Surrogate Mums… Brave or Mad?!

Watching the Cutting Edge program on surrogacy, Monday night, I was left in two minds: are these women brave or are they mad?

Going through the pregnancy and all it entails: sausage fingers, stretch marks, swollen ankle, no sleep, explosive heartburns… and give the baby away? It is almost like putting your womb for rent, free of charge… Now I personally think that renting it to my own children is an OK deal. They are in for a long life of repayments: lots of public embarrassments, kisses in public, Papa doing the Madness dance at parties, sharing their childhood stories with potentially important girlfriends… Ok, I agree with you, their Dad doing the Madness dance is a very high price to pay, but it is nothing compared to the total cost of Tum Tums during my two pregnancies!

Now all of this apart, I suppose all the women doing this, do it for different reasons, some will probably do it for the money only, some for the buzz of being pregnant, some to help a member of their family or a dear friend… Whatever reason they are doing it for, there is always a couple in distress behind this.

This program made me realise how lucky we have been to get pregnant both time, almost immediately when we chose to. You take the whole pregnancy concept for granted, when everything goes well and if you never struggle to get pregnant, but how distressing it must be for a couple not to be able to conceive naturally? How terrible must it feels for a woman to discover that she will never carry the baby she longed for all her life?

I can understand how it can turn into a real obsession and how it can ruin a marriage or send someone into deep depression.

I asked myself if I would revert to surrogacy if we couldn’t have children, and I came to the conclusion that it would probably be our very last resort. Through this program I realised how vulnerable the women not being to have children are in front of the women carrying their child… It is almost like branding a blackmail tool all the time “You see this baby? Well behave if you want it!”. This is how I would feel, I think. Of course it all depends on the relationship the two women build, but all the ones portrayed in this documentary seemed to be nervous wrecks. Who wouldn’t be?! Imagine spending all these months before conception, checking each month if the surrogate mum got pregnant… then going through the 9 months, the scans, the worry to make sure that it all goes well, wondering what if the surrogate mum decides to keep the baby? the surrogate mum wondering if she is going to be able to give up the baby…

I have made up my mind and I believe that all these women, the surrogate mums or the mums are very, very brave! The emotional rollercoaster they all go through is a tough one and they all deserve to be happy. And whether the surrogate mums do it for money, or for love of being pregnant, or any other reason, does it matter really? If they give the chance to couples to be happy and complete, then I think they give one of the most beautiful gift ever: the gift of life and happiness, so they really can’t be bad, can they?