Letters to the Editor
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I think this letter is one for the book
I think Cary's response is perfect. LW, good luck.
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My younger sister just became pregnant this month...
...for the first time at 32, within her marriage of two and a half years. I am 35, single & no kids myself, but if for any reason, she needed me to carry a baby for her, I'd do it with very little hesitation -- unless I will risking serious harm to myself or to the infant -- forbiding husband or not. But then I'm closer to her than anyone else, so this might be a given! :)
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For Chrissake
Ever heard of ADOPTION, people?
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This could devastate everybody
I have to disagree with Cary on this one. It could be devastating for all parties involved. LW stands to lose her marriage over this, and giving away your child after you've carried it around in your belly for nine months - never mind that it isn't actually YOURS - is in itself a traumatic experience. It would be a different story entirely if all parties agreed to do it (and even so, it would still be hard), but this way? Sounds like a very bad idea to me.
Her sister should look into adoption. This surrogate mother thing is too dangerous, and could result in a broken family.
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Adopt, adopt, adopt
If your sister is willing to take in a child that came to be in a womb not hers, then why not a womb of someone she doesn't know, of a child from a situation where he / she is not wanted? Isn't that the right thing to do.
For Chrissakes, people, sometimes you have to face the goddamn facts. The fact is, your sister can't have a baby. I know you are an entitled American who thinks God should be gift-wrapping (or baby-wrapping) happiness, but the fact is, the universe does not owe your sister a child; she, on the other hand, is free to go out and adopt one that is coming into this world no matter what.
And speaking as a husband and despite Cary's poetasting on this point, I think a marriage could definitely founder on this point. I can't imagine my wife proposing such a thing, but I can imagine me opposing it on the strongest terms imaginable. A marriage is a lifelong committment to another person - i.e., your spouse. If you want to help your sister, help her sift through the bureaucracy of adoption, not risk your own marriage in a misguided attempt at selflessness.
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It sounds like LW...
..cares more about having a baby than keeping her marriage. If she goes ahead with the former, she better be prepared to lose the latter--or live with a feeling-dissed husband for the rest of her life. (And the husband sounds like he's got a lot more sense than she does as regards the health risks this could cause)
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Cary, grow a spine!
Like you say, this isn't a little thing, it is a big thing.
Has it occurred to you that this might be a big thing for the husband as well?
That his resentment about having his boundaries completely disregarded in the making of this decision might last much, much longer than nine months? That this may very well be the end of the marriage?
I mean come on: you are counselling her to go ahead with this whether her husband likes it or not. This is supposed to be a marriage, a partnership. If she had written to you saying "I want to have another baby but my husband doesn't want another-- should I just 'oops' him?" what would you say?
What I would tell the letter writer is that something like this is only feasible is EVERYONE involved is 100% in favor and ready to be fully supportive. Otherwise, watch as the marriage falls apart and get ready for your three children to be deeply traumatized.
That to me is really basic.
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I can understand that
As a man, I can appreciate fully the husband's reservations. Nature's ability to get women to forget just how miserable they can be during pregnancy is as important a factor in procreation as the pleasurable feelings associated thereto that my wife calls "mother nature's cruel joke."
A standard joke for me when people ask how long I have been married is to say, "In human years or dog years, because a couple of them were real dogs, like every goddamn pregnancy." There were four of those, by the way.
So this guy is thinking he is done with all of that shit. Done with emotional ups and downs. Done with a wife in desperate need of sleep. Done with the late trimester sexual shutdown followed by the post partum recuperating period. Who knows if there were emotional issues, too. Perhaps the LW does a Yates woman impersonation?
Likewise, the LW is no spring chicken conception wise. Yeah, women can conceive at 40 albeit at lower percentage rates than when younger, but that's a lot of strain on the body. Our IUDidn't baby came onto the scene when we were both 39. My wife admits it was a bigger strain on her than the three prior ones in her late 20s and early 30s. She was also off the wall much more with the last one.
Those are all the selfish reasons why I can see the husband objecting to the surrogacy. It will ruin his sex life, turn his wife into a bloatfish, potentially cause her harm, and more than likely make her emotionally volatile and therefore tougher to live with. Jeez. Sign me up for that living situation.
Or it could be a moral resistence. We spend countless thousands of dollars to make babies on the one hand while we have kids in foster homes. Throw in abortion and the fact we can also do in vitro surgeries to safe fetuses around the same age some get aborted, and we have a huge cauldron of moral dilemmas when it comes to the applicaton of science to our procreative abilities.
That, of course assumes he is thinking with his big head rather than the little head in his pants. My bet is on the little head doing the talking with respect to his resistence to this surrogate pregnancy, as it SHOULD be.
Oink.