Celebrity surrogacy - find this a bit heartbreaking

[Nowyouwillfeel]

Irish ‘celebrity’ couple with a new baby via surrogacy. The surrogate was one of the couples sister. They have put up pictures and stories all delighted and excited but I just see raw emotion on the mothers face in the second picture and in their stories the baby is clearly rooting for her mothers breast. I have a two month old who always does this and honestly it’s breaking my heart seeing the baby search like that while the dad doesn’t even notice and that she isn’t with her mother. They took the baby home before the mother was discharged and she is nowhere to be seen.

seems so unfair on both baby and the mother who doesn’t have any children of her own.

instagram.com/bprdowling?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The other day I was considering how when celebrity women give birth, if they tell their story, they and their baby tend to have had a shocking experience with near death and a long recovery a common feature.

When celebrity men have a baby with a surrogate, we never, as far as I know, hear about the birth and certainly not about a dramatic story. It's like the baby just appeared and the mum was discarded.

Yeah wait till he's 6 and full of opinions. He won't have any memory of your golden dyad days and will mostly want to argue they toss with you about every single tiny aspect of life and take great delight in declaring you WRONG or MEAN at every opportunity.

(Now, obviously I understand about attachment and childhood development and that only a child secure in his parents' love will be able to push boundaries in this way, and that this bind is formed from very early life. However I'm not convinced that there is THAT much magic in the early bond being with the biological mother. Honestly, the kid could not give a monkeys that I carried and breastfed him when Daddy is the one serving up the pizza and cracking out the new box of Lego).

They won’t know about most of it. I doubt she will be explaining to her brother how uncomfortable her boobs are, or how many pads she is getting through, or that her stitches are looking a bit raw etc. It’ll all be ‘taken care of by the midwives’ as far as they’re concerned.

are you saying that nature is homophobic?

@moofolk that’s an awful photo but yes, it is her brother with his hands round her neck. She’s Aoife Dowling.

im amazed at all tne posters here who are ignoring the attachment the baby has to it’s mother in the womb and when it is born!
A baby does not NEED it's mother to thrive no matter how much you insist this is the case. A baby needs to be nurtured and loved but it does NOT have to be from the person who gave birth. So your whole premise is faulty.
A baby will form an attachment with the person/people providing what it needs.
Harping on about how the baby only NEEDS its mum is kinda dismissive of any mother who does not hold their baby straight after birth for whatever reason that may be..adoptive, medical etc. Do you think those babies are somehow defective for not being held by the one who gave birth?

I don't agree with commercial surrogacy but do not have a problem if it is between family members.

I'm far more bothered by the circumstances a lot of babies are brought into on these very boards. There are a lot of shitshows that we read about every single day. Having babies with strangers because they can. Having babies in abusive relationships/staying in situations where the children are being damaged. There are a whole lot more babies and children willingly being brought into/kept in way worse situations.

Loving family members bringing a baby into a well thought and loving environment. No problem.

Alot of very strong opinions here.

I wonder how the adopters of newborn/small babies feel reading them. Especially when the biological mothers didn't consent to the adoption. After all the same logic applies, doesn't it?

Ripping babies from the woman who created them is wrong, self indulgent and downright damaging. To do this to a woman who has never had a child before (so is completely unprepared for the grief) is also very irresponsible and I am surprised its even legal.

Yes quite.

Babies being removed from the mum that carried them is always a tragedy. Sometimes it's the least worst option.

It should never be the intended option.

The surrogate sister has never had a baby before??!!!!!!! Holy moly this is going to mess with her emotions, not to mention the physical shock to her body 😳

And as for 'consenting adults'- which conveniently removes the baby from the discussion- we know only too well how many women are coerced into various arrangements.

Whether it's sex they aren't enthusiastic about, having another child, care of elders, sole household responsibility... women are coerced into stuff all the time. Why are you so sure they aren't coerced into surrogacy?

As she is his sister who happily offered to be the surrogate, I assume she will play a large part in the baby's life anyway.

And having empathy for the mum and baby is not 'projecting'!

As long as she stays out of the way for the first six weeks, right?

They want the baby to settle with them, after all. They certainly don't want to be reminded of the baby's drive to seek the mum, or the mum's pain, leaking breast, battered body, wild emotions.

How do you know she was coerced? Maybe it was her idea?

not something I could do. But maybe some people could.

I have not read the full thread as but I listened to the Filia podcast on surrogacy and it is eye opening and heartbreaking. Even within families when things go wrong.

It should be illegal. It puts the wants of adults before the needs of infants. The whole donor egg and surrogate situation is engineered for the convenience of the buyers to separate the baby emotionally from a mother figure and deliberately obscure its heritage, again purely to ensure the buyers are cemented as ‘parents’. It can never be in a child’s best interests to be created in this way.

The ignorance and wilful disregard to the needs of infants is shocking.

Loving family members bringing a baby into a well thought and loving environment. No problem

So who checked in this circumstance? Who checks in other circumstances? Where’s the oversight? How do you propose we make sure all family relationships are above board and not coercive? Like I’ve asked several times, a woman can’t donate a kidney to a sibling without significant assessment but where’s the same assessment when she’s giving away the first human being she’s ever experienced of her own?

I agree. Babies are not a commodity. You should not be allowed to rent a woman’s body, either for sex or for reproduction.

This thead has the usual suspects who are trying to make it about the sexual orientation or the sex of the parents. It’s not.

It’s about the baby, the mother and their human rights.

Doesn’t matter if the intended parents are women, men, any other gender or self identification or any other sexuality. Because it’s not about them, what they what or even need.

I know some people are just desperate to make it about them - because they are men, celebs or rich or famous. So they should be able to get what they want, when they want it.

But it’s about the unknown, unfamous, usually poor and unnamed women and their babies. I know the woman is named here but she’s not usually.

It tough, I know, for some people to grasp the concept that women and babies human rights are more important than the wants of rich famous men who have instagram profiles.

@Nobetterthansheoughttobe

No-one is entitled to a baby
It is not an inalienable right to be a parent.
Sometimes, why not just accept your circumstances rather than demanding someone do something to meet your (selfish) wants?

So can I assume this applies to every woman who has had fertility treatment? Particularly via the NHS, so at taxpayer's expense?

I was taken away from my mother at birth because she had decided (with pressure from social services) to give me up for adoption. We both carry huge trauma from it, which had followed us through our lives (we met when I was 25). The idea of creating a situation like that on purpose makes me sick. It was only when I gave birth to my daughter that I understood the enormity of what my birth mother had been through.

There's a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy at work as well. When an infertile woman gets pregnant with a donor egg, it is "her" baby and woe betide anyone who says it isn't. Yet suddenly when surrogacy is involved, the baby magically has no connection to the woman who gestated and birthed it.

And if you think this insidious move towards "gender neutral language" isn't part of this, think again. Much easier to discount the feelings and needs of a "gestational carrier" and a "birthing body" rather than a "woman" and a "mother."

No comparison.
A lot of dogs and puppies are subjected to extreme cruelty.
en-gb.facebook.com/puppylovecampaigns/

I find the birth picture a bit disturbing 😳 Mum laying there like a bit of meat whilst the (male?) dr holds up baby like The Lion King to show everyone

I've just realised (and I've had multiple pregnancies and assisted in ivfs) that only women can have human babies.

This immediately pits women in the firing line of any group who can't have children or wants more children for whatever the reason. No wonder governments think they can have population increases or restrictions on demand.

The homophobic comment? just... what?

Women are homophobic by their sheer existence if that's the case!

Most IVF doesn't involve using another woman's body and creating a baby who will immediately be taken away. So no. That isn't the "gotcha" you think it is.

I did as well! The dads are always grinning and practically high-fiving. It’s just all very distasteful.