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.

More disturbing than that I think.

Plus daft. The Op has two kids. Yes this couple would love children but to even think they gaze at @MiniMischiefMakers thinking she’s living their dream is farcical

@MiniMischiefMakers
one of the things that struck me from one of your later posts is that you had PND and struggled to bond with your babies. What if this baby comes along and you feel an overwhelming and powerful instant bond (which is very common) with this baby that you’ve never felt before. If you’ve not felt if you don’t know what it’s like and you’re setting yourself up potentially for even worse PND and no baby in your arms to show for it.

And for that matter, what's the difference between being a surrogate for a sibling, and siblings deciding to pass the child over later than birth? Say I don't like little babies and only want to parent one who can sit up, and my sister likes being pregnant and having a newborn but loses interest in them after age 8 months and we agree to swap then?

Except that that would be illegal child trafficking. Why is it illegal to do it with an 8 month old but ok with a newborn? Neither will remember it, a popular argument for surrogacy being ok is that the baby won't remember. Both will be loved and wanted by the receiving parents, that's another one.

Surrogacy is child trafficking, whether you get paid or not.

Incredibly close. It still is. She knows how and why I found her offer to be insulting now and she understands! I also know though why she offered and it was kind if not wanted!

What plans will you have in place if you die in childbirth? How will your OH cope with being a single father? What will it be like for your children to grow up without their Mum? Will you write letters to them before the birth so you can explain why you did this so they can understand why you left them?

Another poster gave you the link to the death of Natasha Caltabiano who was a surrogate who died while giving birth.

There's also the death of Michelle Reaves, who was a surrogate who died while giving birth - her death left her 2 kids without their Mum.

https://www.today.com/parents/mom-acting-surrogate-another-family-dies-while-giving-birth-t172216

Right now, the number of women dying during childbirth is increasing.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/20/maternal-deaths-rising-in-uk-despite-fewer-births-official-figures-show

"the 254 deaths during 2021-23 meant the death rate had by then climbed to 12.67 for every 100,000 births...However, the 2021-23 figures were slightly down on the 275 deaths and 13.56 deaths per 100,000 maternities seen in 2020-22."

The question is, is your brothers heartache worth dying for?

I think it's an amazing thing to do for your brother OP. Sounds like you have thought it all through. Talk to them xx

Have you been in my situation and received the same offer?

That's very different to what is being discussed here.

Attachment in the psychological sense does not begin in the womb but when the baby enters the world. Mind-blowing that you think physiological familiarity is the same as psychological attachment.

Yes, it definitely is. This is a very specific thread about a very specific example, in a very specific set of circumstances, to which I am responding. Had I come on to a thread about baby farming via corporate entities and replied as I have, then you'd have a point. But I didn’t, and you don't.

But there has to be a point where it's not ok.

Or is it only ever ok, for this one specific scenario with this op?

Everything's specific. You might as well be asking why it's ok for a relative to donate a kidney, as opposed to buying one from someone poor from abroad.

A child is a bit different to a kidney, in any circumstances

Exactly. The people saying "but no one consents to being born" are (willfully?) missing the point. The child can't consent to being removed from his/her mother. In every other circumstance we know this is to be avoided if it possibly can be. But for some reason in surrogacy people are suddenly willing to claim it's absolutely fine, no harm done.

Yes

Yes.

Why do some women struggle so much when other women will make different choices to them?

You know men don't try and berate and bully each other into agreement like this?

Why do women struggle so much with other people having autonomy?

Wait. Dying to fix your brother's upset is worth more to you than your child having a mother???

You'd DIE for your brother to have a child?

Many posters like me are concerned about the resultant child. To be treated as a ‘gift’ to be handed over

@ThorsRaven do you think mothers with more than one child should have written a letter from beyond the grave to their eldest child just in case they should die during childbirth. It never crossed my mind to do that for my firstborn when pregnant with number two. This is no different.

@Thisusernameisalwaysavailable and for your example, the same thing…. We don’t tend to think this deeply into it when planning a family (or people would never have a second). I didn’t think of it as ‘dying to give my child a sibling’, or ‘risking death to have another child’. Yes there is a risk but the argument only gets brought up in this case by those fundamentally against surrogacy, even though many many women plan a second pregnancy without a moment’s thought of ‘but what if I die and my first child loses a parent’.

Yes. I'd take the tiny risk that I'm going to die in pregnancy for my sibling to become a parent.

I'm white
Not that fat
Not that old
With a simple obstetric and medical history

There is absolutely no reason for me to plan to die by getting pregnant so the tiny chance of death wouldn't have much influence on my decision making.

Ok.

I'd be fine knowing the baby is in my family and will be raised by their loving parents.

Why dying in pregnancy is possible and the risk is higher for an IVF pregnancy not using my egg, the absolute risk is very low. If we get to discussing IVF I will have the conversation with somebody familiar with my previous medical history and current health status. If I’d posted asking if I was unreasonable to consider a third pregnancy, or if I should consider a subsequent pregnancy via egg donation (which is the same process) people wouldn’t be commenting that I should be writing goodbye letters to my children. I’m aware that pregnancy has risks but with the information I have I’m satisfied that the risk is low enough to be tolerable to me at the moment.

I’m incredibly aware that the child is a full human being and not a gift. 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. 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.