‘Our Baby: A Modern Miracle’ C4 10pm tonight

[Haveastock]

The story of Jake Graf and Hannah Winterbourne’s surrogacy journey. They’re the photogenic transgender power couple who are patrons of Mermaid.

Their surrogate was an Irish woman and I followed Jake on Instagram during the whole drama of the birth happening amidst a pandemic. I actually shed a tear when I saw a photo of the baby in their arms and thought about a nameless woman in the background having to deal with the post-birth pain and bleeding without a baby to hold.

I’ve just watched a trailer where Jake said they were hoping for a boy first (they used their own eggs and donor sperm) as they knew how to handle boys - throw them around, be boisterous etc. and werevmore familiar with that then girls who, as far as they were concerned mainly played with glitter and dolls!!! Yes, they laughingly admitted they’re were as prone to gender stereotypes as the next man, woman etc.! How we laughed!?

I’m sure it will be an interesting programme and the baby is so gorgeous. As I’ve said before, I wish them all well. The baby won’t be short on love. But by championing Mermaids and their push for the affirmation model, no matter how young, Jake is indirectly encouraging a generation of young kids to start on a treatment pathway that will end up in depriving them of any chance of a biological child of their own. I find that absolutely tragic.

(Am sure they’re a bit frustrated that their programme is airing during the 48 hour Twitter blackout)

Hope no one minds me posting about it on this board. Am sure there will be a thread in Telly Addicts too. I imagine they’ll get a lot of positive feedback.

Fertility treatment should not be paid for by the NHS.

I agree Dido, the case if that woman getting NHS compensation, above and beyond the original payment, to fund Surrogacies in the US, all paid for from the NHS pocket is quite beyond anything you would expect to be rational and reasonable. But here we are. 'Fertility' treatment for fertile men, babies to be bought by NHS an women in poverty to be hired as walking wombs. Welcome to 2020 folks. Is it time to reboot yet?

Thanks Clymene and Wolf I missed the deleted thread. Maybe we could try again at some point, there is lots to talk about. Sorry that the thread went south.

NHS cash to fund surrogates? Good grief- if you're in agony waiting for a new hip, trying to get new cancer treatment, better get in the queue mate.
People wanting greater access to wombs???
What the hell?
I feel like we're in an Aldous Huxley novel

Seconding thanks to those who watched the programme so that I didn't have to. I've got my blood pressure to consider

@JulieBindelAteMyHamster

The baby won’t be short on love.

I'm sure you're right. But the baby will have been ripped from his/her world and all the familiar rhythms and sounds and will be plunged into a stange new world with no way of understanding or processing what has happened. That baby will be formed around the primal experience of abandonment and no amount of love or later adult intellectual understanding can heal that wound.

but surely this is what happens to all babies when they're born or am I missing something? The being removed from their familiar works bit, not the primal experience of abandonment obviously. This statement isn't true at all, surely?!

*world

but surely this is what happens to all babies when they're born or am I missing something?

Most babies stay with their mother who they grew in. So they know her voice, her heartbeat, her rhythms/movements. That's what your missing.

The earlier posts re who is mother/father on the birth certificate - what an absolute headfuck. That poor child.

I haven't watched it as much as I'm intrigued to some degree but I do t want to give it the ratings and it would probably just make me cross!

I agree we treat animals better than humans.

@Alabamawhirly1

"I wonder how many trans people grew up in households with very strict gender stereotypes and how many grew up with no emphasis on gender roles.

It would be a really interesting study. The same with looking at mysogany in the home.

It seems from what people have said that Hannah has a real dysphoria, where as jake seems to believe that they can't be tough and manly and do what they want to do and be a woman, he also seems to have a real hatred for women. That seems to be more learnt rather than inherent inner feeling"

Stephen Whittle, transman, said that in his childhood his parents played very strict gender roles. His mother wasn't allowed to wear trousers and his father was very much top dog. Not hard to imagine how a girl brought up in this atmosphere, especially if they were same sex attracted, might decide that being a man was a better number.

I also grew up with parents playing very strict gender roles. My mother did not know how much my father earned nor had access to the bank account. All decisions had to be referred to my father and my mother was certain that women could not exist in the world independently of men. She was disapproving of the new female GP at the surgery (who would want to go and see her!) and Mrs Thatcher was greeted with "I wonder what her husband thinks about it all". I went to a girls schools that encouraged girls to succeed and I was determined that I would not live like my mother, and I haven't. I loved her dearly but although rejecting her version of womanhood, I did not reject womanhood itself.

It would be really interesting to see some research on this.

I'm very curious (and quite worried) about the birth certificate situation here.

I know Freddy McConnell was unsuccessful in trying to have themself recorded as the father, despite giving birth to the child themself, but this is surely different.

Would this not be more like an adoption order, rather than a birth certificate? The baby's legal mother is Laura and that would go on the original birth certificate. Then Jake and Hannah apply for a parental order, bit surely they apply as their legal identities, and since they both have a GRC they are applying as Jake the man, this father, and Hannah the woman, so mother, if it's more like an adoption than a transman giving birth to their own child?

Might this enable a loophole for trans people to get around the Freddy McConnell ruling?

I think the main issue with Freddy McConnell is that he wanted the child to be left motherless. Which is impossible.

This baby will have the true mother on their birth certificate.
I'm not sure what is issued after the parental order, is it another birth certificate or some sort of add on. But either way they baby will always have a legal mother in the surrogate.

I guess Freddy McConnell could get round the issue if he adopted his own child with a woman and then had the birth certificate re-issued with him as the father and the woman as the mother.

I'm not sure but I think the main thing is the baby has to have a mother. Father can be unknown so doesn't have to be included on the birth certificate.

This is so messed up. All this lying and deception of the child's rights to know it's own information about itself and all to prop up a legal fiction.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive", etc.

And OMG, if the law ever changes to allow mothers not to be named on the birth certificate...what a sad and terrifying day that would be. I resent the Freddy McConnells of this world for trying to fight for that.

A good proposal that the Law Commission made was that children born from surrogacy should be given a legal right and a way to find out about the woman who gave birth to them. So if they made that into law, the child could get access to any info that the surrogate had been willing to share about herself or her contact details. I think like people born from sperm and egg donors can do now.

www.lawcom.gov.uk/surrogacy-reforms-to-improve-the-law-for-all/

This would only cover UK surrogacy, but at least if the UK started keeping the info officially for future access it would feel less erasing of the surrogate’s contribution to the child’s personal history and more like the law treated the pregnancy and birth as something meaningful.

So Laura didn't tell them when she actually went into labour then. That was interesting cos in surrogacy that usually tell them at the start of labour

I'm confused how they went home by plane when they brought their car there?

I didn't warm to Jake. I don't think he listens to Hannah and I think he dismisses her concerns a lot. I didn't take to him

@TheGreatWave

Then of course the LGBT surrogacy lobby have been working very hard to reframe the concept of surrogacy as a civil right for all LGBT people almost as an addendum to marriage equality. It's framed as a 'right to family life' but by approaching that way it means that some people will have a legal right to access and commodification of women's bodies and this will end up being written in legislation.

In a way this makes any conversation difficult as it is immediately shut down with accusations of homophobia/transphobia. One cannot just be against surrogacy, they are against surrogacy because they are homophobic or transphobic.

This is so true. I remember a thread after tom Daley & his partner had a baby using a surrogate anyone who commenting opposing surrogacy was accused of homophobia.

I haven't watched the programme but I'm hugely uncomfortable with the idea that this seems to represent that everyone has a right to have a child. A child is not a commodity to be bought with a surrogate or IVF and is not a right. A world where we abort thousands of unwanted embryos but also use technology to produce babies where a couple can't naturally have them, either for fertility reasons or because they are in a same sex relationship, seems a strange dichotomy to me. These assisted reproductive methods are not wrong per se but they can produce a warped view of reality.

So many things here.
So little experience of relationships, first and only relationship, I love you on first date, then meeting online and two weeks later full steam ahead with the surrogacy
The constant gender stereotypes.
The ambivalent relationship with Laura, the surrogate- I thought she was looking to them for kindness, or concern for her wellbeing or health, or friendship or gratitude and thanks- Yet the restaurant, pregnancy test, meeting her kids scenes, all felt so awkward because she seemed to be seen as such a transactional figure to the couple.

The shifting goals of personal identity validation: implying that first you always wanted to be read as male, but now to be read as a father is a major goal. Or that the goal is being allowed by society to become a dad, (I think a lot of parents have that feeling) but then the goal being that everyone is actively positive about you being a father or mother (who expects that?!). Other people’s reactions coming in via media or social media seem to be so much felt as the yardstick of personal worth or success.

Much unresolved-seeming emotional struggles, fragile sense of self, whereas parenting gives little space for preoccupation with selfhood or working out your emotional issues.

The never seeming to think outside own experience: this may be editing but no appearance of care for the surrogate : no ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘does it hurt?’, ‘thank you for letting us be here in the room with a camera crew while you’ve got a speculum, womb catheter, vaginal ultrasound in’, ‘oh no, how awful for Laura to have to give birth alone because of corona’, no ‘thank you‘ to her until baby is taken from her, no ‘thank you Laura we’ll be in touch’ at the end, no ‘will you be ok?’

The documentary makers asked the couple a question on gender stereotypes which was good. However they did not ask Laura any questions at all, not even about why she did it- so her words. ‘I just like the feeling of being pregnant’ and ‘would you believe some couples ask me to do it for free?’ went unexplored.

Her experience or voice was only mediated by the couple’s subjective interest in her. There wasn’t the same journalistic objectivity for her. That gives the impression either because she isn’t seen as a real, equal person to the couple or that if she voiced her motivations and situation the motivations wouldn’t have been seen as palatable or the scenario so sympathetic to watch?

In life, relationships, anything, it’s often a big red flag if you are going ahead with doing something that you can’t even talk really freely about, isn’t it?

The documentary makers didn’t show the actual leave taking with the baby and goodbye to the surrogate. I thought that would have been emotionally key to the whole film. I wondered why not?

No conversation shown about whether and how they include Laura and her kids in the baby’s life going forward.

And Laura:

At the start before the pregnancy, her saying something like her own children are ‘now grown up’ (I think they were 8 and 10?!) then later on, saying her kids are really young.

Could be editing but: she asked no real questions of them, how the relationship would be with her, the risks to her, nothing about the baby’s welfare or upbringing. She was shown very passive, silent, never talking about how she is feeling ever. Is never asked.

Not filming at the surrogate’s home, not including any adults from her family, just showing her chatting on some land outdoors with her kids in their school uniforms, being really positive about the baby.

Whereas the couple’s nice home interiors and Hannah’s supportive middle class parents are shown in detail, like going off to get the MBE and preparing for the baby’s arrival. The couples feelings about things are given so much focus.

The gaping wealth and social capital chasm between the couple and the surrogate.. and how in the film-making as if that somehow justifies everything. Otherwise why are some key questions left in explored?

The silent tears rolling down Laura’s face and her lack of any speech in the film after giving birth. I just keep thinking of her.

Great observations Chatty

Yeah, I wondered about the editing - they made it look so cold. When Jake said 'obviously the mother isn't in the hospital, the mother is sitting here in the car' The way they stalked into the hospital with the car seat, fuming because they couldn't get their hands on the baby, apparently no regard for Laura at all, she will have been recovering, it sounded like maybe the hospital were doing the right thing? The comment about latching onto Laura's breast being 'awful'. I also thought Jake came across as a completely arsehole when he wouldn't get out of the car on the ferry.

And yes, given that they had actually showed the implantation, which is a very invasive procedure, and a pretty 'intimate' moment of the whole journey, it was strange that they didn't show a goodbye... I'm now wondering if its because Laura was really upset and it wouldn't have looked good?

Laura was very much portrayed as just a tool in their journey wasn't she, not an actual person.

The thing is, Jake and Hannah are obviously happy with the editing and how it came across. Presumably they would have watched the programme before it aired and they have been endlessly plugging it - so they must think they came across well.

Christ, it really does show the misogyny actually doesn't it, that people don't even notice this stuff?

Oh no, I can't stop thinking about Laura now either. Even if she was just visibly very upset as she said goodbye, which is a totally normal human reaction to saying goodbye to a baby that you have carried for 9 months in your womb, it would have looked really bad. Because it would have made her look like an actual feeling human being, rather than just a baby carrying vessel.

She barely spoke at all throughout the programme did she? ChattyLions post is spot on - they didn't really go into any depth about her feelings about it. The way she just had to stand there outside her house with her kids while Jake did the big 'it's your daddy here' show, talking to her tummy.

Argh, it's made me really cross now actually!

I've had a thought about the leaving the car in Northern Ireland and flying back. They took the ferry from Holyhead and Wales had pretty strict lockdown rules about travelling back into England. I bet they thought flying was the only, and quickest, way to get Millie back to London.

They obviously didn't want to spend a minute longer in Northern Ireland, or with Laura, than was necessary.

At the start before the pregnancy, her saying something like her own children are ‘now grown up’

Yes I wondered that as soon as Laura said it. She's 32, not likely to have 'grown up' children.

'obviously the mother isn't in the hospital, the mother is sitting here in the car'

A male person cannot be the mother of any child.

It did all come across as rather insensitive
On other programmes with surrogacy in I think it's come across better
But then I also just really didn't like Jake