How do you feel about?

Question

this blog- from a child of a surrogate?

http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/

Answer 1

shows another point of view

Answer 2

It was a difficult read for me...because it hits so many topics so squarely on the head.  Is the guy really only 18?  Great maturity and insight into the issues.  

The line that truly knocked my socks off was that he realizes that he was specifically conceived to be given away.  Wow.  That is a powerful piece of information.

Answer 3

I really like what Tish and Cat's Meow said.  I know there are infertile people out there who "get it", and don't have these weird entitlement issues.  I wonder if, perhaps, it's less an issue of fertility, than it is learned behavior.  What I mean is, perhaps these folks were never taught as children that they CAN'T take others' toys.  

Just my opinion.  Maybe that's why I had such a hard time with the concept of infant adoption...I just couldn't imagine feeling like I'm better than someone else (i.e. more deserving of others' toys).  Hellooooo, I grew up in a trailer!  I AM trailer trash!  You want to put me next to any other mom and compare notes?  I doubt I'd come out the winner if the test is money or status!

Oh goodness gracious...I just noticed he used my favorite term.  Y'all beware, he views AP's as substitutes.  (Silently giving him a high five for that one.)

Jesus, he's one smart kid!  He was only 16 when he wrote all this, and he's already researched the mother-child connection, and all kinds of stuff.  Granted, this is HIS life, so I see why he researched it, but wow...he never experienced anything BUT pain, he never deluded himself into thinking this was natural or normal, or ok.  Wow.  I have a lot of respect for this guy.  And my heart just cries for him!

I don't have time to finish reading it now, but those are my thoughts so far.  Wow.  Thank you for sharing.

ETA:  Back for more.  d**n...*sniff*.  Check this, "What does a tiny baby know? He or she knows a lot. We didn’t ask to be given away, particularly for money. "  Jesus.

Oh. My. God.  This is INFURIATING!!  "My mother came back into my life a year ago but i had to beg and plead with my adoptive mother to let her do so."  He had to BEG someone who isn't even related to him, to be ALLOWED to visit with his own MOTHER???

Oh Jesus...***sob***  "She cried and held me in her arms and I felt like that tiny baby she had given birth to 17 years ago and was holding for the first time. I felt like I finally came home."  I'm going to have to have a good, long cry now.

You want to talk about bravery?  THAT is bravery.  That young man bared his soul to the world.  Jesus.

Answer 4

I think it's just the tip of the iceburg.  People think that us "traditional" style naturally-conceived adoptees are messed up and pissed off?  

Oh, just you wait until all these designer babies reach adulthood and start talking.  WATCH OUT!  The sh*t is about to hit the fan!

Answer 5

So interesting. I have asked about this last week! I hadn't heard from any children of surrogacy before. There are a lot of comments the writer makes here that I have in my open adoption blog about always looking for a resemblence in stranges to see if you might be related. I even said in my question about how they would feel being created to be given away. Wow. Thanks for that, It will be great for my research. I have always had a personal feeling of it being immoral now I have a starting place for my study.

Answer 6

Where is the crying emoticon???

WHY does nobody GET THIS???

Answer 7

I can't believe he's only 18. Very insiteful.... There's nothing else I can add. People just don't realise that these babies grow up and speak up.

Just sad.

Answer 8

Well i didn't read it all but the feelings his adopted mother had are the exact reason why i wouldn't adopt just because of a fertility problem and i would NEVER use a surrogate.

I think it is a sick practice, when we are little we are taught we can't have someone else's things just because we don't have one, but that is exactly what adoption and surrogacy is "I can't have mine so i want yours" and from the other side, how could anyone hand over a piece of themselves  to someone else just because ?

Answer 9

This is very sad the young man here clearly needs to seek counseling . Certainly his parents were wrong to hide this and pretend his mother gave birth to him. The young man feels that a birthparents should be allowed in child’s life regardless if the person could/would cause harm to the child.  He is ok with surrogacy where the donated egg / is cared by the intended mother.

Grant it i have never fully understood surrogacy when there are so many kids that need to be adopted and need families.   I hope my brother and SIL tell my youngest nephew about them having to use a donor egg for him. I dont know if they have or not but its not my place so all i can do is hope and pray they are honest with him when he is older[he'll be 8 in October].

He would be 20 or 21 now, says it was updated in 2006.

Answer 10

It really moved me - yes adoptions are very much the same ultimately in the eyes of the child.  In adoptions the adoptive parents bond with A child/ or any child for the love of having a child and nurturing them. It can be still the same pangs which teh little one undergoes but then here is a mom who due to circumstances had to give up a child. Whereas surrogacy is a selfish motive of women sometimes who do not want to accept - rather denial of thier physiological condition, monetary gain - selfish reasons resort to this method. Conscious crime. It is a deliberate breach of human respect and emotions.

I have also known moms who have gone back on their word and changed their mind - that too leading to myriad complications.

Moms who have been surrogates to bear children for their daughter and son in law. Most demeaning.

Answer 11

"I don’t care why my parents or my mother did this. It looks to me like I was bought and sold. You can dress it up with as many pretty words as you want. You can wrap it up in a silk freaking scarf. "

-there's nothing more i can add...IMO, surrogacy is one of the most selfish acts of all of the alternative reproductive practices.  basically, one is "manufacturing" a kid to satisfy someone's "baby jones."  there is little regard to the life nor feelings of the children born from these arrangement.

ETA: cat's meow....you are channeling my thoughts! often when i read infertility blogs (not too much anymore...some are simply too irrational for me) i hear a hint of "why can't i have a baby...everyone else has one" and think...d**n...my 2-year old has that same issue.

*this is not a general statement about all infertile women.  i actually know quite a few who understand that their inability to conceive is not intricately linked to another woman.

Answer 12

I read it, and I wonder what kind of mother his adoptive mother would have been if she had given birth.  It does raise some questions, but I don't agree with a lot of the thinking there.

It does raise one thing I'm very thankful I did.  Before my adopted son was born, the couple who conceived him moved in with us, that way he heard my voice 3 months before he was born.  From day 1, he bonded with me, and never did with her.  He is a very happy baby, well adjusted, above average in motor skills, health, and physical and mental development.  He will do anything to get back to me and his daddy.  We'll always tell him the truth about his adoption, and that we all loved him and that is how he got to live with us.

I don't think that some adoptive parents have the emotional attachment that an adoptive parent like myself has.  I had also lost a daughter in my 6th month of pregnancy, and have an older son I gave birth to, and I love my new son just as much.  In some ways, I'm probably a better parent, because I've had some parenting experience, and I've had experience loving a lot of kids that I've babysat, partially raised, and loved through all the times, good and bad.  I wish this boys' parents could have been like this.

Answer 13

OMG.  I'm just in stunned SILENCE!  I can't even respond to Brian's story...

I have known since the first mention of surrogacy that it would be a disaster.  

Surrogacy circumvents so many adoptions laws that were established to protect moms, babies, families...

Surrogacy is selling a child BEFORE it's conceived!  Forget "before the child is BORN" - illegal in adoption.  

You can NOT legislate human emotions. PERIOD.  Surrogacy laws can never address the human toll that selling a baby  takes.  Or the cost to the human SOUL.  

Now we have egg donation, sperm donation, gestational carriers, too!  ARGGHHH!  Horrifying!  

Our technological abilities have exceeded our moral capabilities BY FAR.

Sad. Sad. Sad.  

Thank you for the link...even though it makes me cry.  

Too bad those who most need to read it won't listen!  Won't hear!  Just put on their "denial" hats and happily commit another child to this type of pain because they WANT a baby and because they CAN.