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=

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.
I guess I'm reserving judgement too but from a different perspective. I want to see evidence that there's no resulting trauma before I support surrogacy.

I don't think analogies with adoption or either mother or baby needing ICU care hold up because these are emergency interventions, necessary for wellbeing or life, whereas surrogacy is not. (Incidentally this point has been raised and discussed many times already and, while I know this is a long thread, I really recommend reading it before posting.)

Convince me that surrogacy is either necessary or that it does no harm and you'll get me onside. But sorry, I don't think telling me there's no evidence it doesn't do harm is good enough.

You are "aware how science works".

That's great. When I look there seems to be loads of credible evidence pointing to the primacy of the mother baby bond. Study after study on pheremonal bonding, immune benefits of colostum, epigenetics, secure attachment, outcomes for premature babies, benefits of skin to skin, importance of first few weeks all from robust sources.

Where as there seems to be a distinct lack of studies demonstrating surrogacy outcomes aren't harmful.

Which is unsurprising as surrogacy is vanishingly rare. Doesn't make it right though.
So yes, I think common sense should factor into it a bit

Reacting to loss ( breastmilk supply, physical or mental health circumstance) through unavoidable circumstance is not the same as deliberately engineering a situation.
No one blames mothers who can't breastfeed. So don't be ridiculous.

The truth is, you don't know, but you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you think of a childess couple with a baby and you are high on your own goodness.

I don't think it is good and I don't think you are good for thinking it.

Surrogacy objectifies and comodifies mother and child. I hypothesise it is harmful and you have no evidence to disprove that.

When you do, I might change my mind ( about the harm) not about the objectification or commodification.

There needs to be a funking good reason to break the mother child bond. Not having a womb between you isn't one of them.

So preach off.

It’s understandable that people who have been through medically-enforced separation from their newborn would consider that the relationship is all good now. But I would also imagine that at the time, they would have given anything to be with their baby. It would have been reassuring to rationalise that separation at the time by understanding it was in the best immediate needs of the baby or mother or both.

Why is this baby not with its mother? Because two men have decided it’s more important the baby is with them instead.

I can’t rationalise that, personally.

Good point @NotBadConsidering

At the time of a medically-enforced separation, a newborn would cry for his or her mother. This will probably not cause long-term trauma should they be reunited, but at the time the baby would cry and the mother, if conscious, would be desperate to soothe her fresh-from-the-womb newborn baby. The father, a partner, a grandparent or a nurse would obviously try to soothe the child and provide comfort and the baby would eventually tire and settle. That situation is far from ideal, but it is necessary to prioritise - possibly life saving - medical treatment.

Those who have experienced this personally would be unlikely to remember how it felt or how they screamed as we don’t form memories that early, but parents or grandparents may remember better and could recall how a baby wouldn’t settle unless close to the mother, close enough to smell her perhaps. Depending on the trauma and worry at the time it could be also traumatic for them too.

My child was held as I passed out from blood loss…upon consciousness I felt a very strong physical need not only to hold my baby right now but to also breastfeed, having no prior experience of this. My baby did not cry, I assume due to the shock of suddenly being outside of my body rather than inside (which is common, with lengthy births especially babies can also exit very tired out) but our enforced medical separation was minutes, not hours or days and I can only describe the physical reaction I had as primal or animalistic. I would even say it was something beyond instinct, it’s difficult to describe.

I don’t know why the mother/baby dyad would be any different for a surrogate-born baby. Does a baby know they are being grown and birthed by a woman who has agreed to be a surrogate mother? Any study exploring this would need to create a control group to prove the findings and as a PP said, this would be unethical.

Why wouldn’t a study be done where newborns are taken from their mothers and given to strangers (human babies don’t build emotional bonds with the providers of the gametes they were conceived with) to form a control group for a study on surrogate born babies? Why is it considered unethical - is it because the bond between mother and child is widely understood, has been studied for decades (Bowlby etc) and it would be considered cruel to artificially withdraw a mother from her child and a child for his or her mother, for the purposes of a study?

DD was very premature and was in NICU for three months. I had to have emergency surgery after she was born so did not see her properly for 24 hours although DP was able to see her. During her time in NICU we had skin to skin contact every day (which was initially slightly terrifying as I was convinced I was going to disconnect something vital) . She has SN but gets really anxious if I am away from her apart from during school hours. I don't know if this is because of her neurological condition or the fact that she was in NICU for so long.

a very strong physical need not only to hold my baby right now

One of the strongest needs I've ever felt.

The first time someone took my eldest for a walk out of my sight was when he was 3 weeks old. I was supposed to rest but I was on edge, could barely breathe with anxiety.

I am not an anxious person and the feeling absolutely floored me. They were only gone for about 15 minutes!

When DD2 was born, DD1 would walk into room and DD2 would turn her head at sound of DD1's voice. In my postpartum weeks, MIL would hold DD2 so I could shower/attend to those first times using the toilet (YIKES) and the best way to settle her was having DD1 talk to her. No other child or adult's voice had this effect on DD2, except mine. Babies do know voices from the womb. It's why separating siblings during adoption is frowned upon.

I get this is one single anecdote, but collectively, mothers have thousands of them, and like PP said, it'd be unethical to try to disprove that babies don't suffer from separation at birth. We already know this and advise during adoptions or medical separations on how to best support baby during this time.

I had no idea that an instinctual bond w/ my baby at birth would be so intense until I'd given birth. People w/ no experience of childbirth should not be making laws or policies regarding surrogacy, IMO. Just like men shouldn't get a majority say in abortion laws. Only in women's issues are women with lived experience somehow not the experts!

💐similar happened to me w/ DD1. Only 5 hours, but it was excruciating.

Archived link if you can't access The Atlantic article:

web.archive.org/web/20220420014924/www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/do-we-have-right-know-our-biological-parents/620405/

A short film by a Donor Conceived woman. Its shocking how much she looks like her biological dad, they even have the same laugh.

People are so nonchalant about their eggs and sperm that will create new humans, just calling human eggs "genetic material" to distance yourself from the reality that you are receiving 10k a pop.

vimeo.com/331831472

Unfortunately this is just a trailer, but shows the creation of a "Genius Factory" by using the sperm of Nobel Proze wimners and the eggs of women who also had high IQs. Eugenics basically.

I had very similar. In the first few weeks after I was back from hospital my mother in law took my baby to let me rest. I could not hear then and asked where she was and was told she had taken her for a walk so that I could have a proper rest and not be disturbed by her crying. I was distraught. I kept repeating that I have to be able to hear her cry, I have to be there if she needs me. It was completely visceral.

Everyone deserves the chance to be parents

Ok then.
How come its always the RICH that deserved to be surrogates.
How about single woman on a council estate on benefits?

Funny isn't it, how surrogates are overwhelmingly poor and its the rich and famous who are beneficiaries. When are we going to have a leading Hollywood actress take time out of her career to act for a surrogate for a woman who struggles financially?

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.

Join in, in your best 'understanding statistics and research voice.
'Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence'.

What you CAN do is make comparisons and look at the evidence for children who ARE now coming out as adults who were conceived from donor sperm and see that there is a need to understand the biological identity and where they came from. And the longer term better known evidence from adoptees.

If you are doing this in a completely scientific way, the key question you should be asking is 'what is different about surrogate children which would PREVENT them from having similar issues to other children who don't know about their ancestry'?

One of the other things here, is the age of surrogate children and the number of them. That means your potential pool of data is very small. It might be many years before it becomes known. Many adoptees don't start to look for their biological families until the death of parents because they don't wish to upset family members. That means we could have a long wait until this group feel able to speak publicly about how they feel.

Everyone deserves the chance to be parents

Everyone? No exceptions?

No one deserves to be a parent - it's not a right that people are entitled to at all.

Everyone deserves the chance to be parents to use a woman, to have her risk her life, risk life changing injuries, to put her body through the trauma of pregnancy, to put her own family life on hold, to have her children risk losing their mum or her ability to care for them, to be able to treat women like breed mares and babies as commodities, to tear a baby away from its mother....

🤔

I don’t understand the perspective of ‘until I see some evidence that the decision to centre on the parents is wrong, I will centre the parents.’

I do understand the perspective of centring the child until there is some proof that there is no evidence of trauma discovered at any stage in life.

My thoughts precisely, @ImNotAnExpert. I can think of plenty of people who definitely should NOT be parents!

Babies absolutely recognize their mother’s voice at birth. They can hear in utero. Everyone else’s voice sounds a bit muffled, but mum’s voice they can hear more distinctly through her body.

But your mother's voice as projected through her body will sound nothing like her voice once you are outside her body with air rather than liquid and flesh as the conducting medium. Let's face it, the reason most people don't like their voices when they hear them recorded is that they sound nothing like that to us.

Also, and I guess this is a side issue, I find it more than slightly bizarre for feminists to be championing the rights of a newborn when if the mother had wanted to terminate it 24 hours earlier they'd all be cheerleading for her right to do so.

Don't be so bloody silly Porcupine. On both counts.

You find it bizarre that pregnancy progresses and priorities change with the changing situation?

I guess if that's too difficult for you to process, there isn't much point trying to explain it to you. But trust me, it makes sense to people who understand the concept.

Also, and I guess this is a side issue, I find it more than slightly bizarre for feminists to be championing the rights of a newborn when if the mother had wanted to terminate it 24 hours earlier they'd all be cheerleading for her right to do so.

Are you against women's right to terminate pregnancy or against a newborn having rights?

I’m not saying that the mother’s voice sounds exactly the same through the body and through the air. I’m saying babies recognize their mother’s voice. They also prefer the sound of the mother’s voice to other noises or to other people’s voices. There is genuinely good research on this subject. You have to look into language acquisition research. The prosody of the mother’s speech (how your voice rises and falls, plus the rhythm of your speech) is particularly salient.