’t be a surrogate, it just means that a baby born to its bio mother will bond with them…as it will bond with the person who adopts it, or the bio mum after a surrogate has it. The argument doesn’t work because it isn’t about whether the baby can or can’t bond with someone else, so the points you make are not important to me or this situation right now.

I think the ethics of surrogacy are complicated depending on so many factors. In op's situation baby would be raised by biological parents and still have a relationship with their aunt and surrogate, that's as ethical as it could ever be.
To make sure every outcome is thought about I would get lawyers involved if it does go ahead.

Here is a good summary of the theory known as The Primal Wound, which is where a baby is removed from birth mum shortly after birth. I saw the author Nancy Verrier speak many years ago and the audience included a lot of adopted adults who absolutely agreed with her theory. www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&source=android-browser&q=the+primal+wound+theory#lfId=ChxjMe

But it adds complications that a baby who is adopted from birth and never sees the person who carries it won’t experience. Both theoretical children face different (and potentially devastating) consequences

i just can’t see any ethical argument for surrogacy.