She has children to make … trips – Her next stop is Greece
THE Kim Eldridge he was 21 years old when he wanted to travel around the world. The big bet for Kim from the East London, who does not have wealthy parents to support her, was to submit the resources required for this trip. So he came up with a unique, highly controversial – and, perhaps, morally questionable – plan to raise money. She would become a surrogate mother to a childless couple and pass the one-year maternity leave, which she, like any other paid parent, would be entitled to while traveling. In addition, Kim would receive .000 12,000 in expenses from the couple for whom she will give birth to the baby – the payment of surrogate mothers is illegal in United Kingdom.
Although it may sound unreal, this is exactly what 26-year-old Kim did today. The truth is that Kim – who is engaged to her girlfriend – knew what she was doing. First of all, as she stated “Does not have the maternal instinct”. In addition, the concept of surrogacy is not foreign: Her own mother, 50-year-old Emma, was also a surrogate mother…
PREGNANCY WITH PROFIT OR TRAVEL
Kim gave birth to a cesarean section in March, pumped her breast milk to feed the first weeks of life, waited for her cesarean section to heal and set off for Spain in September. She plans to continue traveling until the day she returns to work, which will be next May.
And, in addition, as she states, this is something she intends to do again and again. If the next pregnancy, like this one, results in a caesarean section, it will inevitably be limited to having three parenthetical babies. Otherwise, she plans to become a surrogate mother for at least four babies: “I have been planning them for many years”says Kim, from the Croatian capital, Zagreb, where she is now. “From here I will go to Greece, then I will return home for Christmas and I will travel to Thailand on New Year’s Eve, where I plan to stay for a month. I hope some other parts of Asia (currently inaccessible due to Covid) will open. If not, then I will fly back to Europe and go to the eastern part of Spain, Portugal and Morocco. “
When her story appeared on the Mumsnet parenting forum, many accused her (and rightly so) of taking advantage of the parental leave system to allow mothers to spend valuable time with their newborns. The extremely unusual quid pro quo in which Kim has entered, which has a YouTube channel and calls itself “surrogate traveler“, He explains to those he meets along the way. She happily shows the scars and stretch marks of a caesarean section, not only to fellow travelers but also to the hundreds of followers who have attracted her unique story, both on YouTube and Instagram. “Some of the people I have met have said, ‘Yes, but you have destroyed your body.’ I have not done it though. My body has changed – I have stretch marks, loose skin, a big scar and my chest has fallen a little – but it has not been damaged. Other people told me, “What you did is so selfless.” And I say, “No, it’s not! I have a year off work and I travel the world.”
THE JOY OF THE EMPLOYER
It is not difficult for anyone to guess what her employers think of her decision, although Kim stresses that her bosses and colleagues were “very supportive”. And she does not intend to leave the railway company, for which she has been working for the last five years, in fact she says that she does not see any reason why they may not want to facilitate her pregnancies and leave. maternity.
You are entitled to 26 weeks of full-time leave, 13 weeks of statutory maternity allowance and 13 weeks of unpaid maternity leave for each pregnancy. “There are no specific laws on parenthood in the United Kingdom. I showed my employer the certificate that verifies the pregnancy and gives me the right to 52 weeks off work. I know surrogate mothers who do not want to take full-time leave because they do not want to jeopardize their careers, but employers simply cannot discriminate on maternity leave. Pregnancy puts a lot of strain on the body and mind and as much as you want to spend this time after giving birth, you need both. “Pregnancy and childbirth are a great sacrifice, so I will become my own for a while”.
CONCEPTION AND BIRTH
Kim got in touch with her parents through CREPS (Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy) and, while they have no objection to Kim sharing her experience on social media, they themselves do not want to appear anywhere. As a result, Kim fully protects their privacy and only says that the baby’s mother has blue eyes and blond hair, just like her.
It took four attempts to arrest Kim. Each time the couple visited her apartment on the day of ovulation, the man “left a sperm sample” in her bathroom, which she was then allowed to fertilize on her own, using a syringe. She was thrilled when she was able to tell them the news of her positive pregnancy test in June 2020. “I called them on the WhatsApp video early in the morning and showed them the positive test. I will never forget the look of absolute joy on their faces. I have completed them twice since birth, when the baby was six weeks old and then again when he was six months old and I saw how happy this child made them. “I could not be a surrogate mother who never had contact with them again because the whole point, for me, is to start this family and watch them grow up.”
But is it that simple? Pregnant with a baby, her first child, for nine months, undergoing 24 hours of delivery, which led to an emergency cesarean section, after which the newborn was delivered directly to his parents, while Kim had to manage the maternity situation on her own. like a toy. If you add to this the knowledge that the baby is genetically hers as it fertilized itself, using the father’s sperm, it all sounds like a recipe for severe postpartum depression.
However, Kim insists that this is not the case. Perhaps the fact that she saw her mother go through the same experience many times contributed to this. He fully supported Kim’s decision to follow in her footsteps. Her mother’s only child, Kim, has two older half-sisters from her father’s previous marriage and was five years old when her mom first conceived a baby that, like the ones that followed, was biologically hers but worked . as surrogate mother for another couple.
“My mom really wanted to have one, but she was adamant that she only wanted one child. He saw an ad for COTS and thought, “I could do that.” He would say to me, “If I do not use my egg, it will simply be lost, so why not use it for a good cause, for a woman who desperately wants a baby?” Mom became a surrogate mother of two babies for two couples, we met and saw how happy families became… But it was confusing for other people who, seeing mom pregnant, congratulated her and my dad told them: “It’s not mine” . “Then mom would say, ‘Neither is mine.’
Kim insists that her mother’s history prepared her psychologically for surrogacy. “From the moment I was conceived, I said to myself: ‘It’s not my baby, it’s just a little genetic material, in which I’m babysitting. When the baby kicked, he would call his mom and tell her “Your baby will not sleep tonight”. I had no maternal feelings for him. When they took him from me, I was so relieved! I could not see him because of the screen in front of me, but when he cried, I looked at my mom, who was next to me at the birth, and said, “I still do not want children.” They wrapped him up and took him to the anesthesiologist’s room, where his parents were waiting, and I saw him for the first time in the recovery room, after I had made stitches. I asked my mom to photograph us all. “I had no interest in the baby, but the joy I saw in his parents’s faces was incredible.”
LATE DEPRESSION AND PLANS FOR NEW PREGNANCIES
Kim did not hold the baby in her arms, to reduce the risk of any bond with him. When she returned home she used a pump to express breast milk every two and a half hours the little boy who will receive all the results from breast milk for the first time. And somewhere there, postpartum depression knocked on her door. “It was like the worst post-traumatic shock, very intense, very sudden. “I felt like I had been hit by a car,” Kim recalls. “I called my mom and I broke out, saying ‘I’m not feeling well.’ He came the next day, cleaned my apartment and made me a nice meal. “This situation lasted only a few days and would not prevent me from becoming a surrogate mother again, but the most difficult part of the whole affair was to express milk for six weeks – I felt like a cow.”
However, Kim is already thinking about the next baby she will conceive, either for the same couple or, if they decide not to raise their family, for someone else, as well as the travel adventures that will follow. Kim hopes her fiancée, Dilara, 24, with whom he started dating when she was six months pregnant and proposed last month, will be able to take a break from work to follow up on the next trip, after the next her pregnancy.
Absence of maternal instinct, she says, but she often watches a video that was shot shortly after the birth. “I have lost count of how many times I have watched the video with the parents holding the baby for the first time”, says. “I cry every time I see it. It is so beautiful…”.
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