Well, geez, now I’m not feeling so great about this. I’ve contacted several surrogacy agencies, and well, all that’s fine. None of this will be easy or simple, but again, it’s all doable. While I was doing my research though I discovered blogs by children conceived through surrogacy advocating against surrogacy. Their basic argument was that surrogacy was the selling of human life, and it removed children from the birth mother and their is a deep link of child to mother that occurs in the womb, and removing this causes trauma for the child that might not manifest fully for years. The children experience issues like some adopted kids, low self esteem, loss of identity, etc.
One person wrote the following: “Because somewhere between the narcissistic, selfish or desperate need for a child and the desire to make a buck, everyone else’s needs and wants are put before the kids needs. We, the children of surrogacy, become lost. That is the real tragedy. “
I’m haunted by this now. The kid wouldn’t know the donor mother, or the history or any information about siblings. I would never be able to give them that information. And I’ll never know how important that information would be. I would want to know. Hell, I hate the fact that I was circumcised without my consent as a baby, would the kid feel that it was wrong of me to bring it into the world knowing that it would never be able to know half of its genetic history? I think if the donor was known and somehow involved, even if through sharing pictures and light communications, it would be different. I think there are ways to address these issues but not with what is available to me as a single man.
Someone earlier mentioned co-parenting, which I initially didn’t think would be right for me, but I can feel now, that ethically (my ethics only), it would be better than what I was contemplating.
I feel like everything is making it improbable to be a father and it crushes me as I know I would be a great one. I’m a bit bummed out as I thought I was making progress through this. I’m still going to attend the surrogacy conference but they don’t have the children of surrogacy as speakers. That’s a big miss, as the impact on the children and their sense of self should matter.
On one hand I’m quite sad about this, but on the other, glad my research revealed this information and I can make choices to not overly burden my kid. I’m starting to feel like I would be consciously adding so much weigh to the kid: child of a surrogate, single father raising, older parent, living in multiple countries, identity issues, lack of siblings, etc.
Although I know I’ve overcome so much, is that the life I want for my kid and how do I know it will cope, without some type of majoring suffering, especially because I wanted this so much and happened to have the money to make it happen?
This all feels so cruel.