Surrogate pregnancy: what it is and what psychological effects it has on the mother and the baby

The Spanish actress Ana Obregón, who lost her son Aless Lequio due to illness, has given the news that she has become the mother of a girl in the United States, specifically in Miami, through surrogacy at the age of 68.

What is surrogacy

Surrogacy is an assisted reproduction technique in which a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy and give birth to a baby for another person or couple. In this technique, the woman carrying the baby is known as the “surrogate mother” or “surrogate mother”, while the person or couple who wants to have a child is known as the “intended father or mother” or “intended”.

surrogacy it assumes that the baby is gestated by a woman who is not going to raise it and that, in exchange, receives an economic income. Surrogacy is a controversial technique and its legality varies from country to country. In some countries, such as Spain, it is prohibited by law, but It is totally legal for a Spanish citizen to have a son or daughter this way in a country where it is regulated, like in the United States.

Some time ago, the Supreme Court ruled on the matter and considered that surrogates entail unacceptable damage and exploitation for the mother and the baby. It was considered so from the Supreme that these surrogacy contracts conceive of babies and women as “simple merchandise”.

In this article, child and perinatal psychiatrist Ibone Olza explains what are the psychological consequences of surrogacy for the baby and the mother. Beyond the feelings of the parents and the ethics of the “business”, we cannot ignore all that it implies for the newborn, the risks and the serious psychological effects.

Psychological effects for babies of surrogacy

Blank Slate. The idea that newborns are like a wax tablet on which everything is yet to be written is very old, as Aristotle already thought. In fact, for centuries the scientists of the time, that is, the philosophers, debated about whether at birth the human being possesses some kind of knowledge or not.

The issue was definitively settled in the 20th century. with the development of technology that allowed us to understand embryological development and see the reactions of babies to different stimuli from very early moments of pregnancy.

We now know that there is an answer to the painful sensation from week 25 of pregnancy, visual response and preference for human faces from week 26 and similar hearing ability, and clear olfactory response from week 29.

Babies perceive what their mother feels

Babies in the womb perceive their environment and it affects themenormously, everything that lives and feels the mother.

Studies have also confirmed what is called “fetal programming theory” that is to say, that during some moments of the pregnancy there are biological systems of the baby that remain “programmed” to give a lifelong response to a type of external environment.

The construction of the psyche begins in pregnancywith the prenatal bond, and the neurodevelopment of the baby is highly conditioned by the emotional state of the mother, even more so if she consumes alcohol, tobacco or other toxins.

All these studies and investigations effectively confirm that what is experienced in the womb leaves a mark that will last a lifetime and that in many aspects will condition physical and emotional health. That is to say, that the baby and her body remember intrauterine life.

Effects of baby-mother separation

The same can be said of birth: There is more and more evidence that shows how the journey that comes out of the maternal womb is deeply engraved in the psyche and in the body.

A whole series of neurohormonal mechanisms They make babies expect to meet their mother as soon as they are born, recognize her, smell her, look into her eyes, and ideally, start breastfeeding.

It conditions in many aspects their brain development what lives in pregnancy, childbirth and in the first days. It leaves a very important mark on your psychic life. For all these reasons, when we talk about surrogacy, it is essential to put ourselves in the baby’s shoes and ask ourselves the following questions:

How does what the pregnant woman lives and feels affect the baby? How will being separated from her mother affect her as soon as she is born and saying goodbye to her permanently?

The baby gestated by surrogacy, Like all of our species, he expects to find himself at birth with the woman who has gestated him and who for him is his only mother. He expects to be loved and raised by her.

The primal wound: the trauma of separation

Being separated from the mother immediately after birth and probably not seeing her again is a trauma and a huge loss: equivalent to his mother dying in childbirth.

“The worst thing that can happen to a newborn is to be separated from its mother”

This phrase from the neonatologist Nils Bergman, a world-renowned researcher, summarizes very well all the current scientific evidence that shows how painful it is for babies to be separated from their mother as soon as they are born.

The consequences are more damaging and the more serious consequences, obviously, the longer the separation. Precisely because of all this evidence, only situations of a certain medical severity justify this immediate separation.

It is what we call the primal wound. Many of the children who have been adopted suffered these early and traumatic separations from the mother, which sometimes favors bonding disorders or very serious behavioral disorders in childhood or adolescence that can be very difficult to treat: years of therapies.

The psychological wound of losing a mother

Surrogate pregnancy means inflicting a huge psychic wound to a newborn: separate him from the mother who gestated him, and maintain the separation.

In addition, the delivery is scheduled or a cesarean section is performed in most cases, to encourage the parents who have “contracted” the surrogacy to be present.

The baby will not benefit from a spontaneous birthhe will not have skin to skin with the mother, he will not be breastfed… It involves a whole sum of losses with many risks and possible adverse effects on health in the very long term.

Body memory cannot be erased, the sensations of pregnancy and the absence of that mother who gave birth to her will last for life.

From the newborn’s point of view surrogacy is not only an ethically unjustifiable aggression, it is also risky and foreseeable that some of these babies may suffer psychological sequelae and difficulties for affective bonds for the rest of their lives.

Psychological effects of surrogacy on the mother

Every pregnancy entails a profound brain transformation which is also irreversible, it will last the whole life of the woman. Neuroplasticity is highest during pregnancy: new neurons are created, others are eliminated, and others migrate.

We mothers have in our brain cells from all the children we have gestated

Things happen that are still incomprehensible to scientists, such as what is called microchimerisms: Stem cells from the fetus that pass into the mother’s blood and some of them settle in her brain for life.

Pregnancy changes the mother’s brain

During pregnancy, the mother’s brain structure is forever modified.especially the regions involved in social relations change.

The brain becomes more and more emotional as the pregnancy progresses: pregnant women refine their ability to discriminate emotional states in other people, they sharpen their intuition.

That state of emotional hypersensitivity and hypervigilance is characterized by the “transient self-absorption” It increases in the last weeks of pregnancy and subsides weeks after birth.

The psychiatrist Donald Winnicott (1896-1971), a pioneer in the study of the maternal psyche, already described how this high emotional sensitivity was necessary for the mother to be able to put herself in the baby’s place and take care of it.

All these changes happen for that very important reason:

Guarantee that women can develop maternal behavior after childbirth Ensure that they can care for their baby with pleasure and enjoyment during, at least, the first years of life Allow them to establish a healthy and lasting bond with their children

The maternal brain is a perfected system throughout millions of years of evolution that has allowed the development of the intelligence of our species.

All these changes also pose a vulnerabilityand the reality of the perinatal mental disorders suffered by many pregnant and postpartum women is there.

Beyond motivations and social context (probably situations of poverty that make surrogacy almost the only way to guarantee an income to support the upbringing of previous children, for example), it is necessary to understand everything that gestating a child for others can entail in the short and long term .

The risks to the health of the mother

All possible complications must be named. of pregnancy from a physical point of view:

Early or late losses Prematurity Risks to the mother’s health: carrying a child that is not genetically your own poses a greater risk of serious complications such as preeclampsia

and in childbirthIn the case of surrogacy, many times a caesarean section will be scheduled or performed without a medical reason, just to make the birth of the baby coincide with the presence of those who have contracted surrogacy and who travel far away.

That induced labor or planned caesarean section puts you in greater danger the life of mothers. Some of these deliveries will be complicated by these unnecessary interventions: there will be hemorrhages, hysterectomies, or even maternal deaths.

Psychological risks for the mother

On the other hand, from the psychological point of view the situation can be especially complex. No matter how much a woman decides or pretends not to bond with the unborn baby to prevent later grief, biology will take its course and brain changes cannot be avoided. That is to say, bonding is inevitable.

Although it is likely that, faced with the horizon of having to be separated from your baby after the birth, you will make a psychic effort not to bond with it, it is possible that you have a low mood or even depression during pregnancy, something we know profoundly affects the unborn baby.

All this can also favor the consumption of alcohol or other toxins by the pregnant woman, something that can be undetectable but will also harm the development of the baby.

Having to face the separation of the baby Right after birth, the brain of the pregnant mother is placed in a situation that has been widely studied in mammals:

The maximum aggressiveness occurs if, as soon as they are born, the mothers are separated from the newborn

It is difficult to imagine what that postpartum period must be like, without a baby and with a “puerpero” brain.

Coping with loss: depression and post-traumatic stress

A duel for the loss of the pregnant baby is tremendously difficult no matter how much the woman tries to prepare for it, since by contract there is no going back.

It is certain that a significant percentage of mothers…