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=

"One had a biological parent die before they were born. A second had a biological parent abscond before they were born. A third was conceived using an anonymous donor. Why do we acknowledge loss and feel empathy in the first two scenarios but not in the third?"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/do-we-have-right-know-our-biological-parents/620405/

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/do-we-have-right-know-our-biological-parents/620405/

There is an event at the university of Kent on November 9th to discuss current surrogacy law and expected changes/recommendations from the Law Commission for anyone interested.
It is free to attend, remotely or in person.

www.kent.ac.uk/events/event/55998/moving-things-on-surrogacy-serendipity-collaboration-policy

😂

This is a really thought-provoking article.

Wow. I didn't meet my baby for a week as we were both in separate intensive care units. We have both survived and have a great bond. Saying this crap about babies needs is ridiculous and makes mefeel rubbish about the separation. Baby just needs to be loved.

I can’t get worked up about a baby that will have two loving parents and a woman who voluntarily offered to carry the baby for her brother. I don’t like commercial surrogacy because I think it exploits poor women, but this obviously isn’t the case here.

My mother was extremely ill following my birth, she couldn’t breast feed and I was cared for primarily by my father in my first few weeks of life while my mum recovered, the first person who held and soothed me was my father, comments about how babies are damaged by not being breast fed and that they are desperately searching for their mother any time they are with someone else are hurtful to a lot of mothers who struggled to care for their child following birth for whatever reason.

@Elsiebear90 - the baby is going through the same trauma, of being separated from its mum during their earliest days - people have posted links on here to the research that shows that being separated from mum immediately after birth, traumatises the baby. Obviously, if the baby or the mum is ill and cannot be with the other, this is necessary - but should we be applauding something which could well be traumatising a baby, when there is no medical need?

This is what a previous poster quoted, from the research:

”Relinquishment trauma is one type of separation trauma. When trauma occurs it can change an individual’s brain chemistry and functioning.
Emotional dysregulation –Children are easily upset and reactive. They stay fearful, angry, sad, or withdrawn due to difficulty recovering from emotionally provoking situations.
^Problems with sleeping, eating, elimination, overactivity to sound and touch
Hypervigilant, extreme risk-taking^
Problems with goal-directed behaviors
^Low self-worth, feeling defective, helplessness
Reactivity with physical or verbal aggression^
^Poor capacity for self-protection, drawn towards relationships with individuals who repeat the pattern of poor attachment*
Difficulty in school, few peer relationships, and turbulent family relationships can arise due specifically due to the trauma response to being relinquished.

Surrogacy risks all of this long term damage to a baby, so that two adults can have what they want - I think it is worth getting worked up by this!

It makes no difference if the surrogacy is commercial or altruistic - the baby is still being separated from their mum, during the vital early days. We know now that the fourth trimester is important for the baby, and this should be given to the child wherever possible. Clearly in your case, the separation from your mum was unavoidable, and no-one in their situation should feel they have done anything but the absolute best for their child in that situation. There will always be some circumstances where mum and baby cannot be together in the early days and weeks - but the wants and desires of adults should not be put above the needs of the baby, as they are in surrogacy.

Do you have a link to that article? I would like to see if the children studied had a primary care giver(s) or if they have been removed from their mothers to go into care, as obviously those two situations are quite different.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius
Dumb question maybe - but how does a baby know its not with its birth mother? Sure, a baby needs close contact with its main care giver - but how does a baby feel that’s not the same person they were attached to for nine months? I don’t understand how as long as a baby is lovingly cared for, being taken away at birth before a connection is made makes a difference.

If I have understood correctly, @BeanieTeen, the baby knows their mother’s heartbeat - I assume that is how they know. Maybe they also know their mum’s smell.

@Elsiebear90 - these are the links from the post I quoted:

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

mariedolfi.com/adoption-resource/relinquishment-trauma-the-forgotten-trauma/

Smell, sight, sound.

Familiarity established in utero.

Just a couple of studies from a v quick google:

'fetuses displayed more arm, head, and mouth movements when the mother touched her abdomen and decreased their arm and head movements to maternal voice'

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0129118

www.researchgate.net/publication/18744650_Recognition_of_mother's_voice_in_early_infancy

'neonates can recognize their mother on the basis of visual clues alone and that these cues relate to memory for featural attributes of the mother's face'

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1989.tb00784.x

I’m a bit horrified that two adults have, in quick succession, suggested we not talk about prevention of potential lifelong trauma relating to being separated from one’s
mother at birth because those adults find reading the discussion hurtful or because they didn’t personally suffer (and neither of these anecdotes involved complete separation, one was with mum with dad doing most of the physical care and the other separation lasted only a week)

Yes, these are difficult birth stories but neither is comparable to being separated from your mother at birth and given permanently to someone else.

so have a word with yourselves, please?

Those articles quoted do not prove that children suffer from being cared for by a primary care giver other than their birth mother immediately after birth, in fact the website actually states itself there is not a single paper written on that topic that the author could find. Familiarity with something does not mean there is automatically trauma when you’re not around it, that’s conjecture.

“While adoption trauma research can be found in an Internet search, this author was unable to find one research article specific to adoptee relinquishment trauma.”

The first link is a study on rats who were removed from their mothers too soon, so not conclusive proof either.

So maybe people should have a word with themselves before posting about what trauma babies must have endured because they weren’t breastfed and because they were looked after by someone other than their birth mother following birth, when as far as I can see there is no evidence of this, just conjecture.

Jake and Hannah Graf have also bought another baby in Ireland.

For some bizarre reason, Hannah wanted to be on a ward but was uncomfortable so given a private room.

Indeed, she feels so ill at ease in female-only spaces, one of the hottest areas of contention, that she was afraid to be in a women’s ward after Teddie’s birth. ‘It made perfect sense; babies are born and midwives check them out, and it’s natural they should be with their mums,’ she says. ‘But I was all too aware that there might be someone who thought I didn’t belong, as a trans woman, on a labour ward, and in the current culture might be emboldened to kick up a fuss.’

Given Hannah hasn't given birth as Hannah is a biological male, I'm not sure why they were in hospital at all.

Hannah is also described as 'radiant but exhausted' in the article as though Hannah has done something other than pay a woman to have a baby.

The biological mother of their children does at least get a name check:

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11190271/Meet-mum-dad-whove-swapped-gender-just-second-child.html

That 3rd paragraph is a quote from the article in case it's not clear

No one research study or article proves anything conclusively. That's not how research works.

There is however a body of evidence that points to an infant needing it's mother (The woman in whose womb they just grew) both physically and psychologically. There is also a very considerable body of evidence about breastfeeding, especially early on. There is also common sense.

It behoves us all to be vigilant for confirmation bias, and some humans manage fine under the shittiest of early circumstances, and I expect a much wanted baby being transfered from a woman who acted as a surrogate into the loving arms of it's new family is far from shitty circumstances, but surely you aren't really arguing that breastfeeding is unimportant and that a baby doesn't suffer at all by bring removed in the neonatal period from the woman who carried them.

So I guess it comes down to which is more important.

As far as I am concerned, no one has a "right" to a child (Including couples who can conceive naturally) Children aren't possessions or commodities.

A child however should have a right to it's mother in the 4th trimester and having formed the bond, the right, (bar tragedy) to maintain that bond.

And because of the extent of the impact on the child is not known, and exploitation of surrogates is possible, lending out wombs is not moral on a societal level, even if done altruistically on an individual level.

Also it would not be possible for every childless couple , so on a philosophical level it fails the categorical imperative (where a thing is only morally ok, if it would be OK if everyone did it/ it happened all the time)

as far as I can see there is no evidence of this, just conjecture.

your ‘I’m alright even though my dad had to help my mum a lot’

is hardly evidence that permanent separation at birth isn’t traumatic!

I doubt you’ll care and it’s not relevant to you anyway but for anyone reading this who does give a shit:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_bewilderment

I’m well aware how science works, which is why I am saying you can’t state things as a fact when there isn’t even a single study backing you up, let alone any meta analyses, the only studies you can find are on rats being weaned too early. You’re really clutching at straws if that’s the best “evidence” you can find.

”Common sense” also means moot when it comes to science and asserting your opinions as facts.

I wasn’t at all saying that my anecdotal experience is evidence or proof, I was stating that there are many scenarios where newborns are not able to cared for by their birth mothers immediately following birth (as happened with me and my mother) or were not breast fed and that stating opinions about this, such as “this causes long term trauma in children” as facts backed up by evidence is disingenuous, and may be very upsetting to a lot of women who were for whatever reason not able to be primary care givers or couldn’t breastfeed their newborns, as another poster explained.

As there appears to be no significant evidence that surrogacy does result in permanent trauma or trauma of any kind to surrogate born children then I reserve judgement until evidence does come out, then my stance will likely change.

There isn't any research on the negative effects of babies being removed from their mothers deliberately because it would be unethical.

What we do know is that babies respond to their mother's smell, voice, and possibly taste. We can see this by the way mothers are able to comfort and settle their infants when no one else can.

Babies in ICU are able to hear, smell and touch their mothers on the whole. It is not ideal for the babies but physical health has to be prioritised over mental health.

It is not the same as deliberately removing a baby from its mother.

If I have understood correctly, @BeanieTeen, the baby knows their mother’s heartbeat - I assume that is how they know. Maybe they also know their mum’s smell.

Right… I’m no scientist but I’m going out on a limb here to say you probably have not understood correctly, although it is a sweet and notion for sure. If my baby was going to ‘know me’ by any of my bodily sounds immediately after birth, it’s probably more likely to be my stomach churning and wind passing through my intestines… you can easily hear that from outside my body as well as inside. But I suppose that doesn’t have the same emotive ring to it 😂

I'm sure they know those sounds as well @BeanieTeen. The heartbeat is a steady beat that's there from the moment they hear.

I'm sorry you feel you need to ridicule this. It's very hard when our births don't go as planned.

Really? Both of my babies reacted to my voice (and my voice only) from birth - other people holding them would coo to them 'you know your mummy' etc.

From an evolutionary standpoint maternal/baby dyad bonding is very logical. Carrying, birthing, and feeding a baby is very high cost to the mother and many processes have evolved to cement that bond and reinforce the relationship.

Well said, @Clymene.