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.

Would you though?

I just admit being a bit sick of all the people with infertility issues shouting Do it! It just underscores the fact that people will do anything to have a child, and will be willfully blind to the various issues - even from people born as surrogates - that might dare to say anything negative about it.

This is the very reason I now struggle with my mum, who had similar fertility issues and therefore chose another woman to have me. The blatant 'I want a child at all costs' is understandable but screams of entitlement. I think everyone in society is guilty to some extent of just feeling entitled to have a child. Plenty of people who can conceive easily, probably shouldn't and plenty of people with challenges definitely should be parents and it's a tragedy that they struggle. But nobody deserves a child. And society has really done a number on us all when we are told that our life might be pretty valueless without a child.

Underneath all of it, this is what it brings up for me. And to circle back to the OP...it's a shame for her brother and SIL but she talks of feeling guilty that she has the perfect life they want. Perhaps we need to reframe what a perfect life can look like rather than going to the extremes of surrogacy.

Tend to agree. We had infertility issues and unsuccessful IVF but we didn’t want a child at any cost. We ruled out adoption, had ethical concerns about gamete donation and even more about surrogacy. We have a good life without children now. It is possible.

Honestly, through rose tinted glasses, this is an incredibly generous and selfless thing to do but in practice, it could be fraught with complications.

On one hand, you feel like you’d be easily able to give up your niece or nephew but the reality is you’ll always have an extra special bond with that child and there are so many ways your heart could be broken over that. What if they raise him or her in a way that doesn’t sit right or they move to another country or you fall out over something because totally unexpected jealousy takes over? It could all happen - when deep feelings are involved, any one of us can become the very worst version of ourselves.

As for the baby itself - obviously being part of the same family and always knowing where it came from, is going to be a very different scenario to a commercial surrogacy but who knows what kind of emotional issues it could still raise? This is not like donating a kidney, this is growing a human and then entrusting it to the care of someone else, with absolutely no say in what happens next. That’s an absolutely huge, life-altering decision.

I was your SIL, OP and my husbands sister made the same offer. It felt very much a case of ‘my body works, yours does not, look at what I could do’. I wanted to be pregnant, experience it all, give birth, have those moments and the offer, kind as it was, felt like a massive kick in the teeth and I actually found it quite insulting. And I didn’t want to be forever grateful to someone else!

I will say that having read some of the comments on your post the thing that irritates me the most, and it’s irrelevant whether I agree with surrogacy or not (I don’t!) is this ‘the child hasn’t chosen that’ bullshit! All of us have been born - some into lovely lives, some not so much, but not one of us have chosen to be born so please, if you’re against surrogacy then just say so but don’t use arguments about a child’s choice because no child has a ‘choice’.

What was your relationship like with your sister in law @mtobrokeme

No child has a choice to be born true.

But we as humans with capacity have the choice to not intentionally cause trauma to another human, which is what separating the baby from its mother does (legality and genetics meaning nothing to the developing infant).

Even when all parties have the best will in the world, as with OP.

It ought to be illegal. It is with puppies.

Edit to add: that is precisely why I'm against it. I used not to be - I have a friend who is infertile; a gay child ..... But then I learned about trauma and child development

I'm sorry for your struggle and happy to hear you've built a good life. Thanks for the support x

I think if i was in your position i would probably offer too, aslong as the egg wasn’t mine- i don’t think i could give up a baby that was biologically mine, but not biologically mine it would be easier to view the baby as theirs and im just carrying it.
Just wanted to add that although you have had 2 uneventful pregnancies and births that might not be the case for your other pregnancies/births, i have had 5 children and 4 completely different births- (set of twins so 4 pregnancies, 4 births).

On one hand, you feel like you’d be easily able to give up your niece or nephew but the reality is you’ll always have an extra special bond with that child and there are so many ways your heart could be broken over that. What if they raise him or her in a way that doesn’t sit right or they move to another country or you fall out over something because totally unexpected jealousy takes over? It could all happen - when deep feelings are involved, any one of us can become the very worst version of ourselves.

Yes I agree SIL could end up feeling very jealous and insecure about that special bond. And I wonder how I would feel as the child with two people in my life who were both in a real sense my mother. My genetic mother, and the mother who carried and gave birth to me.

And how would the child feel? That is the most important thing

It’s funny but you are already casually assuming you get to make those parenting decisions. The baby’s parents may not want the baby to know it was born by surrogacy - would you accept that? What about when you’re pregnant. let’s say you get tonsillitis and they ask you not to take antibiotics because it’s harmful to the baby.

anyway i still think that you should go for it IF you know your DB well enough to know you’ll be aligned on these tricky matters. but i could never!

Its not like you would be telling them they are adopted, they will be biologically with their mum and dad, just auntie had to carry them 🤷🏻‍♀️ i have literally just asked my 14yo DS how would he feel if he found out that his aunt had to carry him and give birth to him but he was still biologically mine and dads child and he said well it wouldn’t make a difference i can’t remember being in the womb or being born, if i wasn’t yours i would feel a bit sad but i would be so thats fine.

Oh don’t be so bloody ridiculous!

Part of the process of therapy if we go down this line would be discussing the child. My eldest’s best friend is donor conceived and while it’s pretty obvious in that case they’d need help (because the child has two mums) all the advice from the clinic is to be honest with the children from birth about where they came from. The same would be true of surrogacy and I’m working on the assumption that they would do that. If in the discussions they seem hesitant about the honesty about their child origins then I wouldn’t want to go ahead. Of course they could move to Australia and cut all contact and not tell the child and that would be their choice. I’d be upset at that, I’d also be upset if they’d used a donor egg and were dishonest with their child and cut contact with us. I can’t say how much more upset I’d be because I haven’t experienced how it feels directly having a baby for someone else, and I have no other nieces or nephews to compare that to anyway.

So after this navel gazing (on AIBU of all places), whatcha going to do @MiniMischiefMakers ?

We don’t know. I’ve read a lot of perspectives of grown up children and teens born from surrogacy. Some feel positively about it, some negative, and some neutral. There isn’t consensus. There aren’t large scale high quality research studies to refer to on it. If it happens I hope they’d be happy, like I hope my children are happy I brought them into the world.

So he’s happy with rent a womb. Also a child who isn’t in that position isn’t going to know how they would feel in that position. It is known babies can feel trauma if removed from their birth mum, so your son wouldn’t have that inbuilt trauma

I don’t think it’s navel gazing to try to get a wide range of thoughts in such a huge thing. That I why I posted in AIBU because there are probably people who have directly or indirectly known an altruistic surrogacy arrangement beyond those in the Surrogacy topic. I also didn’t want an echo chamber, and partly posted for traffic.

I think I said in an earlier post, the first thing we’d do is find a therapist for my husband and I to work through our feelings fully before offering anything. Especially my husband hasn’t thought about it as deeply as I have. Then we’ll make a decision if it’s right for us.

If you genuinely wanted to discuss this incredibly serious and massive potential development for your family - no way would you have chosen Mumsnet AIBU.

That doesn’t apply to surrogacy, years long research between surrogacy born and natural born children suggests there is no difference in the childs psychological/emotional wellbeing, as long as the baby is placed in a loving environment with hands on parents, OP would just have to make sure that first contact with the baby once he/she is born would be biological mum (SIL) skin to skin straight of the bat with SIL will create a bond that is akin to birth mother- its why dads do skin to skin straight away too so the baby feels a strong bond with dad- and obviously dad doesn’t carry baby either.

I think it's a fabulously generous gift you are thinking of giving.

Also @sittingonabeach it is even possible for SIL to breastfeed if she prepares throughout the pregnancy, creating an even stronger bond, if she wanted to of course.

I don’t doubt that there’s nuance to every situation. There’s an argument that having biological children ‘naturally’ is a selfish act, too. This is an issue I think about often, as I’m in the interesting position of having two sisters, one who was a surrogate herself and she has a very close relationship to the child she carried and their family; my other sister gave birth to her own biological position, sadly during an abusive and drug fuelled relationship. Every time she announced a pregnancy we all went through immense stress and fear, all of which was justified as all three children are now adopted (within our family) and two carry immense trauma and have suffered their whole lives. The child born via surrogacy, however, is thriving and loved by multiple people in the way that every child deserves to be. This is, of course, one anecdotal example, but a good example, I think, that the manner in which a child is born is anything but black and white.

I have no personal experience but just wanted to say what an incredibly selfless act, and that whatever happens, your brother and sil are very lucky to have you in their corner.

My view is that I don't see surrogacy as inherently wrong. If the embryo is theirs, this limits the chance of you becoming attached - it's their baby. If you haven't already, thoroughly research it to enable you to get your head around the risks - there are some as I'm sure you're aware so you need to be comfortable with the level of risk you're taking, and the impact it may have on your own family. It's a lovely altruistic act, but it absolutely should not come at the expense for of your own relationship and family. Your dh may be supportive - but has he had the risks explained to him independently?

And definitely be cautious in how you offer, be ready for a reaction you may not expect or understand.

Good luck op, whatever you decide and however the offer is received.