The Emotional Experience of Not Carrying Your Pregnancy

You can be incredibly grateful for your gestational carrier and still wish you were the one carrying your baby.

For many intended parents, both are true.

When you pursue surrogacy, there is often so much focus on getting pregnant that you may not have space to think about what it will feel like when the pregnancy actually happens.

Then the transfer works. Your baby is growing—and your body isn't the one carrying the pregnancy.

Gratitude and Grief Can Exist Together

Not carrying your pregnancy can bring a particular kind of grief.

You may miss experiences you expected to have: feeling the first kick, watching your body change, attending appointments as the pregnant person, or having others recognize you as an expectant parent.

Sometimes seemingly small moments hurt the most.

Someone asks when you're due. A friend announces her pregnancy. Your gestational carrier describes feeling the baby move.

You can feel genuinely happy and suddenly sad.

Then guilt may follow: How can I feel this way when someone is doing something so extraordinary for me?

But gratitude doesn't require you to erase your grief.

You can love your gestational carrier, feel a deep appreciation for what she is doing, and still mourn the pregnancy experience you imagined for yourself.

“Will I Feel Like the Mother?”

For intended mothers, not carrying may also bring up questions about identity and connection.

Will I feel like the mother? Will my baby know me? Am I missing something important because I'm not pregnant? Will my baby think I am an imposter?

You may try to quiet these thoughts by reminding yourself how fortunate you are. But that doesn't necessarily make them disappear. It can simply make them harder to say out loud.

Therapy during surrogacy can provide somewhere you don't have to choose between gratitude and grief. Instead, we can become curious about what not carrying means specifically to you—without trying to convince you that you shouldn't feel that way.

Becoming a parent through surrogacy isn't only about getting to your baby.

Sometimes it's also about making room for everything it took—and everything you had to let go of—to get there.

Looking for Support Before, During and After Surrogacy?

Joanna Haydon, JD, LCSW, is a psychotherapist who works with intended parents navigating the emotional complexities of infertility, surrogacy, pregnancy loss, and third-party reproduction. She supports clients experiencing anxiety, depression, grief, uncertainty, and the complicated emotions that can arise while building a family through a gestational carrier.

Joanna provides telehealth therapy throughout Missouri and Illinois. Joanna provides telehealth therapy throughout Missouri and Illinois. Learn more about Surrogacy and Third-Party Reproduction Therapy, explore Infertility & Pregnancy Loss Therapy, or contact Joanna to learn more about working together.