I’m not planning to have children any time soon (I don’t even have a boyfriend), but I just want to learn more about surrogacy because I have schizophrenia so I have a feeling that I would probably be more likely than most women to experience post natal psychosis after birth which I definitely don’t want to experience because the psychotic episodes that I have already experienced were really scary.
Another reason why I think surrogacy might be a better option for me (if I am able to) is because I have an Aunt who became mentally ill after giving birth and it greatly affected her life. We don’t know for sure if it was the pregnancy that caused this to happen, but she became unwell after given birth. [name_f]My[/name_f] sister was fine after giving birth, but my Auntie was really shy and quiet when she was young and that’s how I am too so my family think that I might become unwell too if I become pregnant?
I also have a subset uterus, but I have heard of other women with this type of uterus who had early miscarriages, but had a healthy baby later on so I am not as worried about this.
Also, I’m from Australia which means that if I got a surrogate that I would only be paying her for her (the surrogates) needs and the needs of the baby (e.g. medical needs) which means she won’t get anything extra so I would feel kind of bad about having a surrogate because I’m not sure if they get much out of it unless they just really enjoy being pregnant, but even then I would feel bad. [name_m]Even[/name_m] if I did pay them a lot for carrying my baby and giving birth to it, I would still feel bad. [name_f]Do[/name_f] the women who do this get anything out of it?
Another thing I was wondering was, can you choose the gender if you do this? I’m assuming not (which is okay), but I have heard of people being able to choose the gender with IVF even if it’s their first baby and I think the surrogate would be doing IVF in order to get pregnant with my baby?
I’m also thinking of adoption which I will probably ask a question about as well. Apparently it’s really hard to adopt in Australia though.
I am not a surrogate, nor have I had a surrogate or studied surrogacy, but from what I understand, while surely it can be a nice sum of money for the surrogate, I think the positive feelings of helping a family who otherwise wouldn’t be able to have children is a greater benefit. Sure, I am sure there are surrogates who do it for self-serving reasons, but a lot of them are just good people who want to help families, and perhaps enjoy being pregnant!
You can choose the sex of your baby if you are going with the surrogacy route, but only in the event that you have healthy embryos of both sexes and you are doing a gestational surrogacy (where the surrogate is not using their own egg to fertilize the sperm and it is done through a sort of IVF like process). There is traditional surrogacy, however, where the surrogate uses her own egg, but from what I’ve seen, that seems to be a little less common nowadays.
Generally, you would go through the process of ovarian stimulation (getting on medication to grow multiple eggs), then have an egg retrieval, and then the clinic would collect the sperm before fertilizing the retrieved eggs. Once the eggs are injected with the individual sperm, they are monitored to check for signs of fertilization and embryo growth. Once the embryos reach the blastocyst stage 5 days after insemination, you are given the option to test your embryos. You can test for diseases and genetic health conditions - this same test can determine the sex of the embryo, meaning yes, you can choose what gender you would like your baby to be.
Eventually your surrogate would have an embryo transfer, and if everything goes to plan, would go through the entire pregnancy before delivering your baby!
Here are a couple articles that you may be interested in reading:
Thank you so much! You’re the same person who helped me with my IVF question haha. Another awesome and very helpful reply!
I was wondering if you know if I would be eligible for a surrogate? I’m assuming it depends on a lot of things. Would I be able to become friends with my surrogate?
It’s really exciting that you can (in most cases) choose the gender of your baby this way because I’ve always wanted my first baby to be a girl, but if it ended up being a boy, it would still be really lovely!
You’re very welcome! A quick search says that in Australia you would be eligible to have a surrogate if you are unable to become pregnant, carry a pregnancy, give birth due to a medical condition; or if as a couple multiple transfers of a genetically normal embryo have been unsuccessful; or if the parent is a single male or in a same sex male relationship. As for the friendship thing, I think it just depends! Some surrogates do not have a close relationships with the families whose babies they carried, some are cordial, some become very close. It just depends! A relatively recent study said that of 33 families that used a surrogate, 61% of them remained in contact with their surrogate after 10 years. 75% said they were happy with the amount of contact they had!
