The system of surrogacy seems to nearly completely exist from the point of view of the parents. It makes sense—the kids aren’t yet here and don’t yet have a voice. Decisions are made within this system that make big assumptions and are weighted towards the parents’ potential insecurities rather than a child’s needs. As if the child should automatically be okay to trade the option to know their biological parents for the reassurance it offers the ones who raised them. Why can’t both exist?

My surrogacy situation and adoption were open. My parents did it for medical reasons, sharing on the paperwork that they imagined the relationship would fizzle out. Who does that fizzling out benefit? Whose questions does it resolve? Each situation is unique of course and I do believe my parents made the best decision they could at the time. The world has evolved though and now, at what feels like peak child bearing age, I see friends making the same big assumptions and decisions. I try to poke and prod, hoping to prevent their child’s future suffering and give them options I’ve had to fight for. Often, it seems it’s only viewed as me raining on their parade or projecting my situation.

I am projecting! I am taking my lived experience, my painful questions, and my against-the-system reunions to try to offer a different path. I don’t have all of the answers. I want to learn from other surrogate kids (that’s why I created this site). I refuse to be silent yet also am learning when to be careful to rip one of the deepest parts of myself open to an audience that doesn’t care as they pursue their own child.

Surrogacy is ultimately still rare especially when compared to more readily available means like sperm donation. This is often where I find myself desperate to talk to my queer friends, usually AFAB, about how to give their future kid options. How to queer the fertility system in the way I believe queer people are uniquely positioned to do so. In some twist of fate or perhaps exhaustion, more often than not, I find queer folks desperate and protective of their future kids. Rather than wanting to keep a line open to their future kid’s biological connections, they shut it down in fear. This happens across the board with straight couples too, as I found with my parents who could not fathom I would have any curiosity about my birth mom or wider biological family. I can appreciate that fear but not talking about it and shutting it down unfortunately doesn’t resolve it. It might be a sign of rushing the process, starting the process with the wrong person, or not having done the work to grapple with what you are signing up for. Ultimately, that fear is passed off to the child in a new form of unanswered questions, abandonment, and more.

I met my 21 year old niece for the first time this last week. I only spent 30-45 minutes with her at a cute coffee shop in a small Utah town but it was minutes that were not baked into the system. I felt it every minute I was with her how this should not be possible. My parents, my birthmom, the surrogacy agency, and the medical professionals did not have a reunion like that in mind when I was born. The plan for many having kids in different ways is ironically solely about making their lives easier rather than embracing the complexity of the life they are bringing about.

Embrace the complexity! Ask the questions now and make it a part of your kid’s story. Facilitate and hold open those connections. Rather than having connections to half siblings and nieces and nephews be hard fought, find a way to keep the door open as much as you can. Do that work because it’s required for your future kid you say you so desperately want to have. Don’t just rely on the fertility world to tell you what to do. It is designed for you to have a kid–end of sentence. It is not in service of the kid itself. Too many let the anonymity of many of these processes let them off the hook but the resulting kid will turn into an adult and they will never, ever be off the hook. The system isn’t designed for it and this is exactly where the opportunity lies to continue to create your own, just as you’re finding your own way in bringing about a new life. Keep going. This is part of the intentionality your kid deserves and needs.