We’d been instructed by our surrogacy agency not to use the “m-word.” “This child will have two fathers,” the staff member scolded. “He or she will have an egg donor and a surrogate, but no mother!”
Categories: General, Motherhood
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Motherless
Elizabeth Marquardt 07.18.2010, 12:31 AM
I just read the article that the quote was from. The sad thing is that these guys are only partially aware of the confusion that these two children are going to go through. I wonder how long the kids are going to be kept in the dark about aunt Susie. When they know, are they going to wonder about why they came into the world?
Congratulations to the parents and best wishes to the twins.
Elias: I think the reason they came into the world is the same reason most kids are conceived. Their parents love each other and want to nurture a new generation. Surely, they can understand that. They will also know who their birth parents are and presumably will develop a close relationship with their Aunt.
I guess marrying the woman who gave birth to your child is simply too great a burden. Sick.
So the possibility of sibling donation allowed this couple to “imagine what it would be like to have a child who had genetic roots in both family trees.” and to think about all that means.
“What would she look like? How would he act? How would our respective features merge into one warbling little miracle? We’d grown up when coming out meant putting an end to dreams of fatherhood. Now we were giddy with the possibilities of reproduction that most straight couples take for granted.”
I’m disturbed by the inconsistence of this admission, when earlier, as these men comparison shopped for the “biological relative for our unborn fetus”, their potential child was going to be denied the very thing that made this couple giddy. Both parents having a genetic connection to the child.
Anna, I would think that you would be happy that this couple finally chose a stituation in which there is no anonymous donor or genetic participant. These children will grow up knowing their genetic background.
Jay,
One of the men was fortunate to have a sister willing to go through a lot of pain and trouble to make him happy. They were giddy that this altruism on her part allowed them both to have a genetic connection to their children.
And, yes, I think this family is lucky.
But this feeling cuts both ways. So I found this couples lack of concern earlier in the process, when their child would have been cut off from half his genetic heritage, at odds with how they felt later about themselves.
Anna, well, I am glad that you recognize that they finally made the right decision. When my husband and I first considered having a child, we thought about surrogacy, and we actually considered asking one of my husband’s sisters to both donate ova and then carry the child, for the same reason the couple in the article did. The genetic issues certainly crossed our minds, but we both decided that it really wasn’t so important to us to pass our genes along, and so we decided to look into adoption. We were very lucky to qualify for adoption and to find rather quickly a beautiful baby who needed good parents. In any case, I think the couple written about in the article finally made a good choice.
So I found this couples lack of concern earlier in the process, when their child would have been cut off from half his genetic heritage, at odds with how they felt later about themselves.
They learned, or maybe they didn’t.
Couples–both opposite sex and same-sex–enter the decision to parent in a variety of different ways and mindsets. Some are noble and some are flawed. Some learn, and some don’t.
Hello!!!
That was probably the last and only chance for the sister to successfully use her own eggs in conception. What happens when she IS ready to have her own kids and she realizes she can’t have her own? How will that change her relationship with her brother and HER children when it proves impossible to use her own eggs for her own children.
I think about this all the time with my egg donation.
What happens if I never get to have my own kids? There are two out there that are mine in a very meaningful way.
I grow enraged and incredibly jealous at the idea that another woman gets to raise MY children and I never got the chance..
If the sister has a desire to have children- but was planning to wait till she was 40- this intervention might just have given her her only chance to have kids.
My reading of the article made it clear that she will be involved in the children’s lives.