What has been your experience? Looking for advice

[Parkzy87]

Hello everyone, I am expecting a backlash so I'm buckled in ready, but please if you agree with surrogacy or not don't leave negative comments. What has everyones experience been with surrogacy? I am a male IP.
I know it's not pre set for time line or costs but how long has it taken people to meet a surrogate and what was the total cost. What agency did you use? And what advice/information did you wish you knew at the beginning.

Thank you

for the record, we did not buy a baby
I hope none of you judgemental posters ever have to walk in my shoes, it might make you think twice on your views.
Yes, she gave birth to him, we call her his 'tummy mummy'. It was my voice he heard every day during the pregnancy too. Biologically he is ours.
There was no buying, and he is a wonderfully happy child.

This thread is going well

always does on this topic.
Plenty of opinions, not much experience.

My version? Of course not. Your son was removed from his mother at birth and placed with strangers who had a DNA connection to him. That's not my version, that's the truth.

You think no posters on this thread have experienced infertility?
Did you pay her any 'expenses' money?

No. Commercial surrogacy is illegal where we are

Yes. Your version.
Ours is different.
Have you had first hand experience with surrogacy, or just an opinion?

This is such an absurd comment.

I've never murdered, stolen organs, embezzled or assaulted anyone. I don’t need to have done so to have an opinion on those things being wrong.

Much like I can have an opinion on human trafficking without ever having purchased a human.

You might be one of the tiny minority who used an entirely altruistic surrogate (sister friend), but why you would then associate your experience and more importantly the experience of your child who will experience being brought up in a close relationship with the extended family who birthed him, with people that buy babies from overseas is beyond me.

Where did I say I associate myself with people that go overseas for surrogacy?

OP I don’t think Mumsnet is the place for you. It is for Mums or females who have their own children.
Yoy are asking for views on something that the vast majority of posters find abhorrent.

And yes, a family member gave us an incredible gift. No price can be put on that

If yours was one of the tiny numbers of truly altruistic surrogacy, surely you can see that your experience is nothing like the situation of the OP?
He is seeking information on how to pay a stranger to grow a baby. Possibly two strangers, as we don't know if he has a female partner with her own eggs.

Good lord, OP, I bet you wish you'd never posted now!

For a single unmarried male, you can look at Georgia and Cyprus for surrogacy. The cost is now ~£60. For US, all in, has gone up to ~£250k. More if additional medical treatment is required.

Sorry that you are getting mostly unhelpful hater response on MN. The ethnical discussion should happen elsewhere.

But the baby didn’t recognise you at birth. It didn’t recognise your heartbeat or your taste, smell or your voice or the way you walk. The mother is the person that carried the baby. A newborn baby is coded to recognise the mother that carried it and doesn’t care a fig about genetics. You severed the only bond the baby had and actively wanted when it was born and you removed it from its mother. Worse, you created that life with the express intention of severing that bond as soon as you could, just so you could get a baby. If you can’t see that that is putting your needs and wants above the child’s needs and rights then I can’t help you. It’s illegal to remove puppies and kittens from their mother at birth. For good reason.

thanks, but I don't need your help

Women are people not your incubator. And babies are people too so not for sale.
If you are desperately wanting children and can’t have them with a partner in the usual way then consider adoption.

Not sure they were offering you any.
No baby should be created with the express intention of it being taken away from its mother, the person who it has spent 9 months growing inside.

Actually she did say 'then I can't help you'

Thats not offering help, its a turn of phrase.
Its generally not the people who commission babies who are in need of help anyway, its the women and babies who are being exploited.

Lucky our wonderful surrogate wasn't exploited then. Our whole experience was done with love

You exploited a family connection to persuade a female relative to risk her health and shorten her life expectancy to give you a baby 🤷🏼‍♀️ I'm not suggesting she didn't make the choice herself but she wouldn't have done it if she wasn't a relative/close friend so the relationship absolutely was exploited.

Righto. Let's not let the facts get in the way of your story

If shes wrong then please do tell us why a woman would agree to put their body through that in order to hand their baby to someone else.
Money, manipulation or some sort of saviour complex are the only reasons someone would do that.

In your opinion.....