An increasingly popular pregnancy method used by celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon and Kim Kardashian has been linked to an increased risk of complications and death.
A new study finds that surrogates – women who carry and carry a baby for someone else – are more likely to experience life-threatening complications or death during pregnancy than women who give birth to their own children.
Researchers looked at data from more than 800,000 pregnancies in Canada and determined that surrogate mothers were more likely to develop preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition that causes high blood pressure, nausea and vomiting.
It is also said that the risk of heart disease and stroke increases as you get older.
The incidence of life-threatening health problems that may occur during or after birth The pregnancy rate for those who carried their baby via surrogate was 8% compared to 2% for those who carried their baby themselves.
People choose surrogacy for a variety of reasons, including complicated previous pregnancies and infertility. Jimmy Fallon has spoken about why he and his wife decided to use a surrogate. Kim Kardashian has also shared her own experience with surrogacy, having used two women to have children with Kanye West.
Study author Dr. Maria Velez, an obstetrician at Queen’s University in Canada, said people considering paying someone to carry their baby should consider these risks.
“Clinicians caring for individuals and couples who need a gestational surrogate to build their family should counsel their patients and gestational surrogates about the potential risks during pregnancy and the early postpartum period,” Dr. Velez said.
Surrogacy, in which a couple’s fertilized egg is implanted into the uterus of another woman who then carries the baby, is becoming increasingly popular as medical advances continue.
The researchers analyzed 863,017 pregnancies (including 806 surrogate births) from 2012 to 2021 and published their findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The topic remains controversial, but the authors point out that little research has actually been done to examine how safe surrogacy is compared with natural childbirth.
Dr Velez said: “This study was prompted by the increasing use of gestational surrogacy around the world and the lack of information on the impact of this reproductive method on pregnancy outcomes for gestational surrogates and their unborn children.”
Childbirth is inherently risky. During birth, mothers run the risk of heavy bleeding, tissue tears, and changes in blood pressure.
One well-known complication is preeclampsia, a sudden and dangerous change in the mother’s blood pressure during pregnancy or birth that can lead to premature birth, liver damage, seizures, coma, cardiovascular disease and death.
The disorder affects about 5 to 8 percent of all pregnancies in the United States and is more common in women who are obese, over 35 years old, or have an autoimmune disorder.
The study found that 8 percent of surrogate pregnancies experienced some type of life-threatening complication, particularly preeclampsia and heavy bleeding.
This was four times the rate in the natural birth group, where 2% of pregnancies resulted in complications during birth.
Surrogates were also more likely to give birth prematurely (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) than other women, but overall babies born to surrogates were just as healthy as babies born to biological mothers.
The authors note that screening guidelines for surrogate mothers require them to rule out pre-existing health conditions that increase the chances of pregnancy being complicated, but Dr Velez said “these guidelines are not always strictly followed.”
Overall, surrogacy is still a relatively rare situation.
This is likely due to the high cost of caring for a surrogate mother — which can exceed $200,000, according to American Surrogacy — making surrogacy a service reserved for the wealthy.
The researchers found that the risks for women who chose surrogacy were greater than those for women who gave birth to a biological child.
Some surrogate mothers choose to enter into contracts for a fee, while others agree to be surrogates solely to help couples who are unable to conceive on their own.
Those seeking surrogacy have similarly varied motivations: some have had risky pregnancies before, others are infertile, or are in same-sex relationships unable to conceive a baby on their own.
One of the complications of surrogacy in the U.S. is that it’s not legal in every state: Nebraska and Louisiana currently ban paid surrogacy.
Paid surrogacy first came to the forefront in the 1980s after a controversial court case in which a New Jersey couple’s woman, who had been paid to use a surrogate to carry a pregnancy for them, changed her mind after giving birth and decided to keep the baby.
Couples who paid women to have children sued and were ultimately awarded custody, leading New Jersey, New York and other states to pass laws banning paid surrogacy that stood for years.
The case, popularly known as “Baby M,” has made surrogacy a controversial topic nationwide, with some questioning the ethics of wealthy couples paying sometimes quite poor surrogate mothers for the temporary use of their uteruses.
In Canada, where the study took place, surrogacy is largely legal, although there are some restrictions.
