The Pain of the Children Speaks for Itself - Son of a Surrogate

I just had to post this excerpt from the blog of Son of a Surrogate. This is who he is: "My name is Brian and I am the son of a traditional surrogate, a biological father, and an adoptive mother." His blog speaks for itself:

Then came the time last year that J's real mom had her second child. Bev was 35 or 36, somewhere around that. I have never seen the boy unravel quite like he did that day. After we returned from the hospital, Jason and i sat beside each other on the bed. I knew something was wrong because when J chews the inside of his mouth, something is bothering him. I just didn't know how deeply it went for him.

I innocently asked, "So J, whaddya think of Connor? Isn't he an absolute doll?" The dam burst, the levy broke and the floodgate blew apart at that moment. J, sobbing the hardest I have ever seen anyone do, flung himself across my lap, clutched my knees, and wept into my stoneblast Levis. "WHY DIDN'T SHE KEEP ME?! WHY DIDN'T SHE WANT ME?!" he wailed. Over and over he repeated these two things until the dam broke inside myself. I was taken back to the time when I first met my siblings and how badly that stung. Seeing the family photos, all happy and smiling, but I wasn't there. I was missing. I knew exactly how J felt. My mother didn't keep me either. My mother didn't want me either. No matter how much our other parents did, our real mothers did not.

I bent over and sobbed into J's tee shirt. 2 barely grown men transformed back into the raging, grieving infants taken from their mothers and replaced with substitute mothers. No matter how much love we were given, it wouldn't take away the pain of losing our 1st mothers. I felt a connection to J that superceded anything physical or mental. It was a spiritual connection with a grieving brother.

Something horrible happened to us at birth. We lost our mothers. They did not die, but they might as well have been dead because we lost them in the capacity of mother and to a tiny baby, that feels like death. They are all we ever knew and suddenly, they were gone.

How ignorant it is for us to think that babies don't feel or don't remember. Study after study comes out to reveal how aware we really are and how bonding begins before birth.

...Why is it that I get blasted for being the child of a surrogate and an adoptee? Because I am not grateful? Cuz I don't kiss the ass of surrogacy and adoption? Kiss the ass of the industry?

It must threaten you. I must threaten everything you are and everything you stand for to make you write some of those bitchy things to me. I must scare the piss out of you to get so damned defensive. It also hurts, because you care nothing for the feelings of the person these arrangements affects the most - the child.

If my mother was killed in a horrible accident on her way home from the hospital or if she perished in childbirth, I would get all permission to grieve I needed. When I expressed my rage against the forces or thing that killed my mother, you would all give me all the sympathy in the world. I would be allowed for me to grieve, be angry, to rage. Well my mother died as my mother when the forces that be took me away from her. However I am not allowed to grieve because that force was called surrogacy and those people who took me away were called Intended Parents. It's becoming like a sacred cow. Poor poor infertile couples. Ungrateful adoptees. Acquiring that chikd by any means available is far more important to what is actually DOES to the child.

It's bullshit. Pure garbage. Its disenfranchized grief and it is self-perpetuating. No wonder I just don't "get over it'.

So John and Paul were wrong and Aretha was right. Love isn't all you need. You need respect, too. And respect is something I never got. Neither did Jason. The first disrespect came when you took us from our mothers and you gave us a substitute. AS IF we had no feelings. AS IF we wouldn't notice.

Well, we did notice. We'll notice for the rest of our lives.

To read more by Son of a Surrogate, also click here. Here is some taste of what else he says:

How do you think we feel about being created specifically to be given away?...I don’t care why my parents or my mother did this. It looks to me like I was bought and sold....You can pretend these are not your children. You can say it is a gift or you donated your egg to the IM. But the fact is that someone has contracted you to make a child, give up your parental rights and hand over your flesh and blood child. I dont care if you think I am not your child, what about what I think!

...Lets look at this from our point of view. Here is our biological mother our flesh and blood the woman who would naturally be raising and loving us totally denying that we are her child. ...We’re your kids just as much as your own kids, but yet you only think of us as some sloughed off egg that you are giving to a substitute mother who no matter how much love she has just can’t be the same as you? ...How do you think that makes us kids feel? You may be able to deny us but we don’t want to deny who you are. That makes us feel very rejected. That leaves a hole in our hearts whether we admit to it or it manifests some other way like in depression or a fear of getting close to someone else.

...What makes us different than the children you love and raise? Because in your mind you have to think of us as somebody elses kid so that you can keep your sanity and take your compensation. What about our brothers and sisters, the kids you didn’t give away in exchange for money? What if we want to know them and they know us. You can tell them we aren’t their brothers and sisters, but they know the truth. We all know the truth.

...And what about all of the lies told to the kids and their families about who they are. What about all of the sperm and egg donor babies who will walk around looking at faces wondering who their biological parents are and if they could be Joe Schmoe walking down the street because he has the same jaw line. Is it fair to take away our identities? Would you like that done to you?

...Our biology is a part of us, it’s the very first part of us and you have no right to lie about it! Not to us, not to our family either. What you do isn’t all about you. That is so selfish. Its all about us, the kids of surrogacy.

... When I was 6 I asked my adoptive mother if she really was my mother. She loved me and I knew she did, but she never felt like my mother. She felt more like a loving nanny and I sensed this even being so young. She started to cry and I felt bad for upsetting her so I didn’t ask any more. But I always knew. Kids always know.

...I am mad at them both for not thinking about how I would feel about being taken away from my bio mother and family and having my biology separated like this. I am angry with my mother for denying me and treated me like nothing but an egg and a $8000 paycheck.

... Yes I am angry. Yes I feel cheated. Yes I feel that my parents and my mother did not take my feelings into consideration when they entered into this arrangement, but I feel that they are all good people just really misguided and did not stop to think of the ramifications. It’s a shame and it sucks for me. Hell it sucks for all of us. I don’t mean to come off that you (the surrogates and the intended parents) are bad people either. It looks like you are all good people with good intentions and a lot of love but all the good intentions and love in the world wont change the defenition of right and wrong. It won’t change how the kids feel.

... I don’t know what the solution to infertility is. I hope they can come up with a way for you to all carry your biological children. I just don’t feel that breaking apart a mother and child is the answer unless the mother will cause harm to the baby. Even in those cases, a mother should be able to take part in the child’s life someway and in a safe way. All I am asking you to do is to think long and hard about what you are doing. Consider everything including the way the kids might feel.

... My mother came back into my life a year ago but i had to beg and plead with my adoptive mother to let her do so. I just stood and stared at her for the longest time. It was so comforting to see someone who looks like me because I didn't look much like my father. I have her hair and eyes. I have her nose and smile. There was an increible sense of recognition. Just to see her gave me a sense of belonging to the human race. I no longer felt like I crawled out from under a rock or was dropped off by an alien spaceship. I had a mother and she looked like me. My brothers and sister looked like me too. She cried and held me in her arms and I felt like that tiny baby she had given birth to 17 years ago and was holding for the first time. I felt like I finally came home.

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.

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