Surrogacy with donor egg

[Samuraisammy]

We are fortunate to be in contact with a wonderful surrogate lady.
DH sperm is functioning fine but unfortunately with tried attempts and health condition, it has been many failed attempts of egg retrieval from myself.

I just wondered though it’s likely less common, if anyone knows or has any success stories of surrogacy with an egg donor? If this is heard of?

I can see there being egg donors perhaps for gay couples. Or for women that use an egg donor and become pregnant themselves via ivf. But we are a heterosexual couple with a surrogate open to helping us on our journey.

Can we please keep this a kind thread for an already sensitive area of our lives I’d like to say that if there is nothing nice to say please can I kindly ask that you do not hit the reply button. There is a real person at the other end of this message. Thank you for any help 🌸

@sittinginthesand

Mine didn't contain any of those things either. There was absolutely nothing in it that warranted deleting.

@HebeMumsnet

Evening, everyone.

Just popping by to ask everyone to bear in mind that this is a support thread. We understand that surrogacy is a topic that is quite emotive and divisive, and we're happy to host discussions on the pros and cons of it, but the place for that is on another thread, not on a thread started by someone looking for support.

Thanks.

If you’re happy for the pros and cons to be discussed elsewhere, then why was a post that signposted to another thread on surrogate mothers deleted?

Surely that would have been useful for posters to find the “correct” thread so they could post there instead of here.

Have you thoroughly researched the effects of this? - it’s a traumatic experience for a baby and only ever done in extreme circumstances. That’s not a moral judgement, just facts, and you should be aware of them.

This is not true and I dispute your 'fact' that it is a traumatic experience for the baby. I can't see how your research would be better than the reality of my personal and ongoing experience of a child born through surrogacy. It is not the case that it is a traumatic experience for a newborn baby to be removed from its mother. That's not moral or immoral judgement coming from me either.

As I said upthread, I do not dispute some of the more moderate (as opposed to the plain vituperative) views against surrogacy expressed by some on Mumsnet. Neither do I dispute the reality of the experience expressed by some posters that they were traumatised by being removed from their birthmothers at the point of birth. But there are other experiences that are equally as valid, and to make it into a blanket 'fact' that surrogate babies removed from their birth mothers at the point of birth are traumatised is just not true. They go straight to the arms of a loving parent, who will become their legal parent, unpalatable as that may seem to you.

So OP you may want to factor that into your considerations.

If you’re happy for the pros and cons to be discussed elsewhere, then why was a post that signposted to another thread on surrogate mothers deleted?

Surely that would have been useful for posters to find the “correct” thread so they could post there instead of here.

Good question. I imagine it's reporting of dissenting opinion, as os done on Twitter. No wonder we never hear the stories of 'surrogacy regret', these women rarely get their experiences heard. My other deleted post referred to the official government guidance available from the HFEA and I suggested the OP look to her local clinic so it was supportive as I was offering practical advice.

The OP appears aware of law reform re surrogacy so it's clear she is aware of existing laws so I'm surprised she is not also aware of how to purchase an egg and have it implanted in the woman she has found who is willing to grow a foetus into a baby for her, and to give birth to this baby and give it to her and the proposed genetic father. The laws and logistics go hand in hand.

Whole threads have been deleted because posters have expressed concerns or have pointed out the problems with surrogacy but as we are encouraged to discuss these issues elsewhere, off this thread as this is for support only, then I'll share this link again.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4349518-Surrogacy-makes-me-very-uncomfortable

I can't see how your research would be better than the reality of my personal and ongoing experience of a child born through surrogacy.

Decades of research and literature on attachment theory is generally considered to be more in depth 'evidence' on what a baby experiences when removed from their mother than one person's personal account but I agree that anecdotal 'evidence' works to explain or support an argument or position. It is just one persons experience though and in your situation you can speak for yourself but not the child.

I would recommend "The Primal Wound" by Nancy Verrier as a good starting point.

@TrojaninTroy

Have you thoroughly researched the effects of this? - it’s a traumatic experience for a baby and only ever done in extreme circumstances. That’s not a moral judgement, just facts, and you should be aware of them.

This is not true and I dispute your 'fact' that it is a traumatic experience for the baby. I can't see how your research would be better than the reality of my personal and ongoing experience of a child born through surrogacy. It is not the case that it is a traumatic experience for a newborn baby to be removed from its mother. That's not moral or immoral judgement coming from me either.

As I said upthread, I do not dispute some of the more moderate (as opposed to the plain vituperative) views against surrogacy expressed by some on Mumsnet. Neither do I dispute the reality of the experience expressed by some posters that they were traumatised by being removed from their birthmothers at the point of birth. But there are other experiences that are equally as valid, and to make it into a blanket 'fact' that surrogate babies removed from their birth mothers at the point of birth are traumatised is just not true. They go straight to the arms of a loving parent, who will become their legal parent, unpalatable as that may seem to you.

So OP you may want to factor that into your considerations.

Separating newborn from mother is traumatic. It may not be a long standing trauma and it may not cause long term difficulties but you cannot deny it's a trauma. You can try, but you'd be lying to yourself.

I would recommend "The Primal Wound" by Nancy Verrier as a good starting point.

The Primary Wound is all about adoption, and Verrier is vague as to the stages after birth that the adopted children she refers to (not just her own) were taken away from their birth mothers. She implies that her own one was taken away at three days, and not immediately following birth.

All birth is traumatic. Coming out of the womb is traumatic. Can you cite well researched evidence that distinguishes the difference between the trauma of merely being born and the trauma of being 'snatched' away from birth mother at point of entry into the world: evidence which has both a large enough control group and a large enough target group of surrogate children and produces a statistically significant result? That would be more convincing.

Meanwhile, on this aspect of surrogacy, I trust to the evidence of my own experience, rather than to a writer whose adoptive child demonstrated trauma attributed to being removed from its birth mother further down the road.

Be Kind everyone
Or in other word shut up if you don’t agree

@TrojaninTroy

Funnily enough, no one has ever got ethical approval for a double-blinded trial in which newborn babies are separated from their mothers. There's plenty of scientific evidence out there, though.

www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/how-mother-child-separation-causes-neurobiological-vulnerability-into-adulthood.html

"The attachment bond between a mother and her child is first formed in the womb, where fetuses have been found to develop preferential responses to maternal scents and sounds that persist after birth, explains Myron Hofer, who was director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychology at Columbia University until his retirement in 2011. These rapid early-learning processes continue during the newborn stage of development, in which children begin to recognize their mothers’ faces and voices.

From this point on, early maternal separation can result in a series of traumatic emotional reactions during which the child engages in an anxious period of calling and active search behavior followed by a period of declining behavioral responsiveness."

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102124955.htm

www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-adopted-my-child-birth-what-do-you-mean-trauma-alex-stavros/
Your child began feeling and learning in the womb. According to Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D., your baby learned to be comforted by the voice and heartbeat of his mother well before birth[1] – a voice that was not yours. In the case of adoption this connective disruption has an impact on the brain and body.

Paula Thomson writes for Birth Psychology, “Early pre- and post-natal experiences, including early trauma, are encoded in the implicit memory of the fetus, located in the subcortical and deep limbic regions of the maturing brain. These memories will travel with us into our early days of infancy and beyond and more importantly, these early experiences set our ongoing physiological and psychological regulatory baselines.”[2]