Tuesday, August 2, 2011

What Are Your Top 10 Questions?

Throughout the summer and now that we are back in India, Chad and I have answered a lot of questions about our surrogacy journey lately. Here is our best estimation of the top 10 most frequent questions we are asked.

1. What are the genders?
2. When are you due?
3. Do you get leave from work?
4. Who is the father? (or, Do you know who the father is?)
5. Is the egg donor Indian?
6. How did you find your surrogate?
7. Are they going to be American?
8. Are you going to have one nanny or two? (welcome to life in India)
9. Have you thought of names?
10. Do you know the egg donor? (or, What do you know about the egg donor?)

If you're an IP, or already have children through surrogacy, or if you've been or currently are a surrogate, what are the questions you are frequently asked? Please leave your response in the comment section. I think this could be very helpful for those considering surrogacy.

7 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, while it's my least favorite question, it tends to be the one most often asked: So who will its mother be? My response: Me, of course! While we will be using donated eggs and a gestational carrier will carry the baby, only I, and I alone, will be the mother.

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  2. I feel the same way as Bernadette and Duane....
    Another question I get is: Can your child one-day meet her biological mother (no one seems very concerned about her meeting the surrogate)? Uff! That is a hard question to hear (especially after 8 years of infertility problems!). No, for one, I am her MOTHER and two, our Indian donor was Anon by law. Yet, the few people I mention to about how we came to have our child (because she is a lot darker than I am) and ask questions which I don´t always answer but to some people I do, and note, I am talking in general terms, seem to think that our daughter should be able to meet the woman from whom we BOUGHT!!! what turned out to be 8 ovules, 4 or 5 of which fertilized and were transferred to a surrogate and produced our daughter. I mean they jump to this conclusion so quickly and so smoothly saying, ¨but she´ll be able to meet the biological mother when she is an Adult, right?¨ No and NO! People, generally, don´t think this is ¨right¨, morally, emotionally or ethically because they think, ¨if I didn´t know who ¨I came from¨ I would want to know because, simply I want to know. I DO understand this and if it were up to me, our child could meet the ovule donor one day, but we could not afford an open donor to be flown in from another country and India does not allow them. So. That is the way it is. Furthermore, the media and society has had its hand in this, making genetic relationships so important, when they simply are not. But, all told, this is a consideration for all of those thinking about India. I would appreciate seeing other view-points on tackling this issue.

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  3. People can be so invasive and ignorant to any manners....but they ARE the minority and usually just harmless busy-bodies.

    I was stopped by some random woman once and without any introduction, she simply approached me - standing in front of my fully loaded triple stroller - and said, 'Fertility?'

    Now, what I really wanted to say to her was...'Since we're discussing intimate things, let's first discuss your bra size and then we can move on to your husbands manhood...'

    But what I actually said was: 'Why do you want to know?'

    That has been pretty effective on the very few occasions we have received odd questions. It usually stumps them and they walk away.

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  4. We get many of the same questions as you, however a few other common questions are -

    Will you go to India to get them? ( As if they fly by themselves at two weeks old. I always respond with a puzzled look on my face and of course!)
    How did you find the surrogate?
    Do you know her/meet her?
    Does she speak English?
    Do you email with her often?
    How often do you receive updates?
    How long have you known you were pregnant? (strange question?)
    Will you have to adopt them?

    The egg donor question is one that I answer in two ways depending on who the person is - either I give them a straight forward truthful answer (we used an anonymous, Indian egg donor) or skirt around it because they are just nosey and its none of their business, by saying something like, "oh, the surrogate is not genetically related to the babies. We did IVF in India and transferred the embryos to her; therefore they are American's by birth because they are genetically related to an American citizen."

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  5. We do frequently have to tell people that we won't tell who is genetically related to our babies. Most of the time, though, I find people are curious as well as supportive, so I don't mind talking about the process.

    @SKhan, Maybe the hospital will FedEx the babies to you! HAHA!!

    Thanks for the comments, everyone!

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  6. I'm so with the girls. These are MY babies and I dare anyone to tell me otherwise.

    We get... 'Why India?'. And 'Where does he get his beautiful skin tone from?'

    We DO live in sunny Arizona and Daddy is very tanned all the time. :)

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  7. The information in your blogue is really useful. For many couples it is very important to study a real history of the program running since the very beginning to the end. This topic is not so widely discussed among the people, ‘cause not all the countries support this treatment at their legal level. But even in the countries where the surrogacy is permitted there are hidden obstacles, for example, the surrogate mother in Russia according to the law is considered as a mother of the child and she has the right to choose either she gives the child to the parents or she will leave it with her. In Ukraine the law is on the biological parents’ side, according to them, only they are the biological parents of the child.

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