Michelle Williams has revealed that she welcomed her fourth baby via surogate. While speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the actor said: "I've got to give a big shout out to [our surrogate] Christine, because this last baby did not come through my body. But the miracle of our little girl is thanks to Christine. Maybe you're watching out there; thank you, Christine."
Williams' surrogate birth comes after Emily In Paris star Lily Collins also welcomed a child via a surrogate in February this year. My interest that both stars welcomed children through surrogacy was just as piqued as the next person, but perhaps with a different perspective. An ‘unexpected’ baby after a ‘non-pregnancy’? Welcome to my club.
I am a hugely proud mother of two girls, born via surrogacy, so I am best placed to understand and sympathise with the gargantuan effort (of the entire village) it requires to make a family this way. I’m vicariously misty-eyed at the thought of the extraordinary bonds it creates, both with the people who help and within this extraordinarily special family dynamic, because it is, well, extraordinary.
But I recognise we are a very small and exclusive club. The majority of those who took to the internet to offer their own thoughts and feelings did so from a place of literal naivety, and that to me is problematic.
The response to Lily Collins and Charlie McDowell's heartwarming Instagram announcement was predictably divided, peppered with speculation about why they would need to commission a surrogate to create their family, and along with it, a significant amount of derision and assumption.
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I must admit that I also ‘wondered why?” It’s a natural reaction in the absence of information, particularly when it comes to celebrities whose job it is to invite public interest. And whilst I enjoy idle gossip – it’s kind of part of my job as a journalist – I only linger on the topic if it’s particularly relevant to me. For instance, I definitely still wonder what kind of cancer Princess of Wales Kate Middleton received treatment for, because I want to know if my experience of cancer can relate to hers. But not for a single moment do I believe that I, or any of us, have a right to know. I agree wholeheartedly with the royal family – and now with Lily's husband Charlie McDowell – that everyone has the right to privacy. Without judgement.
The Emily in Paris star and her husband, Charlie McDowell, have just welcomed a daughter.
My own choice was to lay my experience, my motivations and essentially my soul bare in a public forum. A column for The Times online called The Mother Project documented my four-year journey to parenthood from start to finish. My own husband found this difficult at times. He still questions my online persona. ‘Why do we need to make everything public?’ The answer, of course, is that we don’t. And in reality, I don’t by any stretch. But for my own reasons I found it comforting at the time, interesting even, to open the topic up. To bring people on my journey with me. To demystify the whole experience, my cancer and eventual infertility diagnosis, to knock the taboo off the table. But the thing is, it is still taboo. My columns invited similar disdain for similar reasons from – I assume – similarly misinformed keyboard warriors.
But the context and commentary is remarkably similar. Let’s unpick a couple of the more erroneous responses to Lily’s news.
“Rich people using women as incubators once again lmao.”
*shudders* Well this is disgustingly disparaging and frankly, shortsighted. It infers that the most obvious explanation for any celebrity using a surrogate is vanity. Or laziness. Either way, they have money, so someone else can do it for them.
Surrogacy is unquestionably a practice reserved for a privileged minority – and I count myself among them. It is expensive. Extortionately so if, like ours, it doesn’t go to plan. Medically, the process is straight IVF, and as such it might take several tries – each round of treatment is several thousand pounds in this country, and tens of thousands in America. I was exceptionally lucky that I was in a position to afford it – but I use the term loosely. We had a home we could remortgage - twice. We will be in debt for the rest of our lives but we were able to raise the funds – and I could never put a price on my family, it will always be worth it.
I sometimes resent the fact that we had to pay an uncomfortably large amount of money for something that literally everyone has a right to, and most don’t need to pay for. Even those who society might deem unfit for parenthood. But because of my illness, it cost us a lot, both financially and emotionally. So yes, celebrities are privileged to earn exponentially more than the average person, but that does not make them immune from infertility, does it? It doesn’t immediately nullify their moral or ethical values. There will be the same number of reasons for a rich famous person to need to use a surrogate as anyone else, and there is nothing to ‘lmao’ about any of that.
All your IVF questions, answered.
“People unable to conceive have the option of adopting millions of children that don't have homes."
This is an interesting point, and one that I came up against time and time again, and my response is simple: it is not the responsibility of the people who struggle to conceive to adopt children. It’s true that there are millions of children that don’t have homes, but it is also true that there are millions of healthy people who could potentially offer them one. In my mind, adoption is as incomparable to surrogacy as a natural pregnancy is — a different route to parenthood open to both fertile and infertile people, and it is a true feat of superheroic selflessness.
I often felt that I needed to justify myself in my choice to become a mother by surrogacy, but I would also say that it wasn’t quite a choice. My first choice – the obvious choice – was not possible for my own specific set of circumstances, and whilst I chose to share those with the world, it really would not have made a difference to my right to privacy had I not. Essentially. What is up with any woman's body, or any of her choices is none of anyone’s business but hers.
The topic of surrogacy is an interesting one and it should be open to informed debate or discussion, because yes, there are still so many situations or circumstances in countries where it is open to exploitation. But what really bothers me is generalising that this is the issue in every case.
Anyone who wants to be a parent should be able to be a parent, fertile or infertile, gay or straight, celebrity or citizen; it shouldn’t make a difference. It’s just harder for some people than others. The fact that they have to go above and beyond is a feat. I always think how amazing medicine is that we even have this opportunity, and I wish Lily, Charlie and their extraordinarily wanted baby every happiness from my very full heart.
We urgently need better education on the impact PCOS has on our bodies and minds.
