‘I am not my child’s auntie – I am her mother’
Mum whose sister had a baby for her is in a fight to become her daughter’s legal parent
A DUBLIN woman has said she will keep fighting until she is recognised as the mother of a baby, born by surrogacy to her sister.
Amy White underwent a hysterectomy at 25 as part of treatment for cervical cancer.
‘I absolutely always wanted to have kids,’ she explained.
‘But I was only 25, I was just like – I’ll get there, but I knew it would
look different. I was just so busy just trying to stay alive,’ she said.
Amy wants the law changed so she will be recognised as her daughter’s mother automatically.
‘I’m the one who gets up at night, I’m the one who changes her nappy and teach her to walk and stuff but legally I’m her auntie – I can’t apply for her passport or open a bank account, I’m not entitled to maternity leave.
‘If anything was to happen to say, mine and my husband’s relationship, or mine and my sister’s relationship, where does that leave me?’ Amy asked.
‘It’s once again putting Irish women in a vulnerable position.’
She and her husband, Reggie,
‘She knew we’d be good parents’
considered adoption, but it was proving to be extremely costly and time-consuming.
Once her sister, Katie, became a mother six years ago, she decided to help.
‘She knew we would be good parents, that we would be there and we would love our child and she wanted to give that to a child too,’ Amy said.
Katie and her husband Blake Richardson live in New Zealand.
‘In New Zealand… they have big families, families of different ages, grandparents – it’s not just what we’d have here as in a traditional family unit,’ Amy explained.
Katie and Blake agreed that once she gave birth to their second child, she would act as a surrogate for Amy and Reggie.
Amy said: ‘I do think that the surrogate’s partners don’t get enough credit for what they do, they are part of the surrogacy and part of the aftermath as well.’
New Zealand’s laws are far more pro-surrogacy than Ireland’s, and it has an ethics board that sits four times a year to help families and surrogates get a firm understanding of each other’s rights and responsibilities.
It’s a system that Amy wishes was available in Ireland.
‘You submit a huge application form that is literally months and months of work and you have to fill out what your intention is, your family circumstance, the reason why. All questions have to be answered with fertility counsellors, in all different combinations – sessions with me and Reggie, or me and my sister or whatever.
‘We discussed what the journey would look like before, during and after birth. Things like: if Katie got sick or if there was a problem and we had to decide who to save; things like if she decided half way through the pregnancy that she wanted to have a termination, who would make that decision? ‘All these were difficult scenarios but they had to be addressed. ‘It means that the surrogate is protected, the surrogate partner is protected and the intended parents know what they surrogate wants,’ Amy explained. ‘There are four of you in this, you need to know what happens and who makes what decision.’
‘Because of my surgeries I had to have a laparoscopy, so each time they went to retrieve eggs there was abdominal surgery involved,’ she said.
Two out of three rounds were successful, and after sending their embryos to New Zealand, Katie became pregnant.
However, the pandemic prevented her from being physically present for much of the pregnancy. Katie had to attend all appointments and scans on her own – Amy didn’t get to join her until the 20week scan.
‘Katie did say at one stage that it was like having three husbands,’ Amy said. Amy said the bond she felt with her daughter, Florence, was immediate.
Katie has described the experience as ‘extreme babysitting’, and has always felt that she was merely helping her sister become a mother.
New research released by the Assisted Human Reproduction Coalition has found that more than 1 in 10 Irish people have had, or know someone who has had, a child via surrogacy.
‘All I want for all children like Flo, is for them to be in a safe protected space,’ Amy explains.
‘We give our children so much but they are missing the protection of the State, that’s the hard part to accept,’ she says.
The Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy is due to draft a report on possible changes to the law.
‘They are missing State protection’