To ask if you've regretted surrogacy/struggled to bond?

[ivfregret]

Posting for traffic the other forums do not get much response.

This is not a thread about the ethics of surrogacy so I'm hoping it doesn't become that.

I'm posting because starting a family myself is becoming a very unlikely route for me and I may have to consider surrogacy.

I'm just concerned about bonding with the child/having regrets so I'd like to know if anyone has had this experience experience?

Thanks in advance

@Achwheesht no, it was not Ukraine. Even in peace times, Ukraine is not a good place to do surrogacy.

How would you like me to quantify how grateful I am to the two women involved?

So people saying it is immoral to ask someone else to risk their life for you only mean that in relation to surrogacy? Why? If it is wrong to ask/pay someone to risk their life why would it only be in one situation.

A firefighter might be risking his life to try and control the fire when no one is at risk of dying.

My husband has been disabled for over 30 years due to something that happened to him as a serving policeman. No one's life was in danger, he was enforcing the law and has been in constant pain with limited mobility for all that time. Is his life any less ruined that a woman with birth injuries? Have we all got a right to expect people in certain professions to risk their lives and health for us for money?

My view is he chose his career, he knew there were dangers and it was his decision just the same as a woman who chooses to be a surrogate.

Ripped is not a scientific term so is unlikely to be used in an academic report. However this shows how a fetus senses it’s mother in the womb and the impact of early separation including crying out for her if the baby can’t detect her there https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/how-mother-child-separation-causes-neurobiological-vulnerability-into-adulthood.html

Firefighters and police officers are performing an essential civic duty.

Surrogates are not.

This is sounding an awful like pro-prostitution arguments “sex work is work”.

The ‘wrongness’ of surrogacy is manifold.

We need a Venn diagram.

• Circle A - Is risky - life-changing injury or death.
• Circle B - Is intimate - relational, emotional, fosters connection, involves the intimate body, such as the sex/reproductive organs, and is normally only done with close partners or family.
• Circle C - Is paid.
• Circle D - Is socially necessary - it prevents risk of harm and civilised society would break down without it.

The only things which occupy circles A, B and C are prostitution and surrogacy.

There are many things which involves circles A, C and D, but most importantly, not B. Armed forces, emergency services and so on.

I wasn't talking about the morality of having a surrogate baby v fire/crime fighting. People were making the point that asking/paying someone to risk their health or life is immoral so why is asking police/fire officers to risk their lives suddenly OK? Obviously there are other careers that risk health/life. When you are in a car do you think of the oil rig workers working in dangerous situations, we don't have to have a car do we, there is no civic duty about it so is it moral to ask/pay people to do that?

You need to separate the two things, I haven't made any comment about the morality of surrogacy. Saying you believe surrogacy is morally right or wrong is a matter of personal opinion, stating flatly that,"Asking someone to risk their life for you is morally wrong" does beg the question whether you like it or not.

So basically you think surrogacy is immoral, that's fine but it doesn't mean that the people on here saying "paying/asking people to risk their life is morally wrong." have thought about the people they do ask/pay/expect to risk their lives. They weren't saying A, B and C make it immoral, maybe they meant that but they didn't say it.

Risking your life for the greater good, which in turn creates a society that is a safe place for your DC to grow up in is very different to risking your life at the detriment of your DC.

People were making the point that asking/paying someone to risk their health or life is immoral so why is asking police/fire officers to risk their lives suddenly OK?

Firefighters and police officers and soldiers are necessary for society and so they are all thoroughly trained and equipped and efforts are made to avoid putting them at needless risk.

It would be totally immoral to put any of these people at risk for personal reasons.

Wanting a baby is not reasonable justification for putting another person at risk.

I wasn't talking about the morality of having a surrogate baby v fire/crime fighting. People were making the point that asking/paying someone to risk their health or life is immoral so why is asking police/fire officers to risk their lives suddenly OK?

My previous point still very much stands.

Those people also benefit from a lucrative lifelong career, a highly scrutinised industry from a health and safety POV and the protection being a public servant offers. Such as a decent pension, insurance schemes for workplace injuries and legal protection.

Surrogacy is not highly scrutinised and laws are very rarely enforced. If there IS a vulnerability regarding a surrogate the horse has already bolted is she pregnant (such as the landmark case where a gay couple took a young woman with low IQ to Poland to inseminate her - by the time the authorities realised she was vulnerable and exploited she was already pregnant). If it goes wrong NOTHING happens. If a woman sustains permanent injuries there’s no Union, occupational health scheme, no insurance plan.

Im actually quite embarrassed for people who continue to make these comparisons.

Well said

Forgot to mention the comprehensive training public servants and army personnel go through.

Surrogates are compensated seemingly in feelings that they did a good thing.

All for other people to have a Proper Baby.

It’s utterly inequitable and scary thinking people believe it’s the same as being a police officer.

I was making two points there:

1. Surrogacy is similar to prostitution in that it commoditises our intimate lives.
2. Surrogacy is not not socially necessary (unlike armed forces, etc).

I don’t know what other people think. I do believe surrogacy is innately wrong/unethical. The word ‘immoral’ is kind of loaded, because it is associated with being judgemental. I have more sympathy - desperate people can do unethical things.

People were making the point that asking/paying someone to risk their health or life is immoral so why is asking police/fire officers to risk their lives suddenly OK?

Because they are risking their lives for people in imminent danger of serious harm or death.

Wanting a child, and not being able to conceive and bear one yourself is not going to result in serious harm or death.

Infertility is tough, but it's not threatening to life or civic order.

Totally agree @HathorsFigTree - I made the point about prostituted women way upthread.

I would add that when people talk about the "choice" of the surrogate, I am sceptical. For many many surrogates (in Ukraine and other countries) the "choice" is the same as that of a woman who "chooses" to be prostituted.

We know that poverty, domestic violence, a history of being psychologically and/or sexually abused, subject to coercive control, are all things which affect women disproportionately, and factors that propel women into becoming prostituted.

Hobson's choice is no choice at all, IMO.

And it is pertinent that most people exploited in prostitution are female and surrogates mothers are exclusively female.

It forms part of sex inequality.

Some people say prostitution is ‘the oldest profession’ - but there are no training courses required or career development. You only need sex organs for sale. Likewise, for surrogate mothers.

Indeed @HathorsFigTree I know about infertility and the sense that everyone else "belongs" to the community through their DC and I don't. But I'd never think of buying a child, exploiting another woman's poverty. There are many ways to live a full life without having a child. Therapy is a good start ...

I genuinely don’t understand that if a woman wants to and gives consent to be a surrogate, what’s the issue? The thread makes out they have no choice and are forced into it.

Those in poverty still have a choice surely? I know one surrogate and it was done because she loved her sister and saw the pain infertility caused her over years and years

@Achwheesht Can I just say thank you for your support here. I left the thread after talking quite starkly about something personal.

It felt relevant to the discussion but that poster made me feel a bit scoffed at when I saw their posts later.

It felt relevant to the conversation because while I wasn't a baby conceived through surrogacy, my life has had a lot of parallels with that of a surrogate baby. Loads of love, very wanted, everything very open, gradual handover to Mother 2 from when I was born, zero drug or alcohol abuse or chaotic lifestyle in utero etc - quite the opposite.

I feel that the parallels are obvious between adoption and surrogacy. I’m sure all of us know some people who were adopted and can see that they range between self-aware and articulate about the missing piece, to chaotic, on mission self-destruct.

There’s this false idea that has floated around for a long time, that the younger and less aware of what is happening a person is when they go through a trauma, the less ‘damage’ it causes, because the child ‘never knew anything different’.

I actually believe the opposite, that the later a trauma occurs, the larger portion of life we have had knowing what un-traumatised feels like, and because that un-traumatised self has had more formative years to create a stamp on us, our sense of self is built on a stronger psychological foundation. With that foundation, post- trauma, we can remember what it felt like before, and have some kind of sense of what it would feel like to return to that state. The younger someone is when we experience trauma, the harder it is to put our finger of what is wrong, what feels off, and to get to the bottom of it and to know what feels right.

I think this clip of Khloe Kardashian talking about how she is finding it hard to bond with the son she got from a surrogate mother is relevant to this thread.

"It's such a transactional experience because it's not about him."

twitter.com/britmartinez/status/1661805700614422547?s=46&t=3vhG_KDq77qvuwlnTiE6jg

Yes, but she did also find out the biological father was cheating on her again within a week of the embryo transfer and was basically dealing with the life she was expecting imploding throughout the pregnancy. She apparently didn't even want to celebrate or tell anyone by the time baby was born. The extra circumstances probably had a big impact too on how she found it.