If you are a mother, did you feel potentially feel more inclined to donate to this before you had children?

[RickiTarr]

I’m just watching the BBC documentary series about surrogacy and thinking how my attitude to gametes and generic inheritance has changed since becoming a mother.

The first “traditional” or “straight” surrogate interviewed in this programme seems very blasé about her relationship with her own eggs. It’s just made me wonder.

I couldn’t have donated my eggs pre having children anyway, I was always amazed at how casually men seemed to donate sperm. After a difficult pregnancy I feel quite angry surrogate mothers aren’t warned how dangerous pregnancy can still be for some women

Ha, just looked it up, it was a film not real life!! It was a long time ago

“Delivery Man”
An affable underachiever finds out he's fathered 533 children through anonymous donations to a fertility clinic 20 years ago. Now he must decide whether or not to come forward when 142 of them file a lawsuit to reveal his identity.

I looked into egg donation about 30 years ago and what concerned me most was that there didn't seem to be any safeguarding against 2 of "my" children meeting as adults and having their own children.

In the end I was over the viable age, but that always worried me.

I would have loved to help someone to have a baby, but feel quite attached to my eggs. I like to think I would carry a baby for a close friend or sister, but I think in hindsight these relationships could become fraught with difficulties.

Ha!

Posted before I saw yours EyesOpening

I was probably on the fence before but more on the anti-surrogacy side ut it was very abstract and also I was somewhat hesitant about saying no to altruistic surrogacy.

Having been pregnant and having children makes me feel much more strongly what the implications are. But my thinking on it has evolved a lot more in other ways - now pretty much take the view that gamete donation of any kind isn't so much like blood donation, but functionally amounts to the selling or giving away of children.

@BewitchedBotheredandBewildered

Ha!

Posted before I saw yours EyesOpening

I get the chills a bit when I hear of celebrities having children with lots of different half brothers and sisters, I feel like they’ll end up being “10 degrees of separation” with them all but where they’re actually related!

I'm not a mum, but looked into being a surrogate because I felt guilty choosing not to use a (presumably - judging by my ridiculous number of first cousins) healthy womb.

The more I looked into it the less comfortable I felt about it, and then it became a moot point as you have to have had a healthy pregnancy of your own before you can be a surrogate in the UK (I don't know if this is still the case).

Since then two of my closest friends either have had or are in the process of having children, and following their pregnancies I have to echo a pp who said no one seems to tell childless women/first time pregnancies that you get to know the baby before it's born.

I still definitely don't want children, but I suspect if I'd gone ahead with surrogacy it would have been harder than I could ever have imagined to part with the baby.

To answer your actual question, I don't feel overly attached to my eggs but I wouldn't donate them either.

I had my children via IVF and before that I was certain that I'd try to have a couple of kids and then I'd donate or destroy the rest of the embryos, if there were any left over.

After having my babies I haven't been able to do either. I pay to store the embryos because I'm just.. unable. Donation seems impossible; my children would have full siblings running around somewhere and I would not be there to see that they're okay. Destroying the embryos is even more impossible.

I never expected to have these feelings.

I always wanted to be a mum. I could never have coped with the thought that someone else might have my biological child, especially if they'd had the child before I was able to. It would have been unbearable.

I've always been utterly opposed to surrogacy in all circumstances. Having a child made no difference.

No, I have always felt very aware of my genetic relationship with my eggs and the potential children they might make but I think this is perhaps down to my unusual family situation. One of my parents was not brought up by their biological parent but has many half siblings that they met later in life from one of their biological parents. Clearly that parent had all of the outward appearance genes because my parent and their half siblings all looked incredibly alike and me and my siblings look like them too. It really changed how I viewed genetics and made me very aware of the relationship between my eggs and myself/my genes.

Me too. My parent mentioned above being not brought up by their biological parents always made me very pro choice- one of the reasons that my biological grandmother wasn’t around was because she had my parent young and then developed postpartum psychosis which she never recovered form- but having my own kids only underlined it for me. Having kids is a big deal. You need to be one hundred per cent up for it. If you’re not, it’s just terrible for everyone involved.

Argh, sorry- quote fail- that was re: @AnneLovesGilbert saying that they were more pro choice since becoming a mother.

I’ll stop commenting now!

For a long time I didn't know if I wanted children. For a while I genuinely thought I might opt for a childfree life.

However, I've never once considered donating my eggs. How could I? I would have had no idea where my eggs ended up. Whether my biological children were safe, happy or cared-for. It's always seemed to me like selling children. I don't know how sperm donors can be so cavalier about it.

The more I think about it, the more I’m surprised that straight/traditional/“own egg” surrogacy is legal in the U.K.

That just seems the worst possible combination of surrendering your genetic gametes and carrying the baby, birthing etc.

We are out of step with most of the world there.

Yes, but I think that is more to do with age rather than being a mum. When I was younger I definitely wouldn't have thought about what it really means, and I would have seen them as just eggs.

Possibly playing devils advocate a bit and not trying to be inflammatory but surely this is a case where people just have to do what they are personally comfortable with?

If that happens to be donating eggs, or surrogacy, or donating embryos, then who are we to tell them they aren’t comfortable with it?

No, always knew I would not be able to do this.

@MissBarbary

I've always been utterly opposed to surrogacy in all circumstances. Having a child made no difference.

This.

Yes. I mean it's not something I had really considered but I was always open to the idea of surrogacy, something I now find quite difficult.

I was totally in favour of altruistic surrogacy previously. But now I know that having a kid is so harmful to women's bodies, I'm just angry that society takes this for granted.

@hollowchocolate

Possibly playing devils advocate a bit and not trying to be inflammatory but surely this is a case where people just have to do what they are personally comfortable with?

If that happens to be donating eggs, or surrogacy, or donating embryos, then who are we to tell them they aren’t comfortable with it?

Yes, to an extent I’m thinking that’s it @hollowchocolate - in terms of opinion, anyway. I do think we need legal restrictions to protect people from themselves sometimes. Even from things they feel really willing to do, and maybe from things they might regret later.

I really disapprove of surrogacy, though, I must admit. I think it’s just one more commodification of women’s bodies

It was literally just that in the course of trying to challenge and prod my own thinking about surrogacy, I hit these really strong feelings about egg donation and I wondered if other women felt the same change.

So I slightly derailed my own line of thought with a slightly different question.

As @EdgeOfACoin says, there is also the complications around how male gametes (sperm) are culturally seen as very different to female gametes (eggs). Probably part of that difference is that sperm donation necessarily has a much longer history than egg donation. Also that we historically had a social belief that men spreading their seed was acceptable.

I wonder what fertility laws we would end up with if we were writing them from scratch now?

Certainly a lot of the surrogates in the BBC series I was watching last night were single mums in need of money and/or social connection.

I now question it a lot more, yes. However I know it's easier to say when you have a child of your own.

Should probably link the programme I’m wittering on about;

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p098hqrq/the-surrogates