Expecting A Child In An Unexpected Way
When you are expecting a child, everyone is excited. Everyone knows what to say, everyone is thrilled for you. Strangers congratulate you, everyone has joy. People open doors for you and people go out of their way to be helpful. At least, this is the case when you are actually the one that is pregnant. If you are not the one that is pregnant, it is a completely different story.
While you are obviously thrilled and ecstatic to be finally having the child you have been waiting for, it is more complicated for others to understand. First of all, people cannot see that you are physically pregnant, so it is difficult to know if and when to share, as well as how people will react. Second, if you do tell people, they are usually more curious about the details surrounding how the child is being born, more than about the child themselves. Third, many people who are expecting in ways that are not “traditional” have a lot of trauma and past heartbreaks that they are still processing, and this is often ignored or forgotten about. Overall, it is just very different to be expecting a child when you are not the one carrying the child, but I wish it was not so different.
Since people cannot see that you are physically pregnant, you do not even know if you should tell people you are expecting a child. And if you do share, the reactions are never the same. People do not have the same level of excitement, they do not offer to help you with anything – they definitely do not understand the layers behind what you are experiencing. And personally, I did not always want to have to educate every person, so I could not always figure out if I even wanted to share or not. With that said, I know that it is difficult for things to change without explaining and educating those who do not understand, so that is why I wanted to explain more here.
When I would share our news with people, there were a variety of reactions. Overall, people acted confused or curious, more than excited. When we were expecting Dylan, someone asked: “what is the nicest thing a stranger has said to you about his arrival?” And this is an extremely simple question if you are pregnant – people can see you are, and they say congratulations. But if you are not pregnant yourself, this is not so simple. My response was: “Nothing”. Not that I did not respond to my friend, but that I said strangers literally say nothing. Because they cannot physically see that we were expecting a child, so they did not know to say anything. I would have to explain to them that we are, which meant that they became curious, confused, or uncomfortable. Not excited. And most never said congratulations.
To be honest, that always hurt me a little. I understand that surrogacy is very misunderstood and not super common, but people have children in many different ways, including surrogacy, adoption, fostering, etc. And many of these ways include having neither of the parents carry the child. Even though these are not “traditional” ways of expecting children, they are not really that uncommon – many people have children in these ways. In my experience, especially when it is a woman that does not have a baby in her belly, people do not know what to do. They understand that men cannot carry babies, so I think that there is a different viewpoint if a man is talking about it like that, but when a woman says that she is expecting a child, but you cannot physically see if that is true, people either assume that you are very early on in the pregnancy, or they just have a lot of questions.
I have also found that people have a tendency to want to congratulate the surrogate instead of the intended parents, and praise the selfless act that she is doing to care for your child. And I completely agree, of course she deserves that praise, that attention, that love, and that respect. But so do the parents. And I feel like once you are expecting a child via surrogacy, and you are the parents, nobody really cares about you anymore. Nobody really thinks that you need to be checked up on, nobody thinks that you should be anything besides happy, and nobody understands that there is still a huge mix of emotions in the bag.
When we started our surrogacy process, our agency was very clear that they were there for us as much as they were there for our surrogate. And that just was not true. And I do not think it was specific to our agency, I think that is just what happens once the process starts. I think that once the surrogate is going through all of the motions of trying to get pregnant with your child, and especially once she is, you are forgotten about. And listen, I understand that the focus should be on her – she is the one going through all the treatments, doctor’s appointments, etc. She is the one who will carry the child. She should be the main focus. But I do not think that means that the parents need to just be forgotten about in the process. And often the parents feel they should not or cannot speak up because it will make them look ungrateful.
The therapist that was “there for both of us” was not. She was technically there mainly for our surrogate, even though we found out later that she was not great at doing that either. But overall, she absolutely was not there for us. We had a few phone calls with her, and she did not ask a single question about how we were feeling, how we were doing, if we needed to talk about anything, etc. Nothing. Not one question about us. Not one concern. Not one consideration. Literally all she said was that she wanted to remind us that we needed to be there as a support system for our surrogate. She said she wanted to remind us what a selfless act our surrogate was doing for us, and to make sure she felt supported every single day. As if this was not something we already thought about daily. She was extremely condescending, and she made us feel insignificant. She made me feel like I was not grateful enough, but I knew I was grateful! I already knew everything she was saying to me. I did not need another person telling me those same things, especially a therapist. I needed someone to be there for me. There for us. But no one was (except we were there for each other of course).
When I would have anxiety, or frustrations, or just really get worried that I had no control, everyone (everyone!) would tell us that we just needed to be grateful, and we should just be happy for what someone was doing for us, and for the baby that was coming. And that made me feel like I just had to shut up and smile.
Is that how people treat a mother who is pregnant? If a woman says that she is having anxiety when she is pregnant, do people tell her to just get over it because she is having a baby? If a woman is pregnant, did they tell her she is not allowed to have a single other emotion because the baby is finally on the way, and she should be grateful? No. That’s ridiculous! That is not how people talk to women who are pregnant, that would never be tolerated – so why should it be different just because someone is not carrying their child themselves. In fact they need a whole different level of support, there’s so much more involved. And if someone is spoken to in this way, regardless of being pregnant or not, it is unacceptable. There were a few exceptions – other women I connected with who were or had been intended parents understood, my sister and one of my close friends were very understanding – but overall, they were outliers. And I believe more people have the capacity to understand, they just need to try to put themselves in our shoes and think about everything going into this.
In addition to a lack of support, I think many intendant parents feel like people are less excited about their child until the child is actually there. In fact, I had people in my life who kept saying they forgot we were having a baby because I was not pregnant. People do not tell me that now that I am the one who is pregnant. People remember – they can see it. And I understand strangers would not know that we were expecting via surrogacy, but people who know me, how do you just forget? And I think they said it offhand like it was funny, but I did not think it was funny. And I did not think that the baby should be celebrated less just because I was not carrying him. But I really felt like that a lot. We also happened to be expecting him when the pandemic hit, so to a certain extent we could not celebrate him as much because we could not gather, and I recognize that is part of the reason we did not celebrate in the same way. But to me, even if it was not truly intended this way, it felt like we were doing less overall to celebrate him. I feel like people did not know what they were allowed to say or how they were allowed to celebrate. I feel like people felt awkward, like they did not know if they were allowed to do as much for him. But why? He is still a child. He is still ours. And we wanted to celebrate him just as much as any other child born in any other way. And I could not really understand why that was so difficult for people to grasp.
I know this is a lot to take in – there is a lot to unravel, and I am clearly still unraveling it myself. I probably felt differently than I do after the fact, but overall, these are some major themes I found during our surrogacy journey. I am not saying any of this to complain, or place blame, or make people feel bad, but these experiences will continue to happen to other people if there is not more understanding on the subject. It is impossible to change or offer support when you do not even realize there is a need for it. So I am saying all of this to bring awareness to the fact that while intended parents are obviously extremely grateful to their surrogate, and they are very grateful to finally be having the child they have been waiting so long for, they are allowed to have other feelings too. And this is often either misunderstood, forgotten, or not considered at all. They are allowed to need help too. They are allowed to need support too. They are allowed to voice their concerns and their opinions too. They should not be expected to be silent and just smile, they are human. And they need support too.
Remember, no matter how your child is coming into the world, or no matter how you become a parent – you should not feel guilty for needing support and understanding too!
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