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

You can join registers, you can donate kidneys, parts of your liver etc to matches. Are you from a different planet or something?

This simply isn’t true.

Babies are born expecting their birth mother. They know their voice, they sense who they are.

Why are we lying to ourselves that babies are born not having a clue who is who?

DON'T feel like a monster In real life, very VERY few people think badly of people who use surrogates. Good luck in your search for a surrogate mummy.

If she wants a baby it's her choice.

I hope it goes well for you 😊 x

We had our child (now 9 years old) through international gestational surrogacy. Although I did not carry our child, his birth mother sent us 12 and 20 week scans as well as a recording of his heartbeat (cellphone + headset to her belly), and she played him a recording of us singing songs. My heart did a complete somersault the first time that I held him in my arms.

He has guilted us for many things: for not giving him an air-up bottle, for not taking him to a beach resort with a swim-up to room pool, for not giving him ice cream for pudding every day, etc, etc. But he has never guilted about his birth, and he is glad of his life. I know he is just as bonded with me as I with him. We have always told him the truth about how we was made. He does not have a problem with it, and enjoys telling other children about his three birth certificates and three mothers, along with the full technical details. I could never, ever regret him. And I speak as the parent who was less emotionally invested in having a child.

Jesus this is so offensive.
I work as a midwife and in this past year we have had two surrogacy pregnancies on my ward resulting in so much joy for all involved.
The baby is loved from conception by all involved. A baby will love and respond to WHOEVER shows and gives them love. They are not taken away from everyone and everything they have ever known. They are not traumatised. State your research to prove this.

Sorry I'll point out there is no way I'm doing it with someone else's egg or sperm it'll be genetically mine and my partners

A baby doesn’t HAVE to be ‘ripped from all it knows”. Surrogacy done properly involves the surrogate sticking around, not just handing the baby over.

This.

@Thedogscollar im amazed you’re a midwife yet have so little understanding of pregnancy. It is well known that babies can hear the voices of their mother/father from 18 weeks and that they know their mothers heartbeat. So baby is taken away from all they’ve ever known at birth and handed to two total strangers. I’m sorry if it’s hard to hear but it’s the reality. You can wrap it up in ‘love’ and ‘joy’ and other happy snuggly things but that’s what happens to the baby.

The baby bond worries wouldn't put me off surrogacy. My first-born had a horrific birth, weeks in critical care and I was completely traumatised. I had PND and struggled to bond until my mental health recovered (common after a bad birth apparently). Our second DC was an easy birth and instant bond. I love both my children just the same. There are all sorts of scenarios of becoming a mum, nothing is set in stone.

@Thedogscollar A baby will love and respond to WHOEVER shows and gives them love

And if this is true surely just hand any baby born in your hospital over to any parents or staff. Same difference if mothers can love and bond with any baby and babies will love anyone who shows them love. 🙄

I agree with this.

As I’ve said in an earlier posts surrogacy requires monumental amounts of selflessness

When I had my first it was back in the days when it was standard to be in hospital for a week with your first baby. I found that my baby settled much better for the midwife than for me, he'd never heard her voice, smelt her nor was their any biological link between them. It wasn't even just one midwife, it was every midwife and if I was struggling to breast feed the midwife only had to touch his head and he'd feed. I think he'd probably have been quite happy to go with one of them but he had to settle for me.

The baby is loved from conception by all involved. A baby will love and respond to WHOEVER shows and gives them love. They are not taken away from everyone and everything they have ever known. They are not traumatised. State your research to prove this.

I was loved from conception. I was separated from my mother and then had another mother.

Both mothers loved me completely. I loved both of them. I was securely attached to Mother 2, a child who knew my full origin story, explained in an age appropriate way.

Mother 2 would chat and sing to me when I was in Mother 1's womb. I knew both their voices. I knew I was madly loved right from the start.

The maternal separation from Mother 1 still left a deep and profound wound.

I feel guilty for even writing this because I loved them both so much, but the wound is still a fact.

Maternal separation leaves deep wounds, maybe not in every child but in plenty of us. It is a loss built in right from the very start.

I have 2 adopted children. With one the bond was instant. I remember it happening. In that moment I fell utterly in love and he became part of me.
With the other it took about 2 years to gradually form the attachment and for the love to completely develop.
I have heard it can be the same with birth children.
Good luck. I hope it works out for you

Could I ask OP, who will be carrying your commissioned child? What is in it for them? Have you considered how your DC will feel about you as they grow, knowing how they were created? How surrogacy will affect them?

You really are very patronising. I am fully aware a baby can recognise parental voices. They can also recognise the voices of the parents they will be loved and brought up by.
A baby will respond to love from ANYBODY it will not be traumatised at all by going home with "two total strangers" as you put it!
You really have very little or no idea of surrogacy in the UK. You have zero knowledge of child development.

@ivfregret please ignore the totally ignorant posts on here re "suffering babies torn from their birth mothers" this is so far from reality. My experience in my unit is that the mothers both stayed with the baby whilst in the hospital with the father also having unlimited access. This enabled all involved to have time with the baby and for the bonding process( not a word I'm fond of) to continue.

The woman I have met are such amazing people with the capacity and knowledge to proceed with a pregnancy and it's possible complications and knowledge of the unknown path that labour may take them down. They are fully aware of what they are undertaking and of the possibility of lifelong implications both physically and psychologically.

YABVU to contemplate this. It’s appalling to take a baby away from its mother - and yes, the surrogate mother is the mother.

Treating women’s bodies so casually is misogyny at its worst. Surrogacy is not in the interest of the child, and is all about the wants of adults. A shameful practice.

A womans body should never be considered a workplace. Dress it up however you like, surrogacy is human trafficking. How often do you see wealthy women carrying a baby to be sold to a poorer woman? It's women who are being coerced who are the surrogates, either through financial coercion or emotional. What happens if the surrogate changes her mind? What if she is left with life altering birth injuries? We barely take care of postnatal women as it is, who is following up on the health and welfare of the birth mother after the baby has been handed over? No-one cares about the welfare of the mum. Such a purely selfish thing to do.

Absolutely.

It is impossible to separate surrogacy from the ethics of it.

My second pregnancy nearly killed me despite no previous risk factors. Paying someone to take that risk is immoral of itself. Not to mention the concerns about what happens if the surrogate changes her mind or if the baby is unhealthy during pregnancy etc. All very risky and quite different to when it comes to your own body.

You are already worried about bonding, which is both a positive (you are thinking about it) and negative (you are thinking about it).

All of the naysayers to the bond between birth mother and child cannot know. You are putting your own perspectives on it just as much as those who feel there is an impact. My own anecdotal experience is that of my best friend in the world who was adopted at birth. She had wonderful adoptive parents but her desire to understand and know her background and to try to find her birth mother after the death of her loving adoptive parents is overwhelming. She feels and always has felt 'something missing'.

You don't have to answer but was it her egg or yours?