The Emotional Experience of Not Carrying Your Pregnancy

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

For many intended mothers pursuing surrogacy, both feelings exist at the same time.

There is often so much focus on getting to pregnancy—the appointments, embryo transfers, waiting, and uncertainty—that you may not have had space to imagine what it would feel like once the pregnancy actually happened.

Then it does.

Your baby is growing, but your body isn't the one carrying the pregnancy.

And that can bring emotions you weren't expecting.

Grieving the Pregnancy You Thought You Would Have

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

You may grieve feeling your baby kick from inside your body. You may imagine what it would have been like to watch your belly grow, attend appointments as the pregnant person, or have strangers recognize you as an expectant mother.

Sometimes seemingly ordinary moments can hurt the most.

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

You may feel genuinely happy—and suddenly deeply sad.

Then guilt can follow.

How can I feel sad when someone is doing something so extraordinary for me?

But gratitude and grief are not opposites.

You can love and appreciate your gestational carrier while also grieving the pregnancy experience you hoped would be yours.

Will My Baby Know I'm Their Mother?

For some intended mothers, not carrying a pregnancy during surrogacy can also bring up fears about bonding and motherhood.

Will I feel like the mother? Will my baby know me? Will we have the same connection? Am I missing something important because I'm not carrying?

These questions can feel especially difficult to say out loud when everyone around you is celebrating, and often can lead intended mothers to feeling anxiety and depression.

Therapy for intended mothers can provide a place where you don't have to minimize these feelings or immediately turn them into gratitude.

Instead, we can become curious about what not carrying means specifically to you.

Because becoming a parent through surrogacy isn't only about finally getting to your baby.

Sometimes it's also about making space for everything you had to let go of along the way.

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.