Letters to the Editor
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Husband's reasons?
Several posters are saying that they "understand" reasons of the husband. I know 1 year is a long time to devote to getting someone else a child, but I really cannot see why he would be so totally against this.
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Risks of surrogacy
The LA Times recently ran an article about two gay men who tried to have children using one of their sisters as a surrogate. She gave birth to twins at 24 weeks and they both died after a week in the NICU. She was emotionally devastated by the experience--felt as if she'd failed her brother. Also, the medical bills totalled $125,000, all of it paid for by her HUSBAND'S health insurance.
Surrogacy carries major risks, particularly when IVF is involved. As many as 25% of pregnancies conceived through IVF are multiple pregnancies (twins, triplets or greater), and as many as 53% of those pregnancies end prematurely.
Plus there's a good chance the LW won't be able to get pregnant. The odds of getting pregnant through one cycle of IVF are only 25% and the odds of getting pregnant after multiple cycles is only 40%. The cost per cycle averages $10,000 so the sister and her husband could nearly bankrupt themselves and still end up with no child.
The LW's husband is not being selfish in opposing this. If something goes wrong with the pregnancy, he and his wife will literally be footing the bill. Plus his wife is 40 and there are many more risks to her health in being pregnant than there would be to a younger woman. Cary was way off in his answer.
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make this decision alone and the marriage is most likely over
This is so much more complicated then a 9 month pregnancy. If it were just the mood swings and sickness with a light at the end of that 9 month window I’d say go for it. But there is no guarantee this is going to work inside of just 9 months – it could take a long time for the LW to get pregnant and even then it might end in miscarriage and then second and third tries and maybe multiple eggs (I’ve no idea what kind of medical procedures and whose eggs we’re talking about but this could be a BIG deal).
I also have every confidence that this is going to get super complicated even past the birth. Maybe I’m prone to becoming a little more attached then other people but going through a pregnancy (especially as an older mom), separating from my husband and then having to give up the child I’ve been carrying while taking care of three other children would put me over the emotional edge. I just don’t have that much in me and there is no shame in that when my sister could adopt.
BTW – I would freak the fuck out if my husband donated his sperm to his brother’s wife. I would always see the resulting child as my husband’s (and mine). The idea of him donating his sperm seriously fills me with a sense of terror. What if my brother-in-law died and his wife remarried a nut job and I never say my husband’s child again and I never knew if he was safe and taken care of. This would go way past ‘upset.’ This would be about my emotional inability to give my husband’s child away. If my husband couldn’t respect that over his brother’s need for a genetic child you bet I’d leave him.
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WRONG!
Cary couldn't be more wrong.
When you are part of a couple, there are some decisions that are of the "Two yeses and one no" variety. It takes both people to agree on it but only one to veto it.
Having a child falls into this category.
Let your sister solve her own problem through adoption or another surrogate. You need to remember where your priorities lie.
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Reactions
Several posters are saying that they "understand" reasons of the husband. I know 1 year is a long time to devote to getting someone else a child, but I really cannot see why he would be so totally against this.
Because its not just a year. Some examples:
What if she ends up with such a bond to the child after its born that she wants to keep it? It happens, you know.
How about health problems - there's a small but non-zero chance that this will injure or even kill her. Most women that I know (including my lovely wife) get concerned when men talk about sky diving or motorcycles. Some husbands get concerned when their wives talk about these things, too. Having a baby is far from automatically safe.
What happens if her sister gets hit by a bus in the next nine months? Or even in five years - will the wife want to take the child back (legally possible in some states I understand) rather than have it raised by her sister's husband alone?
Is it possible that this "enormous" gift will destroy the balance of his wife's family, something that may be more apparent to the husband as an outsider?
Is money tight? Not to the point that they couldn't do this, but is it
As others have said, how would their current children feel about this, not just during the pregnancy (although that's very important), but afterwards? Would they resent their mother being unavailable for nine months? Especially if they didn't, might they resent what they saw as their brother or sister being taken away from them by their aunt and uncle?
Some summaries for thought.
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Really on the fence on this one
The greatest indirect risk, as others have said, is that the surrogacy will destroy LW's marriage. On the other hand, no one seems to have noted that by effectively not permitting LW to act on her own conscience, her husband is threatening his own marriage. I would certainly resent my husband for a long time if I were in LW's position.
As for the health risks and all, I had a baby at age 45, no complications, easily the healthiest of my four pregnancies. There are many ways to minimize the health risks of a pregnancy, among them undergoing thorough medical assessment prior to agreeing to undertake the surrogacy (for instance, cardiac stress testing).
And for those advocating adoption, there are not thousands of available babies just waiting to be adopted. Adoption is, if anything, more expensive and intrusive than assisted reproduction. In the end, how one chooses to have a family, whether one chooses to have a family, are decisions that are too personal for second guessing. No one should be guilt tripped into adoption (or parenthood).